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To dovetail into something else...

Stephen Uzzo sez:

"Natural selection is important not because of all 
the "facts" about living things (or evidence of formerly living things) 
we accumulate, but rather how elegant it is as a process for change and 
adaptation and how universally applicable it is to living systems from 
intracellular metabolic processes up to clades and beyond...."  

So, what exactly do you mean by "elegant"? And whatever it may mean, is it
really an important facet of science?

I read Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe". I liked it even though I
didn't understand a few parts. (OK, OK! More than a few!) He talked about
how string theory was elegant, and that was one reason some people think
it's on the right track - but admitted that there's no reason the universe
couldn't operate under an inelegant system.

Just curious,
Jonah Cohen

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