ABSTRACT
THE thesis I have proposed has involved the assumption that it is possible to discern in the results of evolution some general overall direction of change which can truly be regarded as a special direction. The existence of such a direction has been asserted by many other authors, who have usually referred to it as the direction of evolutionary progress. This implies merely that a change in this direction has happened to occur, and that the direction is one which we are willing to recognize as progressive. I have, however, asserted, or at least implied, something rather more than this, namely that the direction is one which in some way arises as a result of the general structure of the universe; that is, it is not merely a direction in which progress happens to have occurred, but, in some of its aspects at least, it has the character of an inevitable consequence of the nature of the evolutionary process and the organisms involved in it. This assertion certainly requires discussion.
