Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 65 (9162 total)
7 online now:
Newest Member: popoi
Post Volume: Total: 915,815 Year: 3,072/9,624 Month: 917/1,588 Week: 100/223 Day: 11/17 Hour: 0/0


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   What Darwin Got Wrong
Stagamancer
Member (Idle past 4915 days)
Posts: 174
From: Oregon
Joined: 12-28-2008


(1)
Message 6 of 10 (547177)
02-16-2010 10:44 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Percy
02-13-2010 9:04 AM


If trait t1 and trait t2 are endogenously linked, then if an organism possesses one of these traits it must have the other. It cannot possess just one or the other. But if only one of the two traits is adaptive then the other will go along for the ride, even though it is neither adaptive or non-adaptive.
Percy writes:
Does this sound like Kimura to anyone?
No, it sounds like a basic explanation of pleiotropy.
Pleiotropy is when a single gene affects more than one "trait" (an ill-defined term to begin with, btw). If a gene affects more than one trait, and one is adaptive and the other is neutral, then of course, natural selection will increase the frequency of that gene in the population and both traits will go toward fixation. There is no new argument here, and the only reason Darwin didn't bring it up is because he didn't know DNA existed, let alone how it worked.
This is an old argument, adaptation vs. pluralists and it is really a straw man. "Pluralists" argue that "adaptationists" think that every trait that exists has some adaptive advantage. This hypothetical "adaptationist" says that the human nose sticks out from the face in order to hold his glasses. Or he might argue that
RAZD writes:
Crucially, however, the evolutionary process in such cases is not driven by a struggle for survival and/or for reproduction. Pigs don't have wings, but that's not because winged pigs once lost out to wingless ones. And it's not because the pigs that lacked wings were more fertile than the pigs that had them. There never were any winged pigs because there's no place on pigs for the wings to go. This isn't environmental filtering, it's just physiological and developmental mechanics.
No one is arguing that wingless pigs out-competed winged ones, nor that evolution is only caused by natural selection. The real argument is that ADAPTIVE evolution can only be brought about by natural selection. Evolution is a change in frequency of alleles in a population. Adaptive evolution is an increase in fitness of a population. Adaptive evolution will be most strongly influenced by natural selection. Genetic drift can also happen to produce it, but it is most likely incredibly rare (because it involves the random fixation of adaptive mutations which are rare). However, general evolution, i.e. simply change in a population, is probably mostly influenced by genetic drift (a la Kimura).
The argument proffered by these authors is aimed at a straw man. They say nothing new, nothing interesting, and their only stoking the anti-evolution fire. Shame on them.

We have many intuitions in our life and the point is that many of these intuitions are wrong. The question is, are we going to test those intuitions?
-Dan Ariely

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Percy, posted 02-13-2010 9:04 AM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 7 by Percy, posted 02-17-2010 8:53 AM Stagamancer has replied

  
Stagamancer
Member (Idle past 4915 days)
Posts: 174
From: Oregon
Joined: 12-28-2008


Message 8 of 10 (547226)
02-17-2010 12:10 PM
Reply to: Message 7 by Percy
02-17-2010 8:53 AM


Re: Demoting Natural Selection
Ah, well no worries. I suppose their argument is Kimura-esque, but much less elegant. Either way, the argument they're making is 50 years old and already incorporated into modern evolutionary theory. It has given me an idea for my own book, though: What Newton Got Wrong. It's about how Newton thought gravity was some force of attraction between matter particles, but if you really think about it, it's actually just that space-time is curved by matter. This is going to be revolutionary.

We have many intuitions in our life and the point is that many of these intuitions are wrong. The question is, are we going to test those intuitions?
-Dan Ariely

This message is a reply to:
 Message 7 by Percy, posted 02-17-2010 8:53 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 9 by Taq, posted 02-17-2010 4:39 PM Stagamancer has replied

  
Stagamancer
Member (Idle past 4915 days)
Posts: 174
From: Oregon
Joined: 12-28-2008


Message 10 of 10 (547266)
02-17-2010 6:23 PM
Reply to: Message 9 by Taq
02-17-2010 4:39 PM


Re: Demoting Natural Selection
Fair enough, that does seem a better analogy.

We have many intuitions in our life and the point is that many of these intuitions are wrong. The question is, are we going to test those intuitions?
-Dan Ariely

This message is a reply to:
 Message 9 by Taq, posted 02-17-2010 4:39 PM Taq has not replied

  
Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024