Questioning The Evolutionary Process

Hi;I'm a newbie, so I'll introduce myself before you all start making assumptions about me and my opinions.I am not a scientist, and have no formal degree in any branch of scientific or mathematical study. If that is sufficient to exclude me from participation in this board's threads, I would rather be told that here and now, rather than banned for it at some later date.I am very interested in philosophy and the basic questions of existence, because it has been my experience that the proposed answers to philosophy's questions lead directly to the attitudes, values, goals, and politics that inform our societies and control our lives.It seems to me that the question of 'origins', and its various answers, are a big part of this. The particular question of the origins of 'life', and the associated question of the origins of differing lifeforms, has played an extremely important role in the politics of industrialised nations over the past 200 years, and to my mind is part and parcel of what has become of the planet and its biosphere during that time. In short, I am saying that theories of evolution have become theories of social, political, and economic activity, and those theories, when implemented, have enormous consequences for the quality of life on this planet, including non-human life.So, as I look about me and see the biosphere collapsing, with the highest extinction rate since the death of the dinosaurs, with its air, soil, and water poisoned, with horrendous human over-population and over-exploitation of natural resources, and with global warming pointing to an unstoppable 'greenhouse effect' that could literally fry the planet, I pause to wonder just what basic philosophical notion/s have brought us to such a pass?I cannot help but suspect that the the philosopical assumption that has ruled biology ever since Charles Darwin has had a lot to do with it, and since it is still the ruling paradigm today, I can't help but feel that what helped us get into this mess is not going to help us to get out of it. We need a better theory of origins.I am not suggesting a return to the old mythic explanations for origins favoured by religious adherents. If anything, they contributed as much to the present disaster as any science ever did.
I think that we need a 'third way' of thinking about origins, of thinking about evolution. One that is not founded in faith in some whimsical anthropomorphic deity that arbitrarily 'selects' the saved from the damned of the mystical basis of 'grace', nor in some whimsical, quasi-divine 'nature' entity that chooses/selects survivors from victims on the basis of some mystical criterion called 'fitness'.And I happen to think that Bertvan is referring to this 'third way', and from what I can see in the media and on the net, this 'third way' is daily growing in popularity. Not just among us, the despised, ignorant, non-scientists of the world, but even among evolutionary biologists.Having introduced myself, I'll just make a few comments on RAZD's last post. It's quite old, so I hope s/he'll still be around to read my response. S/he says--

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This is what you claim when you say that acquired traits get incorporated into the genome. A cut off tail is an acquired trait.

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Now, some may try to dismiss my objection to this as, 'mere semantics', but the fact is that it is very meaningful when you think about it. And my objection is this--a "cut-off tail" is not a "trait" in any evolutionary sense, any more than a scarred face or a blinded eye is a 'trait' in any other sense than as a 'personal aspect of identification'. You might just as well refer to Long John Silver's missing leg and acquired parrot as his 'traits', if you are going to call any identifying mark a 'trait'. Calling tattoos and facial twitches 'traits' kind of dilutes any scientific meaning into absurdity, don't you think? And the same goes for Weismann's, anti-lamarckian strawman, the amputated tail, 'trait'.Basically, calling a tail that is not there an 'acquired' biological 'trait' is saying that, in biology, that which subtracted or erased or eradicated or excised or otherwise taken out of existence is the same as the addition of something else, even when that 'acquired' 'something else' is nothing but the absence, a lacuna, of anything actual. To simply lose a biological trait is not to acquire another one, IMHO.Lastly, I wish that someone would give me a non-mystical definition of the word 'selection' as used in the following quote from RAZD's post."I think if you do a little research you will see that it is in the phenotype where selection operates on the individual organisms, but that there is no creative interaction." [bold added]The reason I bring this up is because I believe that "selection" is the 'key word' that defines both of the old paradigms, 'creationism' and 'darwinism', whereas "dynamic response" is key to the paradigm that Bertvan refers to, an organism-centered theory of evolution that might be thought of as, 'developmental evolution'; as opposed to the 'gene-centered' theory of evolution that is called, at least by its believers, "THE" theory of evolution.Thanks for listening, but I must caution those who will automatically attempt to flame me that I ignore trolls and also, that I ignore empty-headed gainsayers. That is, I will only respond to those who make a sincere effort to debate my opinions on their logical merits.Edited by Elmer, : typos

Hi bluegenes. Thanks for the welcome. You say--

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What is this philosophical assumption?

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Basically it is the assumption that existence consists solely of this material universe, and that the universe as a whole, as well as each of its many parts, began as a spontaneously generated accident whose characteristics changed over time in a determined, mechanical,inevitable, immutable linear progression. It has many names, including materialism, mechanism, physicalism, naturalism, and positivism. Its chief corollary is atheism.

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People who think that natural selection is the driving force behind evolution do so from observation and because of the evidence.

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Well, once we find out just exactly what this '[natural]selection' thing is, [that is, once it is defined empirically rather than metaphysically], we can go on to discuss it. In the meantime I can only say that I have never observed this 'natural selection' to be an actual entity, nor have I ever observed any phenomena that cannot be attributed to causes that are distinct and empirically identifiable, rather than nebulous, non-specific and hypothetical. At this point, I would have to say that "natural selection" has neither more nor less actuality than a creationist's "angel of death".

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As individuals, they have a wide variety of philosophies. The Theory of Evolution has to fit evidence, not anyone's philosophy.

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I agree that that is how it SHOULD be. But any examination of any board dedicated to defending the old evolutionary paradigm shows that that is not at all 'how it is'. Not in the least.

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The industrial revolution, the beginning of the really serious environmental problems you describe above, was well under way before Darwin's birth, let alone the publication of "Origins".

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I do not believe I said that Darwin started 'the industrial revolution', and I wonder where you got that impression? Probably it was my overly complex phrasing, since what I actually said was that 'the philosophical assumption' that rules the darwinian approach to evolutionary biology, and which darwinian biology seeks to support empirically, has a lot to do with the social, political, and spiritual mess we've made of the world. That philosophical assumption is the materialist assumption, with its corollaries, that I referred to earlier.

Hi wounded king. I thank you for making a reply, but I find that all you do is gainsay what I said, and attribute my opinions to ignorance. I'm afraid that that just doesn't advance the debate at all.Perhaps if you took the time to actually demonstrate the truth of your assertion that--

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Both natural selection and fitness, which you criticise later, have specific definitions. There may be some debate as to the exact extent to which different factors should be incorporated into natural selection but the principles are clear.

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--instead of simply expecting me to accept it as factual, we might get somewhere. And if 'natural selection' is nothing more than technical terminology, arcane jargon, argot, IOW, just some convenient intellectual place-holder that doesn't really represent any actual entity, then why should anyone take it seriously? Like 'the angel of death' or 'the grim reaper', it is nothing more than a fanciful expression for something we really do not comprehend. For "NS", why not just say, 'mortality', and be done with it? And for 'fitness', why not say 'life expectancy'?I ask these questions hoping for a real answer from an individual debater, and not for instructions telling me to consult TalkOrigins or to take a course in molecular biology, or to read something or other, somewhere else.Later...

Hi again, WK;You ask--

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If you are interested in learning then surely you should be asking questions about what NS is not making statements?

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But I am at a loss to respond, since asakjing a question about 'natural selection, aka 'selection',and 'fitness' is exactly what I have been doing, wi8thout, as yet, receiving an answer. Of course, it is still my very first day here, so I won't be impatient.

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If you simply make a bald assertion why are you surprised when you are dismissed in kind.

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What "bald assertion" would that be? I said that if 'selection', 'natural selection', and other terms lack empirical substance that they are meaningless, scientifically speaking. That isn't a "bald assertion". That's just a plain fact. There is a very important difference. Assertions of opinion require support; statements of fact do not.

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Fitness is perhaps the easier to define and is simply a measure of the changes in frequency of a particular genotype in a population over tim.

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What is it a measurement of, and what are its standard units? For length, (as a measurement of space or distance), a standard unit is, for example, a metre. What phenomenon comparable to weight, volume, velocity, etc., does 'fitness' measure, and what passes for its 'feet', 'pounds', 'degrees', or whatever? Can you get 3 fitnesses minus 1 fitness leaving a remainder of 2 fitnesses? I'm sure that there must be some standard unit of 'fitness', or it could not be measured. Forgive my ignorance, but I've never been able to find out just what that standard unit of measurement is. Can you describe it for me?

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In evolutionary terms it is a probabilistic measure of the chance of a particular genotype being propagated and is based on the observations of the propagation of that genotype in previous generations. Therefore fitness is a post-hoc measure based on observed changes in a populations genetic makeup which can be used to predict future changes in the genetic makeup of the population.

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Hmm. So what I hear you telling me is that 'fitness' is not empirical science, i.e., evolutionary biology, but rather an arithmetical abstraction from the non-empirical world of mathematics. I'm sure that that makes for very useful biometrics, and is of great use in ecological studies [number and distribution of particular bioforms], but what it has to do with evolution, i.e., the 'origins' of novel traits and novel organisms, I cannot guess. I do not think that changes in numbers and changes in organisms are the same thing, you see.

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There is also genetic, or absolute, fitness which is a simpler measure of the mean fecundity of a particular genotype.

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Well, which is it? "Fitness" or fecundity? Mice are far more 'fecund', as in, 'prolific', than are, say, tigers. Are mice therefore 'fitter' than tigers? Or are you saying that mouse "A" is "fitter" than mouse "B" because mouse "A" has produced more litters than mouse "B", which may just be because mouse "A" is a year older than mouse "B". Or, since you speak in terms of 'genotypes' instead of organisms, are you saying that "fitness", as a measurement, is simply a matter of one set of genes [genotype] being numerically more common than other sets, making 'fitness' a quantitative, not a qualitative, phenomenon? And making it an abstraction, a numerical phenomenon, and not an empirical, scientific phenomenon? This concept of 'fitness' strikes me as analogous to counting the corpses after a battle as if that explained the origins of the weapons used.

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Natural selection is not an entity itself it is a term used to describe the various interactions of an organisms genome with its environment with respect to its survival and ultimately its reproductive success.

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See, I thought that the word for what you are describing was ecology.
At any rate, it certainly seems to be an abstraction and not an empirical phenomenon. That is, it is a notion, not an actual entity. It belongs to philosophy, not science. Am I right?

