Random no more

摘要

Evolution, we have always been told, results from natural selection sifting through countless random variations over millions of years. That's not good enough, says Andreas Wagner, a systems biologist at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. Natural selection can explain which adaptations survive over time, he argues, but it falls far short of explaining where those adaptations originate. For over a decade, Wagner has been looking for an answer that would satisfy him, and Arrival of the Fittest presents his research to a general audience for the first time. In it, he makes a persuasive case that the origin of adaptations - the arrival of the fittest, rather than the survival of the fittest - can't be down to pure chance alone.