Is the human race today susceptible to natural selection?

[Black Sheep]

Considering that (under capitalism of course), your personal intellectual / physical traits are of little relevance to your prosperity,social growth, and to some extent, your chance of reproducing.

Since the factors of your well-being are such, can we say that we are subject to artificial selection?

[cop an Attitude]

Family sizes seem to differ no matter what class. Some rich chose to have fewer offspring to divide the wealth less. The lower classes sometimes have large familes, especialy in 3rd world nations. 3rd world nations have to have a large family to tend to family chores and task to earn enough income. If anything, I feel that natural selection is on our side :).

[Module]

Hey, I started a similar thread to this like a year ago :p a coincidence.

Anyway,
Yes, we are subject to natural selection, as much as we ever were.
Whatever traits are passed down from generation to generation, the cause of their being passed down does not mean that those which are passed down are not the result of 'natural selection'. Individual human beings, and culture of human societies have always had an impact upon what genes are passed down, due to us finding certain things attractive, and certain characteristics being favorable in certain, not necessarily environment, conditions.
It continues to have an impact today, of course environmental factors are becoming increasingly less important, it makes it no less 'natural selection' than it was 1000, 1000,000 years ago.

[Oneironaut]

Hey, I started a similar thread to this like a year ago :p a coincidence.

Anyway,
Yes, we are subject to natural selection, as much as we ever were.
Whatever traits are passed down from generation to generation, the cause of their being passed down does not mean that those which are passed down are not the result of 'natural selection'. Individual human beings, and culture of human societies have always had an impact upon what genes are passed down, due to us finding certain things attractive, and certain characteristics being favorable in certain, not necessarily environment, conditions.
It continues to have an impact today, of course environmental factors are becoming increasingly less important, it makes it no less 'natural selection' than it was 1000, 1000,000 years ago.

Great post!

[DesertShark]

Considering that (under capitalism of course), your personal intellectual / physical traits are of little relevance to your prosperity,social growth, and to some extent, your chance of reproducing.

Since the factors of your well-being are such, can we say that we are subject to artificial selection?
I think that because of modern medicine (way more then capitalism) we have a larger control (artificial selection) over what traits get passed to the next generation. (My apologies if this next part sounds like eugenics, I'm not going there and I'm not implying that eugenics should happen or is 'right') By keeping the weak and the sick alive enough to reproduce we are reducing the passing on of "favorable heritable traits" that would normally have been passed down through natural selection for the continued passing on of "unfavorable heritable traits".


Hey, I started a similar thread to this like a year ago :p a coincidence.

Anyway,
Yes, we are subject to natural selection, as much as we ever were.
Whatever traits are passed down from generation to generation, the cause of their being passed down does not mean that those which are passed down are not the result of 'natural selection'. Individual human beings, and culture of human societies have always had an impact upon what genes are passed down, due to us finding certain things attractive, and certain characteristics being favorable in certain, not necessarily environment, conditions.
It continues to have an impact today, of course environmental factors are becoming increasingly less important, it makes it no less 'natural selection' than it was 1000, 1000,000 years ago.
If "environmental factors are becoming increasingly less important" then your claim that "we are subject to natural selection, as much as we ever were" is invalid; you just contradicted yourself. Natural selection is perpetuated and checked through: environmental factors and the survival of individuals within in a species. Artificial selection is synonymous with "selective breeding" (think dog and cat breeds, flowers, and many vegetables) and favorable traits that would be passed on through natural selection are not necessarily continued.

Yes humans are still subject to natural selection, but we try and fight it every step of the way by trying to control our environment and how the environment effects us. In the end, it will be the environmental factors that will ultimately shape our survival as a species, we are not immune to it no matter how much we want to be.

-DesertShark

[Jazzratt]

Natural selection is still relevant to us but we are fast approaching a new epoch in our growth as a species - self guided evolution. Through genetic modification, sexual selection, embryo screening and so on we can guide ourselves through our next stage. Or at least we will, one day. For today we do become affected by natural selection but the advantages we pass on to our offspring are very different from the kind we would pass on if we still lived like chimps.

