Natural Selection (Evolution)

by dhw, Tuesday, November 29, 2011, 11:44 (4553 days ago) @ xeno6696

Dhw: The bones of contention between us were your insistence 1) that your definition of NS as “the process by which an organism undergoes environmental pressure and responds to that pressure in its genotype” had superseded the conventional one, which for brevity’s sake I will simplify to “NS is the process by which those forms of life best suited to the environment will survive”; 2) that NS and evolution are synonymous.

MATT: I don't see a material difference between my definition of evolution or the one you provide here in 1. 2 is harder for me to tackle, because again, if you remove it from the equation of evolution, you no longer have evolution. It is irreducible. Natural Selection is not removable from the theory of evolution. Because of this, I have a difficult time answering yes or no to the synonymous question, because again, my hands are tied by the ropes of methodological materialism. I have attempted (and failed) to explain why I hold this view, both through a mathematical argument as well as an attempt to explain the mathematical argument in plain english. Is it synonymous? Not syntactically, but Natural Selection is such an important part of the process that I cannot remove it. Does this clear the mud for you?

1) Then you can’t see a material difference between adaptation and natural selection. If an organism undergoes environmental pressure and responds in its genotype, it adapts. Some organisms don’t respond, i.e. they don’t adapt. Natural selection is the process whereby those organisms that do not adapt will die out, and those organisms that adapt best will survive and flourish. Nature will only select when the adaptations have (or haven’t) taken place. The two processes are inseparable, just as cause and effect are inseparable (i.e. you can’t have one without the other), but you don’t say that cause is synonymous with effect (i.e. “cause” does not mean the same as “effect”). Your definition of natural selection stops before it reaches natural selection.

2) Nobody has ever at any time at any point in any way even indirectly, implicitly or remotely suggested that NS should be removed from evolution! My objection is to the ruse of synonymising the two terms, as is sometimes used to divert attention from the gaps in the overall theory. NS is the stage of evolution that follows on from reproduction, adaptation, innovation. All of these are integral phases of the one process we call “evolution”, but “reproduction”, “adaptation”, “innovation”, "natural selection" and “evolution” do not mean the same thing (i.e. they are not synonymous). Does that clear the methodological materialist mathematical mud for you?