Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 65 (9162 total)
5 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:   Mendel innocent, Darwin guilty
Syamsu 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5590 days)
Posts: 1914
From: amsterdam
Joined: 05-19-2002


Message 1 of 18 (11007)
06-05-2002 11:09 AM


Darwinists are notorious for not providing formal versions of their theory. For this reason up until 20 years ago physicists and chemists, people of the socalled hard-sciences, looked down on Darwinism as a soft-science, employing magical terminology such as Natural Selection, and the struggle for survival, and intuitive terms like that. Unfortunately physicists and chemists have changed their attitudes in recent years, but this is not because Darwinism has become more clear, but because physicists and chemists have also had to make their science "softer", because of problems they ran into.
Often Darwinists say that the reason that there is no formal treatment of the theory is because Darwin wrote in the 19th century. But, some time has passed since then in which a formal treatment could have been made, and besides Gregor Mendel, who published round about the same time as Darwin, was able to write a decent formal treatment of his theory, so there really is no excuse for lack of formalcy.
Because I like formalcy in science, it is grating for me to see a prozawriter like Fischer accuse a formalist like Mendel of fudging his data. Fischer used some statistical argument to "prove" Mendel fudged his data, and then argued that this fudging was the reason that Darwinists did not accept Mendel's theories for up to 40 years. Accusing Mendel of lying helped much in getting the modern synthesis accepted, but Fischer's accusations and arguments are doubtful at best.
First of all, people that have repeated Mendel's experiment have observed highly similar results like Mendel recorded. Fischer's theoretical accusation does not stand up to observation. Second it's not reasonable to accuse Mendel of deliberately fudging, when it is possible he could have simply made mistakes. That happens all the time in science, unthinkingly classifying data by your preconception of what it should be, in stead of what you observe. Third, even if Mendel had deliberately fudged his data, that still does not reasonably explain up to 40 years of denial from Darwinists. According to Darwinists the data was "too" perfect (the data Mendel was supposed to have fudged to fit his theories didn't actually perfectly fit his theory), and this supposedly made their fragile minds go blank with incomprehension at Mendel's findings.
Mendel's texts today are held up by Darwinists as an example of how not to do science, as a warning not to falsify your data else it might be ignored. What would be more reasonable is to hold up Mendel's theory as a warning to biologists that they have to learn basic math, else they might ignore something like the foundation for genetics again for up to 40 years. That Mendel's theories were ever forgotten is a myth. Mendellists and Darwinists debated continuously, but Darwinists simply continuously dismissed the observation of mathematically proportional variation untill they found a way to fit it in with the theory of Natural Selection.
So I think Mendel cannot reasonably be accused of fudging his data, but I think a much more reasonable case can be made for accusing Darwin of fudging his work. Before publishing "The origin of species" Darwin and Wallace published what should have been a formal treatment of the theory of Natural Selection to a science journal. Darwinists have said that this paper was ignored because the creationists played the work down. But upon reading the paper I think there may be another reason why it was ignored. The paper which should have contained the formal treatment of Natural Selection which I am questing for, is a hopeless mess of contorted wordcontraptions that fail to make sense. Darwinists never reference this mess, so not only creationists ignored it, but Darwinists ignore the basic sciencepaper as well.
But why should it be such a mess, when Darwin's "Origin of Species" was already finished? The definition of the theory of Natural Selection is contained in a single paragraph in Darwin's book, on page 25 or something, so it is not too large for a science paper. There is much to be said about this definition, it has many problems. It has been damaging to science and even society at large that Darwin didn't make any serious attempt to formalize or systemize this definition in a science paper. I think it's reasonable to assume that Darwin deliberately messed up the science paper, to 1. get rid of Wallace, 2. protect the emotive value of his theory by not conforming to standards of formalcy.
Darwin only published when Wallace was going to publish something similar, so his motivation for publishing was for himself to get the credit and not Wallace. Also, I'm pretty sure you can't get away with positing something like a natural force of goodness in a science paper, but you can get away with it in pop-science proza.
"Natural Selection acts by and for the good of each being, and therefore each corpereal and mental endowment will tend to progress towards perfection."
Darwin's fudging of the sciencepaper, is the reason why there is no formal theory now. There are some halfhearted attempts, but really nothing that comes close to being a uniformly interpreted theory. After complaining about the lack of formalcy, some time ago a Darwinist offered me a mathematical formulation of Natural Selection. In discussing the theory with him and other biologists before that, I was assured that the variants do not have to influence each other's reproductive success for the theory to apply. But then he produced a set of 9 equations which neccessarily lead to competition in every single last case of it's application. Upon asking about the apparent change of opinion on the subject of Natural Selection neccessitating competition, he said that only the equations 5, 6 and 7 that he produced fall under Natural Selection theory. It nowhere said Natural Selection was limited to these 3 equations in the paper itself, it only said at the heading "Mathematical treatment of the theory of Natural Selection". For the rest of it, the mathematics provided could not deal with mutually enhanced reproductionrates of variants, or any change in the total number in the population, because that number was set as a constant (the carryingcapacity of the environment constant) So I think his mathematical version of Natural Selection doesn't apply generally throughout Nature.
Can any Darwinist-Creationist, or Darwinist-evolutionist reference me a formal treatment of the mechanism of Natural Selection (defined as for an individual to reproduce or not to reproduce)?
regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Replies to this message:
 Message 2 by Joe Meert, posted 06-05-2002 12:28 PM Syamsu has replied
 Message 4 by Percy, posted 06-05-2002 1:21 PM Syamsu has replied
 Message 5 by Percy, posted 06-05-2002 1:49 PM Syamsu has not replied

