Fleming Leonore, Brandon Robert
Department of Philosophy, Utica College, 1600 Burrstone Rd., Utica, NY 13502-4892, USA.
Department of Philosophy, Duke University, Campus Box 90743, Durham, NC 27708, USA.
Stud Hist Philos Biol Biomed Sci. 2015 Feb;49:24-31. doi: 10.1016/j.shpsc.2014.10.006. Epub 2014 Nov 29.
There is a worry that the 'major transitions in evolution' represent an arbitrary group of events. This worry is warranted, and we show why. We argue that the transition to a new level of hierarchy necessarily involves a nonselectionist chance process. Thus any unified theory of evolutionary transitions must be more like a general theory of fortuitous luck, rather than a rigid formulation of expected events. We provide a systematic account of evolutionary transitions based on a second-order regularity of chance events, as stipulated by the ZFEL (Zero Force Evolutionary Law). And in doing so, we make evolutionary transitions explainable and predictable, and so not entirely contingent after all.
有人担心“进化中的重大转变”代表了一组任意的事件。这种担心是有道理的，我们将说明原因。我们认为，向新的层次结构水平的转变必然涉及一个非选择主义的偶然过程。因此，任何关于进化转变的统一理论都必须更像是一个关于偶然运气的一般理论，而不是对预期事件的严格表述。我们基于ZFEL（零力进化定律）规定的偶然事件的二阶规律性，对进化转变进行了系统的阐述。这样做时，我们使进化转变变得可解释和可预测，因此毕竟并非完全是偶然的。
