By combining a computational model with experiments on the evolution of drug resistance in bacteria, Gore and his students have, for the first time, calculated the likelihood of a particular evolutionary adaptation reversing itself.
The deviations of observations from the idealized expectations, and the high levels of graph complexity both point to potential transitions among landform types as being the dominant phenomenon, rather than canalization along a particular evolutionary pathway.
One may think of a physical system, changing as time goes on from one state or configuration to another, as progressing along a particular evolutionary path, and ask, from this point of view, why it selects that particular path out of all the paths imaginable.
The book focuses on a particular evolutionary model learning mechanism, a combination of a directed specializing mechanism and a genetic generalizing mechanism.
The assertion by some creationists that science has failed to prove a particular evolutionary scenario fails to appreciate the nature of scientific knowledge.
In any case, there is a broader misconception inherent in the claim that an incomplete recounting of a particular evolutionary outcome challenges the validity of evolution generally.
