Even if you are not a reductionist and believe, as I do, that there is genuine causal power and functionality in the arrangements of things that is not contained in the things themselves or fully explainable by their low-level interactions, you are still left with the question of where that functionality comes from. It does feel like it somehow violates the conservation of causal power for evolution to have simply created systems that can do things – truly amazing, incredibly powerful things – from the mundane, purposeless matter that we are all made of.
Kevin Mitchell – Were the principles of life invented or discovered?
no straight lines 