A little acid... is all it takes... (Evolution)

by David Turell , Friday, January 31, 2014, 15:06 (3731 days ago) @ xeno6696

David: I think this is a misuse of the term natural selection. The environment, not NS, acts on the organism which changes by this mechanism. NOW natural selection steps into determine if the change is sufficient for survival. NS is the end judge of the whole process and can only act on what is presented to it.
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> Matt: I think that our understandings of natural selection are different. If you'll entertain me for a moment--evolution is a process. ......The thing that *makes* natural selection important, is the fact that it replaced the notion that "all things appeared in the forms they are in" with "All things are the way they are because of a stimulus-response interaction with the environment." 
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> Matt: Basically, natural selection stops being "Natural Selection" if you attempt to logically separate the environment from the response. So the way I look at it, natural selection is the act of organisms adapting to changing environments.-I think we will have to continue to disagree about definitions. You are conflating two processes. The organism has the ability to respond to stress and change. That is separate step one, as fully exposed by Shapiro with all of the epigenetic mechanisms and gene expression modifiers are discovered. Step two is when the new phenotype presents itself to the environment and at that point natural selection as a competition does its job. Natural selection is a passive recipient of these forms.