"Doug Freyburger" wrote in message
...

The word "directed" is problematic. Because unsuccessful mutations are
culled very effectively the directions of change are not random.

Right, evolution is not a process which favors the best solution, but
culls the bad solutions. Something that is 'good enough' is likely
to be passed on warts and all.



Because the current environment effects evolution the change is a
feedback loop based on other current species.

But remember, the sum total of a complex system's feedback loops
is to behave as market forces. Which are self tuning forces driving
the whole towards the more efficient future. That is a clear direction
or bias towards success. The deck is clearly stacked in favor of
more order over time, and randomness plays a crucial role by allowing
more of possibility space to be explored. Greater gradations for
selection to operate within.



The change is
self-organizing without any need for a global controller. Lack of a
global director makes the change not directed.


It's not directed from outside, but direction comes from within.
It's still a directed path.


Presence of local
feedback loops that cull most mutations makes the changed some variation
on the word directed - sorta self-directed.

But another largely unappreciated aspect of evolving system is emergence.
Most of the truly significant evolutionary advances are not directly related
to chance events. Once an ecosystem becomes fully filled, every niche
spoken for across space and scale, then emergence occurs. Which are
spontaneous large evolutionary jumps, following power law or earthquake
like events. Countless minor changes, combined with the rare big one.

Emergence like intelligence. Which allows a fully filled ecosystem to suddenly
have an entirely new niche explore, but within the same physical space.

Nothing incremental at all about significant evolutionary advances.
Just like an earthquake. It's all the rest, the minor changes, which are
incremental, or linear in character.

Power law

"Power-law relations characterize a staggering number of naturally occurring
phenomena, and this is one of the principal reasons why they have attracted
such wide interest. For instance, inverse-square laws, such as gravitation
and the Coulomb force, are power laws, as are many common mathematical
formulae..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law