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Factors which affect mortality and reproductive success but are not influenced by the genetic makeup of the organism, or arguably any other heritable epigenetic characteristic, would not be considered to be selective although they may influence the proportions of particular genotypes in the population.

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IOW, "NS" is about genes, not organisms? Now I'm confused, since I'm sure that "NS" only applies to expressed traits and the organisms that embody them. Am I wrong?
It would seem to me that the only way to make what happens to an organism into a function of what happens to its parent organism's genetic makeup is to insist that traits and organisms are the inevitable outcome of genetic determinism. If 'gene' does not equal 'trait', I do not see how you can treat them as if they were synonymous, or at least equivalent, and that is what you are doing here. It's a clear case of equivocation.
If, OTOH, a gene is not tantamount to a trait, nor its molecular equivalent, and 'selection' is dependent upon traits, then how can you say that 'selection' is gene-dependent? And if 'selection' is not 'gene-dependent', then what you've just said here makes no sense.And neither does anything you've said about a gene-based definition of 'fitness'.

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And for 'fitness', why not say 'life expectancy'?

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Because that isn't what it means, if you think it is then you are eloquently showing you ignorance of the terminology.

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Again, I'm not telling you what it means; I'm asking you what it means. Unless you can stipulate what it means, I'm free to ask you if it means this, that, or the other.

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Why persist in doing so? If you want an explanation I have provided one why throw up these strawman definitons?

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Come now. You provided no explanation of anything prior to my response, so you can hardly criticise me, post hoc, because you have now supplied one in response to what you are criticizing!Later...

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Welcome to the fray Elmer

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Thanks. Happy to be here. The board is much more active than I had anticipated, however, so I won't be able to keep up with all the resonses, at this rate. I hope that you and the others will bear with me as I attempt to deal with as much as time and energy will allow.

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Presumably by "the philosopical assumption that has ruled biology" you mean "some whimsical, quasi-divine 'nature' entity that chooses/selects survivors from victims on the basis of some mystical criterion called 'fitness'."

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Actually, (as I explained to bluegenes, I believe it was), the assumption I was referring to is the fundamental cosmological postulate of materialism and its metaphysical offshoots. But certainly 'natural selection' is a notional postulate that has ruled evolutionary biology ever since Darwin introduced the term as an illustrative analogy to stock breeding.

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But there is no personification of nature into any kind of entity doing anything.

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Well, call me old-fashioned, but attributing 'selection', an activity performed intelligently and volitionally by aware beings capable of weighing, comparing and contrasting the relative merits of different alternatives, i.e., making a choice and acting upon it, and attributing that power, that ability, that intellectual capacity, to a general abstraction called 'nature', is the essence of personification, i.e., "A figure of speech in which inanimate objects or abstractions are endowed with human qualities". Show me where I'm wrong.

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To think of evolution being in any way directed towards some goal is totally false.

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Well, that is a statement of your belief, but until you can justify that opinion, I respectfully disagree.

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What you really have are these basic possibilities

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some god or god created life and man to rule earth, so man is not responsible for global warming or anything else.

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Well, I don't believe than "man [was created] to rule earth". I don't believe that anything was created to rule earth. That does not mean that I believe that that the universe, the earth, and the biosphere exist for no reason, no point, no purpose.
And btw, if I did believe that man was created by some anthropomorphic god for the express purpose of ruling the earth, then I would very much expect that god to hold man responsible for global warming and for generally trashing his gift. But that's neither here nor there.

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some god or gods created the whole universe but don't care whether human life continues, so the issue of global warming etcetera is irrelevant to the god or gods, and is solely an issue affecting humans themselves and one that is their problem to solve.

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I'm not here to debate theology and to speculate on the nature of god/s, but since you bring it up, your statement depends upon what you mean by 'created', 'care', and so on. It is possible to care without being able to intervene. Ask any parent, or a friend forced to watch a friend make a bad mistake. But when it comes to the bottom line, I would have to say that man made this bed, and he is going to have to lay in it, or re-make it. No divine (or technological) '7th cavalry' is going to get him out of this mess and whisk him off to 'a better place'. I suggest that one way to start the reformation would be to junk 'fitness' and start looking for painless ways to reduce human overpopulation, ASAP.

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Personally I think that the concept of your survival being dependent on your environment being habitable for your species is one more likely to end with a response that we ought to do something than any other concept.
Can you think of one more likely to produce results?

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Well, yeah, sure. Some huge anthropomorphic god suddenly appears and says that if we don't stop global warming and rampant environmental destruction, he's going to kill us all, mean and slow, with a plague of nasty boils, or something. But I'm fairly confident that that just won't happen.

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The issue is that for a genetically tail-less mouse the lack of tail is a trait,

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No, it is not. It is a lack, or absence, of a trait. You are saying that nothing equates to something. That which is not, is not anything which is. Kind of a logical axiom, that. The absence of something is not something else, it is only nothing. Unfortunately geneticists ignore this fact, as it it is necessary for them to ignore it if their notion (of novel adaptive traits arising from damaged genomes) is to have any credence.

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and that the question posed was whether this trait could be acquired by cutting off the tails of mice before mating. This is not mere semantics either, but a very real historical concept, one that has been falsified, but which was considered entirely possible before falsification. See Lamarckism.

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I have seen Lamarckism, but nowhere in Lamarck's 200 year old understanding of evolution did I see anything that suggested that organisms re-expressed the physical deformities accidentally acquired by their forebears. Weismann was a sophist who set up a strawman of Lamarkian theory, (albeit that Lamarckian theory was quite primitive in modern terms), in order to sell neo-darwinism at a time when Darwin's original 'theory', "Natural Selection", was falling into public disfavour.

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"Lastly, I wish that someone would give me a non-mystical definition of the word 'selection' as used in the following quote from RAZD's post."

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I think if you do a little research you will see that it is in the phenotype where selection operates on the individual organisms,

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Well, I have heard this a number of times, but it does not answer the question asked--just what is this 'selection', in empirical, (i.e., scientific as opposed to notional, philosophical) terms?
BTW, I've heard some geneticists refer to 'selection' as something operating at the genetic, molecular level. And at the cellular level. Indeed, I'm sure some of them refer to nucleotides in terms of 'selection'. None of which tells us what 'selection' actually is. [quote] but that there is no creative interaction." [bold added][quote] No idea what you mean by this, but if you are saying that "NS" creates nothing, I agree.

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There is nothing mystical -- no quasi-divine 'nature' -- about selection as used in evolution science,

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Well, feel free to voice your opinion, but I've already shown that "Natural Selection" is nothing but a perfect example of personification.

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it is the selection of individuals to pass on hereditary traits by their relative ability to survive and reproduce.

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No doubt this sentence suggests something to you, but to me it is utterly meaningless. Natural Selection is "the selection of..." strikes me as tautologous. Well, not even that, since it's saying the same thing with the same words.

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One phenotype may be better at swimming through a flood, another phenotype may be more attractive to mates or have higher fecundity. This is basic evolution science.

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I hope not, since in fact 'this' is nothing but a litany of hypotheticals that are, in and of themselves, perfectly meaningless.

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"The reason I bring this up is because I believe that "selection" is the 'key word' that defines both of the old paradigms, 'creationism' and 'darwinism', whereas "dynamic response" is key to the paradigm that Bertvan refers to, an organism-centered theory of evolution that might be thought of as, 'developmental evolution'; as opposed to the 'gene-centered' theory of evolution that is called, at least by its believers, "THE" theory of evolution."

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Calling natural selection by a different name won't change the process involved,

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Where in your above-quoted passage do I call "Natural Selection" by "a different name"? And yes, changing names won't change the process, nor will it tell us just what this "process" actually is. Now, I believe that evolution is an historical 'process', but surely "NS" is not the same process as 'evolution', or evolution and natural selection become one and the same thing. How is the 'process of natural selection' to be distinguished from the process of evolution itself?

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Evolution as a whole is a dynamic response system, and natural selection is part of that process.

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You are, I believe, completely correct to say that "Evolution as a whole is a dynamic response system". Unfortunately, since "Natural Selection" make the organism into the passive pawn of accidental agencies, there is no room in any dynamic, responsive theory of evolution for 'NS'. That is why there are two basic approaches to evolution--the neo-lamarckian 'dynamic organismic response' theory, and the neo-darwinian, 'passive organismic selection' theory.

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This also is NOT evolution. There is no determined, mechanical,inevitable, immutable linear progression.

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I agree. Butit is the determinist view, and the determinist view is the mechanist view, and the mechanist view is the materialist view, and the gene-centered view of evolution, (call it fisherism, the modern synthesis, RMNS, or what you will), simply falls apart without genetic determinism.

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Well, once we find out just exactly what this '[natural]selection' thing is, [that is, once it is defined empirically rather than metaphysically], we can go on to discuss it.

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Old news. Demonstrated over and over. Natural selection is a fact. It's been documented in Peppered Moths and Galapagos Finches among others.

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That's nice. Can I ask you again.? Just exactly what is this thing that you call "Natural Selection". Do you have a scientific, empirical (as opposed to notional, philosophical)definition for it, or don't you?

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"In the meantime I can only say that I have never observed this 'natural selection' to be an actual entity, nor have I ever observed any phenomena that cannot be attributed to causes that are distinct and empirically identifiable, rather than nebulous, non-specific and hypothetical."

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Then you are ignorant (uninformed) of the facts. This can be rectified.

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I am happy to hear that. Please bring on those facts.

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What is more troubling is your apparent disinterest in finding out whether Natural Selection is a fact before posting your ignorance.

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The fact that I have nowhere found any reason to believe that "NS" is a scientic phenomenon, rather than a fanciful notion, does not mean that I have nhot already searched high and low for such evidence empirical actuality. And my "apparent disinterest" is only apparent to you. This because you expect that the stuff that you take for 'proof' of the empirical reality of NS as a causal mechanism for evolution SHOULD suffice tol convince me, but hasn't. You then leap to the conclusion that I haven't seen your 'proofs', and that the only way that that could happen is if I hadn't bothered to look. Well, it is true that what you and others consider to be 'proof' of "NS", (without ever defining it scientifically)is thrown about everywhere, Who has not heard of the "peppered moth", or of "Darwin's finches"? Trouble is, I do not draw the same inferences from those cases that you do, and there is no logical or empirical reason why I should.

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It is easy to disabuse yourself of ignorance.

