Questioning The Evolutionary Process

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...

If you are interested in learning then surely you should be asking questions about what NS is not making statements? If you simply make a bald assertion why are you surprised when you are dismissed in kind.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. 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.There is also genetic, or absolute, fitness which is a simpler measure of the mean fecundity of a particular genotype.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.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.It is due to the fact that such non selective sources of random noise exist, and in some cases due to problems in sampling populations, that evolutionary fitness measures are only probabilistic. Because that isn't what it means. Because that isn't what it means, if you think it is then you are eloquently showing you ignorance of the terminology. Why persist in doing so? If you want an explanation I have provided one why throw up these strawman definitons?TTFN,WKEdited by Wounded King, : No reason given.

Welcome to the fray Elmer That has not been a problem for any of the creationists with similar levels of education, and you may be less encumbered by false ideas of what is involved. 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'." But there is no personification of nature into any kind of entity doing anything. To think of evolution being in any way directed towards some goal is totally false.What you really have are these basic possibilities

1. some god or god created life and man to rule earth, so man is not responsible for global warming or anything else. If man's behavior doesn't satisfy this god or gods they can step in and take over.
2. some god or god created life and man to take care of earth, so man can be responsible for global warming or anything else and should take measures to preserve the earth. If man's behavior doesn't satisfy this god or gods they can step in and take over.
3. 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.
4. there are no gods, so the issue of global warming etcetera is solely an issue affecting humans themselves and one that is their problem to solve.

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? He, not that sex is an important trait ....The issue is that for a genetically tail-less mouse the lack of tail is a trait, 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. There is nothing mystical -- no quasi-divine 'nature' -- about selection as used in evolution science, it is the selection of individuals to pass on hereditary traits by their relative ability to survive and reproduce. 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. Calling natural selection by a different name won't change the process involved, nor do I believe this will lead to any increase in understanding by creationists, and it is open to misinterpretation as well. Evolution as a whole is a dynamic response system, and natural selection is part of that process. This also is NOT evolution. There is no determined, mechanical,inevitable, immutable linear progression. Old news. Demonstrated over and over. Natural selection is a fact. It's been documented in Peppered Moths and Galapagos Finches among others. Then you are ignorant (uninformed) of the facts. This can be rectified. Certainly nature is not inhibited in any way by what you know, think and believe ... singularly unimpressed with what anyone knows, think and believe. What is more troubling is your apparent disinterest in finding out whether Natural Selection is a fact before posting your ignorance. It is easy to disabuse yourself of ignorance.Natural selection - Wikipedia

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A well-known example of natural selection in action is the development of antibiotic resistance in microorganisms. Antibiotics have been used to fight bacterial diseases since the discovery of penicillin in 1928 by Alexander Fleming. Natural populations of bacteria contain, among their vast numbers of individual members, considerable variation in their genetic material, primarily as the result of mutations. When exposed to antibiotics, most bacteria die quickly, but some may have mutations that make them slightly less susceptible. If the exposure to antibiotics is short, these individuals will survive the treatment. This selective elimination of maladapted individuals from a population is natural selection.

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Care to elaborate? It could be your discussion of global warming and needing an alternative concept to evolution to combat it ... Which is precisely why we should use scientific evidence and valid conclusions and not untested philosophy. 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).Basing it on mythology would be rather ridiculous eh? 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. Because that would be wrong.So are you willing to learn?Enjoy.

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I think you're confusing methodological naturalism with metaphysical naturalism. 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.Methodological naturalism (science) 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.I'm an atheist myself, but that's not because I think that science has disproved the possibility of Gods. It hasn't. 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. I assure you that on this site there are theists, atheists, agnostics, pantheists and deists all defending the theory of evolution. Lucky we've got environmentally and spiritually concerned leaders like G.W. Bush to lead us out of the mess, isn't it?Actually, the most religious country in the west is the one which produces the most pollution per. head of population. It also has the highest murder rate.The "Darwinian approach to evolutionary biology", as you call it, requires no philosophical assumptions. Darwin was a Christian when he started his observations, and was probably not a full blown atheist when he finished his life. His friend Huxley was an agnostic (he invented the term) and Wallace finished his life with an interest in spiritualism, so was clearly not a metaphysical naturalist. The other important 19th century figure whose work led to the modern synthesis was Mendel, who finished his life as the abbot of his monastery.Anyone can practise methodological naturalism excepting those who have a literal belief in any of the ancient creation mythologies which describe fictional universes.

