title: Can evolution be directional without being teleological?
abstract: Convergent evolution reveals to us that the number of possibilities available for contingent events is limited, that historically contingent evolution is constrained to occur within a finite number of limited pathways, and that contingent evolution is thus probabilistic and predictable. That is, the phenomenon of convergence proves that truly contingent evolutionary processes can repeatedly produce the same, or very similar, organic designs in nature and that evolution is directional in these cases. For this reason it is argued in this paper that evolution can be directional without being teleological, and that the dichotomy that evolution must either be directionless and unpredictable or directional and predetermined (teleological) is false.
authors.affiliation: Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Wright-Rieman Laboratories, Rutgers University, 610 Taylor Road, Pistacaway, NJ 08854 USA. Electronic address: mcghee@rci.rutgers.edu.
authors.forename: George R
authors.initials: GR
authors.lastname: McGhee
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D010684:Philosophy; D012641:Selection, Genetic
keywords: Contingency; Convergence; Directional evolution; Teleology