I notice your quote says "many aspects of genomic, cellular, and developmental evolution", i.e. not all of evolution.
In the paper itself, we can discover what is hidden by such cherry picking:
"First, evolution is a population-genetic process governed by four fundamental forces. Darwin articulated one of those forces, the process of natural selection... The remaining three evolutionary forces are nonadaptive in the sense that they are not a function of the fitness properties of individuals.
... all four major forces play a substantial role in genomic evolution."
So we can see explicit acknowledgement that natural selection is the only evolutionary force that is adaptive, i.e. a function of fitness, and it plays a substantial role in genomic evolution.
'nuff said.
I'm glad you established that natural selection is the only adaptive force. Because the same paper clearly states as far as the origins of gene networks and the continued evolutionary trend towards complexity is concerned adaptive forces are not responsible. It is non adaptive forces that are more likely to have established, evolved and develop gene networks for complex life.
I had already posted the section you have just mentioned. But its ironic that you talk about whats hidden and missed because you have also not mentioned the many other references to natural selection that show I am correct in saying the papers are clearly saying that natural selection is not and cannot evolve gene networks and complex life. As stated several times now natural selection may play a substantial role but its not in the evolution of gene networks for complex life and that is what I am talking about. Evolution claims that natural selection and random mutations are solely responsible for the evolution of life from the first universal common ancestor which was a single celled life then evolved everything else including all complex life through to what we see today. The papers clearly say that natural selection is not up to doing that and this is what you are not admitting or addressing.
Once again can you tell me what these statements say from the same paper.
What is in question is
whether natural selection is a necessary or sufficient force to explain the emergence of the genomic and cellular features central to the building of complex organisms.
Jacob (1977) argues that “it is natural selection that gives direction to changes, orients chance, and slowly, progressively produces more complex structures, new organs, and new species.” The vast majority of biologists almost certainly agree with such statements.
But where is the direct supportive evidence for the assumption that complexity is rooted in adaptive processes? No existing observations support such a claim, and given the massive global dominance of unicellular species over multicellular eukaryotes, both in terms of species richness and numbers of individuals,
if there is an advantage of organismal complexity, one can only marvel at the inability of natural selection to promote it. Multicellular species experience reduced population sizes, reduced recombination rates, and increased deleterious mutation rates, all of which diminish the efficiency of selection (
Lynch, 2007). It may be no coincidence that such species also have substantially higher extinction rates than do unicellular taxa (
Raup, 1978;
Stanley, 1985).
It has long been known that natural selection is just one of several mechanisms of evolutionary change,
but the myth that all of evolution can be explained by adaptation continues to be perpetuated by our continued homage to
Darwin’s treatise (1859b) in the popular literature.
many aspects of genomic, cellular, and developmental
evolution can only be understood by invoking a negligible level of adaptive involvement (
Kimura, 1983;
Lynch, 2007).
The following statements from the paper show where natural selection fits with the other non adaptive forces. Rather than play a substantial role in the evolution of complex gene networks and complex life it states that the effects of these non random forces can direct evolution to encourage the fixation of mildly deleterious mutations and discourage beneficial ones. So these non adaptive forces are not only more responsible to evolving complex life they actually work against the mechanisms of how Darwinian evolution works through natural selection acting on beneficial mutations.
Because all three nonadaptive forces of evolution are stochastic in nature, this conclusion raises some significant technical challenges. It is tempting to think that stochastic processes have no implications for the direction of evolution. However,
the effects of mutation and recombination are nonrandom, and by magnifying the role of chance, genetic drift indirectly imposes directionality on evolution by encouraging the fixation of mildly deleterious mutations and discouraging the promotion of beneficial mutations
Here is where the paper is showing how the four forces work with population genetics for which you claim it is saying that natural selection is substantial for evolving complex life. Here it is saying that not only is natural selection insufficient for evolving complex life but it promotes the opposite of
Thus, contrary to popular belief,
natural selection may not only be an insufficient mechanism for the origin of genetic modularity, but population-genetic environments that maximize the efficiency of natural selection may actually promote the opposite situation, alleles under unified transcriptional control.
So taken all together we see the true context of what the paper is saying the role and capabilities of natural selection is for evolving complex life which is all life after simple single celled life. The author would not be stating two opposing positions at the same time. You pick out a single line in the paper and claim that it is saying natural selection is substantial for evolving complex life. It may be substantial but its role in actually evolving complex gene networks is insufficient, negligible and actually promotes the opposite as the papers state.
If you disagree with this then you tell me what these above statements mean if they dont mean what I have said.
This paper explains further why non adaptive forces are more responsible for how life changes and the emergence of complex life. Its not just a case of saying it happens to diminish natural selection. It explains how non adaptive mechanisms work. For example in developmental biology the evolution of new traits are through development bias where certain forms/features are more favored and therefore repeated in different animals. Darwin's evolution would call this convergent evolution but that relies on incredible coincidence.
Rather than selection being free to traverse across any physical possibility, it is guided along specific routes opened up by the processes of development5, 6.
developmental bias occurs when individuals respond to their environment by changing their form — a phenomenon called plasticity. For instance, leaf shape changes with soil water and chemistry. The standard evolutionary theory views this plasticity as merely fine-tuning, or even noise. The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis sees it as a plausible first step in adaptive evolution. The key finding here is that plasticity not only allows organisms to cope in new environmental conditions but to generate traits that are well-suited to them.
http://www.nature.com/news/does-evolutionary-theory-need-a-rethink-1.16080
So non adaptive forces like developmental evolution can produce the basic trait/feature through set pathways that are followed rather than natural selection and random mutations trying to find that needle in the hay stack beneficial situation in among a vast sea of other possible outcomes including many harmful mutations which sidetrack evolution. Organisms work with their environments as though it was a conduit such as with symbiosis which allow life to get the right types of traits needed for that particular environment.
That is why non adaptive forces make more sense, because they work with life and produce what is need rather than blindly trying to find it through natural selection. Once those traits are found then natural selection can refine them. This all makes sense for how we see sudden appearances of complex variety in the fossil records. Life had a helping hand to find the right stuff through non adaptive processes to find the right stuff.