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...

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. 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. Well, wait now. You can measure length in numbers, too; does that make it not an empirical, scientific phenomenon?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? That can't be true, since we observe that populations experience natural selection of their individuals. 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; furthermore we observe in every instance that this differential survival is not random but intrinsically related to that organism's physical adaptations to environment. Organisms contain genes - they are the physical expressions of their genes. Thus, natural selection selects on individuals, which has an effect on the genetics of the entire population.

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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.

Units of measure (feet, pounds, etc.) are arbitrary.Hence, the metric system v. the English system.Fitness is not arbitrary.It is a measurement of a physical fact: allele frequency. 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"?The crows are there. I counted them.Allele frequencies are there. We count them. Fitness is not synonymous with evolution.Fitness and evolution are 2 different things. You'll notice that both fitness and natural selection are concepts within evolutionary theory.A new trait arises thru mutation.The new trait is acted on by the environment.The new trait spreads thru a population.That changes the allele frequency of the new trait.What, exactly, don't you understand about this very simple idea?

I'll leave the rest of your post to RAZD. I just want to ask one question. You doubt mutation?

The only question you asked in the the post I replied to was why someone thought you were attributing the industrial revolution to Darwin. everything else was just a string of assertions showing that you already know hat you think about various terms in biology even though you seem to have no idea what they actually mean. Except you didn't say that you said that you just made a whole string of assertions. Look back at that post and tell me where the questions were. I'm surprised that's what you heard since it clearly isn't what I said. What are 'post-hoc measures base on observed gene changes' if not empirical? How is it different from working out the trajectory of an object in motion from 2 point measurements of its location at given times, in what way is it less empirical? I admit it can be hard to survey the entire genetic complement of a population, but that doesn't make it not empirical just less exact. So there is another whole are of Biology you know nothing about, imagine my surprise. Ecology is concerned with all the interactions of the many different organisms in a particular region. It is not concerned, except in evolutionary ecological studies, with the effect the environment has on the allele frequencies in a particular organisms population. No, you're not right. If I have two plated cultures of bacteria and introduce an antibiotic into one and measure the genetic frequency of a trait connected with drug resistance before and after in both cultures then how is that not an empirical measurement of the effect of the anitbiotic as an environmental factor interacting with the bacterial genotype? It certainly gets more complicated when you are dealing with large organisms out in the wild but it doesn't make the effects any more real. Depends on the mouse, for the common house mouse answer should be obvious since I have never heard there was any of them going extinct while tiger populations are diminishing all over the place. In the modern world humans have made mice are much better fitted to take advantage of human created environments than tigers are. Well I could hardly be saying that since I said that genetic fitness was the mean of fecundity, so that clearly doesn't apply to one mouse. If mouse population 'A' had more offspring than population 'B', over a given time period in the same environment with both populations initially the same size, then it would be the genetically fitter population for that environment. Could you mess up the measurement? Sure. Maybe they have different breeding seasons and you mistakenly measure them during the breeding season of a particular population, but experiments are designed to minimalise such factors and it doesn't change the fact that the effects that are being imperfectly measured are perfectly real. The correct analogy would be to counting the number of soldiers in both armies before the battle and noting what weapons they have and then counting the number of survivors on each side after the battle, obviously counting the dead would work equally well for this last step. Would you not then be in a position to make some estimate of the likely outcome if a similar battle were to be subsequently fought? ell that sounds very deep but makes no sense as far as I can see in the context of the discussion, are you now wanting to discuss the origin of novel traits? Or do you mean the changes in the number of organisms which is what would be being measured? Its not a function of its parent organisms genetic makeup but of its own. But many traits are clearly genetically determined, to think otherwise is merely insane. Are all traits genetically deteremined, no nor do they need to be but the effect suctraits have on the genetic frequencies in the population is exactly the sort of statistical noise I described earlier. Gene can be taken as synonymous with 'heritable trait' without much danger, although as I said before there are potentially heritable epigentic factors. But there it certainly is. If a particular form of protein should b considered a trait, and it certainly should, then how do the different genes which code for different forms of that protein not represent distinct traits?How does a gene encoding a mutant form of haemoglobin not represent the sickle cell trait? But I have very clearly said that it is 'gene-dependent' Indeed, but the choice you chose seems to show no grasp at all of what it actually means, so why persist in making little better than guesses at meaning?TTFN,WKEdited by Admin, : Fix quoting.

