Taking the Magic out of Natural Selection.

'Planning' is simply the result of experience read backward and projected into the future. To me the 'purposive' action of a beehive is simply the summation and integration of its units, and Natural Selection has put higher and higher premiums on the most 'purposeful' integration. It is the same way (to me) in the evolution of the middle ear, the steps in the Cynodonts (clearly shown by me in 1910 and by you later in Oudenodon) make it easier to see how such a wonderful device as the middle ear could arise without any predetermination or human-like planning, and in fact in the good old Darwinian way, if only we admit that as the 'twig is bent the tree's inclined' and that each stage conserves the advantages of its predecessors... The simple idea that planning is only experience read backward and combined by selection in suitable or successful combinations takes the mystery out of Nature and out of men's minds.

Ronald Rainger, An Agenda for Antiquity (2004-03-22)

• evolution
• natural selection