  
Joe Meert
Member (Idle past 5680 days)
Posts: 913
From: Gainesville
Joined: 03-02-2002


Message 2 of 18 (11010)
06-05-2002 12:28 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Syamsu
06-05-2002 11:09 AM


quote:
Can any Darwinist-Creationist, or Darwinist-evolutionist reference me a formal treatment of the mechanism of Natural Selection (defined as for an individual to reproduce or not to reproduce)?
JM: Can you provide same for your 'alternative' to Darwinism? By the way, Darwinism is part of evolution, but it is not evolution as it is known today. I read your post several times and it seems as if you consider formality a mathematical equation. If I am wrong please tell me in the same post where you 'formally' posit your alternative to Darwinism.
Cheers
Joe Meert

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Syamsu, posted 06-05-2002 11:09 AM Syamsu has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 3 by Syamsu, posted 06-05-2002 1:09 PM Joe Meert has not replied

  
Syamsu 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5590 days)
Posts: 1914
From: amsterdam
Joined: 05-19-2002


Message 3 of 18 (11011)
06-05-2002 1:09 PM
Reply to: Message 2 by Joe Meert
06-05-2002 12:28 PM


My alternative theory basicly consists of rewording "the mechanism of Natural Selection" (for an individual to reproduce, or fail to reproduce), to "general theory of reproduction". There exists no formal treatment either of the mechanism of Natural Selection, or of the general theory of reproduction as far as I know.
Your reply is needlessly defensive since I am only asking what is normal to ask of any science theory. A formal treatment would not neccesarily all be mathematical, but would also focus on naming different events and defining the names in terms of the theory. Like encroachment would mean for one organism to have an increased chance of reproduction at the cost of the chance of reproduction of another creature. Making an extensive list of all theoretically possible events that can follow after a mutation occurs, would make it clear that competition is just one of several possibilities that can follow from mutation.
Also, saying that I like formalcy doesn't mean that I'm any good at producing it.
regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

This message is a reply to:
 Message 2 by Joe Meert, posted 06-05-2002 12:28 PM Joe Meert has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 15 by Dr_Tazimus_maximus, posted 06-26-2002 8:23 PM Syamsu has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 4 of 18 (11012)
06-05-2002 1:21 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Syamsu
06-05-2002 11:09 AM


Before responding I'd like to introduce the information you're referring to.
First, the joint Wallace/Darwin paper can be found here:
http://www.inform.umd.edu/PBIO/darwin/darwindex.html
It's not actually a paper so much as a collection of various writings by Darwin and Wallace, with an introduction by Lyell and Hooker. It was published in the Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society, Zoology 3:45-62. Aug 20, 1858.
Second, the "Fischer" you've mentioned in several messages is actually R. A. Fisher, a mathematician and geneticist. He first raised the possibility of Mendel fudging his data in a 1936 paper in the Annals of Science called Has Mendel's Work Been Rediscovered? (Annals of Science 1, 115-137).
Syamsu writes:

Often Darwinists say that the reason that there is no formal treatment of the theory is because...
Since Darwinists do not agree with you that there is no formal treatment of the theory, they would not be attempting to justify something they don't believe to be the case. What led you to this belief?