[Module]

If "environmental factors are becoming increasingly less important" then your claim that "we are subject to natural selection, as much as we ever were" is invalid; you just contradicted yourself. Natural selection is perpetuated and checked through: environmental factors and the survival of individuals within in a species. Artificial selection is synonymous with "selective breeding" (think dog and cat breeds, flowers, and many vegetables) and favorable traits that would be passed on through natural selection are not necessarily continued.

Yes humans are still subject to natural selection, but we try and fight it every step of the way by trying to control our environment and how the environment effects us. In the end, it will be the environmental factors that will ultimately shape our survival as a species, we are not immune to it no matter how much we want to be.

-DesertSharkThere is no contradiction.
'Natural' does not mean 'non-human'.

[DesertShark]

There is no contradiction.
'Natural' does not mean 'non-human'.
I don't believe I made that claim. I know that natural does not mean non-human. Contradiction was a poor word choice on my part. I don't think that environmental factors are becoming less important, they just shape different aspects of our evolution now then they did in the past.

In reality, there is no difference between natural and artificial selection. By deterring the effects of the environment and diseases, we make our species genetically weaker while (in some instances) making our species culturally and intellectually stronger.

-DesertShark

[JorgeLobo]

Everyone gets laid sooner or later and we do little to cull out the crapy gene stocks that result. If there's natural selection, it sure isn't evident.

That said, there may be in China a 1st-born dynamic yet to be realized

[Jazzratt]

Everyone gets laid sooner or later

Except asexuals. And people who die young. And people with nonfucntional genitals. But yeah, everyone is gets laid.


and we do little to cull out the crapy gene stocks that result.

Well, most of the time when someone gets laid they don't pass on their genes. Also a number of the "everyone" that's getting laid is homosexual, they aren't passing on any genes. And of course screening for defects, abortions and other "crappy gene" culling methods seem to be working.


If there's natural selection, it sure isn't evident.


Yes, sometimes moronic aberrations such as yourself do surface. But that's the price of a civilised society I suppose.


That said, there may be in China a 1st-born dynamic yet to be realized

What the hell are you wittering about?

[JorgeLobo]

Sorry it wasn't more clear, rat. Let me explain - it's called "science." It may "rock your bedroom" but you obviously know little about the subject. That probably explains your childish insults - go back to the bedroom little guy and "rock" yourself.

In our society, there is no obvious expression of natural selection. However, I suppose one could make the point that those society would consider more successful (economically, socially, etc) - more adapted - reproduce at a lesser level rate than those of lesser accomplishments - so there is hope for your DNA.

Allow me to clarify the last comment that obviously went over your head. China has a one child policy. It is feasible that genetics of 1st born may be biased so that elimination of subsequent siblings results in a shift in population genetics. For example, a simple search of the literature found a report that homosexual men were less likely to be 1st born. Granted, homosexuality may not be so driven by genetics - but it illustrates the point.

Understand?

[Dr. Rosenpenis]

Has to do with testosterone levels in the womb during gestation, which generally decrease in subsequent pregnancies. This is also related to intelligence, apparently.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

We debated this in Philosophy recently, and in the Science section a while back, where I quoted several articles and a book that seriously questioned this idea. Here is one of those articles again:


Certain aspects of evolutionary psychology are manifestly incorrect, even though they seem to be based on 'natural selection':


So You Think You Are a Darwinian?

By David Stove

Most educated people nowadays, I believe, think of themselves as Darwinians. If they do, however, it can only be from ignorance: from not knowing enough about what Darwinism says. For Darwinism says many things, especially about our species, which are too obviously false to be believed by any educated person; or at least by an educated person who retains any capacity at all for critical thought on the subject of Darwinism.

Of course most educated people now are Darwinians, in the sense that they believe our species to have originated, not in a creative act of the Divine Will, but by evolution from other animals. But believing that proposition is not enough to make someone a Darwinian. It had been believed, as may be learnt from any history of biology, by very many people long before Darwinism, or Darwin, was born.

