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.
There are no moderators here, only admins who abuse their powers. This is not a complaint about moderation. It’s just an observation.
Are posts going to start getting moved to moderation now if they are about moderation? Or only if they are deemed to be a complaint?
I think there are some entire threads then that need to be moved.
Careful Gregory, Lizzie’s bulldogs are own the growl. They have their eyes on you.
“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.”
Ok, even CANNOT?!
This is walto’s shallow jealousy. I’ve made many comments that ‘do not contain personal remarks.’ Yet TAZ moderators condone his mudslinging lies. To me, walto is a bureaucrat, a bottom-dwelling wanna-be ‘philosopher’. Yet doesn’t he fit in just fine here at TAZ among atheists?
Much as I hate to say this, having a thread all in my honor and such, I think it’s time for Noyau to go away.
All of a sudden people think posts OUGHT to be in Noyau. A new moral code appears to be evolving right before our eyes.
I’ll call that a FAIL.
Scientists use the word “agent” for many different things — chemical agent, mail transfer agent, etc.
You need to try to follow the discussion before you criticize it.
No, Gregory derailed. Walto simply reported the derailing, though in colorful language.
Neil, you’re saying walto was the first to whine? I just don’t believe that. The walto that I know and love is not a whiner.
Get rid of all of this atheist bullshit.
My simple question was to Joe F. Let him answer it. He only faked it so far.
I quoted Darwin’s letter to Lyell regretting ‘natural selection’ in 1860. No one at TAZ has yet commented.
I’m not interested in atheist insecurities here.
Gregory, your question about Darwin’s letter might have been interesting. But it was asked in your usual bellicose and self-aggrandizing manner.
Let me ask you–Do you think that sort of behavior encourages or discourages civil conversation?
And then let me ask you this: Why do you do this? Are you actually 12 and somebody kicked you on your way home?
Thanks, but I can’t deny I’m a champion whiner. Much less mature than many here. As I often tell my family, “OK, I’m coming. But keep in mind, I’m not going if I can’t bitch.”
Somehow, I’ve managed to avoid getting thrown out of the house. I think the rules here are similar to Lizzie’s. (I can’t actually understand either set of them too well, tbh, but I figure I’m a beneficiary of extreme latitude in both cases.)
No, but he use a lot of sarcasm.
My insecurity came from not understanding Gregory’s question.
I feel miserable as a result, evil and mean, and my life lacks meaning. Makes me feel like engaging in empty rhetorical posturing. If only he could answer my inquiry, my life would become meaningful again.
Joe F, Math is not an agent. Equations do not cause anything to happen. Poor Darwin was no doubt well within Newton’s gravity well, still believing in causality.
What breathes fire into your equations?
Sarcasm noted. That may or may not be true (atheists often feel evil and mean). But I asked a very simple question to Joe F. after he mocked me for questioning the metaphorical character of ‘natural selection’ by citing his biology book.
Will you finally answer the AGENCY question, Joe?
It’s still simple and clear, asked to Joe F.: http://theskepticalzone.fr/natural-selection-and-adaptation/comment-page-13/#comment-75627
Thank you
Joe F:
Joe F:
By the way, I counted 28 instances of “natural selection ” in Chapter 2. Maybe one day if I have nothing better to do I’ll see whether Joe use the phrase only in the “pop gen” meaning of the term.
I’ve got an idea. You copy all the posts from this thread (or really any thread where you’ve “contributed”) and paste them on some lovely theistical board where you take the people to be nice, smart, and congenial. Then just ask them this: Who do you think is the most angry person at TSZ?
I’ve got a C Note right here for you if THEY think it’s the atheists here who are the angry, obnoxious, and unhappy folks.
FWIW, your religion seems to me to provide you no comfort whatever. But maybe you just act unhappy here. Hard to tell, obviously.
Gregory characterized discussions of natural selection as empty rhetorical posturing. I was pointing out that this “empty rhetoric” is a poor description of what I did in my mathematical discussion of the effects of natural selection. It seemed to reflect Gregory not understanding what such discussions actually consist of.