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Natural selection - Wikipedia

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Gee, and I thought that I had made it clear that I did not need someone to tell me to go somewhere else and read something else. I have no interest in 'argument by link', and I am genuinely offended that you assume that I have not read the wiki, or the TalkOrigins, or the encyclopediae, or the textbook definitions of "NS". I have. But they do not make any scientific sense. They speak of an abstraction as if it were a concrete reality, and that is a logical fallacy.

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I do not believe I said that Darwin started 'the industrial revolution', and I wonder where you got that impression?

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It could be your discussion of global warming and needing an alternative concept to evolution to combat it ...

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I never said that we needed replace the concept of evolution with anything else. I said that we needed to replace materialism and its offshoots with so9mething else. But since it is the darwinian notion of evolution via 'chance plus genetic determinism plus chance coincidence' that is used to prop up materialism, it has to go as well.

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... Which is precisely why we should use scientific evidence and valid conclusions and not untested philosophy.

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My point exactly. Let's stop doing that. After all, 150 years of untested philosophy is more than enough, I should think!

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Part of that science is the actual effect of humans on the climate of the earth (established fact). Another part is the ability of organisms to survive changes in their ecologies (established fact).

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Basing it on mythology would be rather ridiculous eh?

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Yup. That's why all this 'spontaneous genetic generation' and "Natural Selection" stuff troubles me sometimes, makes me laugh at other times. Just like those Genesis myths, they trouble me to think that otherwise intelligent people take them seriously, but it also makes me laugh out loud that otherwise intelligent people take them seriously.

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Yet looking for real information is your best way to determine philosophical truths. On the other hand you can come to a site like this and ask questions -- where you are willing to learn from the answers rather than just post questions from a philosophical position already decided.

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My philosophical position is not fixed in stone. I became a convinced darwinian while in middle school, but the evidence gradually turned me away from that notion and towards a better explanation for evolution. Even so, I was a darwinist for more years than I've been a non-darwinist, neo-lamarckian, 'devo-evo' type. I've proved that facts and logic can change my mind. So bring on your facts and logic.

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So are you willing to learn?

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Of course. Are you?

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Enjoy.

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You too.

Hi bluegenes--You say--

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I think you're confusing methodological naturalism with metaphysical naturalism.

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"Naturalism" is a metaphysical off-shoot of materialism, and so saying 'metaphysical naturalism' is redundant, unless done to distinguish it from aesthetic 'naturalism'.I suspect that your 'methodological naturalism' is a semantic ploy by which first Empiricism, then Science, can be conflated with 'naturalism', and so, 'materialism'. This suspicion was totally vindicated when I found an article on 'methodological naturalism' in wikipedia. From that article it was impossible not to deduce, rationally, that 'methodological naturalism' is simply empiricism's 'scientific method' forcibly and artificially linked to mechanical determinism and all the rest of materialism's corollaries, including atheism.

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Many of the supporters of evolutionary theory are not atheists. There are quite a few regulars on this site who believe in a God who created a universe in which biological evolution happens.

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Yes, but we are not talking about them. I myself, after all, am one of their number, although I am not a practicing or even non-practicing member of any religious assembly, and my notion of 'god' is radically different from the abrahamic concept of the divine, and I have a radically different understanding of the concept of 'creation' from that held by most people.But my point here is that your point here is 'non sequitur'; excepting that people who use the term 'methodological naturalism' in place of 'the scientific method' and 'Empirical epistemology' are invariably atheists.

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Methodological naturalism (science)

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If you mean 'science', then just say 'science'; please do not try to confuse and conflate 'science' with 'materialism' by calling it 'methodological naturalism'.

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deals with the physical universe, but does not assume that that is all there is. If there's such a thing as the human soul, for example, no-one is claiming that it is the product of random mutation and natural selection. Just the body.

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Sorry, but I cannot see where any of this has anything to do with explaining evolution, which is, (at least so I thought), the subject
of this debate!?!?!

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I'm an atheist myself,

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I knew that the moment you brought up 'methodological naturalism'.
And it's nice to have all our cards on the table, I suppose, but IMO our religious beliefs should be irrelevent to any secular debate about evolution, since I have already made it very clear that I am not some religious fundamentalist who denies the fact of evolution.I am simply a plain thinker who feels that the materialist take on evolution, i.e., that it is only a matter of the 'spontaneous generation' of novel molecules (genes) linked by mechanical determinism to expressed traits/organisms that are themselves luckily suited, or unluckily unsuited, to local and chaotically changing environmental circumstances.
That is to say, the notion that evolution is a pointless, never-ending crap-shoot, with no 'rules' or goals to the game except for materialism/mechanism's genetic (chemical) determinism.

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You can easily observe natural selection taking place in the wild. Watch deer rutting, and you'll see that the healthiest males sire the most offspring, for example.

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I'm not interested in hearing people say that 'natural selection' is self-evident. I'm interested in hearing a solid, empirical, scientific, (as opposed to a notional, philosphical)definition for it. And as for that 'deer rutting' thing, I'm sorry, but calling that an example of 'natural selection' just made me giggle.

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Elmer writes:
bluegenes writes:
As individuals, they have a wide variety of philosophies. The Theory of Evolution has to fit evidence, not anyone's philosophy.

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I agree that that is how it SHOULD be. But any examination of any board dedicated to defending the old evolutionary paradigm shows that that is not at all 'how it is'. Not in the least.

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I assure you that on this site there are theists, atheists, agnostics, pantheists and deists all defending the theory of evolution.

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That's nice. How many atheists, agnostics, pantheists and deists do you have here that refuse and deny the darwinian/materialist explanation for the fact of evolution? Do I hear you say, "Not a single one."?

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Lucky we've got environmentally and spiritually concerned leaders like G.W. Bush to lead us out of the mess, isn't it?

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A non sequitur that seems to be presented as a snide remark. Not a good thing. FYI, politically I am a social anarchist and have nothing but contempy for the Bush/Cheney gang of bloody-handed war-profiteers and crypto-fascist corporate flunkies. Don't ever mistake me for a regressive conservative again. And just to get ahead of the curve, I am also vehemently anti-zionist. And a keen conservationist. I am all for equality, both political, legal, and economic. I cannot tolerate elitism, favouritism, and unearned privilege in any form. There. Them's me politics, so let's drop religion and politics and get back to evolution, shall we?

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The "Darwinian approach to evolutionary biology", as you call it, requires no philosophical assumptions.

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I never said that it "required" such philosophical assumptions; I said that they are very clearly present; required or not.

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Anyone can practise methodological naturalism excepting those who have a literal belief in any of the ancient creation mythologies which describe fictional universes.

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From my observation, strange as it may sound, even those people can practice most branches of science, (that which you call 'methodological naturalism', for reasons I brought to light earlier), although they must have some terrible bouts of cognitive dissonance when they try to do evolutionary biology, anthropology, archaeology, geology, etc.. Oh, well, that's their problem, not yours or mine.Later...

Hi crashfrog. Nice avatar.You say--

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Fitness is a measure of increase in gene frequency. Therefore it's a dimensionless ratio of the frequency of a specific allele as represented among all a population's alleles at that given locus.

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So it is NOT an organismic trait, but a mathematical abstraction. In that case, it has nothing to do with evolution, or even biology, except by association. In the same way that census-taking, or consumer preference surveying, are associated with human biology.I prefer to stick to biology proper, and consider 'fitness' as meaning 'fitted, suited, or adapted to current environmental circumstances', that is as an empirically observable 'trait'. Unfortunately, that definition implies function, purpose, and teleology, none of which can be allowed in materialist biology. Is that why darwinians changed the definition of 'fitness' from mine to yours? I do believe it is.

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Another way to look at it is that "fitness" measures the phenomenon where individuals who are adapted to their environment are successful, live longer, and reproduce more than other individuals who are not so adapted.

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Or, to put it another way, "fitness" measures
Well, wait now. You can measure length in numbers, too; does that make it not an empirical, scientific phenomenon?[/quote]No, because all measurements are artificial mathematical abstractions. The measurement is not "the piece of lumber", "the map is not the country", "the pint glass is not the beer", and the measured distance between the earth and the moon is not that space.Mathematics is not science. It is notional, not empirical. But feel free to argue that science and math are the same thing, therefore statistics and biology are the same thing. That's what Ronald Fisher, et al, seemed to believe.

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Molarity would be another measurement that comes in numbers; are you saying that measuring the amount of substance present in a solution is not a scientific endeavor?

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No, and I'm not saying that math is not a useful scientific tool when it comes to descriptions. In some cases it works even better for describing phenomena then verbal language does. I'm just saying that although measurement is a scientific endeavor, it is not science itself, which is empirical, but a useful, albeit artificial and abstract, tool of science, and I think it important, when discussing evolutionary biology, to separate the empirical origins of properties, qualities, traits, etc., from the counting of them, 'ex post facto'.

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That can't be true, since we observe that populations experience natural selection of their individuals.

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Well, that's the legend, at least.
First, we have yet to receive an empirical definition of "NS", just as, so far, we have only received your arithmetical definition of 'fitness' as a differential of comparitive fecundity. To be 'fit' is to be prolific. I'm not sure that's true at all, BTW.
Second, all we actually observe is that numbers of organisms fluctuate over time. Is the fluctuation of numbers over time your "natural selection"? If so, it's another conceptulization for use in the statistical arithmetic of biometrics, something very important in the study of the evolution of the contents of ecosystems, but not in evolutionary biology, which is the study of the origins of organic traits in organisms.

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We observe that populations increase so as to exceed the carrying capacity of their environment, and that therefore not all organisms survive long enough to reproduce;

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Well, actually, we sometimes observe that populations of particular organisms have increased beyond the carrying capacity of their environment. The human race being the most important example of this, both locally and globally. Which brings us back to the darwinist notion that 'fitness' is positive comparative fecundity. It would seem that at times, to be prolific is to be unfitted to your environment. Kinda contradictory.
IAC, this is all ecology, not evolution, unless you are discussing the evolutionm of ecosystems, or the evolution of numbers/measurements/statistics, rather than the evolution of organisms.

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furthermore we observe in every instance that this differential survival is not random but intrinsically related to that organism's physical adaptations to environment.

