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Author Topic:   Mayr
outblaze
Inactive Member


Message 1 of 17 (43161)
06-17-2003 1:56 PM


In the preface of Ernst Mayr's What Evolution Is, he chides the reductionist manner in which all evolutionary phenomena are reduced to the level of the gene, and states that evolution deals with phenotypes of individuals, with populations, with species; and that it is not "a change in gene frequencies."? I don't quite understand. I thought evolution was "a change in gene frequencies"? Can someone better clarify?

Replies to this message:
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Autocatalysis
Inactive Member


Message 2 of 17 (43228)
06-17-2003 9:17 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by outblaze
06-17-2003 1:56 PM


He is saying that natural selection (which leads to change in gene frequency) isn’t the whole story. In animal species and evolution he accuses Darwin of occasioning this error. And rightly so. Natural selection isn’t evolution. Lets seeyou might try this metaphor. Mutation is the road, natural selection is the engine and geographic isolation makes up the wheels.

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Replies to this message:
 Message 3 by NosyNed, posted 06-17-2003 9:51 PM Autocatalysis has replied

  
NosyNed
Member
Posts: 8996
From: Canada
Joined: 04-04-2003


Message 3 of 17 (43239)
06-17-2003 9:51 PM
Reply to: Message 2 by Autocatalysis
06-17-2003 9:17 PM


Does that mean that he was saying "it is not just a change in gene frequencies"?
That makes sense to me.
I'll "see" everyone next week, I'm taking the kids south to Seattle and Oregon and, maybe, the redwoods.
[This message has been edited by NosyNed, 06-17-2003]

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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 Message 9 by Brad McFall, posted 06-24-2003 1:28 PM NosyNed has not replied

  
Autocatalysis
Inactive Member


Message 4 of 17 (43247)
06-17-2003 10:21 PM
Reply to: Message 3 by NosyNed
06-17-2003 9:51 PM


Precisely

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outblaze
Inactive Member


Message 5 of 17 (43323)
06-18-2003 1:59 PM


Thanks gents,
that does indeed clarify it for me

  
The Barbarian
Member (Idle past 6239 days)
Posts: 31
From: Dallas, TX US
Joined: 01-09-2002


Message 6 of 17 (43479)
06-20-2003 9:53 AM


That's like saying "chemistry is not just the interaction of valence electrons". Well, yes it is, but it has implications well beyond the outer rim of atoms.

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Autocatalysis
Inactive Member


Message 7 of 17 (43482)
06-20-2003 10:18 AM
Reply to: Message 6 by The Barbarian
06-20-2003 9:53 AM


Cant have atoms without protons and neutrons.

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 Message 8 by Brad McFall, posted 06-20-2003 10:39 AM Autocatalysis has not replied

  
Brad McFall
Member (Idle past 5033 days)
Posts: 3428
From: Ithaca,NY, USA
Joined: 12-20-2001


Message 8 of 17 (43484)
06-20-2003 10:39 AM
Reply to: Message 7 by Autocatalysis
06-20-2003 10:18 AM


three 1919svdb
The difficulty here seems to me purely a matter to the high cost to provide Hoffman style quantal predictions of form with the bias that this is the first KIND of research to be done. I will comment on Mayr later. There can be no claim that "creation science" is NOT differnt than this approach. IT IS. Saying that one has good cause to file a work out of time and that there IS NOT TIME to file are two different analogies. Science will only change from tradition but overzealous prunning of the psychology can cause a defect. (wisdom=understanding)

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Brad McFall
Member (Idle past 5033 days)
Posts: 3428
From: Ithaca,NY, USA
Joined: 12-20-2001


Message 9 of 17 (43947)
06-24-2003 1:28 PM
Reply to: Message 3 by NosyNed
06-17-2003 9:51 PM


a guess.
I have to do some research...etc, but he could have meant something about the Gould and Lewontin Spandrels' that may not allow Gould the linguistic space to invoke miltons and franklins in Mayr's philosophy of Aristolte while still paying filial relation to Mary's "founder effect" per any "genetic revolution" when allometry is available data.
I am starting to get the idea how Gould may have managed a linguistic extension due to his multivariate analysis but this may be an artifact of the statistcs done around an axis only and it may be that Mayr is trying to show rather older linkages in the literature than the opened discussion Gould etc has newly created (in my generation).
There are other explanations IF ONLY AN AXIS is involved but these still would be within revolutions of founders no matter the rotation and momentum change angularly. Of course if this IS the reason a little application of group theory to bilaterian morphogeny should spell the end of this difference in my opinion.

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MrHambre
Member (Idle past 1393 days)
Posts: 1495
From: Framingham, MA, USA
Joined: 06-23-2003


Message 10 of 17 (43963)
06-24-2003 3:27 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by outblaze
06-17-2003 1:56 PM


Two Cheers for Reductionism
I want to point out that folks like Mayr, Gould (especially) and Lewontin were thirty years behind the times regarding selfish-gene effects and intergenomial evolution. I agree that natural selection is not the whole story, but I think the last decade of research supports the so-called reductionists who were so unfairly caricatured by Gould, while his notion of 'contingency' has been most deservedly ignored.