The issue is how many “agents” I refer to in my chapter. I was asking for clarification as what constituted invoking an “agent”. I will be happy to answer the question once I have some understanding of that. I asked about an example.
I’ve got a simple idea, Joe. Call me crazy for asking. Just answer my question about AGENCY from your ‘biologist’ viewpoint.
You want to put the burden on me to define ‘agent.’ No, speak straight your view because the metaphor of ‘selection’ is easy to doubt. It is directly relevant to this OP.
No, Joe, not ‘how many’. The issue is: buckle up and tell us which ‘agents’ you refer to in your biology chapter. Name them. If there are none, then say openly “there are none.”
Darwin himself spoke about the metaphor ‘natural selection,’ expressing regret. I doubt Joe will address this.
walto, your words are worth so little. Not even ‘seems to me.’ Your atheist worldview is both depressing and full of despair. Likewise, it is either amoral or morally relativistic. Iow, it is fanciful idiocy.
Act ‘happy’ and be proud! 😉 We all know your atheist worldview is really both sad and empty. Only atheists will ‘support’ you in their co-despair.
A better way is possible, if only you’d unplug your ears and stop antagonising. People around the world prefer inspiration and hope to despair.
Maybe call it an intentional ‘adaptation’ on your part beyond determinism. But philosophistry apparently still drags you down, to disenchanted KN levels.
Moved to Noyau.
Well, since Gregory won’t clarify what he means by discussion of “agents”, let me simply put here the opening two paragraphs of Chapter II. Is there discussion of “agency” in them? I can see a few places where Gregory may say that there is. But he can speak for himself.
Gregory should be able to point out where we see “agency”.
Moved to Middle Earth.
I hate that some people are so good with their computers.
Gregory,
Indeed.
Oh so right. I spent my free afternoon playing inside 100-meter-long storm conduits. Not exactly sunshine.
Laughing, though. 🙂
keiths:
And:
Joe:
You didn’t answer my question. You merely told us that you don’t like Mayr’s definition, which we already knew, and that population geneticists don’t use Mayr’s definition, which we already knew.
“Joe doesn’t like it” is not equivalent to “it’s unscientific”. “Population geneticists don’t use it” is not equivalent to “it’s unscientific”.
Why do you think Mayr’s definition is unscientific, Joe?
If it’s scientifically legitimate to disentangle sexual selection from natural selection — and it clearly is — then why can’t differential fecundity be similarly disentangled?
Please be specific.
keiths,
I think you’re getting too hung up on Mayr (Joe G is a big fan too! 😉 ).
When it comes to ‘the appropriate definition for the thread’, the aim is presumably one that makes all adaptive change due to that set of causal factors, and any causal factor that does not cause adaptive change to be outside it.
So if Natural Selection is ‘the thing that causes adaptation’, then it incorporates sexual selection, environmental selection and fertility selection, provided one is happy to call the products of those processes ‘adaptations’!
Male-expressed peacock genes adapt to the tastes of their mates (which themselves may adapt to correlates), and fertility-optimising genes adapt to the constraints provided by having suboptimal offspring numbers or rates.
Malaria parasites in a body can adapt by replicating faster. They are adapting to the fact that they can only get out by dominating the population prior to being sampled by a mosquito. This may not look like an adaptation – it’s not a peacock’s tail or sharp teeth – but it is one. Birds can adapt by laying more or fewer eggs. They suffer costs if there are too few and if there are too many. It is a tunable parameter.
This one could run and run. But I don’t see it getting anywhere (Red Queen!).
Allan,
It isn’t just Mayr, as I think you know.
More tomorrow.
The question is which agents? Are you suggesting that ‘natural selection’ is an ‘agent,’ Joe? And who is the ‘we’ that you say ‘sees agency’? I don’t see ‘agency’ in those 2 paragraphs. So you must have some ‘special’ view of ‘agency’ in your biologist’s vocabulary.
Gregory
In the paragraphs I posted, you found no discussion of “agents in biology”. The rest of the chapter, which is about mathematical analysis of natural selection, talks about the results of different patterns of fitness, supporting the argument with lots of equations showing how gene frequency changes.
