Looking at it from a slightly different perspective:
Evolution is Time driving Matter forward.
From the cosmic perspective of some 14 billions years,
Evolution has no intent, it has matter, time, motion, outcomes.
An under appreciated analogy for “Evolution,” is to recognize that “Evolution” is a result of time’s relentless forward momentum.
The sum total of human knowledge shows us with overwhelming consilience that our “Reality” started at what’s been coined the Big Bang some 14 billion years ago, when massive pure energy was released to create our Universe.
It’s time/motion that pushed this primal energy to coalesce into bundles such as quarks, and it’s time that drove the universe to expand and cool. It’s time/motion that saw atoms and molecules form.
Time/motion/gravity is what brought vast clouds of atomic, molecular dust together into swirling nurseries for stars to be formed, only to run through their life cycles. Some dying stars exploded and producing all the elements heavier than iron. Time/motion/gravity is what sweeps together those remnants into new stars and planets.
Here in our corner of the Universe, conditions were promising for something special to happen and it did. It’s time/motion/gravity with sunshine and radioactivity that created Earth’s geological turmoil which is the source of life
Time married Earth’s geology with biology and it has driven all the changes since. One second, minute, day, season at a time. Resulting in folds within folds of cumulative harmonic complexity flowing down the cascade of time.
