A process of random selection ...

I just got home about an hour ago. I had to spend several hours shelving the books that had piled up over the past few days. I couldn't get to them because I had a couple stories to write -- which involved doing some extra reporting -- and I had lots of other stuff to do besides.
Anyway, while I discarded September's galleys and made way for December's and January's, I started thinking about the lively exchange I've been having here with Melville Goodwin and others about intelligent design and neo-Darwinism. There are maybe 600 galleys for October and another 600 for November already on the shelves, a mere fraction of the more than 12,000 that on average get published every month. It's a prodigal display of fertility, just like you see in nature, where, out of millions of fish eggs, say, only a comparatively few will actually grow up to be mature fish -- very few indeed when you take into consideration how many fall prey to other species.
I can't bring myself to believe that only the best books get reviewed. I can't even be sure if the best books get noticed. We surely can't imagine that only the best specimens survive in nature. Random selection is surely an imperfect method for determining which books to review. Seems an odd system for organizing life, too. Then again, maybe it's designed that way.