Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 64 (9164 total)
3 online now:
Newest Member: ChatGPT
Post Volume: Total: 916,901 Year: 4,158/9,624 Month: 1,029/974 Week: 356/286 Day: 12/65 Hour: 0/0


EvC Forum ⇒ Science Forums ⇒ Biological Evolution ⇒

The Definition for the Theory of Evolution

Thread ▼ Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   The Definition for the Theory of Evolution
Fosdick 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5529 days)
Posts: 1793
From: Upper Slobovia
Joined: 12-11-2006

Normal Thread Display
Message 42 of 216 (409314)
07-08-2007 4:36 PM 		Reply to: Message 1 by RAZD
07-07-2007 11:18 AM

Re: Your opinion, Your Favorite
RAZD wrote:
​
The questions are:
​
...
​
(C) what is your personally preferred (concise) definition.
Hi, RAZD. Hope all is going well for you with your therapy. I've been away sailing for some weeks now and haven't kept up with the news. Good luck! It can't be easy.
​
To answer question C, I would say this: The theory of evolution attempts to explain how beneficial alleles are fixed in a population.
​
”HM
This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by RAZD, posted 07-07-2007 11:18 AM RAZD has not replied
Fosdick 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5529 days)
Posts: 1793
From: Upper Slobovia
Joined: 12-11-2006

Normal Thread Display
Message 91 of 216 (409982)
07-12-2007 3:19 PM 		Reply to: Message 90 by Cold Foreign Object
07-12-2007 2:32 PM

Boiling it down
The following comment is directed at all evolutionists:
​
Evolution is NOT a change in gene frequencies; the same is a temporal mode. Reductionism (genetics) needs explanation but evolution is about populations and the principle object of selection - the organism. Evolution is inferred (after the alleged fact) by observation. There are plenty of scholars who reject reductionism and explicitly favor the naturalist or traditional understanding of how evolution is identified. The theory of how evolution happens is natural selection. RAZD's present list of scientific concepts for the definition of ToE, with NS thrown in, defies all published scholarship on this issue.
​
It does not matter what any given person thinks how ToE is defined, what matters is how scholarship defines ToE: natural selection. Just about everything in this topic, offered by most evolutionists, is subjective and unsupported by assertion.
When you boil it all down evolution is about a population's success in fixing beneficial alleles. That's all. We know the processes which allow that to happen”natural selection, sexual selection, drift, gene flow, mutation. What matters is the result. A population changes with the fixing of beneficial alleles; who disputes that? What more is there to it? You'd have to be into evo-devo to find another way a population can evolve. I'm not, because I am suspicious of the evo-devo mentality. They want to dodge the genetic-heritability imperative and invoke other means of passing along structure information. If you think the reductionism of genetic heritability is subjective you ought to read some works by Mary Jane West-Eberhard or Simon Conway Morris.
​
”HM
This message is a reply to:
 Message 90 by Cold Foreign Object, posted 07-12-2007 2:32 PM Cold Foreign Object has not replied
Replies to this message:
 Message 92 by Wounded King, posted 07-12-2007 4:19 PM Fosdick has replied
Fosdick 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5529 days)
Posts: 1793
From: Upper Slobovia
Joined: 12-11-2006

Normal Thread Display
Message 93 of 216 (410018)
07-12-2007 7:41 PM 		Reply to: Message 92 by Wounded King
07-12-2007 4:19 PM

Re: Boiling it down
WK wrote:
​
I think you are getting evo-devo confused with process structuralism.
Perhaps. Could you provide a distinction?
​
Unless that is you are talking about epigenetics.
Epigenetics, yes. That, too, is obviously heritable.
​
But at its operational core, pursuant to the striped-down definition of evolution theory that RAZD seeks, would you agree that biological evolution is all about populations fixing of beneficial alleles (epigenetics notwithstanding)?
​
”HM
This message is a reply to:
 Message 92 by Wounded King, posted 07-12-2007 4:19 PM Wounded King has not replied
Date format: mm-dd-yyyy
Timezone: ET (US)
  
Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024