History does include aspects of directionality, and the present range of causes and phenomena does not exhaust the realm of past possibilities.

The pathways that have led to our evolution are quirky, improbable, unrepeatable and utterly unpredictable.

The essence of Darwinism lies in its claim that natural selection creates the fit. Variation is ubiquitous and random in direction. It supplies raw material only. Natural selection directs the course of evolutionary change.

I emphatically do not assert the general 'truth' of this philosophy of punctuational change. Any attempt to support the exclusive validity of such a grandiose notion would border on the nonsensical.

The invalid assumption that correlation implies cause is probably among the two or three most serious and common errors of human reasoning.

... each with its own beauty, and each with a story to tell.

Mass extinctions may not threaten distant futures, but they are decidedly unpleasant for species caught up in the throes of their power.