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Not true in this case, since there is no 'differential' survival in any general catastrophe, (such as a famine, flood, hurricane or what have you). What you do have are some organisms starving to death, while other very similar creatures do not, simply because there just isn't enough food for everybody and so somebody has to die. Frankly, in cases of famine, the differences between individuals are usually to slight to make a difference, and who lives and who dies is usually a matter of chance. That's what actual empirical studies of wild populations actually shows, in contrast to the theoretical assumption you voice, above. And let's not trot out the peppered moth and the Grant's finches just yet, since I've got too much on my plate right now to go into the flaws in those two over-worked examples, right now.

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Organisms contain genes - they are the physical expressions of their genes.

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So you are endorsing genetic determinism, I take it?

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Thus, natural selection selects on individuals, which has an effect on the genetics of the entire population.

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So which is it? Do genes direct, control and determine natural selection (whatever that is), or does natural selection direct, control and determine 'genes' (however they come to be defined)? Which is the horse and which is the cart?

Hi molbiogirl--You say--

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Units of measure (feet, pounds, etc.) are arbitrary.

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Hence, the metric system v. the English system.

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Fitness is not arbitrary.

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It is a measurement of a physical fact: allele frequency.

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So I guess that you are saying that the basic unit of 'fitness', in darwinian terms, is one 'allele', however that word may come to be defined. (It kind of depends upon how 'gene' come to be defined,so far as I can tell). Seems to me that choosing the 'allele' as your basic unit of 'fitness' is an arbitrary act, just as choosing the word 'fitness' to describe statistical fluctuations in aggregations of DNA molecules was pretty darn arbitrary to start with. But hey, what do I know?

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Would you have the same "philosophical" trouble with "the nonempirical world of mathematics" if I were to say "There are 12 crows in my front yard"?

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The crows are there. I counted them.

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Allele frequencies are there. We count them.

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It's still arithmetic, not biology, so what's your point? If I said that there are 12 molecules in this container, would that be biology, or would it be arithmetic? Well, counting crows, or counting alleles, is no different.

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Fitness is not synonymous with evolution.

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Fitness and evolution are 2 different things.

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Well, that's certainly undeniable if we accept the mathematical definition of 'fitness' that seems to be the standard darwinian concept. I mean, since 'evolution' is an empirical, organismic phenomenon, and 'fitness' is an arithmetic, abstract phenomenon, they are categorically different. [quote] wiki writes:
Fitness is a central concept in evolutionary theory.[quote] Well, darwinian evolutionary theory, that is.

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It describes the capability of an individual of certain genotype to reproduce,

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No, it does not. It simply sums up the amount of reproduction in one case and makes local comparisons with others. The product is not the capacity to produce it. It's just a number.

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and usually is equal to the proportion of the individual's genes in all the genes of the next generation. If differences in individual genotypes affect fitness, then the frequencies of the genotypes will change over generations;

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That is a big "if"; an assumption being presented as an actual phenomenon. The fact is that "the frequencies of the genotypes will change over generations" no matter what, for any number of reasons, the least of them being genetic differences.

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the genotypes with higher fitness become more common. This process is called natural selection.

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Gee, this guy seems to think that 'fitness' _is_ 'natural selection'!! More confusion!

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You'll notice that both fitness and natural selection are concepts within evolutionary theory.

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Yeah. I also notice that, at least in wiki, they seem to be the same concept written two different ways.

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A new trait arises thru mutation.

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The new trait is acted on by the environment.

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The new trait spreads thru a population.

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That changes the allele frequency of the new trait.

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What, exactly, don't you understand about this very simple idea?

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Well, if you are going to make snide remarks implying that I'm stupid, I guess I'll ignore you in future, lady. As for the "simple idea", it is not that I do not understand it. I understand it perfectly. I just don't accept it.
It strikes me as simple-minded and superstitious. First you attribute novel traits to 'spontaneous generation', i.e., accidental genetic mutation, followed up an unfounded inference of mechanical, chemical, genetic determinism from molecule to trait, so that the one is simply the extension of the other, and then say meaningless junk like "The new trait is acted on by the environment.",etc., and then leap to the conclusion that there is some necessary connection between environmental action and the number of a certain 'allele'(whatever your definition) in a certain local population. Every bit of this stuff is at best, dubious.Learn not to diss people you don't know before you post to me again.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi bluegenes,You say--

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Elmer writes:
Well, call me old-fashioned, but attributing 'selection', an activity performed intelligently and volitionally by aware beings capable of weighing, comparing and contrasting the relative merits of different alternatives, i.e., making a choice and acting upon it, and attributing that power, that ability, that intellectual capacity, to a general abstraction called 'nature', is the essence of personification, i.e., "A figure of speech in which inanimate objects or abstractions are endowed with human qualities". Show me where I'm wrong.

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I'm happy to call you old-fashioned.

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Are you happy to admit that the use of 'selection' wrt darwinian evolution is a pure and simple case of personification? If not, why not?

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From dictionary.com:

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se·lec·tion /
4. Biology. any natural or artificial process that results in differential reproduction among the members of a population so that the inheritable traits of only certain individuals are passed on, or are passed on in greater proportion, to succeeding generations. Compare natural selection, sexual selection, kin selection, artificial selection.

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Why are you citing the dictionary? I never claimed that darwinian biology has not co-opted the word to serve its purposes. Everybody knows that it has. I simply point out that they did it illegitimately, and show why their/your usage is illegitimate, albeit common, and now, after 150 years, is pretty much entrenched in the language.
BTW, the above description of 'selection' in the darwinian sense boils down to--"Any old thing that results in some organisms having more offspring than others do". Well, duh?!?

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This thread is called:

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Science forums - Biological Evolution - Questioning The Evolutionary Process. We're talking biology here.

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You're certainly questioning the evolutionary process, which is fine, but please try not to use semantics to do so,

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What do you mean, "semantics"? And why are "semantics", whatever you mean by that word, a 'no-no' in this debate? Personally, I define 'semantics' as 'meanings', and find 'meaning' indispensible to 'understanding'. Go on, call me old-fashioned-- again.

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unless you have an understanding of the ever changing nature of language and the meaning of words.

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I do. Certainly enough to recognise the difference between the natural, general usage evolution of a word meaning, and the artificial, self-serving corruption of a meaning, one made solely to serve the agendum of a certain few. As per L. Carroll's Humpty Dumpty. As is the case with the darwinian corruption of 'selection', 'fitness', 'mutation', and more than a few other words.

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"I never said that we needed replace the concept of evolution with anything else. I said that we needed to replace materialism and its offshoots with something else. But since it is the darwinian notion of evolution via 'chance plus genetic determinism plus chance coincidence' that is used to prop up materialism, it has to go as well."

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It has to? To be replaced with what? A vague desire for magic?

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Actually, the reliance of darwinism upon 'spontaneous generation' and some vague mystical personification called 'natural selection' already satifies that "vague desire for magic".Darwinism needs to be replaced with a truly scientific causal explanation for evolution that is based upon a universally acting force, just as all the rest of science is based upon the existence of different universal forces. Evolution needs to be seen as a dynamic, systematic process, and not as a series of molecular accidents that just happened to turn out happily for the lucky few.

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It's worth noting that much of the world does not suffer from materialism. Go to a very poor and struggling culture and you'll find very high levels of religious belief, accompanied by high levels of infant and child mortality, and low levels of life expectancy. This, presumably, is what you think the rest of us should aim for.

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Oh, oh. Now you, too, are starting with the snide and uncalled for remarks.

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Do you like seeing dead babies?

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Nope. And I don't like reading trash, either.Bye.

Hi crashfrog--The other darwinian participants in this thread all seem to be having 'bad hair days', and I'm not about to respond to posts that are nothing more than adolescent, 'in your face', attitude. But so far you are still acting like a well-mannered adult, so I'll try one more post.

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No more than "size of population" is a mathematical abstraction.

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Actually, 'size of population', stated as such, is an abstraction, albeit not a mathematical one. But never mind. It is the darwinian concept of 'fitness' that we were discussing, in particular your definition of that concept---"Fitness is a measure of increase in gene frequency. Therefore it's a dimensionless ratio of the frequency of a specific allele as represented among all a population's alleles at that given locus."Anything that is, as you put it, "dimensionless" is not concrete, and so far as I know, anything that is not concrete, is abstract.

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Fitness is merely another way to say "differential reproduction", it's just a way to describe what is obvious from observation

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If that is all that it is, then I really have to wonder why it is not simply stated that way? Why did neo-darwinists call 'differential reproduction', 'fitness', when 'fitness', empirically stated, refers to the overall relationship between a certain something and a certain set of circumstances, but "differential reproduction", arithmetically stated, refers solely to a quantitive comparison of outputs? I really wish they hadn't, because all they did was to create equivocation and confusion.

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- some individuals have physical advantages over their peers that result in greater reproductive success.

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Yes, but what does that have to do with evolution?

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It's not any more an abstraction than molarity is an abstraction.

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I had to look up 'molarity'. And again, 'molarity', as a concept, is an abstraction. And the units used to measure the degree of molarity in various solutions are also abstractions. But when those units are used to delimit and describe a particular solution, they describe a concrete phenomenon, and thus make an empirical statement. The same goes for such statements as 'three-legged dog', '4 chambered heart', '1 gallon bucket', etc.But this does not seem to apply to 'fitness', at least not in your definition, because there does not seem to be any concrete object involved. I mean, a "dimensionless ratio of frequency" between concrete objects (say, 'alleles', if 'alleles' are concrete objects?) is not a concrete object, in se, but an arithmetical abstraction. Now, can 'fitness', as defined, be made concrete, and so, empirical, when used to describe particular cases, as in, "Paul is 1" shorter than Joe", or "Mary has 3 more children than Jane has"? Probably, but these are simple statements of facts, and how any general rule or universal principle wrt evolution can be inferred from these facts is beyond me.

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Fitness has never been defined as you define it.

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Simply not true. "Fitness" was for hundreds of years, and in fact still is, defined exactly as I define it. It was this definition that was the original sense in which both Darwin and Spencer, and the others, used the word. The neo-darwinian sense of the word is a johnny-come-lately. Something added after the coming of gene-theory in the 20th century. As pointed out, it is a very special sense of the word that, since it in no way resembles the original sense of the word, causes much equivocation, confusion, and this confusion lends itself to sophistry and manipulation. The same criticism applies to 'selection'.

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Your understanding of evolution, if we can even call it "understanding" when you don't understand it at all, isn't archaic or supplanted; it's idiosyncratic.

