Collier, John. “The dynamics of biological order.” Depew, Weber and Smith (1988).
URL1 URL2
The most casual observer notices that order, complexity and organization are found in biological organisms. The most striking evidence for evolution is the regular increase in these properties displayed in the fossil succession. Despite this, the core of conventional selectionist evolutionary theory avoids mentioning the order concepts altogether. Natural selection of fit traits merely requires that fitness promotes reproduction in a line of descent. The order concepts are required only to account for the promotion of reproduction, which is kept out of the core of the theory, and relegated to boundary conditions. This tactic is peculiar at best, since it deliberately relegates explanation of an obvious fact of biology to the periphery of evolutionary theory. Furthermore, as I will argue later, if the environment is the only cause of biological order, cyclic changes in environmental characteristics affecting fitness should result in cyclic changes in biological forms. This is a direct result of omitting order concepts from the core of evolutionary theory. A unified general theory of evolution must include order among its key concepts.