IF YOU want to make steam rise from an evolutionary biologist's ears, try suggesting that evolution might have a goal or purpose. The idea has been anathema for more than a century, ever since biologists rejected Jean-Baptiste Lamarck's idea that giraffes that stretched to reach high branches could pass their long necks on to their offspring. Evolutionary change, we know, results from random mutation and natural selection, and any notion of purpose smacks of creationism and its close cousin, intelligent design. "That's the third rail of evolutionary theory," says Peter Corning – anyone who treads near it risks a severe shock to their reputation.
But Corning, director of the Institute for the Study of Complex Systems in Friday Harbor, Washington, is one of a handful of people who are tiptoeing, gingerly, into the danger zone by suggesting that organisms can guide their own evolution. And they are not talking ...
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