Devolution: Getting Back to the Simple Life

As we have seen already in this series, evolution can occur via horizontal gene transfer and epigenetics, both of which add information to a life form by non-Darwinian means -- that is, not by natural selection acting on random mutation of the genome.

The information added by epigenesis and horizontal gene transfer is not random. For example, assume that male parents' alcoholism is consistently associated with disrupted patterns in children's genes. The effects of excess alcohol, far from be...