Cornelius Hunter seems very confused.
…This brings us back to the UC Berkeley “Understanding Evolution” website. It abuses science in its utterly unfounded claim that “natural selection can produce amazing adaptations.”
In fact natural selection, even at its best, does not “produce” anything. Natural selection does not and cannot influence the construction of any adaptations, amazing or not. If a mutation occurs which improves differential reproduction, then it propagates into future generations. Natural selection is simply the name given to that process. It selects for survival that which already exists. Natural selection has no role in the mutation event. It does not induce mutations, helpful or otherwise, to occur. According to evolutionary theory every single mutation, leading to every single species, is a random event with respect to need.
He has forgotten what “adaptation” means. Of course he is correct that “Natural selection is simply the name given to [differential reproduction]”. And that (as far as we know), “every single mutation …is a random event with respect to need”.
And “adaptation” is the name we give to variants that are preferentially reproduced. So while he would be correct to say that “natural selection” is NOT the name we give to “mutation” (duh); it IS the name we give to the very process that SELECTS those mutations that promote reproduction. i.e. the process that produces adaptation.
Cornelius should spend more time at the Understanding Evolution website.
ETA: CharlieM points out below that…
When CH says that natural selection does not produce adaptations he is talking about individual organisms. He is discussing mutations in individuals and adaptations in individuals. Natural selection has nothing to do with the first appearance of an adaptation in an individual.
And that of course is the confusion – I hadn’t seen just where Cornelius’s confusion lay. Because, of course, the term “adaptation” is a population-level concept. At the level of the individual, the equivalent would be “advantageous mutation”. And that makes the Understanding Evolution website absolutely correct.
Much appreciated!
Alan:
Come on, Alan. You know better than that.
Joe is human and capable of making mistakes — even on his home turf — just like the rest of us. He already made this mistake:
Mayr — an evolutionary theorist if there ever was one — begs to differ. Given that Joe made that mistake, why do you think he is incapable of making another?
I’ve given my reasons for disagreeing with him, and he is of course more than welcome to offer a counterargument — preferably something more substantial than “Keith’s position is silly and invalid.”
I asked Joe:
I look forward to his answer.
keiths,
Have stuff to do but I’d be wary of quote-mining Ernst Mayr to support a point you wish to make. As he died in 2005, we can’t contact him for clarification. I see he lived to be 100 and was not persuaded by Dawkins and selection at the level of the gene.
Alan,
It isn’t supposed to be realistic. It’s a thought experiment showing that differences in fecundity are separable from natural selection under a perfectly reasonable definition of natural selection.
Alan,
I’d be wary of accusing someone of quotemining when you have no evidence of that. Think, Alan.
It isn’t just Mayr who sees natural selection that way, as you’d know if you had actually read the thread.
But I didn’t accuse you of quote-mining. “I’d” is short for “I would” as in “I don’t think it would be a good idea”. And I’m using “quote-mine” in the weak sense of lifting quotes from secondary sources to support a point without really being familiar with the broad views of the person being quoted.
Well, I have been following the thread with interest. And Mayr doesn’t see anything now, nor has he since 2005.
Allan,
But of course I’m not arguing that differential fecundity has no impact. It does, and it can be huge. I’m just pointing out that it needn’t be lumped with natural selection.
The mere fact that the effect is the same doesn’t mean that the processes are the same or that they require the same label.
One can certainly separate out natural selection, fecundity selection and sexual selection.
And some do.
Yes, and it’s convenient to do so when you’re doing population genetics. However, I think you’d agree that this isn’t enough to qualify the pop gen definition as the One True Scientific Definition of natural selection, though.
But in this thread, and in the quotes I’ve provided, it is definitely natural selection that is being discussed.
I’d just like to repeat that this is a quibble if there ever was one.
Nothing whatever hinges on it except, I guess, whether (i) some slightly different definitions might have been used to produce precisely the same results and (ii) if anybody DID or HAD used those definitions it would have been a violation of some brand of orthodoxy, in spite of again, using them to reach precisely same results.