What is needed to make someone an adherent of a certain school of thought is belief in all or most of the propositions which are peculiar to that school, and are believed either by all of its adherents, or at least by the more thoroughgoing ones. In any large school of thought, there is always a minority who adhere more exclusively than most to the characteristic beliefs of the school: they are the ‘purists’ or ‘ultras’ of that school. What is needed and sufficient, then, to make a person a Darwinian, is belief in all or most of the propositions which are peculiar to Darwinians, and believed either by all of them, or at least by ultra-Darwinians.

I give below ten propositions which are all Darwinian beliefs in the sense just specified. Each of them is obviously false: either a direct falsity about our species or, where the proposition is a general one, obviously false in the case of our species, at least. Some of the ten propositions are quotations; all the others are paraphrases. The quotations are all from authors who are so well-known, at least in Darwinian circles, as spokesmen for Darwinism or ultra-Darwinism, that their names alone will be sufficient evidence that the proposition is a Darwinian one. Where the proposition is a paraphrase, I give quotations or other information which will, I think, suffice to establish its Darwinian credentials.

My ten propositions are nearly in reverse historical order. Thus, I start from the present day, and from the inferno-scene - like something by Hieronymus Bosch - which the 'selfish gene’ theory makes of all life. Then I go back a bit to some of the falsities which, beginning in the 1960s, were contributed to Darwinism by the theory of ‘inclusive fitness’. And finally I get back to some of the falsities, more pedestrian though no less obvious, of the Darwinism of the 19th or early-20th century.

1. The truth is, ‘the total prostitution of all animal life, including Man and all his airs and graces, to the blind purposiveness of these minute virus-like substances’, genes.

This is a thumbnail-sketch, and an accurate one, of the contents of The Selfish Gene (1976) by Richard Dawkins. It was not written by Dawkins, but he quoted it with manifest enthusiasm in a defence of The Selfish Gene which he wrote in this journal in 1981. Dawkins’ status, as a widely admired spokesman for ultra-Darwinism, is too well-known to need evidence of it adduced here. His admirers even include some philosophers who have carried their airs and graces to the length of writing good books on such rarefied subjects as universals, or induction, or the mind. Dawkins can scarcely have gratified these admirers by telling them that, even when engaged in writing those books, they were ‘totally prostituted to the blind purposiveness of their genes Still, you ‘have to hand it’ to genes which can write, even if only through their slaves, a good book on subjects like universals or induction. Those genes must have brains all right, as well as purposes. At least, they must, if genes can have brains and purposes. But in fact, of course, DNA molecules no more have such things than H20 molecules do.

2 '…it is, after all, to [a mother’s] advantage that her child should be adopted’ by another woman.

This quotation is from Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene, p. 110.

Obviously false though this proposition is, from the point of view of Darwinism it is well-founded, for the reason which Dawkins gives on the same page: that another woman’s adopting her baby ‘releases a rival female from the burden of child-rearing, and frees her to have another child more quickly.’ This, you will say, is a grotesque way of looking at human life; and so, of course, it is. But it is impossible to deny that it is the Darwinian way.

3. All communication is ‘manipulation of signal-receiver by signal-sender.’

This profound communication, though it might easily have come from any used-car salesman reflecting on life, was actually sent by Dawkins, (in The Extended Phenotype, (1982), p. 57), to the readers whom he was at that point engaged in manipulating. Much as the devil, in many medieval plays, advises the audience not to take his advice.

4. Homosexuality in social animals is a form of sibling-altruism: that is, your homosexuality is a way of helping your brothers and sisters to raise more children.

This very-believable proposition is maintained by Robert Trivers in his book Social Evolution, (1985), pp. 198-9. Professor Trivers is a leading light among ultra-Darwinians, (who are nowadays usually called ‘sociobiologists’). Whether he also believes that suicide, for example, and self-castration, are forms of sibling-altruism, I do not know; but I do not see what there is to stop him. What is there to stop anyone believing such propositions? Only common sense: a thing entirely out of the question among sociobiologists.

