[extropy-chat] why the vertebrate eye might not be suboptimal after all

[scerir]

A medico pal, not on this list, comments:

> The real test is this conclusion: "nor is it easy to conceive how it 
> might be modified without significantly decreasing its function." In 
> fact it's very easy. After all, we have a perfect example sitting 
> around. It's called the mollusc eye. And it manages to be just as 
> good at seeing as the vertebrate eye without all the stupid design 
> features AND without the flaws that Ayoub claims would necessarily 
> eventuate from a reverse design. You'll notice the hoops Ayoub jumps 
> through specifically so that he doesn't even have to address the 
> issue of the cephalopod eye. "Would hundreds of thousands of 
> vertebrate species -- in a great variety of terrestrial, marine, and 
> aerial environments -- really see better with a visual system used by 
> a handful of exclusively marine vertebrates?" In other words, the 
> vertebrate eye must be better because there are lots more 
> vertebrates. Except of course, by that logic, the most successful eye 
> of all time is the insect eye. Ayoub seems to be unaware that the 
> very existence of multiple different eye designs poses a major 
> problem for ID. >

It seems interesting. I also realize it is a generalization of 
the AP (Anthropic Principle). Here we have a sort of VeP (Vertebrate
Eye Principle) plus MeP (Mollusc Eye Principle) plus IeP (Insect
Eye Principle) at work. Which is 'the best'? Are natural selection
and 'anthropic' reasoning the same thing?
s.

'I'll say it again: the ACP is to cosmology as natural selection 
is to the theory of evolution. Natural selection is not really 
falsifiable, being a tautology. Yet little in biology makes sense 
without it. Same goes (or will go, once the new paradigm becomes 
widely accepted) for the ACP.'
-Jonathan Colvin