Sticking a fork in Natural Selection (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, September 01, 2013, 18:08 (4102 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: More on the book What Darwin got Wrong. They throw out Natural Selection as a theory:-http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/08/natural_selecti_2075991.html-And there was me thinking Natural Selection was as simple and straightforward a theory as you can get. Let me tell you what I think it means: the process whereby those organisms best adapted to the prevailing environment will survive and flourish, while less well adapted organisms will die out. Does anyone object to this definition? It explains why there are variations within species, and it establishes a link between innovation and the environment, but it does not explain innovation itself. I agree that Darwin was wrong to attribute the origin of species to Natural Selection in his title, since NS never originated anything, but that doesn't mean we should "throw it out", or that it is "empty"!-QUOTE: "Natural history is just one damned thing after another. This should seem, on reflection, unsurprising since, to repeat, natural history is a species of history, and history is itself just one damned thing after another... Darwin made the same sort of mistake that Marx did: he imagined that history is a theoretical domain; but what there is, in fact, is only a heterogeneity of causes and effects."-Darwin examined one damned thing after another in his attempt to find out why species are as they are. From the series of causes and effects he extrapolated the above theory. He did not treat history as a theory. He examined history and based his theory on it.-QUOTE: "There aren't, and never were, pigs with wings. That there aren't and weren't needs to be explained; but the explanation surely cannot be selectionist. Mother Nature never had any winged pigs to select against; so pigs not having wings can't be an adaptation. We think such considerations strongly suggest that there are endogenous constraints -- quite possibly profound ones -- on phenotypes. As far as we can tell, this is slowly becoming the received view in evolutionary biology."-Of course the explanation is not selectionist, and of course it's because Mother Nature never had winged pigs to select against. Mother Nature can only select from what exists, and of course not having something can't be an adaptation unless it's the shedding of something that exists but has become redundant or deleterious. And of course there are endogenous constraints. I don't accept the theory of random mutations, but randomness itself would be a constraint ... you only get what chance produces. I would say that the "intelligent cell" is also under constraint: if a pig is already adapted to its environment and flourishes, (a) there is no need for it to sprout wings, and (b) the changes necessary for it to fly would be so colossal that it would have to lose almost every aspect of its pigginess. What on Earth does this have to do with Natural Selection? NS does not create or prevent innovations. It simply tells us that the existing pigginess of the pig has enabled it to survive and flourish in its piggy-friendly environment, while un-pigs or less piggy pigs have disappeared.