This all suggests an additional question. There must be some connection between evolution and development since they are both agents of change. Thanks for taking time from what I am sure is a busy schedule to address these questions. Peace, Robert DeHaan Below is your message of May 17, 1996. No one is dismissing natural selection as the agent of change.
Natural selection is a different issue from how the morphological change occurs.
It is true that the evolutionists and Darwin, in particular, held to a view that morphological change was carried out by a smooth morphing of form. But this is not what modern genetics is learning about how change occurs. If genetic programs were beanbags of independent genes, each responsible for building a single part of the body, then evolution would have to occur slowly and sequentially as thousands of parts achieved their independent modifications. But genetic programs are hierarchies of master switches, and small genetic changes that happen to affect the switches, might engender cascading effects throughout the body. Homeotic mutants teach us that small genetic changes can affect the switches and produce remarkable changes in an adult fly.