We have here a nice case of how the term “selection” can be ambiguous, and why scientists who use it need to take the trouble to define it carefully. Obviously, if two scientists define the term slightly differently from each other, we have to be careful when we interpret their results so that we don’t telescope one definition into another’s remarks. And, of course, the world would be simpler if everybody defined everything exactly the same way. But alas….
Finito.
Alan,
LOL. Right. You were just saying, apropos of nothing, that if someone were to come along and quotemine Mayr — let’s say, to support a point they wished to make — then that person would be making a mistake.
You must think the readers are idiots.
You were using “quote-mine” to mean “quote-mine”. Think before typing, Alan.
walto,
Exactly, which is why Joe and Steve’s claims of being in possession of the One True Scientific Definition, shared by all evolutionary biologists, were preposterous.
No, read for comprehension. I was suggesting to you that pulling out further quotes from Mayr might not be a good idea in supporting whatever point you wish to make.
Nope. I think we have an amazingly bright and articulate group of commenters. I’d include you in that. Not that you don’t have other faults.
I was using “quote-mine” in the way I defined it. This whole thread is about definitions as you admit.
Thanks for the suggestion. 🙂
The entire thread isn’t much more than quibbles. Yet it has been the most active thread here ever since it was started.
Conclusion: people like quibbling.
Alan,
Of course you were, seeing that I was clearly on the verge of releasing a torrent of Mayr quotes.
Neil,
We certainly do. But it hasn’t been for naught. Thinking deeply about definitions means thinking deeply about the concepts being defined, which is a good thing.
I have explained this before, but let me explain this again:
If we have three genotypes AA, Aa, and aa that have equal viabilities, your position (and Mayr’s) says that there is no natural selection. If their fertilities differ, then their fitnesses will differ, and this will tend to drive change of gene frequencies. Isn’t that too natural selection?
If keiths wants to call the fertility selection something else, I can’t stop him. But I know of no population geneticist who would use that convention.
The link, in case you missed it, Joe. As a fellow ‘scientist/scholar,’ I respect you. But as a minority atheist and ‘skeptic’, you have not my interest as a person. Too intellectually shallow & full of ultimate despair. The children laughing and playing in the sunshine outside of my window are much more interesting.
The questions to you, nevertheless remain. Agents, Joe, agents in biology? Your ‘kind’ (of ‘scientist/scholar’) spew empty rhetorical talk quite often, apparently trying to be ‘important’ socially. We’ve been studying your communication! 😉
If you have no answer, then please acknowledge, defer and stay silent properly at the discourse table. Not answering confirms your ignorance & refusal to acknowledge bigger things.
I prefer squabbling. That’s why I haven’t been active in this thread.
That reminds me of the “when were you ever famous” line from Tootsie. What branch of science did you engage in, professionally, Gregory?
I’m sure Joe is too polite to tell you go play with them, then and cut out the pejorative rhetoric.
Participation in this blog is voluntary. If your questions get ignored it is more likely due to the (I’m sure unintentionally) obnoxious way you conduct yourself here.
Everyone knows that atheists never laugh and play in the sunshine.
Sorry, Alan Fox, you’re who again by education where? Not a scientist or a scholar, check. How many (branches of) sciences are there?
My lack of respect for Joe’s atheism is not merely ‘pejorative rhetoric’. It is a simple statement of fact (and also clearly allowed by Lizzie’s [newly articulated] attitude that not only allows, but seems to promote rude, mean, insulting anti-theism or anti-atheism). Atheists are the least trustworthy people in the world. They stink of no values or low values & morals. That’s a nearly universal human belief across cultures (except, of course, for atheists themselves, who are already figured in the assessment!). Sorry if that sociological reality displeases you, Alan, since you are an atheist too. Shrug.
I have no problem at all with Joe Felsenstein’s ‘strictly scientific’ claims as a biologist. Nice work, Joe! 🙂 Again, the biggest problem with ‘natural selection’ is the rhetoric with which it is promoted as an AGENT. Darwin himself displayed this gratuitously in his OoS. I keep it within arms’ reach, if you want to test me, Alan.
