🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov10.004237.50028@Cookie.secapl.com> Frank Adams,
frank@Cookie.secapl.com writes:
>The main content of evolutionary theory is that *random* mutation is the
>only input to this process.  So another sense of "survival of the
fittest"
>is a negative one: survival of the fittest is the only thing driving
>evolution.  This would not be true, for example, of Lamarckian evolution.

A point of clarification:

"Recent" evolutionary biology (post-synthetic) admits of several
different inputs to evolution: drift, non-genetic heredity, and so forth.
I think the point is that the variation that results has to be random
with respect to the selection pressures active on a population (is that
the point of your scare quotes?)

My $1/50th worth: Sober has argued that fitness is a supervenient
property that sums the total vector propensity of a trait (or gene) in a
given selective environment. It is, in other words, a statistical,
stochastic and probabilistic measure. It neither requires nor allows
non-natural selection in a purely Darwinian evolutionary process, and to
that extent, Darwinism *is* tautological -- it is definitionally true
that if a process of populational hereditable change over time has only
fitness as a relevant proprty contributing to the continuation of traits
(genes, etc), it is Darwinian. If not, it isn't. [A Lamarckian process
could be partly Darwinian, for example.]

A terminological suggestion (to avoid emotive displays): a process that
results in the (qualified as above) survival of the most fit is a
"D-process". One that results in the survival of the most desired (ie, an
intentionally driven process) is an "L-process"; one attracted to a goal
of excellence is a "T-process" (Teilhardian, see Rescher's 1990 book _A
Useful Inheritance_); and one driven by an entelechical unfolding of
pre-existing form, a "B-process" (Bergsonian -- if you don't follow this
last, don't worry about it). So far as I can ascertain, this exhausts the
evolutionary process spectrum.

John Wilkins
Manager, Publishing & Advertising
Monash University, Melbourne Australia
Internet: john@publications.ccc.monash.edu.au
Tel: (+613) 573 2099
--Monash and I agree on several matters: this may, or may not, be one of
them