Re: Natural Selection Again: Charles Darwin Campfire
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line. Charles Darwin & Re: Natural Selection Again
Posted by CHOPOLA on March 06, 192003 at 12:43:35:
In Reply to: Natural Selection Again posted by Alton C. Thompson on May 02, 192001 at 20:09:35:
: In my April 24 posting space limitations prevented me from noting that I was presenting major conclusions of a study of Darwin's theory that I had just completed. Commentators have, therefore, been handicapped in not knowing the reasoning and evidence upon which my statements were based. Obviously, I cannot rectify that problem within the confines of this space; and it may not be worthwhile to offer additional comments--but here goes anyway: : 1. Variation can be thought of in either spatial (i.e., geographical) or non-spatial terms--and Darwin did both. His theory of natural selection, however, is based on the umption of variation within a given area (i.e., non-spatial variability); and the theory predicts that the mean value for the variate that confers survivability will slowly, but steadily, increase from year to year. : 2. Darwin's theory of natural selection tacitly umes that the environment doesn't change over time (i.e., from year to year) while natural selection is occurring, so that change in a species can be attributed to, and only to, natural selection. Given this, the species in question must be changing in a manner that does not affect its "fit" to the environment. What "survival of the fittest" must mean, then, is that those individuals survive which are best able to compete with conspecifics--so that it is fitting a sociological, not a physical, environment that is involved with "survival of the fittest." : 3. Insofar as qualitative changes occur over time with a species, they are outside the scope of Darwin's theory: nothing in his theory accounts for such changes.