So, Nature is a sovereign AGENT, Charles?! Notice capitalised Nature (Darwin leaves unexplained in OoS) and gendered ‘she’ (also unexplained)? Is it any wonder Darwin attempted to correct himself about ‘natural selection’ not long afterwards in his letter to mentor Lyell (which nobody in this thread has yet acknowledged, Darwin lovers & even ‘worshippers’ as most here are!)?
Joe can surely answer for himself how many AGENTS are in the chapter he condescendingly threw at me as a biological argument.
Nevertheless, ‘nature is not an AGENT’, no matter how much Joe cum naturalist or anyone else here wants it to be otherwise. That view is merely an affront to those fields that study ‘agents’ regularly, i.e. SSH.
Above (http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/natural-selection-and-adaptation/comment-page-11/#comment-75112) I discussed metaphor in contrast with the verbs ‘to choose’ and ‘to decide’. Naturalists (ibnlt, atheists & skeptics) simply will not gain monopolies over these words, no matter how hard they may try. Say it ain’t so, Joe!
Tell us, someone, that biologists actively don’t want to confuse people and equivocate between these terms. That they really do openly acknowledge Darwin’s rhetoric and even that Darwin himself would have chosen a different concept duo: ‘natural preservation.’ Who is ‘tough enough’ here at TSZ to actually admit this?
I think I can speak for everyone here. We admit it.
Most people know that children ‘intuitively’ are not atheists either, just like you weren’t KN. Were you?
Right, Mung 😉 Thanks for the chuckle! Lizzie’s atheists regularly dwarf & dismiss you at TAZ.
I was, as soon as I was exposed to confirmation classes. Age 11.
Prior to that I went to church every Sunday, but never gave religion any thought. But when I was taught the actual content of religion, it made no sense.
“Age 11.”
I meant much younger than that.
Gregory, when have I insulted you? Or anyone?
I suppose it can be argued that I have behaved very weirdly: in a chapter of my book that is devoted to merely “spew[ing] ignorant rhetorical talk” I somehow did this by writing down (and explaining) a lot of equations.
… or else maybe I was actually developing technical arguments, rather than ignorant rhetorical talk.
And while we’re at it, Gregory, thank you.
You have brightened my day and brought a smile to my face.
I’m no-one.
Only aspiring to be one for a brief time in my youth.
Not sure what qualifies anyone as a scholar. Do you have a working definition you could share?
checkmate!
Divisions are artificial. It’s no longer possible to be a polymath with the exponential explosion of human knowledge. Maybe TSZ makes a small contribution to the cross-fertilisation of ideas.
No indeed. It’s blind prejudice. You should consider the possibility of trying the philosophy “live and let live”.
I suggest it is your opinion.
Promoting the free exchange of ideas does allow the possibility of being confronted by opinions that diverge quite sharply from ones own. Is this a bad thing?
That comes across as a statement of fact. Do you have evidence for that? And why do you think that should concern me?
We really do live in different environments.
I promote the environment as the agent of selection. I, personally, don’t subscribe to the idea, but you can easily add a layer and attribute the design of the environment to the deity of your choice.
[snip stuff not addressed to me]
The environment designs, Gregory. The environment designed me and you. Maybe some deity designed the environment. I’m dubious on the currently available candidates but there could be an unknown deity at the bottom of everything. Who knows?
Well, thanks. So, now will you answer the question about AGENCY? Biologists usually are incompetent and of course unqualified to speak about this. Perhaps you might be different, Joe.
Perhaps living in France (oops, did I just ‘out’ you?!) you’ve forgotten English grammar. ‘The environment’ is not an ‘AGENT’ capable of ‘designing’, Alan. You mistake your metaphors, just as Darwin did. (And no one here is the wise on kicking Darwin’s SSH credited Malthusianism out of the conversation.)
Nice hypothesis, but you have zero scientific ‘evidence’ of that, don’t you? Are you a Gaia proponent? If you were a native American, indigenous person, I’d take you more seriously. But you are not an indigenous person, are you Alan?
How could you possibly ever find out and believe that in your heart unless you already held your atheism (temporarily) in disbelief?
