Well let’s look at what natural selection is-
“Natural selection is the result of differences in survival and reproduction among individuals of a population that vary in one or more heritable traits.” Page 11 “Biology: Concepts and Applications” Starr fifth edition
“Natural selection is the simple result of variation, differential reproduction, and heredity—it is mindless and mechanistic.” UBerkley
“Natural selection is the blind watchmaker, blind because it does not see ahead, does not plan consequences, has no purpose in view.” Dawkins in “The Blind Watchmaker”?
“Natural selection is therefore a result of three processes, as first described by Darwin:
Variation
Inheritance
Fecunditywhich together result in non-random, unequal survival and reproduction of individuals, which results in changes in the phenotypes present in populations of organisms over time.”- Allen McNeill prof. introductory biology and evolution at Cornell University
OK so it is a result of three processes- ie an output. But is it really non-random as Allen said? Nope, whatever survives to reproduce survives to reproduce. And that can be any number of variations taht exist in a population.
What drives the output? The inputs.
The variation is said to be random, ie genetic accidents/ mistakes.
With sexually reproducing organisms it is still a crap-shoot as to what gets inherited. For example if a male gets a beneficial variation to his Y chromosome but sires all daughters, that beneficial variation gets lost no matter how many offspring he has.
Fecundity/ differential reproduction- Don’t know until it happens.
Can’t tell what variation will occur. Can’t tell if any of the offspring will inherit even the most beneficial variation and the only way to determine differential reproduction is follow the individuals for their entire reproducing age.
Then there can be competing “beneficial” variations.
In the end it all boils down to whatever survives to reproduce, survives to reproduce.
Evolutionists love to pretend that natural selection is some magical ratchet.
So what does it do?
The Origin of Theoretical Population Genetics (University of Chicago Press, 1971), reissued in 2001 by William Provine:
Natural selection does not act on anything, nor does it select (for or against), force, maximize, create, modify, shape, operate, drive, favor, maintain, push, or adjust. Natural selection does nothing….Having natural selection select is nifty because it excuses the necessity of talking about the actual causation of natural selection. Such talk was excusable for Charles Darwin, but inexcusable for evolutionists now. Creationists have discovered our empty “natural selection” language, and the “actions” of natural selection make huge, vulnerable targets. (pp. 199-200)
Thanks for the honesty Will.
Chapter IV of prominent geneticist Giuseppe Sermonti’s book Why is a Fly Not a Horse? is titled “Wobbling Stability”. In that chapter he discusses what I have been talking about in other threads- that populations oscillate. The following is what he has to say which is based on thorough scientific investigation:
Sexuality has brought joy to the world, to the world of the wild beasts, and to the world of flowers, but it has brought an end to evolution. In the lineages of living beings, whenever absent-minded Venus has taken the upper hand, forms have forgotten to make progress. It is only the husbandman that has improved strains, and he has done so by bullying, enslaving, and segregating. All these methods, of course, have made for sad, alienated animals, but they have not resulted in new species. Left to themselves, domesticated breeds would either die out or revert to the wild state—scarcely a commendable model for nature’s progress.
(snip a few paragraphs on peppered moths)
Natural Selection, which indeed occurs in nature (as Bishop Wilberforce, too, was perfectly aware), mainly has the effect of maintaining equilibrium and stability. It eliminates all those that dare depart from the type—the eccentrics and the adventurers and the marginal sort. It is ever adjusting populations, but it does so in each case by bringing them back to the norm. We read in the textbooks that, when environmental conditions change, the selection process may produce a shift in a population’s mean values, by a process known as adaptation. If the climate turns very cold, the cold-adapted beings are favored relative to others.; if it becomes windy, the wind blows away those that are most exposed; if an illness breaks out, those in questionable health will be lost. But all these artful guiles serve their purpose only until the clouds blow away. The species, in fact, is an organic entity, a typical form, which may deviate only to return to the furrow of its destiny; it may wander from the band only to find its proper place by returning to the gang.
Everything that disassembles, upsets proportions or becomes distorted in any way is sooner or later brought back to the type. There has been a tendency to confuse fleeting adjustments with grand destinies, minor shrewdness with signs of the times.
