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Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
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Mon, 4 Jun 2018 13:02:49 -0400
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> Just picking at definitions.  Evolution always has an inevitable outcome--change.

In the process of biological evolution, some things change, some things stay the same. Look at the genome, there are many segments that if changed, would result in the failure to function and/or reproduce, so these need to be "evolutionarily conserved." Other things change with no apparent effect: "neutral mutations." 

Rarely, a change on the genome produces some advantageous trait. More often traits already present are intensified, if they confer benefit. But given the world a few millions of years ago, nobody could have predicted or even guessed what it would become. We can only even guess at how life began. 

The term evolution has been used in many, many senses. Even in biology its meaning depends on context. Here is an early example, where the outcome is thought to be preordained, used in the sense of "unfolding."

The process of development.
1791   Erasmus Darwin   The gradual evolution of the young animal or plant from its egg or seed.

Later the term took on the Darwinian sense, "The transformation of animals, plants, and other living organisms into different forms by the accumulation of changes over successive generations."

1863   E. V. Neale   The diversity of species has arisen by the evolution of one species out of another.
1873   Charles Darwin   At the present day almost all naturalists admit evolution under some form.

But, the sense of inevitability, and possibly "improvement" is a separate thread:

1862   H. Spencer  Evolution is a change from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity, to a definite, coherent heterogeneity; through continuous differentiations and integrations.
1885   E. Clodd  Evolution is advance from the simple to the complex.

Even the theory of evolution is evolving:

1970   Observer   All that neo-Darwinism does at present, the critics say, is to pronounce that ‘what survives, survives’.

PLB

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