Hi Elmer,You're drawing enough responses, I'll be brief. I suppose you could say that assertions with a broad degree of support could be considered statements of fact, but declaring assertions to be facts just doesn't do the job. If terms like "selection" and "natural selection" lacked empirical support, that would not make them meaningless, it would just make them unsupported by evidence. But we don't have to worry about that because they have broad and deep observational and experimental empirical support, as reflected in the technical literature. Breeders knew about selection long before Darwin came along.--Percy

What evidence turned you away, may I ask? I was a confirmed creationist up until the end of high school. But the more I learned about biology and science, the more problems I saw with the creationist arguments, and the more I saw that the theory of evolution was a scientific theory with a lot of evidencial support. The more I learned about it since, the more convinced I became that not only is evolution good science, it probably is the best explanation for what we see in biology.It would be interesting to hear the evidence that turned you away from the theory of evolution. May I take a guess that the evidence consists of untruths and illogical arguments like those found on creationist websites? Not that I'm accusing you of anything, but a middle school student isn't really going to be in a position to really understand any subject enough to be able to comment on its validity, right? And your posts seem to indicate that you don't really understand the science itself very well -- it appears that you get most of your information from sources who are lying to you.Edited by Chiroptera, : No reason given.Edited by Chiroptera, : Oops -- forgot to note that I added the last couple of sentences.
Also decided to change the subtitle/\.

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Computers have cut-and-paste functions. So does right-wing historical memory. -- Rick Perlstein

Interesting.So, in your own words, what is the theory of evolution?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

I'm happy to call you old-fashioned.From dictionary.com:

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se·lec·tion /slk‘n/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[si-lek-shuhn] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
-noun 1. an act or instance of selecting or the state of being selected; choice.
2. a thing or a number of things selected.
3. an aggregate of things displayed for choice, purchase, use, etc.; a group from which a choice may be made: The store had a wide selection of bracelets.
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.
5. Linguistics. a. the choice of one form instead of another in a position where either can occur, as of ask instead of tell or with in the phrase ask me.
b. the choice of one semantic or syntactic class of words in a construction, to the exclusion of others that do not occur there, as the choice of an animate object for the verb surprise.

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This thread is called:Science forums - Biological Evolution - Questioning The Evolutionary Process. We're talking biology here.You're certainly questioning the evolutionary process, which is fine, but please try not to use semantics to do so, unless you have an understanding of the ever changing nature of language and the meaning of words. It has to? To be replaced with what? A vague desire for magic?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.Do you like seeing dead babies? Feel free to describe this evidence. You're demanding evidence for natural selection. It would be fascinating to see the evidence for "neo Lamarckism" that all those stupid biologists have failed to notice.In order for natural selection not to happen, the genomes of all individuals in a population group would have to give them exactly the same chances of survival. They would have to run at the same speed from predators, for example. Being short sighted would be no disadvantage in seeing the predator coming. Having the best eyesight in the group would have to be no advantage.Again: Do you agree that a species can transform into another species?If so, are you suggesting that organisms consciously decide in which direction they are going? I decided my children's hair colour and build? Or is it just that my experience in life in some way mysteriously influenced the genetic code in my sperm? How does this happen?Incidentally, I certainly share your concern about global warming.It's a material problem with material causes, and the potential solutions are material.

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...