Because I like formalcy in science, it is grating for me to see a prozawriter like Fischer accuse a formalist like Mendel of fudging his data. Fischer used some statistical argument to "prove" Mendel fudged his data,...
I don't know what a "prozawriter" is, but it doesn't sound like a compliment. Anyway, given Fisher's large number of publications he was probably a pretty good writer, and he was a statistician of the first rank, but he didn't claim to have proved "fudging", he only raised questions as to whether Mendel had been honest in reporting his data. The debate continues somewhat today, but the consensus of science has been, and still is, that problems with Mendel's data were both inadvertent and inconsequential.

...and then argued that this fudging was the reason that Darwinists did not accept Mendel's theories for up to 40 years.
Fisher couldn't possibly have argued this, since he only introduced the possibility of fudging in 1936. Prior to Fisher's statistical arguments there was no suspicion of fudged data, and by the time he published his suspicions in 1936, Darwinian evolution and Mendelian genetics had already been combined, through the efforts of the population geneticists, into the Synthetic Theory of Evolution, usually referred to today as the Modern Synthesis.

Mendel's texts today are held up by Darwinists as an example of how not to do science, as a warning not to falsify your data else it might be ignored.
Almost all scientists view Mendel's work as an example of good science. His pea breeding experiments are mentioned in all introductory biology texts and evolution texts. Most scientists are probably barely aware or even completely unaware that there is any debate concerning Mendel's data.

Before publishing "The origin of species" Darwin and Wallace published what should have been a formal treatment of the theory of Natural Selection to a science journal. The paper...is a hopeless mess...
But why should it be such a mess, when Darwin's "Origin of Species" was already finished?

The joint paper was published in 1858, the Origin of Species in 1859. In the 1858 paper Darwin included only material he had written prior to receiving Wallace's letters, which was a 1844 essay and in 1857 letter to Asa Gray. He didn't include any more recent material because his primary goal was to establish priority.
Syamsu quoting the 1858 Darwin/Wallace paper:

"Natural Selection acts by and for the good of each being, and therefore each corpereal and mental endowment will tend to progress towards perfection."
This sentence does not appear in the on-line copy of the paper. What is the source of your quote?

Darwin's fudging of the sciencepaper, is the reason why there is no formal theory now.
We can't really discuss this until you show us evidence supporting this interpretation.

Can any Darwinist-Creationist, or Darwinist-evolutionist reference me a formal treatment of the mechanism of Natural Selection (defined as for an individual to reproduce or not to reproduce)?
Uh, the Nganjuk Public Library?
I don't know why the principle of natural selection is such a problem in your eyes. Perhaps you're trying to build it up to be more than it is. All it says is that the environment will exert survival pressures on organisms, providing reproductive advantages to those best suited. I think you've said as much yourself.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Syamsu, posted 06-05-2002 11:09 AM Syamsu has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 6 by Syamsu, posted 06-05-2002 2:04 PM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 5 of 18 (11015)
06-05-2002 1:49 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Syamsu
06-05-2002 11:09 AM


I found that quote. I misinterpreted you as saying it came from the Darwin/Wallace paper, but I see now that you were referring to Darwin's Origin of Species. The quote was:
Darwin in the Origin of Species:

"Natural Selection acts by and for the good of each being, and therefore each corpereal and mental endowment will tend to progress towards perfection."
About this quote you said:
Syamsu writes:

Also, I'm pretty sure you can't get away with positing something like a natural force of goodness in a science paper, but you can get away with it in pop-science proza.
I agree that you can't posit a "natural force of goodness" and remain scientific, but that wasn't what Darwin was positing. He's stating the same natural selection principle we know today, but in 19th century prose. It helps to view this sentence in context where it becomes clear that even though he uses the term "being", he's really speaking about species:
Darwin in the Origin of Species:

"We can so far take a prophetic glance into futurity as to foretell that it will be the common and widely-spread species, belonging to the larger and dominant groups within each class, which will ultimately prevail and procreate new and dominant species. As all the living forms of life are the lineal descendants of those which lived long before the Cambrian epoch, we may feel certain that the ordinary succession by generation has never once been broken, and that no cataclysm has desolated the whole world. Hence we may look with some confidence to a secure future of great length. And as natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress toward perfection."
--Percy
[This message has been edited by Percipient, 06-05-2002]

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Syamsu, posted 06-05-2002 11:09 AM Syamsu has not replied

  
Syamsu 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5590 days)
Posts: 1914
From: amsterdam
Joined: 05-19-2002


Message 6 of 18 (11017)
06-05-2002 2:04 PM
Reply to: Message 4 by Percy
06-05-2002 1:21 PM



Since Darwinists do not agree with you that there is no formal treatment of the theory, they would not be attempting to justify something they don't believe to be the case. What led you to this belief?
The fact that Darwinists do not reference this formal treatment when asked for.

