On Fri, 14 May 1999, S.B. Feldman wrote: > << The thing that I have found most disconcerting is that there is > virtually no empirical evidence for (3). But without (3) natural > selection (items (1) and (2)) can only interact with the > variation that is already present in the gene pool. Since > biologists are unhappy with this, (3) is *assumed* to be true. >> > > I don't think it is a question of being unhappy but that a mutation is, by > definition, a random event. I'm not sure what you are getting at here. The randomness of mutations is not in question, as far as I am aware. The question is whether mutations are the source of the variations that natural selection selects. That's the point that lacks empirical evidence. Todd Moody [log in to unmask]