Hi gb

Robert Wright ("NonZero"), Howard Bloom ("Global Brain") and Greg Bear ("Darwin's Radio") have all posited a natural, purposeful mind behind evolution, in the form of the connectionist network that an evolving population makes. So much information processing is effectively being carried out by the loss and fixation of genes, I don't half see their point. Bear's fiction (which he believes is close to the facts) goes further and posits evolutionary jumps appearing via upgrades being propagated through the population deliberately by the evolving Mind.

I've no idea how this might be tested, but it makes sense intuitively.