dhw: First of all, I'd like to express my admiration at your dedication in reading such books, and my gratitude for sharing what you learn. I don't know how you find the time and the patience!-Thank you. This study has been an avocation for over 30 years. Believe me I live a very full life outside of it, as you probably realize. > > dhw: Anyone who has followed our discussions over the last eight years will know that as far as you and I are concerned, gradualism has long since been a dead duck, and natural selection creates nothing, but simply ensures that useful changes will survive.-Your comment is somewhat tautological: survival and the concept of 'fit' to survive are one and the same. Natural selection is a name given to the result, nothing more.-> dhw: However, we must distinguish between “functional adaptation” and innovation, which is why the response to environmental challenges may come in two forms: adaptation leaves the organism basically the same (surviving the challenge), whereas innovation changes the organism (possibly as a result of exploiting opportunities offered by the environment). Evolution depends on innovation, not adaptation.-Exactly. this is why epigenetic adaptations may very well not lead to speciation.- > dhw: Frankly, if he accepts common descent and wants to discount a preprogramming or dabbling God AND Darwin's random mutations plus gradualism, I see no other possible solution than an autonomous inventive mechanism within organisms themselves.-And I ask, where did that come from? You will admit it is just as nebulous. At least in his 'structuralism' he thinks the 'drive to complexity' follows built in laws or guidelines.