5. In all social mammals, the altruism (or apparent altruism) of siblings towards one another is about as strong and common as the altruism (or apparent altruism) of parents towards their offspring.

This proposition is an immediate consequence, and an admitted one, of the theory of inclusive fitness, which says that the degree of altruism depends on the proportion of genes shared. This theory was first put forward by W. D. Hamilton in The Journal of Theoretical Biology in 1964. Since then it has been accepted by Darwinians almost as one man and has revolutionized evolutionary theory. This acceptance has made Professor Hamilton the most influential Darwinian author of the last thirty years.

6. '…no one is prepared to sacrifice his life for any single person, but everyone will sacrifice it for more than two brothers [or offspring], or four half-brothers, or eight first-cousins.'

This is a quotation from the epoch-making article by Professor Hamilton to which I referred a moment ago. The italics are not in the text. Nor are the two words which I have put in square brackets; but their insertion is certainly authorized by the theory of inclusive fitness.

7. Every organism has as many descendants as it can.

Compare Darwin, in The Origin of Species, p. 66: ‘every single organic being around us may be said to be striving to the utmost to increase in numbers’; and again, pp. 78-9, ‘each organic being is striving to increase at a geometrical ratio’. These page references are to the first edition of the Origin, (1859), but both of the passages just quoted are repeated in all of the five later editions of the book which were published in Darwin’s lifetime. He also says the same thing in other places.

But it would not have mattered if he had not happened to say in print such things as I have just quoted. For it was always obvious, to everyone who understood his theory, that a universal striving-to-the-utmost-to-increase is an essential part of that theory: in fact it is the very ‘motor’ of evolution, according to the theory. It is the thing which, by creating pressure of population on the supply of food, is supposed to bring about the struggle for life among con-specifics, hence natural selection, and hence evolution. As is well known, and as Darwin himself stated, he had got the idea of population permanently pressing on food, because of the constant tendency to increase, from T. R. Malthus’s Essay on Population (1798).

Still, that every organism has as many descendants as it can, while it is or may be true of most species of organisms, is obviously not true of ours. Do you know of even one human being who ever had as many descendants as he or she could have had? And yet Darwinism says that every single one of us does. For there can clearly be no question of Darwinism making an exception of man, without openly contradicting itself. ‘Every single organic being’, or ‘each organic being’: this means you.

8. In every species, child-mortality - that is, the proportion of live births which die before reproductive age - is extremely high.

Compare Darwin in the Origin, p. 61: ‘of the many individuals of any species which are periodically born, but a small number can survive’; or p. 5, ‘many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive’. Again, these passages, from the first edition, are both repeated unchanged in all the later editions of the Origin.

Proposition 8 is not a peripheral or negotiable part of Darwinism. On the contrary it is, like proposition 7, a central part, and one which Darwinians are logically locked-into. For in order to explain evolution, Darwin had adopted (as I have said) Malthus’s principle of population: that population always presses on the supply of food, and tends to increase beyond it. And this principle does require child-mortality to be extremely high in all species.

Because of the strength and universality of the sexual impulse, animals in general have an exuberant tendency to increase in numbers. This much is obvious, but what Malthus’s principle says is something far more definite. It says that the tendency to increase is so strong that every population, of any species, is at all times already as large as its food-supply permits, or else is rapidly approaching that impassable limit. Which means of course that, (as Malthus once put it), the young are always born into ‘a world already possessed’. In any average year, (assuming that the food-supply does not increase), there is simply not enough food to support any greater number of the newborn than is needed to replace the adults which die. But such is the strength of the tendency to increase that, in any average year, the number of births will greatly exceed the number of adult deaths. Which is to say, the great majority of those born must soon die.

Consider a schematic example. Suppose there is a population, with a constant food-supply, of 1000 human beings. Suppose - a very realistic supposition, in fact a conservative one - that 700 of them are of reproductive age. Suppose that this population is already ‘at equilibrium’, (as Darwinians say): that is, is already as large as its food can support. According to Malthus’s principle, people (or flies or fish or whatever) will reproduce if they can. So, since there are 350 females of reproductive age, there will be 350 births this year. But there is no food to support more of these than are needed to replace the adults who die this year; while the highest adult death-rate which we can suppose with any approximation to realism is about 10%. So 100 adults will die this year, but to fill their places, there are 350 applicants. That is, there will this year be a child-mortality of 250 out of 350, or more than 70%.