Because I like formalcy in science, it is grating for me to see a prozawriter like Fischer accuse a formalist like Mendel of fudging his data. Fischer used some statistical argument to "prove" Mendel fudged his data,...
I don't know what a "prozawriter" is, but it doesn't sound like a compliment. Anyway, given Fisher's large number of publications he was probably a pretty good writer, and he was a statistician of the first rank,

but he didn't claim to have proved "fudging", he only raised questions as to whether Mendel had been honest in reporting his data. The debate continues somewhat today, but the consensus of science has been, and still is, that problems with Mendel's data were both inadvertent and inconsequential.
I don't think it's reasonable to assume that Darwinists made an awful fuss about nothing for no reason, when they had lots of political motivation to make a fuss. (wiping away the embarassment of not accepting the basics of genetics for up to 40 years is clear motivation) I have had Mendel's work presented to me as a teaching example of faulty science.

Fisher couldn't possibly have argued this, since he only introduced the possibility of fudging in 1936. Prior to Fisher's statistical arguments there was no suspicion of fudged data, and by the time he published his suspicions in 1936, Darwinian evolution and Mendelian genetics had already been combined, through the efforts of the population geneticists, into the Synthetic Theory of Evolution, usually referred to today as the Modern Synthesis."
There is a difference between someone making a synthesis, and having the synthesis be accepted.


"Natural Selection acts by and for the good of each being, and therefore each corpereal and mental endowment will tend to progress towards perfection."
This sentence does not appear in the on-line copy of the paper. What is the source of your quote?

The origin of species, not the paper.


I don't know why the principle of natural selection is such a problem in your eyes. Perhaps you're trying to build it up to be more than it is. All it says is that the environment will exert survival pressures on organisms, providing reproductive advantages to those best suited. I think you've said as much yourself.
Elsewhere you said that differential reproductive success is as a synonym for competition, where other biologists say that competition is not even required to occur for differential reproductive success to apply. You can't say that there is no problem here.
Please reference me a formal treatment of the mechanism of Natural Selection.
regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

This message is a reply to:
 Message 4 by Percy, posted 06-05-2002 1:21 PM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 7 by Percy, posted 06-05-2002 2:44 PM Syamsu has replied
 Message 8 by Brad McFall, posted 06-05-2002 3:25 PM Syamsu has not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 7 of 18 (11018)
06-05-2002 2:44 PM
Reply to: Message 6 by Syamsu
06-05-2002 2:04 PM


I don't really buy that you can blame anything about modern evolutionary theory on Darwin. He just got things going on the right track. Lots of people have contributed since then.
I think you may have misclassified Fisher with the Darwinists. He was a statistician and geneticist, so you would normally include him with the Mendelians. He was one of the principals in the development of population genetics, and wrote the landmark book on the Modern Synthesis.
Syamsu writes:

Elsewhere you said that differential reproductive success is as a synonym for competition, where other biologists say that competition is not even required to occur for differential reproductive success to apply. You can't say that there is no problem here.
Depends how you define competition. I was being brief at the time, and in that context I meant competition to be interpreted broadly as including competition with anything, including with independent environmental factors. For example two different rodent species might be competing for the same resources, and so would be competing with each other. But their environment may also be changing, perhaps getting colder, and so they would also be competing with the environment to maintain reproductive rates.

