The power of evolution comes from a few basic facts. I find that among these, the most subtle but critical is that each specimen’s “blueprint” is not a blueprint of the final result, but a blueprint of laws of motion.
The variation that occurs from specimen to specimen, such as brother to brother, occurs not at the level of final result, but at the level of the law of motion. When the infant is in the mother’s womb, it collects molecules, and each infant receives a very similar set of molecules.
Natural selection is a force that follows from material conditions and laws of motion, not to some design or form. We often look at the forms, and mistake this as what evolution is about. But that is a mistake born from the prejudice of the senses: we believe that what we see is what best informs us about what is.
As a result of this, the diversity of a population branches out over the generations, and some of the resulting variations are better keys for overcoming the obstacles in that population’s environment.
Consider what this teaches us about ideas and thinking, and how we teach thinking to our students. When our students present an idea, do we examine the end form, and say, “yes, you did that correctly or incorrectly,” or do we examine the process by which they came to that idea? If the former, then we are not teaching them how to think, but rather how to conform their ideas to the ideas of their authorities. If the latter, then we are cultivating the tools of generative thinking that allow our students to think things that their teachers did not, and allow them to solve problems that their teachers did not anticipate.
Natural Causes 