It is true that species may lose something on the way—the mole its eyes, say, and the succulent plant its leaves, never to recover them again. But here we are dealing with unhappy, mutilated species, at the margins of their area of distribution—the extreme and the specialized. These are species with no future; they are not pioneers, but prisoners in nature’s penitentiary.
Not such a powerful designer mimic after all.
But there is one thing it can do– it can undo what artificial selection has done.
Well, no.
“We” have sufficiently good models to allow us to take that view. For instance I can apply a random mutagenesis process (faster than, but indistinguishable in effect from, random mutation in nature) and demonstrate usefully altered proteins, for example that might confer, say, enhanced heat resistance, or boosted enzyme activity.
We also observe these effects in real life, in real time, with no accelerant.
Now, you can argue until you’re a delicate shade of taupe about “random” and “nature”. The FACTS remains that selection of genetically altered survivor populations by a combination of heritable variation and environmental change is observed; and that known mechanisms (following the incidences and patterns to be mathematically expected if they were random) can fully account for it.
What’s more, you can’t even dream up any experiment to try and support your position, and haul you out of your semantic swamp
LoL! I never said NS doesn’t “work” and evolutionist and professor Will provine is the one who says NS does nothing.
And if uyou don’t like what the OP says then please, by all means, produce some evidence to refute it- what can natural selection do?
So far we have-
Eliminates, wobbling stability (meaning different traits have different reproductive successes at different times), undoes artificial selection, what else?
Also taking a position does not mean someone knows. Also it appears that your position is belligerence and nothing more…
Why worry about what “natural” means? Why not simply address the matter of selection? The way I see it, selection refers to a bias in reproduction rates that correlates with some variation in physical characteristic(s). So rather than trying to guess which shell WJM has hidden the goalposts under, why not change our terminology and refer to differential reproductive success? That way, at least he’ll have to use different shells.
I know but that- attacking evolutionism- is ONE part of the design inference. Eliminate the weak and then replace that with the obvious.
It is in the OP- Perhaps you should read it.
Yes it is observed- the question is what does it do?
There’s your problem, right there. Selection is not an event. It is a consistent differential in reproductive success between types. Sorry, arguing by definition agin, but what the hey.
Natural? As Darwin used the term, it means something along the lines of the ‘many and varied trials of life’. Nature, the living world and its environment, the thing that naturalists study, the thing that we are both part of and separate from according to different usages.
Organisms are born, they survive, if they are lucky they reproduce, either way sooner or later they die. Each one is a datum point in the sampling process. No-one appears to be keeping score, but each time a carrier of allele X reproduces, it gains one point for its ‘team’. Each time a carrier of rival allele Y reproduces, it does the same for its team. Each death, subtract 1. These cause change in allele frequencies in the population. Selection is in play when there is a consistent excess of points for X (or, conversely, for Y). If there is no significant differential, the traits are neutral (or effectively so) so frequencies will change by drift alone.
Real life, of course, is a lot more complicated; this is simply illustrative.
It is called “Natural” to distinguish it from the “Artificial” selection of breeders, rather than to piss off Cornelius Hunter or promote atheism. Selection by being less frequently eaten by lions, or better camouflaged, or more tolerant of cold, than other genes in the population. These selective, discriminatory phenomena are – with considerable justification – termed ‘natural’. Like ‘Natural disasters’. So why not Natural Selection? It’s kind of catchy.
Natural selection is defined in the OP- again perhaps you guys should read it…
Natural selection is a result- an after-the-fact statistical artifact
One problem with “natural” vs “artificial” selection is if we are the result of blind, purposeless, undirected processes, then there isn’t any such thing as artificial selection- it is ALL natural.
Just sayin’…
JoeG, are YOU saying this? Wow! You are entirely correct. ALL selection is natural in the sense that selection is what results in differential reproductive success. The notion of “artificial” selection is meaningful only relative to specific human breeding purposes – but whatever we’re breeding can’t possibly know that. It simply has a reproductive environment, and not all individuals survive. So human programs to breed stock or plants or whatever are “artificial” from the viewpoint of the people, but “natural” from the viewpoint of the animals or plants.
