The Organization 

 of Matter and Life 



Organic evolution has followed a course which can 

 best be described as a mixture of peculiar types of 

 randomizing and ordering processes. Mutation may 

 be considered a randomizing process because it tends 

 to produce an infinite number of different kinds of 

 individuals. Natural selection may be considered an 

 ordering process because it reduces this number of 

 kinds to those which can succeed under specific en- 

 vironmental conditions. The advent of bisexual spe- 

 cies was another such ordering process because it 

 made interbreeding populations rather than indi- 

 viduals the units in natural selection. 



Each ordering process appears to have arisen from 

 the situation produced by the preceding kind of 

 randomization. Each new set of randomizing and 

 ordering relationships, however, is superimposed on 

 a previous set, so that finally different sets operate 

 contemporaneously. Within certain limits each set 



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