Please reference me a formal treatment of the mechanism of Natural Selection.
You seem pretty well read already, so I'm going to skip a couple steps and assume that no matter what reference you're provided you'll deny it contains the requested information. Why don't we just discuss why the definitions of natural selection you've been provided are inadequate?
But this is off topic for this thread. You were already discussing natural selection in another thread, so we should pick up the discussion there.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 6 by Syamsu, posted 06-05-2002 2:04 PM Syamsu has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 9 by Syamsu, posted 06-05-2002 11:12 PM Percy has replied

  
Brad McFall
Member (Idle past 5032 days)
Posts: 3428
From: Ithaca,NY, USA
Joined: 12-20-2001


Message 8 of 18 (11019)
06-05-2002 3:25 PM
Reply to: Message 6 by Syamsu
06-05-2002 2:04 PM


It is one thing to say that there is "feedback" from gene environments to the gene and another thing to suggest that Fisher's adaptive modification has been found and that we can now discuss some possibly? alternative expts in which natural selection may be expanded either in the lab or in nature. The problem here may be a simple ambiguity in use of word "nonadaptive" and neophenogenesis for it is less likely that ANY coaction exchange are occurring all over the place.
If one for instance started with Wolfram's position that there is no equations and only interactive programs and tried to AVOID mathmatical genetics that had been told to Wright to be "simple" that would be on the road to some such alternative but I thought Wolfram was mistaken years ago in his universal claim (which like Feynman would speak of biology with systemtic subjectivity etc) and I still do today. A simple re-wording is not suitable at this point but equational translation must also be considered. For instance too I sat down one day and believed I had made an equals sign that developed beyond the benefical/deterimental C/E mutation discussion some dimension for protoplasm. Things like this can not use just a forma logic change but the material must be experimented in in different positions as well. The expense increases rather rapidly when the race is considered as well.
[This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 06-05-2002]

This message is a reply to:
 Message 6 by Syamsu, posted 06-05-2002 2:04 PM Syamsu has not replied

  
Syamsu 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5590 days)
Posts: 1914
From: amsterdam
Joined: 05-19-2002


Message 9 of 18 (11047)
06-05-2002 11:12 PM
Reply to: Message 7 by Percy
06-05-2002 2:44 PM



Please reference me a formal treatment of the mechanism of Natural Selection.

You seem pretty well read already, so I'm going to skip a couple steps and assume that no matter what reference you're provided you'll deny it contains the requested information. Why don't we just discuss why the definitions of natural selection you've been provided are inadequate?
But this is off topic for this thread. You were already discussing natural selection in another thread, so we should pick up the discussion there.

It's questionable that the mechanism of Natural Selection is science when there is no formal treatment of it, that's why I posted it in the forum "Is it science?". I explained what I am looking for in this thread already. A formalized systematic overview of looking at individuals in terms of reproducing or failing to reproduce, in every theoretically possible category of events. If you know some book that sets out to do this, then I probably haven't read it. I mean it's not that Darwinists try and fail to make something like that, as far as I know they haven't tried it.
regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

This message is a reply to:
 Message 7 by Percy, posted 06-05-2002 2:44 PM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 10 by Percy, posted 06-06-2002 9:29 AM Syamsu has replied
 Message 12 by Brad McFall, posted 06-06-2002 1:20 PM Syamsu has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 10 of 18 (11075)
06-06-2002 9:29 AM
Reply to: Message 9 by Syamsu
06-05-2002 11:12 PM


You may never find such a book. Natural selection is a general principle. A treatment of how it plays out in specific scenarios would be ad hoc, and error prone given the huge number of variables. The principle of natural selection gives us a framework within which to interpret evidence from the past, but there are far too many variables in the real world for it to have much forward looking predictive power, if that's what you're looking for.
If you've read any of Gould's books or articles you may have come across his oft repeated point that if you rewound the tape of life back to some point and then started things going again that the outcome would be very different. There's no determinism.
You can take the general principle of natural selection and apply it using logic and knowledge, working out a number of rules all by yourself, such as, "As the climate gets colder, mammals will develop thicker fur coats. As predators get faster, prey will, too."
But you'll never know enough to make accurate predictions. For example, as predators get faster, perhaps some prey will become smaller so as not to be noticed, or become more evasive, or become burrow dwellers, or change the time of day when they graze. As a lizard species develops internal toxins to kill snakes that prey upon it, will the snakes evolve an immunity, or select other prey, or migrate to better hunting grounds, or go extinct?
Natural selection is a general principle. It is not without predictive power, but those predictions are necessarily general. An analog that is a bit strained but might be helpful nonetheless is physical mechanics, ie, the principles of moving bodies. You can use the laws of motion to predict with great accuracy the behavior of any body in any situation, but once you start trying to predict how bodies will interact with each other the possibilities become too numerous and complex to enumerate. What happens when two bodies collide head on? At 179o? At 178o? When one is rock and the other is ice? When one is homogenously half rock and half ice while the other is rock? When one is made up homogenously of different types of rock? When the other is non-homogenously composed, with different parts having different compositions? When the collision takes place in a weak gravitational field? A strong gravitational field? When the bodies are large enough to have their own gravitational fields? When one is hot and the other cold? When both are hot? When one has a molten core? When they collide in a nebular cloud? At an event horizon? I'm not even near done.
Now do the same for three bodies. See the problem? Scientists haven't produced an enumeration like this for physics, and they're not going to do it for natural selection, either.
That being said, there is much greater determinism in dealing with simpler life forms, primarily because the variables come under our complete control. The best example is bacteria in a petri dish. Starting with some known bacterial species, you can change the petri dish environment in proscribed ways and know in advance that bacteria possessing certain qualities will be selected for and that in some number of generations the bacterial population in your petri dish will be adapted to the changes you introduced.
I think you've somehow decided that scientists should by now have enumerated all the different environmental change scenarios into a book of rules for what will happen to species in each case. The world isn't that simple.
--Percy
[This message has been edited by Percipient, 06-06-2002]

