Material Causality and Evolution

One potentially fruitful application of the concept of Material Causality that has been proposed here is to Evolutionism.  Teleological Causality consists in a transition from imperfection to perfection, so hardly seems applicable to any of the transitions that have been classified as an Evolutionary step, i. e. even the most devoted Anthropocentrist might have difficulty attributing perfection to the 'crown of creation'.  Nor does Formal Causality or Aristotle's version of Material Causality seem to have an applicability to e. g. the development of the Human thumb.  So, any substantive debate on the topic has focused on whether or not the predominant Causality of Modern Science--Efficient--is adequate to Evolutionary transitions, and, specifically, to apparently unprecedented phenomena.  The debate at bottom is--the novelty of the phenomena is only apparent, a reflection of a lack of comprehension of how the consequences are, in fact, implicit in antecedent conditions vs. the novelty is truly emergent, irreducible to the sum of antecedent constituents.  But neither side is satisfactory--the former begs the question, while the latter, as is, is no more than ad hoc and nominal.  Now, lacking in the debate is an analysis of the concept of Evolution, constituent stages of which include Mutation, and, hence, Variation.  But Variation is Diversification, the principle of which, as has been previously discussed, is Material Causality, which, as implicit in well-established Philosophical concepts, cannot be dismissed as ad hoc and nominal.  Instead, the concept of Evolution, with which Philosophers are only beginning to reckon, occasions the recovery of a type of Causality that hitherto has remained only implicit but undeveloped, and, hence, unbeknownst in the tradition.