The Critical Rationalist Vol. 01 No. 04 ISSN: 1393-3809 31-Dec-1996
4.6 Testing?
4.4 Variation
(37) Finally: in those phylogenetic lineages which have exhibited significant growth of adaptive complexity, this has arisen through sustained or repeated correlation between adaptive complexity and S-value of S-lineages making up these phylogenetic lineages. More specifically, where adaptive complexity has grown, the increments in adaptive complexity have arisen as unjustified variations in the properties of S-lineages, which variant S-lineages have selectively displaced competing lineages of less adaptive complexity, by virtue of their also having relatively greater S-value. All long term growth of adaptive complexity is composed of such events of unjustified variation and selective retention.
(38) It is crucial to note here that this final thesis does not entail that adaptive complexity be always correlated with S-value, or (therefore) that adaptive complexity should necessarily grow. Maynard Smith makes the point thus:
There is nothing in neo-Darwinism which enables us to predict a long-term increase in complexity. All one can say is that since the first living organisms were presumably very simple, then if any large change in complexity has occurred in any evolutionary lineage, it must have been in the direction of increasing complexity; as Thomas Hood might have said, `Nowhere to go but up'. But why should there have been any striking change in complexity? It is conceivable that the first living thing, although simple, was more complex than was strictly necessary to survive in the primitive soup, and that evolution of greater fitness meant the evolution of still simpler forms.
(39)
That is, this theory solves 
only in the special sense that it
permits a spontaneous growth of adaptive complexity; it
does not compel or predict such growth.
(40) This is an absolutely crucial point which is very rarely made explicit. Instead it is commonly assumed, implicitly, that increased adaptive complexity will just obviously or naturally involve increased S-value (and will therefore be selected). This is utterly mistaken, and leads directly to the various tautology fallacies surrounding Darwinian theory.
4.6 Testing?
4.4 Variation
The Critical Rationalist Vol. 01 No. 04 ISSN: 1393-3809 31-Dec-1996
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TCR Issue Timestamp: Tue Dec 31 17:37:08 GMT 1996