This message is a reply to:
 Message 9 by Syamsu, posted 06-05-2002 11:12 PM Syamsu has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 11 by Syamsu, posted 06-06-2002 11:40 AM Percy has not replied

  
Syamsu 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5590 days)
Posts: 1914
From: amsterdam
Joined: 05-19-2002


Message 11 of 18 (11082)
06-06-2002 11:40 AM
Reply to: Message 10 by Percy
06-06-2002 9:29 AM


Of course there wouldn't need to be an enumuration to the extent of classifying each and every last trait there is in the world, but biologists should have the basic tools to describe the traits in terms of their reproduction, when the traits are of interest.
Defining terms like selection, encroachment, divergence, going into a new environment etc. in terms of reproduction is essential for uniformity of descriptions, and the integrity of the system of knowledge, where otherwise there will neccessarily be much confusion. I don't see how anyone could think otherwise.
regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

This message is a reply to:
 Message 10 by Percy, posted 06-06-2002 9:29 AM Percy has not replied

  
Brad McFall
Member (Idle past 5032 days)
Posts: 3428
From: Ithaca,NY, USA
Joined: 12-20-2001


Message 12 of 18 (11087)
06-06-2002 1:20 PM
Reply to: Message 9 by Syamsu
06-05-2002 11:12 PM


I am not sure that we are actually talking at cross purposes. If one reads a letter between Fisher and Wright about the difficulty of, as you say, formal, requirements to quantify reproduction under any, every and all conditions of restrictions to recombination it does not matter how formalized one gets with the issue of fitness the problem is recognizably difficult. I do not see why reptiles,birds and mammals but not dinos can not be seen as reproducing in such a way as to lessen this restriction I have qualitatiely described. The formalzation is harder than if one had to apply a catastrophe set to magic. I will need to read you thread a little more closely but all this seems possible and so far Percipient has not said anything that should lead you to not understand this.
Take the varibility of whatever this restriction is formally in amphibians. Frogs, toads and tree-frogs can be visualized in this modeling as calling for less restrictions. Caeclians acutally begining to lessen the physiological hold on developemental genetics by begining to get a Ureter singular as in higher vertebrates and slamanders continuing to be restricted in recombination by out of clade parthenogenic hybridization. At this point even without talking about fish or the semming impossiblity of all this in tunicates I have not said anything that fall out of the Fisher/Wright tradition and THERE there should be plenty of material for any formal (even if one wants to go Mivart's way to an Owen against Darwin) implementation of selection. The problem is realy about understanding what the people meant when using the words and assuming a phylogenetic perspective when often a taxonomic one suffices. As for how long this would take?? ihavent the faintest

This message is a reply to:
 Message 9 by Syamsu, posted 06-05-2002 11:12 PM Syamsu has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 13 by Syamsu, posted 06-14-2002 1:57 AM Brad McFall has replied

  
Syamsu 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5590 days)
Posts: 1914
From: amsterdam
Joined: 05-19-2002


Message 13 of 18 (11559)
06-14-2002 1:57 AM
Reply to: Message 12 by Brad McFall
06-06-2002 1:20 PM


