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Given the opportunity, caprices whim, and fluke have played a significant role in making us we are. But how can we make this happen? Individual must not have the opportunity to create a number of complicated, because we? Correct. Has a profound understanding of the principles involved, but to continue to play an important role. These principles first action at this level of the gene, these remarkable biological blueprint for the warehouse was found in every cell of the body. Measuring, biological means of the invention, we have to understand the genes, and how to have the opportunity to affect them.           Nature’s Dance of Chance     It is often said that necessity is the mother of invention. In a world of creative humans, that is certainly true. With foresight and design, courtesy of our expanded hominid brains, we can artificially shape the world to our needs.   ... In the world of biology, needs are not so easily met. There is no forethought in nature (apart from the remarkable biological instruments within our skulls). And so there is no intentional design in life forms, despite the coincidental appearance of design. Necessity, no matter how urgent, cannot be the mother of evolutionary invention.   Necessity may be the mother of natural selection, in that survival of the fittest "promotes" the traits an animal needs. But natural selection is not a creative force—it cannot invent those traits. It is merely a pruning mechanism, working as well as nature allows with what is given. The actual force of creation in life, in evolution, is much less efficient than purposeful invention and much less directed than natural selection.   That creative force—the mother of invention in life—is chance, not necessity.   Chance, caprice, whim, and fluke have played significant roles in making us what we are. But how can that be? Surely chance alone could not have created something as complex as us? True. There are deep principles involved, but chance still plays a significant role. These principles begin to act at the level of genes, those remarkable storehouses of biological blueprints that are found in every cell of the body. To fathom the biological means of invention we must understand the genes, and how chance affects them.   The mechanism by which traits are passed from parents to offspring was a mystery to early evolutionists such as Darwin and Huxley. Today we take genes for granted... Scientists and laypersons alike comment authoritatively on the genetic basis of heredity; we say we have genes for brown eyes, or red hair... [M]any common and uncommon variations of human beings can be found in the genes, many of which have been around for a very long time...   Genes are distinct sections of a long chemical strand called deoxyribonucleic acid, better known as DNA for obvious reasons. Genes organize raw materials for the production of the proteins that build our bodies. They carry the blueprints, in the form of chemical sequences often described as "code" for how to make livers and eyeballs... And our genes exist in pairs, with one member of each pair inherited from the mother, the other from the father...   Half of your genetic characteristics are derived from your father's genes and half from your mother's… These genes are then replicated in your body's sex cells, and half of them will be passed on to the next generation when and if you reproduce. Your mate contributes the other half. It is truly remarkable how genes faithfully replicate themselves with singular aplomb to be passed on from generation to generation. Usually.   Just as in the other cells of the body, mistakes are made in the sex cells. How often genes bungle the process of copying themselves is not clear. Mistakes are rare—perhaps one error in 100,000 replications of a gene, maybe more, maybe less, depending on the gene. But you have around 100,000 genes that control your development. Chances are good that somewhere along the line a tiny error was made. That chance error in the copying DNA is what we know as a mutation. Estimates vary, but it appears that each of us may carry as many as four new mutations. The aberrant process of mutation creates new alleles [alternative forms] of a gene. New alleles create new living variants—the chance innovations from which natural selection "chooses" the fittest. In the world of biology, mutation is thus the mother of invention.     Whether or not a new mutant allele helps or hurts the survival of an animal, such as our ancestor Australpithecus africanus, also depends on chance. In the words of Thomas Hunt Morgan, "In this sense chance means that a variation having appeared, chanced to find a suitable environment."         — Jeffrey K. McKee, The Riddled Chain: Chance, Coincidence, and Chaos in Human Evolution, Chapter 6 – The Mother of Invention                       Indexes/15