The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

by David Deutsch

So what would refute the Darwinian theory of evolution? Evidence which, in the light of the best available explanation, implies that knowledge came into existence in a different way. For instance, if an organism was observed to undergo only (or mainly) favourable mutations, as predicted by Lamarckism or spontaneous generation, then Darwinism’s ‘random variation’ postulate would be refuted. If organisms were observed to be born with new, complex adaptations – for anything – of which there were no precursors in their parents, then the gradual-change prediction would be refuted and so would Darwinism’s mechanism of knowledge-creation. If an organism was born with a complex adaptation that has survival value today, yet was not favoured by selection pressure in its ancestry (say, an ability to detect and use internet weather forecasts to decide when to hibernate), then Darwinism would again be refuted. A fundamentally new explanation would be needed.