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Brad McFall
Member (Idle past 5033 days)
Posts: 3428
From: Ithaca,NY, USA
Joined: 12-20-2001


Message 11 of 17 (44223)
06-25-2003 7:14 PM
Reply to: Message 10 by MrHambre
06-24-2003 3:27 PM


Re: Two Cheers for Naming Reductionism Necessary
So you say but wait for the day that may never come when Zimmer and I co-Author a paper. I would not let the chickens cross the antidote road because I was already hospitlized for trying to say this! They simply know that we do not have French proof of concept yet. Let us think then that Margulis was conservative and cell collectives like mitochondria being bacteria are instead unicellular creatures integrated into embryogeny. A ghoast? I toast not yet...

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Replies to this message:
 Message 12 by Peter, posted 06-26-2003 8:13 AM Brad McFall has replied

  
Peter
Member (Idle past 1479 days)
Posts: 2161
From: Cambridgeshire, UK.
Joined: 02-05-2002


Message 12 of 17 (44315)
06-26-2003 8:13 AM
Reply to: Message 11 by Brad McFall
06-25-2003 7:14 PM


Re: Two Cheers for Naming Reductionism Necessary
... is it possible then, that multi-cellular life is
an illusion and we are really highly dependent colony organisms?
I mean different tissues die at different rates when an
animal 'dies', and most tissues can be kept alive outside of
a body.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 11 by Brad McFall, posted 06-25-2003 7:14 PM Brad McFall has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 13 by Brad McFall, posted 06-28-2003 3:44 PM Peter has replied

  
Brad McFall
Member (Idle past 5033 days)
Posts: 3428
From: Ithaca,NY, USA
Joined: 12-20-2001


Message 13 of 17 (44537)
06-28-2003 3:44 PM
Reply to: Message 12 by Peter
06-26-2003 8:13 AM


Re: Two Cheers for Naming Reductionism Necessary
Yep, that this most* radical conclusio of a evolutionary mind I can think of and yet I would bank on it that that will not be (I could be wrong) the outcome of an answer to the question, "Are topobiological cell collectives cell death toxin-antidote modules changed genetically?"
Indeed in the most biased evolutionary scenario we may not even be living but dead but now even I trick the words... Lets see what Jill the Weather Girl says in the mean time. I have almost decided to learn Perl and try to answer all of my c/e issues with this one question. If I succeed you can expect a web site dedicated to it which would likely include some of your perspectives (about possible probablisms etc) that I doubt will pan in as well for seeing how muddy Gould made the c/e waters and the extent of genic selectionism that must be dealt with I dont expect simple text responses such as I have been providing for the past few years to hold much more water if If I may like in pride to thinksometimes they hold at least the local flood amount.
I may be however altogether "wrong" though THIS has never happned to my second guessing for as you noted about "rates" I have yet to find the hook in Gould for allometry as a scholarship and not a mere phenomenology to which I can likely already more link a fan of the subject to Gould on Fisher but this last may have inverted a former to which I know not the latter to not be late and lat instead.

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Replies to this message:
 Message 14 by Peter, posted 07-07-2003 12:35 PM Brad McFall has replied

  
Peter
Member (Idle past 1479 days)
Posts: 2161
From: Cambridgeshire, UK.
Joined: 02-05-2002


Message 14 of 17 (45302)
07-07-2003 12:35 PM
Reply to: Message 13 by Brad McFall
06-28-2003 3:44 PM


Re: Two Cheers for Naming Reductionism Necessary
So are you saying that it is unlikely since you don't get
mutations within a tissue?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 13 by Brad McFall, posted 06-28-2003 3:44 PM Brad McFall has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 15 by Brad McFall, posted 07-07-2003 11:43 PM Peter has replied

  
Brad McFall
Member (Idle past 5033 days)
Posts: 3428
From: Ithaca,NY, USA
Joined: 12-20-2001


Message 15 of 17 (45341)
07-07-2003 11:43 PM
Reply to: Message 14 by Peter
07-07-2003 12:35 PM


Re: Two Cheers for Naming Reductionism Necessary
I guess, since you (are really one of the few who really make me think) I mean only that cell collectives may have automorphisms but I do not want to say exactly how I understand cell death and the relations to mutations and light is the last thing on my agenda so I could guess an answer to this but to keep the standard up I will not so ask again if the thought occurs at another time. After coming across "biologically closed electric circuts" this past week (which was developed when I was working in an electric fish lab) I am quite excited about the possiblity of avoiding the mutation issue on the first pass at theory and deriving/predicting a correlation between two such circuits FROM ELECTROTONICS because Maxwell set up a physical reference frame in that theory to north and south on Earth from which by metal effects on morphogeny (admitted alterable by mutations)as adapations (relative to a subset of a given taxogeny complent of them) may be explained first WITHOUT GENE FREQUEnCieS (as Lewontin and Gould contend generally)but as the morphological direction the correlation (if it can be found to exist) IS CAUSED.
This would allow a seperation of Gould's issue of # offspring from variation but it may be that mutations can not be ignored and that there will? be a significant factor/effect from the genes and not the soma as you indicated. Indeed I did make a thought that divided the soma perhaps as your response tended in a thought of no mutations in the "tissue" but this is still (though I am slightly unbalanced here)only for me a thought about viruses AKA your post, but on a better understanding of the endosymbiotic mitochondrial hypothesis of death from within I MAY be persuaded that it does indeed extend to any thought I may have of bacteria and cell types as well. I just dont know.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 14 by Peter, posted 07-07-2003 12:35 PM Peter has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 16 by Peter, posted 07-15-2003 7:28 AM Brad McFall has replied

  
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