Natural Selection (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, August 13, 2011, 12:31 (4850 days ago) @ xeno6696

MATT (Under "Science and Religion", 9 August at 15.58): I will return to the tangled mess I seem to have made regarding Natural Selection. Whether or not I can cleanly cleave those threads is beyond me, the damage may be too great here!-"Tangled mess" is an excellent description. I'm touched by the trouble you have now taken to reduce your ideas to mathematical formulae, and I fear it will seem very ungrateful of me when I express my total agreement with your description of your efforts: "clear as mud". I'm sorry, but if you cannot use layman's language to counter arguments put to you in layman's language (even Dawkins is able to do this, and he is no amateur scientist), I can't help feeling there is something wrong with your arguments. This is going to sound horribly schoolmasterly, and I apologize in advance, but I'm now going to put some direct questions to you as I think this is the only way I can pin you down. -1) You have defined Natural Selection as "the process by which an organism undergoes environmental pressure and responds to that pressure in its genotype." How does this definition differ from the description of epigenetics I gave you in my last post? -2) Do you agree that innovations and adaptations must take place BEFORE Nature decides whether they will survive or not? -3) A repeat question: Are you saying that Natural Selection IS epigenetics (IS random mutations) IS Evolution? I.e is the term Natural Selection SYNONYMOUS with the term evolution? Please give me a straight answer yes or no.
You say you took a number of days to meditate on this question, but you appear to have spent all that time looking for a cop-out:
 "I do not see how you can separate them."
The process of evolution entails adaptations and innovations and natural selection. Of course they are interdependent, and so can't be separated. But they are not the same thing. What I consider to be me consists of various interdependent mechanisms, but that does not mean that my brain IS my heart IS my blood IS my lungs.-4) I have quoted uniformly similar definitions of NS from a large number of sources. Please provide a reference confirming your claim that "professional scientists" now reject the conventional Darwinian definition and adhere to your own, as above in 1).-5) I have given you a point for point analysis of the beta-lactamase experiment which you regard as a perfect example of your definition. I have explained why I see it as a perfect example of Darwinian evolution. Please explain as briefly as possible why this is not an example of beneficial mutations surviving and flourishing, as per the Darwinian definition of Natural Selection.-My apologies again for setting you an examination paper, but I can see no other way of unravelling what you have so aptly called the "tangled mess"!