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Whoops, now you're starting with the personal insults.Bye.

Crashfrog;I'm sorry to hear that you do not consider calling me 'ignorant' is not an insult. I wonder if you would consider yourself insulted if I was to say to you, as you said to me, "Your understanding of evolution, if we can even call it "understanding" when you don't understand it at all,...". A personal disparagement is an insult. It It is not added information and it is not reasoned argument. It is purely and simply a personal attack upon your opponent as a person.
IMO, you need to learn some manners;-- including how to recognise when you have personally and gratuitously offended someone, and how to aplologise for doing so.As for my personal hypothesis wrt evolution's driving force, it is "idiosyncratic" in the sense that it certainly deviates from the prevailing darwinian understanding, but it is not peculiar to myself alone. It daily acquires greater credence among those who treat organisms as whole systems, including developmental biologists. I do not consider calling my understanding of evolution 'idiosyncratic' an insult. I do consider calling it 'ignorant' an insult.And may I ask what is meant by your expression, "Man up, Elmer." It is unfamilar to me, but it sounds like an insinuated disparagement of my masculinity. Is it? Next you offer, "If being wrong hurts your little fee-fees,", insinuating with your 'baby-talk' that I am infantile. That, too, is insulting and flaming; i.e., nothing but trolling. And though you apparently do not realize it, you telling me that I am wrong does not prove that I am, in fact, wrong. Your saying, "You haven't been insulted. You've simply been shown to be wrong.", does not disguise the fact that although I have not been shown to be wrong, I have definitely been insulted.From now on, I'll thank you to keep any negative thoughts and evaluations you have of me as a person, strictly to yourself. Both in your posts to me, or in your posts to anyone else. If you find yourself unable to do that, (and apparently you do have great difficulty in remaing civil--are you an adolescent?) our correspondence will come to an abrupt end. If you would prefer to end it here and now, that would be fine with me.As to the rest of your last post, you say--

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That's not true. For instance, molar ratio is a dimensionless ratio, as well.

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Yes, and it's an abstraction as well. All arithmetic ratioes are abstractions, since they are not concrete things in themselves, nor numeric quantities of concrete things, but are mental concepts re the _relationships_ between different concrete things. Relationships, comparisons, evaluations and the like are all conceptual, notional; that is, abstract, and not concrete/empirical. Frankly, "dimensionless ratio" strikes me as a redundancy, but perhaps you can inform me of a 'dimensional' ratio, since arithmetic is not my field of expertise, either. I googled, "dimensional ratio", but got no actual cases, out of 4,900,000 possibles. (Well, OK, I didn't check out every one of the possibles.)

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Anything given in, say, "parts per million" or "percent by weight" is a dimensionless ratio, but there's nothing abstract about it.

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You can call them "dimensionless" ratioes, or just plain ratioes, but they are still abstractions, like it or not. If you wish to make a ratio 'concrete' by turning it into a specified 'measurement' of a concrete and actual object, then I wish you luck, as there is no such thing as a "dimensionless measurement", by definition. It's a contradiction in terms.

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If that is all that it is, then I really have to wonder why it is not simply stated that way?

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Well, I just did state it that way. What are you asking, exactly?

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I'm asking exactly what I asked. Why is it called 'fitness', when in fact it is 'differential reproduction'?

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When individuals have differential reproductive success as a result of heritable physical advantages (which we know now are genetic), that is evolution.

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So now you are telling me that positive differential reproduction which is the direct result of heritable ( by which I assume you mean 'genetically determined') physical advantages equals the origin of novel morphological and behavioural variations in organisms. Umh, I don't agree with this.

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And again, 'molarity', as a concept, is an abstraction.

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No, it's not. It's the measurement of exactly how many molecules of a substance are in a solution.

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If 'molarity' is concept then it is by definition an abstraction. If molarity is a ratio then it is not a measurement, but a comparison, and is still an abstraction. One salt molecule per 20 water molecules is not a measurement. A measurement is a determination of the dimensions of one thing. A ratio is a statement of relationship/association/correlation wrt the dimensions/quantities of two concrete things. As per my example, salt and water. Statements of relationships/associations/correlation are always mental, conceptual, that is, abstract; even when the comparison is between the particular measurements of two different concrete things. Calling a ratio a measurement is wrong. A measurement when applied to a particular concrete entity is empirical. A ratio is always an arithmetical abstraction. If your 'fitness' is a 'dimensionless ratio', then it is an arithmetical, statistical abstraction, and is an aspect of statistical math, not empirical biology. And yes, I have heard from the people on this board who believe that biology _is_ mathematics, and vice versa. I have no idea how to talk to people who believe such things.

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If you're counting the molecules,

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Counting the molecules of one concrete thing is a measurement, and is concerned with dimension. Taking the separate dimensions/measurements of two different things and correlating those measurements is not itself a measurement. From American Heritage dictionary--"di·men·sion (d-mn'shn, d-)
n.
A measure of spatial extent, especially width, height, or length.
Extent or magnitude; scope. Often used in the plural: a problem of alarming dimensions.
Aspect; element: “He's a good newsman, and he has that extra dimension” (William S. Paley).
Mathematics.
The least number of independent coordinates required to specify uniquely the points in a space.
The range of such a coordinate.
Physics. A physical property, such as mass, length, time, or a combination thereof, regarded as a fundamental measure or as one of a set of fundamental measures of a physical quantity: Velocity has the dimensions of length divided by time."Note that the last, the reference to velocity, refers to velocity as the quotient of the measured dimension of length divided by the measured dimension of time. Except that it should not do that, since it is against the rules to divide apples by oranges. So, apologies to all you physicists, but velocity is a ratio, an arithmetic abstraction; not a measurement. Just like 'molarity' and 'fitness'."ra·tio (r'sh, r'sh-')
n., pl. -tios.
Relation in degree or number between two similar things.
The relative value of silver and gold in a currency system that is bimetallic.
Mathematics. A relationship between two quantities, normally expressed as the quotient of one divided by the other: The ratio of 7 to 4 is written 7:4 or 7/4."
(Am. Her. Dict.)

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how can that be abstract?

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Determining the quantity or number of one set of concrete entities is measurement, and that is empirical. Two cows, 4 legs, a 3'long tail, and all that.
Comparing the quantities or number of two different concrete entities is correlation, not measurement."cor·re·la·tion (kr'-l'shn, kr'-)
n.
A causal, complementary, parallel, or reciprocal relationship, especially a structural, functional, or qualitative correspondence between two comparable entities: a correlation between drug abuse and crime.
Statistics. The simultaneous change in value of two numerically valued random variables: the positive correlation between cigarette smoking and the incidence of lung cancer; the negative correlation between age and normal vision.
An act of correlating or the condition of being correlated."That's no more abstract than, say, seeing that there are ten apples in front of me. That's about as concrete a measurement as it gets.[/quote]Yeah, "10 apples"is an empirical measurement, because it is dimensional, a given quantity. But that doesn't relate to 'fitness' or 'molarity'. Those things are correlations. The equivalent would be the correlation between the number of apples on a tree and the size of that apple tree.

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But this does not seem to apply to 'fitness', at least not in your definition, because there does not seem to be any concrete object involved.

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The individual and the individual's genes are the concrete objects involved. Are you saying that individuals exist?

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Actually, your definition of 'fitness' does not refer to an individual's genes, but to the ratio of the sum of instances of a particular 'allele' correlated to the sum of differing alleles in the genotype of a population. It's the ratio that 'fitness' refers to, not the given allele/gene and not the genotype in toto.Are you saying that individuals do not exist?!?

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"Fitness" was for hundreds of years, and in fact still is, defined exactly as I define it.

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Your source?

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http://www.wordwebonline.com/search.pl?w=fitness"Noun: fitness fitnus
The quality of being suitable
"they had to prove their fitness for the position"
- fittingnessGood physical condition; being in shape or in condition
- physical fitnessFitness to traverse the seas
- seaworthinessThe quality of being qualified
Derived forms: fitnessesSee also: fit, seaworthy, unseaworthyType of: competence, competency, condition, shape, soundness, suitability, suitablenessAntonym: unfitness"Any old dictionary could have told you as much. You should use them.See also--"fit (adj.)
"suited to the circumstances, proper," c.1440, of unknown origin, perhaps from M.E. noun fit "an adversary of equal power" (c.1250), which is perhaps connected to fit (n.1). The verb meaning "to be the right shape" is first attested 1581. First record of fitness is from 1580. Survival of the fittest (1867) coined by H. Spencer.
fitness | Search Online Etymology DictionaryLater, maybe. It's up to you.

Hi RAZD;Yours is a very long, albeit very interesting post. I probably won't be able to deal with it in one go, but I'll bite off as big a chunk as I can.You say--

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Yes, instead of selection by people interested in breeding certain traits in domesticated animals, this is the selection that occurs naturally with no input from man nor supernatural (otherwise it would not be natural eh?) entity.

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A rock is natural. Water is natural. Can a rock "choose" it's location, what it does, or what happens to it? Can water "choose" when to evaporate, when to condense, when to preipitate, and where to go once it hits the ground? If 'natural selection' is 'natural', how come it doesn't pertain to all of nature, but only that part of nature that is alive?Now, the word 'selection', up intil Darwin, always meant to intentionally, deliberately, although not necessarily consciously, 'choosing', 'picking', 'taking' one thing in preference to another. Doing that always involved awareness, values/criteria, goals, and ability. These things were always properties of the 'selector', not necessarily the 'selected'. It should be noted that only living, sentient beings possess such properties.Then came Darwin, who tried to make an analogy between the dynamic 'selecting' done by stockbreeders like himself, and what happens to organisms in the wild. What he did was to imply that there was a sentient being, call it "Mother Nature" or "The Great Flying Spagghetti Monster", or what you will, that acted like human stock breeders and picked one creature to live but picked another for drowning, or otherwise eliminating. As a literary or pedagogical device it was quite effective, so long as you didn't take it literally. Taking it literally was mere superstition. Like believing in the 'angel of death', or, 'the grim reaper'. But, of, course, thousands of people did take it literally, just as millions of people take biblical creation myths literally.Now, a few bright souls realised that they were doing with 'natural selection' was just exactly what other people were doing with Adam and Eve, and so went to work on chenging the meaning of the word 'selection' in order to take the 'spirits' out of it. To do that they changed the focus of the word. As I said, 'selection', since the beginnings of the English language, was something dynamic that was intentionally done by someone to something or to somebody. Now it was said to mean something passive, that is, stuff that just happened to something or somebody for any old reason. By changing 'selection' from something that was 'done', into into something that was 'done to', the awareness, values/criteria, goals, and ability were eliminated. Stuff can happen to, or be done to, anything at all, even rocks and water, and it can be purly accidental, i.e., random.For some reason people just stood by and watched this corruption of the language take place, and so now, here we are with it imbedded in the language like a virus that cannot be gotten rid of.

