🚀 go-pugleaf

In talk.origins, on thread _Re: evolution?(please read)_, Jon Thaler
<jjt@mail.lns.cornell.edu> wrote:

>Geoff Sheffield <geoff@m_l.com> writes:
>
>(...stuff deleted...)
>
>> Natural selection says that features which
>> improve chances for survival (and reproductive success) are 
>> preferred.
>
>Isn't this a tautology?  We only know which features improve chances
>for survival by observing which are preferred.

Let's try to make this clear so the tautology goes away. There is an
aspect of organisms called the genome. This has two important
properties wrt this subject. First, it is the genome that is inherited
by "child" organisms. Second, the genome strongly determines the
phenotype, or physical structure and operation of the organism. Some
changes in the genome increase the ability of the organism to
reproduce, some decrease it, and some have no affect. We name this
process Natural Selection. 

>Does the concept of natural selection have predictive power, or is it
>only good for retrodiction?  Please give examples.

It certainly does. The best example, because it has just hit the
popular press, is the experiment with lizard legs. You should be able
to find this in just about any general news periodical you want. In
short, scientists in the Caribbean put some lizards on some islands
that did not have any lizards. The lizards spend there time hanging
out on tree limbs. The new islands has shorter trees, and the
prediction was that the lizard's legs would shorten. And what was what
was observed.



Matt Silberstein
Bander-Log Member in good standing.
=================================================

I keep six honest serving men,
they taught me all I knew.

R.K.