So, how “natural” selection scientifically distinguished from “artificial” selection?
As I suspected – it is an ideological equivocation, one they apparently don’t even realize they are making.
Why on earth would I challenge the term “selection”? I agree that selection occurs, and that bias in the distribution of outcomes generates novel biological features. EDIT: Or, at least allows them to be generated. NS doesn’t “generate” anything.
William J Murray,
Exactly.
If a life form in a cold climate has extra layers of fat or longer hair, that climate has provided the bias for the successful reproduction of those characteristics.
Why is an intelligent designer required, when the climate in this case, has provided enough bias to promote this biological feature?
Umm nature doesn’t select anything. That is why the term “natural selection” is nonsense.
LoL! The climate cannot account for the organism in the first place.
IMO artificial selection can do what natural selection cannot and natural selection can undo what artificial selection has done.
But fortunately, it’s one of those “ideological equivocations” which can be replicated, accurately modeled, used to make correct predictions, and which gives rise to an endless line of fruitful hypotheses. Science depends on exactly this sort of ideological equivocation, so I hope we find more and more of them.
I didn’t say you challenged selection, I said that the term “natural” was being subjected to word games nobody needs to play. And nobody will dispute that selection is not the source of, and does not generate, anything. Selection can be viewed as a good editor – he doesn’t write a single word, but can nonetheless vastly improve the material he edits.
Off-topic. The thread is about natural selection, not the origin of life
It isn’t. That was easy.
As you put it
The natural-artificial distinction is a pedagogical tool, necessary for Darwin to make his point : selection in Nature is essentially the same as selection in breeding cattle. If one removes the modifiers, one is left with a truism.
Joe G,
Joe, this is your thread about “natural selection”, not origins!!!
Please, LoL, stay on your own topic!!!
Joe G,
Do you agree with William?
Darwin’s points are that the effects of selection have been observed for centuries, and that selection shapes populations while having no control over or knowledge of the source or cause of variation.
Whoa, bring back those goalposts! What do you mean by “the organism”, given that organisms are constantly in a state of change? And what do you mean by “in the first place”? The organisms’s immediate ancestor? Or a distant ancestor? Where does “the first place” start, anywhere?
Let’s say, just as an illustration, that “the first place” is some organism poorly adapted to the cold, which gradually migrates to colder climates. Let’s say the organism is warm-blooded “in the first place”. What does that organism need to survive this gradual migration? Well, insulation is helpful, so we will almost surely see various means of insulation developing over time – hair, blubber, etc. And surface-to-volume ratio is important, so we will probably see organisms moving in the direction of more volume relative to surface. Surely dozens and dozens of other helpful changes at all levels will get selected because they make the organism better adapted to both the cold and the day/night cycles.
Now we let these trends continue for, oh, a few dozen million years. After which, we notice that the current inhabitants of very cold climates bear almost no resemblance to their ancestors who started migrating “in the first place”. So can we say that the climate “accounts for the organisms in the first placer”? Well, no, we can only say that the climate probably accounts for the MASSIVE changes the “in the first place” organisms have undergone in the meantime.
But wait! By now, any sensible observer would say that these have become totally different organisms. And climate is clearly responsible. So how do we evade this observation? Uh, no problem, we don’t use a sensible observer!
This is so stupid, I can’t believe you posted it.
We don’t have a theory of “Natural” Gravitation because there are not hordes of religious ideologues who succeeded in keeping the religious “theory” of “intelligent orbital mechanics” alive much past the 16th century triumphs of Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler. The Church finally gave up the fight for Intelligent Falling in 1758. But if they had, somehow, continued to teach it and a substantial majority of Europeans had continued to believe it, then a gravitational equivalent of Darwin would quite possibly have published an 1850’s equivalent On the Origin of Planetary Orbits by Means of Natural Gravity.
No, Natural Gravity doesn’t bother you, for some reason. You’re happy to accept that each planetesimal does not need a gravity angel to push it along its orbital path – mindless, undirected nature is sufficient explanation.