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One thing that occurs naturally is mating of organisms, and rarely is mating purely random, due to distance and opportunity, so mating can involve selection occurring by natural processes.

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Well, I don't think we should introduce 'sexual selection', which a/only applies to sexully reproducing organisms and
b/ is, in those rare instances in which it is truly present, is a dynamic, intentional activity, as opposed to the passive, accidental experience intrinsic to natural selection,
until after we have thoroughly determined the nature of 'natural selection'. So I'm going to skip down a bit.

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Other aspects of natural selection involves survival, not of major catastrophic events, like floods and fires, but involving everyday health, nutrition and being able to avoid sever sickness.

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What do you mean by "aspects of natural selection"? Defining characteristics? Natural properties? If 'natural selection' means the experiences that might befall a passive entity, then everything and anything can be an 'aspect' of 'natural selection', including both dying [being killed] right now, and not dying [being killed] right now.
Kind of makes the term, "NS", both nebulous and vacuous. I think that scientific terms should be a lot more specific, definite, and meaningful than that.

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The differences in health, nutrition and sickness can result in selection -- they are healthy and have the energy to mate and take advantage of the opportunities better than those who are sick.

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Well, aside from absurd truisms, such as,-- the sick are not as healthy as the hale and hearty, the stupid are not as bright as the intelligent, the old are older than the young, the slow are not as fast as the swift, the blind do not see as well as the sighted, the weak are not so powerful as the strong,-- and on and on, just exactly what is it that you are trying to say? The race is to the swift, the struggle to the strong--usually. We get that. It's not rocket science. In fact, it's not science at all. It's just a meaningless fact of life that is probably just as apparent to cheetahs chasing gazelles, and gazelles being chased by cheetahs, as it is to you and me.

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Catastrophes tend to eliminate individuals that were unlucky -- they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, often with all individuals of a species in that area being killed -- this is not natural selection because it is not selection, survival does not depend on hereditary traits but in being lucky. A tree falling on an organism and killing it is not natural selection either, but such chance events can effect the future evolution due to genetic drift of the remaining hereditary traits in the population (natural selection is one process of many in evolution).

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In short, anything can affect mortality, and anything that affects mortality can affect reproduction, and anything that affects reproduction affects 'evolution', and since, basically, everything that that affects mortality, from birth defects to broken legs to catching a virus to being bitten by a shark is, in the vast majority of cases, a matter of pure chance, I guess we can reduce this to 'chance=evolution', right? Or is it, "chance=natural selection"? Or is it both, in which case "Chance = natural selection = evolution"?

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Natural selection is the process that selects hereditary traits from generation to generation through differential survival and reproduction of individuals within populations. The selection is similar to that of breeding programs, but it occurs naturally.

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As pointed out earlier, darwinian 'natural selection' no longer bears any resemblence to organismic selection, since organismic selection is a dynamic thing that an organism does, whereas 'natural selection' refers to a passive organism that has things done to it; accidentally, by chance, more often than not.

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"Well, call me old-fashioned, but attributing 'selection', an activity performed intelligently and volitionally by aware beings capable of weighing, comparing and contrasting the relative merits of different alternatives, i.e., making a choice and acting upon it, and attributing that power, that ability, that intellectual capacity, to a general abstraction called 'nature', is the essence of personification, i.e., "A figure of speech in which inanimate objects or abstractions are endowed with human qualities". Show me where I'm wrong."

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You're wrong because you are going at it from the wrong direction. You first assume that all selection -- even in breeding programs -- is only due to intelligent interaction,

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Of course I do. That is what the word 'selection' means, and only meant, up until neo-darwinists transmogrified the meaning from active to passive, from 'done' to 'done to', from intentional to accidental, from teleological to ateleological, from value/goal based to random, back in the late 19th century. You darwinists are the only one's who believe that it means anything else.

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when often traits are linked so that you get trait {A} with trait {B} whether you want {A} or not.

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Sorry, but how did we get from 'natural selection' to genetics and the intricacies of genetic inheritance?!? Let's watch out for the 'non sequiturs', shall we?

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By this mean YOU personify selection as an intellectual process.

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I'm not "personifying" anything. How can talking about something that persons, (and all other organisms) actually do, be a case of "personification"? Perhaps you are unfamiliar with that word--"per·son·i·fi·ca·tion (pr-sn'-f-k'shn)
n.
1/The act of personifying.
2/A person or thing typifying a certain quality or idea; an embodiment or exemplification: “He's invisible, a walking personification of the Negative” (Ralph Ellison).
3/A figure of speech in which inanimate objects or abstractions are endowed with human qualities or are represented as possessing human form, as in Hunger sat shivering on the road or Flowers danced about the lawn. Also called prosopopeia. [bold added]
4/Artistic representation of an abstract quality or idea as a person.
[Am. Her. Dict.]Number three is the sense in which Darwin used "Natural Selection". Neo-darwinists, trying to make the term 'scientific' instead of literary, and in keeping with their materialist/mechanist worldview, changed Darwin's personification into that other thing I've already described, above. I'm just sticking with the original, true meaning of the word, 'selection'. I'm not "personifying" things like inanimate objects like "genes", and abstractions like "Mother Nature", with mental abilities they do not possess; the way you darwinists are doing.

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Second you activate "nature" to be the source of the intelligent interaction that makes the selection,

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No, I don't elevate "Nature", or any other fanciful abstraction, "to be the source of the intelligent interaction that makes the selection". That's what Darwin did, but not anything I'd ever do. What words of mine ever gave you this false impression?

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when the fact is that natural selection is just selection that happens naturally.

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Uhm, tautologies aren't really that enlightening, you know.

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It is natural that some animals get sick and die while others do not. It is natural that some animals die of thirst during droughts while others do not. It is natural that some animals die of hunger during famines while others do not. All of these individual deaths are selection that occurs naturally.

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Well, to be truthful, the only indisputable thing that can be said here is that they are instances mortality that occurs naturally, as opposed to instances of mortality that occur artificially, as in wars and slaughterhouses. In what sense there is any 'selection' involved, you'll have to spell out for me, unless you mean that neo-darwinian corruption of the word as I described it earlier. See above.I have to break off here. Later.

Well, I'm back to take another bite, RAZD. You say--

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It's simple to demonstrate that the obverse is false. Assume evolution is directed towards a purpose, then each step, each stage, each result of selection must be in the same direction, always building on previous selections step by step towards the goal.

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Well, first of all, unlike you I do not automatically assume the presence of anything labelled, 'natural selection'. All that I do assume is evolution and adaptation. From what I can tell both evolution and adaptation are, like life itself, indisputable empirical facts. However I have heard some people deny evfolution, and I have heard people who accept evolution deny adaptation, and I have heard some peoplewho accept evolution and adaptation deny the actuality of life itself, dismissing it as an 'epiphenomenon'. Apparently some folks will believe what they want to believe, no matter what evidence stacks up to disabuse them of their fantasies.In the case of this universe I do not know and cannot say if there is any long term goal involved. It may be no more than, say, a song that starts, goes on for a while, and then stops. But there is definitely some kind of progression taking place. The same goes for life. It began, it goes on, changing forms along the way, and just looking from archaea to you and me, there is some kind of progression happening. But I am sure that there are lots of people, not all of them creationists, who will insist that I am dead wrong, there is no sort of progression, no real evolution of any kind, merely the appearance of meaningful progress. If people choose to believe that and ignore the evidence, then I can't be bothered to argue with them.
I tend to ignore people whose opinions depend open ignoring logic and empirical evidence.Getting back to evolution, forget long-term goals as applied to the whole of life itself, and get back to short-term goals linked to actual organisms. I am talking local cases, in which goals are plain and simple and above all,_immediate_; and in which behaviours taken to achieve those goals are immediate and responsive to proximate stimuli. No fortune-telling, no foresight, no 'final answer' involved. That is, evolution considered from a strictly _local_ perspective--one specific organism in its own particular, proximate environment, just trying to survive, thrive, and possibly self-replicate, one moment at a time. Those are the goals that are _usually_ what determines the behaviour of live organisms, an
and it is at at this level that adaptation, and by extension, evolution, occurs. But goals are goals, be they long-term or short, general or particular, and goal-driven behaviour is teleleological. Now, there are a lot of people who say that live organisms have no real motivation to survive, thrive and possibly reproduce, but that it only looks that way. That the fact is that all organisms, including ourselves, do what we do, not becausewe are motivated to do so, but because we are mechanically programmed to do everything we do reflexively, like automatons, thanks either to mechanical determinsm or to divine predestination. I look about me at what people and other lifeforms actually do, and without denying the reality of some mechanical, determined behaviours, I see some behaviours that cannot be said to be inevitable and immutable. I do see some 'acts of choice', of selection, dependent upon the reality of intelligence, volition, and freedom from mechanical compulsion. "Free will", as it were. Others don't. What can I say? That's their philosophical choice.
IAC, 'selection', whether as originally used by Darwin, or as twisted semantically as is the present, neo-darwinian use of the word [see my previous post in response to RAZD], has nothing to do with the dynamic evolution of organisms over time.

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Now we look at the evidence and we see events like the Galapagos Finches and the Peppered Moths (and many many others)

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Funny how we always hear about "many, many others", but these two are all we ever seem to get. Considering that there must be gazillions of evolutionary events to choose from, how come darwinists only ever come up with these two old chestnuts? Both of which are extremely dubious support for their hypothesis, IAC? Especially considering that in either case, no actual _evolution_ even took place!

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where we see evolution proceed in one direction (larger beaks, dark wings) but then turn around and proceed in the other direction (smaller beaks, light wings). This falsifies direction.