You mean, how often in that chapter (on the population-genetic equations for natural selection) do I say, for example, that a given pattern of fitnesses “selects for” a particular allele?
Is that the kind of “agency” you mean?
Oxymoron! As a colonial, you must be aware that grammarians have lost the battle for control of the English language.
Oh yes it is!
Don’t know about Darwin (I like his writing but he’s conveying ideas rather than trying to entertain his readers) but I find mixing metaphors is one of life’s many pleasures.
Oh I like that! Not indigenous! Hilarious!
I can suspend disbelief. I’m a “Game of Thrones” addict.
walto,
My idea was that ad hominems could be moved to noyau as a more flexible alternative to guano. The current rule is that noyau is purely voluntary.
Moved a post to guano.
Alan Fox,
It doesn’t explain adaptation. That’s selection. It does explain change. It explains divergence, and anagenesis (lineage change) – or a significant part of them, at least.
The variation thing is because there is no single way to crack most evolutionary nuts. What tends towards fixation, through drift and/or selection, is actually ancestry. One individual in a starting population supplies the original template from which all future population versions descend. But by the time fixation of ancestry occurs, further mutation may have generated more polymorphies – different versions of that ancestral sequence. Because of drift, polymorphies can be sustained in the population even with some differences in selective effect. But if the environment changes, or a fortuitious second mutation or recombinant arises, one of them can become more strongly favoured. Because selection pushes to fixation more strongly, it is less good at maintaining such polymorphies. It reduces variation more rapidly and more surely.
Moved a couple of comments to guano. Please take any objections to the moderation issues thread. Noyau is available for uninhibited discussion.
Allan Miller,
Allan, I appreciate your responses. I’m not up to speed on some of the terminology but I’ll try to catch up.
Alan Fox,
Yet another example of walto antagonising and derailing. Maybe, just maybe, Alan Fox will say something to walto about it.
No, ‘patterns’ are not AGENTS.
(moderators of UD, you are lucky I’m so patient – AF)
Gregory,
Gregory, the rules here are not onerous. Try and work within them. Noyau is the place for uninhibited rants.
Alan Fox,
You guano’d my post before the ‘shitted up’ comment, Alan. Forgive me if I take you as biased. Meanwhile, I’ve crushed your ‘pseudo-agency’ argument, which is probably why you want to guano or noyau anything I say.
Meet me in noyau.
Ah I responded before you edited your comment.
This bit
I guess, is arguably substantive. Well, you must disagree about the environment being the agent of design. Fair enough, I believe in democracy and freedom of thought. But “crushed”? How?
You don’t appear in noyau, Alan, but rather guano’d me before guano’ing walto’s earlier ‘shitted up’ comment, which was entirely ad hom bullshit. This is symbolic of ‘moderation’ at TAZ! Atheists defending atheists from attacking theists.
It’s fine, but I think my remark, perhaps put crassly for effect, was quite true. There are discussions going on here about various issues. (I think the main one is a quibble, but still). So then comes Gregory, who either will not or cannot make a post on this site that does not contain personal remarks–generally digs but juvenile and stupid even when not digs. Silly challenges, self-puffery, whining, attacks on other people’s views of religion, and associated obno blather. And the thread goes to…well…maird.
That this occurs on every thread on which he sets foot, is just a simple fact that anyone can look up. I think he may actually just want to get banned.
As I know the rules here don’t countenance banning for being consistently annoying, I reiterate my suggestion for the (patented) ‘ auto-guan’ function. Cheap, fast, efficient, and thread-saving!
Gregory, Complaints about moderation should be made in “moderation issues”.
walto,
Walto, that should have been posted in noyau. I can say what I think there.
This then to Moderation too.
You’ve made a mess here with your biased ‘moderation’, Alan, including “Moved a couple of comments to guano”. Clean it up. Move all your squawk to guano or noyau. Yes, yours too! You actually defended “shitted up” walto’s ad hom to my genuine unanswered questions to Joe F. This place is surely TAZ – atheism for atheists.
Move to Moderation.