But, Natural Selection, now that bothers you. We know why: because it makes you worry that you’re not special. Not specially created, not specially designed by the intelligent-designer-chappie, not specially sustained moment to moment by whatever you guess is necessary to prevent “unselected” life from simply falling apart, back into the horrible inert world that is all you can imagine without some soul plasm to enliven it …
If believing there is some kind of Intelligent Selection (other than that shown when humans deliberately breed crops and pets) makes you sleep better at night, feel free to indulge yourself.
But people just like you – your ancestors, maybe, one hundred fifty years ago – are why we have a theory of “Natural Selection” instead of just a theory of “Selection”. Because Darwin chose the phrase “Natural Selection” to contrast with still-extant religious ideology that all selection was automatically “Intelligent Selection” – that god had its eye on every sparrow and marked the fall of each one.
When people like you – not necessarily you, personally, but people like you – stop trying to force your religious ideology to be taught to innocent schoolchildren, then I’ll bet that naturally neutral scientists will stop stressing “Natural Selection” and get on with discussing plain “Selection”, just like plain “Gravity” and “Entropy” and yes, even “Erosion”.
Mindless, undirected, natural Erosion. Hmm, wonder why you don’t complain that we are patently biased ideologues because our “particular metaphysical narrative” informs us that Erosion is (in the absence of other evidence) always Natural Erosion.
Do you ever notice how biased and hypocritical your own complaints are ?
I’ve heard it said that without the Designer, the planets would spiral into the sun.
Well, yeah, I did consider a parenthetical mention of a certain poster here whose claims seem perilously close to Intelligent Falling … but I refrained 😉
Sad, very sad, 20% of USAians are ignorant enough to say the Sun revolves around the Earth. Urk! At least they’re not packing school boards to demand that we “teach the controversy” about celestial spheres, nor do they disparage honest science as Newtonism.
They’re just ranting and raelian.
WJM, the provenance of the term Natural Selection has been explained to you countless times and yet your vastly logical mind still can’t see beyond this metaphysical crime scene of your own imagining. Perhaps Charles Darwin (son of Satan, pusher of materialistic ideology, beater of puppies) might help in your struggle with yourself.
From here….
http://www.literature.org/authors/darwin-charles/the-origin-of-species/chapter-04.html
And here’s a link to Amazon.com; a popular website for books where you can pick up a copy of the Origin very cheaply.
See? Only 250-odd pages stand between you and understanding the nature of the windmill at which you’re tilting.
WJM,
I appreciate that you want better definitions for terms like natural and random, and that without them, you can not assess the validity of evolutionary theory. It should be noted, however, that this quirk is particular to you, and not to Intelligent Design theory:
rhampton7,
Glad you posted that.
Now I’m curious to find if it clears up any of William’s reluctance to posit natural/random/chance process as some small part of theist worldview.
I can tell already, the sticking point is going to be in the last highlighted paragraph “… (1) through the natural regularities or laws that he upholds and sustains through his invisible power … ”
Quote me any odds you’d like that William will see “upholds and sustains” as exactly agreeing with his previous, immoral, imagining that all natural life would die out completely if it were not constantly being “Artificially Selected”. Artificially Selected merely to stay alive at all, because without god’s sustaining, life would just not have the desire or ability to carry on living.
Yep, god, in its infinite glory, sustains and upholds every busy little sack of reactive chemistry, every Plasmodium, every Loa loa, every Yersinia, all with the same (invisible) power with which it sustains and upholds the natural regularities that allow our special selves to live.
Remember boys and girls, for all we know, “Natural” Selection can’t lead to anything but death and extinction. So that would leave god to blame for everything that survived extinction, for every parasite it created and continues to sustain to eat innocent babies alive, for every form of sickening life that would have (mercifully) gone extinct under “Natural” Selection but which it “Artificially Selected” to carry on.
You’d think a god believer would be happy to leave some of the dirty work to “Natural” Selection, shift some of the blame for Nature-red-in-tooth-and-claw away from dear god … As Stephen Meyer does!