I don't see any problem in enumeration.
Possible relations of a unit of selection to an environmental factor.
+ increase in chance of reproduction
- decrease in chance of reproduction
0 neutral
Possible ways in which organisms can relate to each other on the event of their reproduction.
+/- encroachment
+/+ mutual benefit
-/- mutual loss
+/0 etc.
-/0
0/0
Darwinists would always tend to conjecture the first, since many definitions of Natural Selection only apply to the first. (not the definition of differential reproductive success, but other definitions, like the definition of Natural Selection as encroachment of one variant on an other variant until extinction)
regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

This message is a reply to:
 Message 12 by Brad McFall, posted 06-06-2002 1:20 PM Brad McFall has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 14 by Brad McFall, posted 06-26-2002 1:19 PM Syamsu has not replied

  
Brad McFall
Member (Idle past 5032 days)
Posts: 3428
From: Ithaca,NY, USA
Joined: 12-20-2001


Message 14 of 18 (12218)
06-26-2002 1:19 PM
Reply to: Message 13 by Syamsu
06-14-2002 1:57 AM


There is a problem if you/one wishes to trasform your symbolism into a chemical equilibrium no matter how you apportion the data hetergenously or homogenously BECAUSE the organic WHOLE (notice I did not spell o r g a n ism)is not the same as a solid as opposed to a synthesis of molecules. It is one thing to say that development is the expression of genes over time and another to inculde all of one's taxogenic experience in the same. The void/vacuum does not need to play out for the organicist (whom I am not) as for the physicist and it does seem possible to use the MATH of population genetics to assist if a third pascal division of the face is provided purely to give an unkown third way to figure molecular distributions. Problem is that Cornell teachs this is UNKOWN. IT is possible theoretically doable as to some apriori content and if granted the funding cycle may show that selection of the small diference in this idea whether or not Creation ex nihilo could a posteriori produce some magnitude. But again you should have known that a magnitude IS NOT an enumeration. I have contended elsewhere that it is possible that biologists are oberving something in the TWO points of disequilibrium something Bohr called to Mayr "aquosity" but which is something physics DOES NOT KNOW yet Mayr for Pasteur's students use of word "proximate" tried to wrest this interest to organicism which is acutally more reductionist if population genetic Data NO MATTER THE SYMBOLIZATION can be use as I begin to implement some of the "repulsions".
Your responses to posts do not seem to show thre requiste creativity but then again perhaps I do not know enough about what fecundity or open habitat you are up to. Best. Brad.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 13 by Syamsu, posted 06-14-2002 1:57 AM Syamsu has not replied

  
Dr_Tazimus_maximus
Member (Idle past 3217 days)
Posts: 402
From: Gaithersburg, MD, USA
Joined: 03-19-2002


Message 15 of 18 (12235)
06-26-2002 8:23 PM
Reply to: Message 3 by Syamsu
06-05-2002 1:09 PM


quote:
Originally posted by Syamsu:
My alternative theory basicly consists of rewording "the mechanism of Natural Selection" (for an individual to reproduce, or fail to reproduce), to "general theory of reproduction".
Syamsu, I have read your original "thesis" and in its proper application in both biology and in biochemistry/molecular biology it is really nothing more than a restatement of the component of natural selction that deals with reproduction. In otherwords, it falls within the susbset of NS w.r.t. the mechanism for the generation of offspring (in Dawkins terms it would be the expression of the replication factor, althogh in the larger sense I think that Dawkins is wrong). What your concepts lack are the fitness factor which need not rely on competition (review statements by Russian biologists prior to Stalin and Lenin concerning co-operation in Siberia and biological evolution). Sorry that I do not have time to go in depth right now but there it is. Back to work now. Sorry that I have been much absent but I have been getting my a$$ kicked at work and am off to a well earned vacation on Friday (I plan on celebrating my 40th by riding my bike up the side of a mountain with a minimum of vomiting as I go
).
------------------
"Chance favors the prepared mind." L. Pasteur
Taz

This message is a reply to:
 Message 3 by Syamsu, posted 06-05-2002 1:09 PM Syamsu has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 16 by Syamsu, posted 06-27-2002 5:07 AM Dr_Tazimus_maximus has not replied
 Message 17 by Brad McFall, posted 07-02-2002 4:41 PM Dr_Tazimus_maximus 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