I am presuming, therefore, that you would find no discussion of “agents in biology” there, and no identifying of those “agents”. So saying that natural selection “selects for” higher fitness does not constitute invoking an agent or identifying the agent, by your definitions.
Is there some reason why, in order to discuss natural selection and its effects, I have to discuss and name “agents”? Maybe call it “Arthur”?
I understand that your main concern with discussions of selection is to point out misuses of the concept of natural selection when it is applied to human society. And yes, much of that usage is “empty rhetorical talk”. I just don’t see how biologists using the concept of natural selection to discuss biological evolution qualifies as “empty rhetorical talk”.
How can you tell is a term is “unscientific” except by its consensus usage by the scientists who work in the relevant field of study? Is there a necessary/sufficient type purely logical definition for “scientific usage” which can be applied from the outside somehow?
I recently read Gravity’s Ghost: Scientific Discovery in the Twenty-first Century. The author is a sociologist working closely with the community of scientists trying to detect gravitational waves. That whole community meeting in conference at one point could not come to agreement on how to interpret a piece of evidence. So they took a vote on it.
Now you might think that taking votes is not the way science should proceed, even when such voting is limited to the recognized experts in the field. I mean, isn’t about interpreting the evidence objectively? But before you can answer the how should it?, you need to understand how does it?. Then factor that understanding into why you think an answer to a how should it is correct.
ETA: For clarity, taking votes is not the way the community normally decided issues. They had an algorithm with different task forces applying different analysis techniques followed by discussion on how to interpret the results. But in this exceptional case, that did not lead to a consensus decision.
Bruce,
As written, your question doesn’t make sense. Are you trying to say
a) that any definition that isn’t the consensus definition among the practitioners in a particular field is unscientific, or
b) that any definition that is regarded by consensus as unscientific is unscientific, or
c) something else?
I am trying to ask you how you can tell if a term is “unscientific” as you used the word in the phrase I quoted. What did you have in mind for the meaning of that word?
Bruce,
The relevant question is “What does Joe have in mind when he dismisses Mayr et al’s definition as unscientific?” It’s his claim, after all. My point is simply that “Joe doesn’t like it” and “population geneticists use a different definition” are poor reasons for labeling a definition as “unscientific”, “silly”, or “invalid”.
OK, thanks for your thoughts.
Bruce,
Two more things that you may have missed in the thread:
1) The pop gen definition of “natural selection” is not binding on the rest of evolutionary biology; and
2) the pop gen definition is not a scientific consensus.
Oh so right.I spent my free afternoon playing inside 100-meter-long storm conduits.Not exactly sunshine.
Laughing, though.
He’s also indicated, to petrushka, that he thinks we should be guided in our views about the world by the views of toddlers and others under 11. My take from that is he’s never had any kids.
Someone should start an OP about what the world would be like if toddlers were right about everything. Even about anything.
One of my favorite confabs with my first daughter (this was back in the age of video tapes, and as she was our first we taped her A LOT.) She was four and kind of precocious. She went on for about an hour about how horses live longer than people. And was keen to elaborate on how important that was to world harmony.
OK, but I’m not interested in the definition of NS per se, but rather in the History, Sociology, & Philosophy of Science issue of what “scientific usage” and “correct scientific usage” mean. I suppose that is somewhat off topic, so I will stop now.
And this is the foundation required for natural selection to be scientific?
No. They are idealizations used in the mathematical model that was considered.
As Neil noted, no. We start with this ideal model, where it is easy to derive formulas for what happens. Then we relax some of the assumptions, one by one, in each case seeking situations where we can do the math. In my Theoretical Evolutionary Genetics text (which you can download free) I relax most of those assumptions in various chapters. In particular, the infinite population size assumption, which you highlight, is relaxed in Chapters 6 and 7.
People do the same thing in physics texts. You might as well complain about them assuming an ideal gas or a perfectly spherical and homogeneous Earth.
I find it useful to think of flagella as perfect spheres. 😉
keiths,
I’m afraid I haven’t been able to keep up with entire discussion. Under your preferred definition of natural selection, does a mutation that does nothing but increase fecundity in a resource-limited population, and that therefore increases in frequency, undergo natural selection or not? (And likewise for a mutation that decreases fecundity.)
