Natural Selection (Evolution)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Tuesday, August 02, 2011, 02:39 (4861 days ago) @ dhw

Matt, there is unfinished business 'twixt thee and me. Just before you went on holiday, you gave us your definition of Natural Selection. I replied on 28 July at 15.51(under "Science vs Religion") but would prefer it if we started a new thread. I'm therefore reproducing my reply here. 
> 
> MATT: The definition I use is the one I was taught and used in the laboratory; "Natural Selection is the process by which an organism undergoes environmental pressure, and responds to that pressure in its genotype."
> 
> This is a truly shocking revelation, partly because many of the disagreements we've been having are due to the fact that your "understanding of Natural Selection has thus far been drastically different from everyone on this forum." Too right it has. The above seems to me to be far more appropriate as a definition of adaptation (which I would link to microevolution and epigenetics). I have at least a dozen reference books ... general dictionaries, specialist dictionaries and encyclopedias, many of them published within the last ten years ... not one of which offers anything but the standard definition I quoted on July 12 at 22.37. An Oxford Science Encyclopedia (2003) for schools describes it in the same way, the consultant editor being one Richard Dawkins. May I therefore ask you the following questions:
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> 1) What name do your "professional scientists" give to the process by which those plants and animals best suited to a particular environment are most likely to survive and breed? 
> -That falls under Natural Selection; but again, I learned it as an entire process, not the one-off 'filter' that I have struggled with both you and David upon. Either I was taught the wrong thing or I wasn't, but many of my views are echoed by Massimo Pigliucci, and if I have to, at this point I will ship the book to you at my own cost.-> 2) Do please give me a reference that authenticates your claim that "professional scientists" no longer use the Darwinian definition.
> -Here we pause, because after an hour I realize I will need to reread Pigliucci's book to find the exact page and quote... bookmark the thread...

--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"