If organisms that don’t run quick enough tend to be killed by lions, and speed has a genetic basis, that would tend to be called Natural Selection. Quicker prey will tend to leave more offspring.
If greyhounds that don’t run quick enough are shot by their owners (or perhaps simply not used for breeding), we’d probably call that Artificial selection. Quicker greyhounds will tend to leave more offspring.
They might be difficult to distinguish after the fact, since the result is equivalent. Now, you probably won’t think that’s very ‘scientific’. But surely it is good enough for a speaker of English?
The lions don’t want their prey to get faster – au contraire.
For the lion example to be an equivalent to the ‘breeder’ case, it would require some intentional entity wanting prey to get faster, rather than it just happening as a result of the ‘natural’ tendency for lions to catch the slower ones. This intentional entity would not actually have to do anything but cheer.
You are absolutely determined to see a metaphysical bias in that choice of words. Would you prefer your dinner to contain natural or artificial flavourings? Ideologue! They’re all natural!
It amuses me to see “natural sea salt” promoted as a healthier alternative to (presumably) “artificial” rock salt. Started googling “natural” in a foodie context. That’s one powerful selling adjective!
What is all this stuff about assuming the character and proclivities of God?
LoL! If organisms were designed then natural selection is moot.
Could you clarify if you mean by “organisms” the first living organism or organisms in general (e.g. horses, bats etc)?
Why would natural selection not apply?
I can design 1000 robots, all slightly different. They have the ability, when I design them, to replicate albeit imperfectly.
I leave those robots to their own devices for several generations. To my surprise (or not) sometimes when I run this experiment the robots are better adapted to the environment then when I left them. Sometimes there are no robots left alive at all. It seems to depend partially on how fast the environment changes.
So natural selection seems to apply there, on my designed organisms.
I know you’ll simply respond that I could not possible run such an experiment or that robots cannot be considered to be “alive” and so I cannot draw any conclusions from such, but that simply shows the paucity of your imagination and nothing else.
Yet somehow a watch on the grass proves ID.
No evidence to support his claim.
So what does natural selection do?
So far we have-
Eliminates, wobbling stability (meaning different traits have different reproductive successes at different times), undoes artificial selection, what else?
Allan,
Have you ever seen lions hunt? They set up an ambush, meaning the fastest is the first to reach the ambush…
Yup, Darwin said natural selection is a designer mimic. Obvioulsy he was sadly mistaken.
Buy a dictionary
Joe G,
Partly right – here’s the first video I looked at – yes, it is an ambush, but the victim does not approach the ambush at speed, and gets to run away).
But it really doesn’t matter. If character X consistently leads to fewer offspring than character Y, and those factors commonly agreed to be ‘natural’ (ie: not us) are the apparent causal agents, then we would declare Natural Selection, not Artificial.
Except “consistency” is not nature’s thing. And if teh victim is not approaching at speed then what does being faster do?
No need for a list; it does one thing only: it provides a component to population allele frequency change causally related to the impact of the alleles upon mean offspring numbers between carriers and non-carriers.
There are also components to population allele frequency change that are not causally related to the impact of alleles upon mean offspring numbers. NS is the bit that is – the bias in the sampling of each successive population.
I think it wrong for Provine to say “NS does nothing”. It is both the process of influencing the population through individual allele effects on individual lives (impossible to detect***) and the sum of allele effects over multiple lives (that so-called ‘statistical artefact”).
*** You will leap gleefully upon on this, but an analogy would be cancer risk factors. There’s a statistical relationship between smoking and many cancers, but no-one can say in any individual case that smoking definitively caused a particular cancer. We cannot detect the individual effect, but get enough datum points and we get signal emerging from the noise. The statistical ‘artefact’: smoking causes cancer.
Joe G,
…? Helps it get away!
Joe G,
Where it isn’t, selection can struggle, yes. It cannot track a rapidly moving target. But I don’t agree that environments are excessively capricious.You can come up with some that are, I’m sure. Organisms in the ones you don’t come up with can evolve cheerfully by NS.
Thank you- I knew NS was not a designer mimic and you have just confirmed that.
It appears that NS is just a statistical artifact and nothing more.