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Well, no, since there was nothing but statistical change in inherited variation,. there was, contrary to the self-serving population geneticist definition of evolution, no evolution at all. And even thought these were only matters of inherited variation distribution statistics, how can you say that the presence of direction falsifies the notion of direction?!?! Anything that "proceed[s] in one direction [...] but then turn[s] around and proceed[s] in the other direction" obviously has direction. It just doesn't have a fixed, mechanical, predetermined, linear direction. I, for one, have never claimed that it did.

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We can also look at organisms like cyanobacteria that are virtually the same as they were 3.5 billion years ago, they have not evolved into something else. This falsifies purpose.

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I can't for the life of me see how you can logically come to that conclusion! I have an old pocket knife I was given as a small boy, many years ago. It hasn't 'evolved' either, but it still serves the same purpose. I think I can say the same thing for, oh, my left eye.What this actually falsifies is darwinian 'gradualism', wherebye organisms must continuously be changed, at least minutely, [by random, accidental, unceasing genetic mutations], so that evolution gets something to work with via small, incremental alterations that get in under natural selections's radar. By this theory, anything that has been around for 3.5 billion years,anduncountable generations, should be very different now from what it was then--but they aren't.

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Well, I don't believe than "man [was created] to rule earth". I don't believe that anything was created to rule earth. That does not mean that I believe that that the universe, the earth, and the biosphere exist for no reason, no point, no purpose.

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That is your prerogative, however that doesn't mean that evolution needs to be involved in any way other than to provide a source of sufficiently intellectually developed creatures able to contemplate your philosophy.

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OK. That's fine by me. Heck, I don't even require that it do that much!

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It doesn't have to result in humans.

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I think I've made it plain that neither mechanical determinism nor religious predestination play any role in my view of biological evolution.

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The question you will tend towards is whether intelligence is self selecting or provides a benefit such that any creature with a sufficient level of intelligence will reach the desired result.

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What does "self-selecting" mean to you? It doesn't mean anything to me when you are talking about inanimate objects and/or incorporeal, insubsubstantial, intangible properties, qualities, abilities, powers, or forces,-- such as 'intelligence'. Is gravity, 'self-selecting'? Is Life?

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Yet those organisms that survive whatever ecological and climatic change occurs will be fit, selected naturally to continue living and breeding.

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Will they be 'fit' because they survive, or will they survive because they're 'fit', and how would you be able to decide?

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You can try to ignore this aspect, but that will not change the fact that natural selection will continue to occur, selection that will occur naturally to differential between the "fit" and the "unfit" in the coming generations.

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Not a single bit of this is "fact". All of it iis purely notional, speculative opinion, and extremely dubious opinon at that. In fact, to my ears,(and I mean no offence), it is so divorced from anything empirical that it sounds more like statement of religious faith, couched in vague, mystical terminology, than anything else.

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So you agree that any "faith-based" approach is counter productive?

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Depends on the 'faith'. I think you need to take it on faith that the human race is capable of changing its values and 'mode de vie' sufficiently, so that we can get out of this mess in the nick of time. If you can't believe that, if you beliuve that 'human nature' cannot change, that everything is mechanically orreligiously predetermined and that we all really just hapless automatons passively swept along by gods or forces beyond our control, then heck, there's no point in doing anything but ordering another beer.Which reminds me. Later.

Back again, RAZD;Here goes. You say--

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No, it is a difference, a characteristic, a condition, that distinguishes one type of organism from another. Having a tail would not be a trait if not having a tail was not a trait.

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Well, since you insist that any noticeable characteristic at all constitutes a 'trait', (eg., both long sideburns and short sideburns are traits, and red lipstick and pink lipstick are both traits, as is no lipstick at all), and in that sense it's true, then I won't argue the point. You can hold to that position logically and semantically, but it renders the word 'trait' useless and pointless, since if anything and everything empirically detectable and identifiable constites a 'trait', then nothing is, in se, sufficiently specified and qualified to make any difference to our understanding.That means the difference that makes a material difference must be found in the qualifiers attached to that word. In the case of Wiesmann's neo-darwinian mice, I see that you use the word "acquired" to modify the word, "trait". So let's look at his use of the term, 'acquired'.The word 'acquired' is defined, in standard usage, as a form of the verb, 'to acquire'. To acquire is to gain, achieve, come by, take possession of. It always takes a dynamic sense, the sense of "to get by one's own efforts". But somewhere, somehow, its cognate, 'acquired', received a special meaning unrelated to the standard meaning. It was changed from "to get by own's own efforts", into, "to get thanks to the efforts or actions of others". That is, changed from 'earned dynamically' to 'received passively'. That is, that which meant 'endogenously earned' now also meant 'exogenously imposed'. Since these two meanings for the same word are antithetical, (just as the two senses of 'selection', (that is, the standard and the darwinian senses of 'selection') are antithetical), we again get a great deal of confusing equivocation.Now, I don't know if the passive sense of 'acquired' was invented by Weismann personally, or if it had come into being with the rest of modern materialism, but it is certainly ingrained in the language today. Divorced arbitrarily from the verb, 'to acquire', we now find that the cognate, 'acquired', is said to mean any thing/trait/identifier that is not congenital, (i.e., not inherited, but which comes into being 'after birth', by any means or under any circumstances). Since this division in meaning is founded upon the sole distinction of inherited/not inherited, I have to suspect that it began with the darwinian hypothesis about evolution;-- that is, that evolution is the passively endured effect of things done to organisms by externally sourced agents called "Natural Selection", just as what has happened to dogs and horses over time is the passively endured effect of things done to them by human stock breeders. The 'new' sense was probably an intended response to Lamarck, who said, using the original sense of, 'to acquire', that organisms, _by their own efforts_, dynamically acquired novel adaptive traits. By equating imposed, passively recived traits with the dynamically created, self-generated traits of Lamarck, and calling them both, 'acquired', the neo-darwinists contrived a neatly sophisticated semantic subterfuge for attacking lamarckian theory.Very dishonest, but highly effective, and extremely successful. They've fooled _almost_ everybody into believing that Lamarck's meaning for 'acquired' is their meaning for 'acquired'. But I'll stick to the original lamarckian understanding of 'acquired traits', thank you very much, and in that sense neither anything that anyone or anything does to anything else by way of changing one or more of its traits, if that change is not effected or derived from any effort or desire of its own, then that 'trait' is not 'acquired', but only 'artificially imposed'.I'm sure that Weismann's poor, mutilated mice would agree with me. That 'experiment was a disgusting sham, a publicity stunt designed to spin anti-lamarckism/neo-darwinism to the public, and had no drop of science in it, since it did not deal with Lamarck's hypothesis, but only Weismann's 'strawman' of that hypothesis.

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"I have seen Lamarckism, but nowhere in Lamarck's 200 year old understanding of evolution did I see anything that suggested that organisms re-expressed the physical deformities accidentally acquired by their forebears. Weismann was a sophist who set up a strawman of Lamarkian theory, (albeit that Lamarckian theory was quite primitive in modern terms), in order to sell neo-darwinism at a time when Darwin's original 'theory', "Natural Selection", was falling into public disfavour. "

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Yet it is an historical fact that Lamarkism, whether it was promoted by Lamark or by Darwin, involved the concept of inheritance of acquired characteristics,

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**
Yes, in their sense that 'acquired' meant endogenously earned characteristics.

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it is an historical fact that experiments with cutting off the tails of mice occurred to test it, and it is also an historical fact that this concept has been invalidated.

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Wrong. As I've explained, 'acquired traits' in the lamarckian sense had nothing to do with exogenously imposed, passively received traits. That was was Weisman's dishonest, phony, 'strawman' caricature of the lamarckian sense of 'acquired trait'.
Weismann, for neo-darwinian political purposes, discredited his own strawman and fooled the public into believing that he had discredited Lamarck. His 'mouse' experiment is to evolutionary biology as Haeckel's drawings are to developmental biology, as Kettlewell's pinned peppered moths are to scientific field work, and as the 'piltdown man' is to paleontology and the archaeological fossil record. A deliberate fraud, pure and simple.

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Now you say that "Weismann was a sophist who set up a strawman of Lamarkian theory," yet the theory was that "organisms gained aquired traits through use and disuse" and cutting off tails would certainly result in disuse and prevent all use of tails.

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And now you are, intentionally or unknowingly, indulging in the same semantic sophistry that Weismann used, and that all neo-darwinists have used ever since. As above.

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Selection that occurs naturally. The result of normal (natural) differential success in living and mating of different individual organisms within a population.

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IOW, anything and everything that affects the death and birth rates of organisms. I'm sorry, but I find this too nebulous and all-encompassing to be meaningful.

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"BTW, I've heard some geneticists refer to 'selection' as something operating at the genetic, molecular level. And at the cellular level. Indeed, I'm sure some of them refer to nucleotides in terms of 'selection'. None of which tells us what 'selection' actually is."

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Those elements may contribute to the normal (natural) differential success in living and mating of different individual organisms within a population, but they won't be all the factors involved (this is why selection occurs on the phenotype not just the genotype).

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How does your darwinian 'selection' operate on genes, alleles, and other molecules? If molecules and aggregations of molecules can 'select' each other, then I guess planet earth 'selected' the moon, and was itself the product of the sun's 'selection' activity.
I guess darwinian 'selection' is everything and anything which can be said to bring about absolutely any old kind of change, in any old ways, means, or fashions. Am I right? I hope not, since would be just too, too, absurd.

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Natural selection creates change in species from generation to generation, far from nothing, but there is no creative force behind it -- purpose and direction being already refuted.

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Now that you've stated your beliefs as to what it is not, I'd like to hear your opinion on what it is. In specific empirical terms, please.

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For now the main point is natural selection is selection that occurs naturally.

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As I said before, such tautologies as this are vacuous, and so do not advance our understanding one whit. Therefore is impossible for me to accept that they constitute a 'point' of any kind.Looking forward to your response.Edited by Elmer, : typoes

Wow, RAZD, yours has got to be the longest post I have ever seen on a debating bulletin board!! I'll work my way through it, but you will have to temporarily confine your posts to other people until I can catch up, and that might take all week!! However, one small bite at a time, here I go--

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Simply because the topic is biological evolution of living organisms, so it would be irrelevant to talk about rocks but not irrelevant to only talk about "that part of nature that is alive" ... and the evidence of past life (fossils, genetics, history, etc).

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That's fine. Let's not talk about genes and other chemical molecules either, then, since in this sense they are no different from rocks.

