... that is to say, the Aristotelian-Thomistic framework of the Four Causes -- Formal, Final, Efficient, Material -- is the best way to approach a really comprehensive understanding of evolution.
This is all courtesy of TOF the Inimitable: retired statistical process controller, working sci-fi author, enthusiast of the philosophy of science.
A Few Nuggets ...
While clarifying a few points ...
Theories are stories or narratives in the context of which a specified body of facts "makes sense," and from which the mathematical laws may be deduced. (And Feynman pointed out that a physicist always has more than one theory in mind, each of them predicting the same body of facts, but differing in their ability to inspire new ideas.)
Hence,
- Falling Bodies and Evolutions are Facts.
- Gravitation and Natural Selection are Theories.
An aside to the reader ...
"endangered species" is a term of art meaning "Gosh, we don't see a lot of these suckers around." [...]
On the failings of a mechanistic model of life ...
There may be very little genetic distance between humans and chimps. There is no distance at all between grasshoppers and locusts. The latter are just grasshoppers that have "gone Hulk." If we didn't know up front that they were the self-same critters, we'd be tempted to classify them as separate species. The same genome is used by both. The difference is that what the genome does depends on environmental cues within which it does it. That is, the end of the genome is not determined to any one thing, but to a suite of potencies, and which one is actualized depends on "epigenetic factors."
In addition to writing a thoroughly-entertaining rag when the fit takes him, TOF has produced some very strong S/F novels. My personal favorite is The January Dancer, although he's received high praise for his Eifelheim — medieval Germans meet dimension-hopping space aliens; hilarities ensue, including the Black Death.
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