I think keiths is off worshiping his ceiling fan, who he decided must be God.
Steve,
I’m in the middle of a short-term coding project, so I’ve been neglecting the thread too.
If the mutations truly affect fecundity and nothing else (which is pretty unlikely in real life, especially in a resource-limited scenario) — meaning that individual mutants are no more and no less likely to survive and reproduce than the “wild type” — then I would say that the mutants are not undergoing natural selection due to their fecundity-influencing mutations, but that they may still be undergoing natural selection due to alleles at other loci.
That’s one of the reasons I stipulated unlimited resources and no death in my thought experiment. It keeps things clean because differential fecundity is then the only factor influencing relative reproductive success.
no, you don’t.
Why don’t you check those biology textbooks you claim to own?
I understand your motivation for the limiting case, but I’m trying to understand the application of your definition to real biology. (More precisely, I’m trying to understand whether biologists actually employ “selection” in the way defined by you.) We can make all of the organisms genetically identical except for this one mutation, if you like. The population size is limited by resources. When the mutation occurs, those who have it have higher fitness (in the pop gen sense) and those who do not have lower fitness than they did before. The new increases increases in frequency while the old decreases, but not because of selection (by your definition) — right?
Would you say this locus is evolving neutrally? Would you call the new mutation beneficial?
Suppose the new mutation decreases fecundity instead of increasing it, and therefore fails to propagate for long. This, presumably, is not the result of purifying selection, since no selection is operating. How would you describe this process? The reduction in genetic diversity in constrained sites is usually (in my experience) ascribed to purifying selection. What would you say causes it? Indeed, is it appropriate to call them constrained sites, since in many cases they’re not being constrained by selection — and what else is there?
How about an embryonic lethal mutation, one that is independent of the details of the environment — can its loss be ascribed to natural selection?
Steve,
They have higher fitness in my sense, too. It’s just that fitness is a function of fecundity as well as natural selection.
No, I still regard it as selection — but it’s fecundity selection, not natural selection.
No and yes.
They do. For example:
And:
So why, for the purposes of this thread, do I prefer a narrower definition of natural selection that excludes differential fecundity?
Recall that William was defending the claim that natural selection does not “produce” or “build” complex features. He asked Lizzie to consider two scenarios: in the first, there was no mutation; in the selection, there was no selection, and no organisms ever died. The latter was similar to my thought experiment except that William allowed mutation to continue forever, whereas in mine it (implicitly) stopped after the initial mutation. We were only interested in the population changes that were due to that single mutation.
Anyway, William correctly pointed out that his “no selection” scenario, as described, would quickly produce complex features, while his “no mutation” scenario would not. He concluded that it is mutation, and not natural selection, that builds complex features.
His conclusion was incorrect, but William was right that mutation by itself could quickly produce complex features if there were no death. Lizzie kept disagreeing with that — I’m not sure why — but William was correct.
As part of her counterargument, Lizzie pointed out that you can have differential reproductive success even if no organisms die. She argued that this meant that natural selection was happening even in William’s “no selection” scenario, since according to her, “Natural selection IS heritable differential reproduction.”
Her statement is correct if you choose the pop gen definition of natural selection, but doing so clouds the issue, because it isn’t natural selection that is producing the complex features in William’s scenario. It’s better to choose the narrower definition and confront William’s scenario head-on.
Then you can freely acknowledge that yes, mutation by itself could produce complex features in a no-natural-selection, no-death scenario — but in realistic scenarios that include death and finite populations, mutation is not enough. You need natural selection to help you build complex features like the chameleon chromatophores that Cornelius mentioned.
Under the pop gen definition of natural selection, there is selection going on in both of William’s scenarios, so the argument is more confusing. You have to say that yes, selection is going on even in the no-death situation, but that there’s a crucial difference from “real life” — natural selection doesn’t build the complex features that arise in the no-death scenario.
Far simpler to say something like this:
With infinite population “slots” available, complex features can be produced even in the absence of natural selection. With a realistic and finite number of slots, you won’t see complex features unless you “turn on” natural selection.
But to say that requires us to define natural selection in a way that excludes differential fecundity.