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"Now, the word 'selection', up intil Darwin, always meant to intentionally, deliberately, although not necessarily consciously, 'choosing', 'picking', 'taking' one thing in preference to another. Doing that always involved awareness, values/criteria, goals, and ability. These things were always properties of the 'selector', not necessarily the 'selected'. It should be noted that only living, sentient beings possess such properties."

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Irrelevant.

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Irrelevant?!?! You have got to be kidding.

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That is why Darwin modified selection with natural, to differentiate selection by natural processes from those that are not natural - intentional selection.

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You do not utterly change a word meaning by putting a modifier in front of it--you only qualify it. A natural fountain and an artificial fountain are both still fountains. The meaning of fountain is not changed. It still means water jetting out of the ground. A 'natural' child and a 'legitimate' child are both still babies, the one defined as a baby in exactly the same way as the other. The natural electricity of lightning from the clouds and the 'artificial' electricity from a generator are both the same physical thing. Whereas changing 'selection' from an activity 'performed by' a sentient being into something 'done to' a sentient being is changing the word's meaning entirely, and creating equivocation by giving it two antithetical meanings at once. And that is exactly what darwinists have done to 'selection'.

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In modern biology

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By which I take you to mean, 'darwinism'.

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selection is defined as:
se·lec·tion -1.a. The act or an instance of selecting or the fact of having been selected.
- b. One that is selected.

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Well, there you are then. It's just as I've been telling you. I rest my case. QED.Please note the difference between using 'selection' as an act of choice, contrasted with referring to 'a selection' as a thing chosen. The first sense is active, the second passive. Note that the first sense refers to an act, the second sense to a thing. If "natural Selection" is to take the first sense of the word, it has to take the active, dynamic sense of 'making a choice', and that is the only sense in which it can be considered a causal mechanism.
The passive sense refers only to a thing chosen, that is, an effect brought about by a chooser. Now a book may be the 'selection of the month', but it did not 'select' itself. If Darwin meant 'natural selection' to mean the effects, (i.e.,the traits/organisms) we find in the biosphere after the passge of time, then he did no more than point at what is there, he offered no explanationas to how it came to there, i.e., its origins.
But I do not think that Darwin was using 'selection' in the passive sense, the sense that might apply to a cat or a dog at a show, or a tie on a rack, or an entree. I think that Darwin fully intended his "Natural Selection" to mean exactly the same kind of active, dynamic selection as that practiced by stockbreeders like himself, show judges, and restaurant patrons. All of whom are sentient beings actively making choices based upon their personal goals and the criteria established for arriving at those goals. I do not know of any earthquakes, floods, inanimate objects, or abstract notions that can make choices. So either admit that "Natural Selection" is a corruption of the word 'selection', by which an intentional and intelligence-based act, choice, is attributed to a non-sentient abstraction,'nature', [personification], or show that your "Natural Selection" is the causal behaviour of some specific, concrete and empirical entity that is just like us human 'selectors', 'judges', 'inspectors', and the like.
Or adopt the later, neo-darwinist, corruption of its meaning.

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4. Biology A natural or artificial process that favors or induces survival and perpetuation of one kind of organism over others that die or fail to produce offspring.
(American Heritage Dictionary)"

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As above, case closed, QED.

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Where it can be either through directed processes (artificial selection) or natural processes (natural selection).

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What do you mean by "it". And what word did you leave out, before or after "either"? If you meant to insert 'done' before 'either', than "it" is an after affect of the doing. It is a product or result of selection, a chosen thing, and not the act of choosing, and certainly not the 'chooser' that does the 'choosing'. In this sense you would intend an effect, not a cause, and so are not talking 'mechanism', but observation of fact. I believe that Darwin thought that he was talking about a causal mechanism that accounted for the origins of bioforms. Sadly for him, his contemporaries pointed out that his "NS", being a non-empirical abstraction, a personification, a figure of speech, was not an empirical cause, and that all of the examples he raised were only instances of the effects of unspecified empirical causes, and not an identifiable, universal causal agency. He had no causal mechanism for origins in his "Natural Selection", only terms for decribing the the world as it is, as in 'that which has been selected' by a non-existent, notional 'selector', using a mystical, inconstant, unidentifiable set of criteria called 'fitness' that apparently changed with every case. A quasi-religious concept as ever was. And more than a little nightmarish.

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This is the terminology used by scientists in discussing the science. Not using this terminology means you are not talking about the science but something else, and in logic this is known as the logical fallacy of equivocation.

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Actually you are using the old, 'fifty million frenchmen can't be wrong' fallacy. The belief that truth is a function of popularity. I am discussing the reality, the truth of evolution, which is not necessarily what darwinists think it is. There is no acceptable reason to accept the lingo that they have devised to support their dubious notion. The only equivocation in evolutionary terminology--"equivocationnoun1/The use or an instance of equivocal language: ambiguity, equivoque, euphemism, hedge, prevarication, shuffle, tergiversation, weasel word. Informal waffle. See clear/unclear.
2/An expression or term liable to more than one interpretation: ambiguity, double-entendre, equivocality, equivoque, tergiversation. See clear/unclear." [bold added] [source Houghton Mifflin]--originates entirely with them, not me, as I have very clearly demonstrated.

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"Then came Darwin, who tried to make an analogy between the dynamic 'selecting' done by stockbreeders like himself, and what happens to organisms in the wild. What he did was to imply that there was a sentient being, call it "Mother Nature" or "The Great Flying Spagghetti Monster", or what you will, that acted like human stock breeders and picked one creature to live but picked another for drowning, or otherwise eliminating. As a literary or pedagogical device it was quite effective, so long as you didn't take it literally. Taking it literally was mere superstition. Like believing in the 'angel of death', or, 'the grim reaper'. But, of, course, thousands of people did take it literally, just as millions of people take biblical creation myths literally. "

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Except that this is false. Totally false. All Darwin said was that it was selection that occurred naturally.

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Well, that is exactly what I have just said that he said. Where is this "false" assertion that you claim ?!?! Nobody denies that Darwin created an analogy between human stock breeding and plant cultivation with what happened to organisms in the wild. Unless you deny it that. Do you?
What Darwin said in his analogy entailed, (as analogies must if they are to be the least bit accurate), the chief aspects of the subject of that analogy, in his case, 'artificial selection', meaning human selection; meaning intelligent, aware, intentional choice-making according to a pre-set and universally applied criterion. That is what 'selection', as an act, entails. Therefore, if his analogy was valid, his "NS" had to possess these same characteristics.Now "Nature", meaning the biosphere as such, does not in fact, as an abstraction, possess those features. But "Nature", figuratively or superstitiolusly taken to be some sort of semi-divine spirit entity, could.
But 'spirit entities' didn't go over well in Darwin's set, and by the time of his death his "Natural Selection" was headed for the scientific rubbish heap; although it remained popular among those who embraced it for religious and political reasons. Eventually it was saved from scientific oblivion by Mendelian inheritance theory, genetics, and the metaphysical speculation that genetic mistakes and accidents could originate and determine the adaptations, novel bioforms, and added complexity and productivity found in the biosphere. Origin by accident. But that's another issue.

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You are the one reading personification into this,

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Oh please, RAZD. The personification is there. It's undeniable. Darwin drew an analogy between the works of nature and the works of man. An analogy is a comparison based upon finding similarities between different things. Such as stock breeding and evolution. When the comparison/analogy seeks to establish a similarity between something non-human and that which is human, that effort is called personification. That's a plain fact. You cannot "read into something" that which is a plain fact. It is there, whether you like it or not.

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Continuing to espouse false positions after they have been demonstrated to be false demonstrates a refusal or inability to learn.

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That's true. Which is why when I demonstrate, logically and linguistically, that I am right and you are wrong, only to have you repeat the same wrong opinions on the subject, willy-nilly, it can get quite depressing.

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Darwin recognized that not all selection was directed

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Not true. Darwin simply asserted that he believed that not all 'selection' is directed. He was wrong to do that, because it just isn't true. By definition. All acts of 'selection' are directed by goals, values, awareness, and intention. There is no other kind, except in the notional world of Darwin and his disciples.Now, if you want to talk 'mechanical sorting'-- (as in wind and water distribution of stone particles)-- instead of 'selection', that's another matter. Non-sentient agencies can do that.

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The problem is that when you modify "selection" with "natural" there is no personification from the start, no changing of the definition -- that is why the modifier is there.

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You simply do not understand the concept of 'personification', for some reason. Just as soon as you attribute a human property to a non-human entity, such as the biosphere, (here refering to the biosphere as 'nature'), and then assign a human ability [selection] to it, here via the word, 'natural', you have made up a personification. Go back and re-read the definition of the word that I supplied you earlier on, and then justify how you can continue to deny that Darwin personified, anthropomorphised the biosphere, with his "Natural Selection".
And then you'll see why that didn't go over, and why the word 'selection' then had to be given a totally new meaning by the neo-darwinists, going from 'the act of selecting' to 'the experience of being selected'.

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"By changing 'selection' from something that was 'done', into into something that was 'done to', the awareness, values/criteria, goals, and ability were eliminated. Stuff can happen to, or be done to, anything at all, even rocks and water, and it can be purely accidental, i.e., random."

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Yes, by modifying selection to be that selection due to natural processes that is the essence -- "stuff happens" -- whether it is to biological organisms or rocks.

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Therebye propping up the materialist notion that live organisms are essentially no different from dust in the wind, and that everything that happens, 'just happens, that's all'. Very metaphysical stuff. But at least you finally admit that the meaning of 'selection' was altered in order to suit a metaphysical assumption.

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Except that it is not corruption, it is using modifiers to differentiate between different processes that actually happen.

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Well, you can go on asserting that, but I have clearly shown that it is just not true. Sticking 'natural' in front of 'selection' does not cause that word to legitimately go from 'directed act of choosing' to 'experience of being chosen'. Added to which if "NS" means 'selection' in the orignalsense, then it means 'a directed act of choosing from among alternatives, based upon criteria linked to values and goals'. I defy you to find me any abstraction that is not quasi-religious, or any inanimate object that is not a human artefact, that can do that. Therefore, if you say "NS" can do that, then you make it quasi-religious, a mystical 'spirit' of some kind. But if you opt for the neo-darwinian version of 'selection', i.e., 'the passively received experience of being chosen', then you've just chucked "NS" as a causal mechanism/explanation, religious or scientific, right out the window.Anyhoo, I'm getting sleepy. Must toddle off. Later.