Jonathan Crowther wrote:
> 
> Dawkins says that evolution creates the almost perfect illusion of design,
> but that it is nevertheless an illusion.
> 
> But I think that Darwin only explains the evolution of organs (= artificial
> parts with substantial matter and accidental form) rather than species (=
> natural wholes with substantial form and accidental matter).  TWL was
> somehow in TSE in parts and needed a midwife to deliver it whole to its
> mother.
> 
You really ought to read Gould's _Structure of Evolutionary Theory_. It
is, among other things, a classic in the history of ideas. A beautiful
book. I was half through my second reading of it and enjoying every page
when my eyesight stopped that. 

Actually, as Richard Levins among others has pointed out, it is not the
'good' design that demonstrates evolution but the bungling design. The
nerves of animals use electricity for communicating; that is far more
efficient than the chemical signalling inside the brain. No decent
engineer would have designed such a crude system. But that was the
'template' established in the early history of evolution, and so we have
abrain that communciates at a relative snail's pace. And consider the
male prostate gland as one ages. An atrocious design. The biological
world is ri8fe with such crude devices crafted by evmolution. Dawkins is
sometimes fun, but Gould is both a better writer, a better historian,
and a better evolutionary theorist.

Carrol