It was undoubtedly reasoning of this kind from Malthus’s principle which led Darwin to believe that in every species ‘but a small number’ of those born can survive, or that ‘many more’ are born than can survive. What did Darwin mean by these phrases, in percentage, or at least minimum-percentage, terms? Well, we have just seen that Malthus’s principle, in a typical case, delivers a child-mortality of at least 70%. And no one, either in 1859 or now, would dream of calling 30 or more, surviving out of 100, 'but a small number’ surviving. It would be already stretching language violently, to call even 23 (say), surviving out of 100, ‘but a small number’ surviving. To use this phrase of 30-or-more surviving, would be absolutely out of the question. So Darwin must have meant, by the statements I quoted above, that child-mortality in all species is more than 70%.

Which is obviously false in the case of our species. No doubt human child-mortality has often enough been as high as 70%, and often enough higher still. But I do not think that, at any rate within historical times, this can ever have been usual. For under a child-mortality of 70%, a woman would have to give birth 10 times, on the average, to get 3 of her children to puberty, and 30 times to get 9 of them there. Yet a woman’s getting 9 of her children to puberty has never at any time been anything to write home about; whereas a woman who gives birth 30 times has always been a demographic prodigy. The absolute record is about 32 births. (I neglect multiple births, which make up only 1% of all births.) As for the last 100 years, in any advanced country, to suppose child-mortality 70% or anywhere near it, would be nothing but an outlandish joke.

It is important to remember that no one - not even Darwinians - knows anything at all about human demography, except what has been learnt in the last 350 years, principally concerning certain European countries or their colonies. A Darwinian may be tempted, indeed is sure to be tempted, to set all of this knowledge aside, as being of no ‘biological’ validity, because it concerns only an ‘exceptional’ time and place. But if we agreed to set all this knowledge aside, the only result would be that no one knew anything whatever about human demography. And Darwinians would then be no more entitled than anyone else to tell us what the ‘real’, or the ‘natural’, rate of human child-mortality is.

In any case, as I said earlier, Darwinians cannot without contradicting themselves make an exception of man, or of any particular part of human history. Their theory, like Malthus’s principle, is one which generalizes about all species, and all places and times, indifferently; while man is a species, the last 350 years are times, and European countries are places. And Darwin’s assertion, that child-mortality is extremely high, is quite explicitly universal. For he said (as we saw) that ‘of the many individuals of any species which are periodically born, but a small number can survive’, and that ‘many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive’. Again, this means us.

9. The more privileged people are the more prolific: if one class in a society is less exposed than another to the misery due to food-shortage, disease, and war, then the members of the more fortunate class will have (on the average) more children than the members of the other class.

That this proposition is false, or rather, is the exact reverse of the truth, is not just obvious. It is notorious, and even proverbial. Everyone knows that, as a popular song of the I 930s had it,

The rich get rich, and
The poor get children.

Not that the song is exactly right, because privilege does not quite always require superior wealth, and superior wealth does not quite always confer privilege. The rule should be stated, not in terms of wealth, but in terms of privilege, thus: that the more privileged class is the less prolific. To this rule, as far as I know, there is not a single exception.

And yet the exact inverse of it, proposition 9, is an inevitable consequence of Darwinism all right. Malthus had said that the main ‘checks’ to human population are misery - principally due to ‘famine, war, and pestilence’ - and vice: by which he meant contraception, foeticide, homosexuality, etc. But he also said that famine - that is, deficiency of food - usually outweighs all the other checks put together, and that population-size depends, near enough, only on the supply of food. Darwin agreed. He wrote (in The Descent of Man, second edition, 1874), that ‘the primary or fundamental check to the continued increase of man is the difficulty of gaining subsistence’, and that if food were doubled in Britain, for example, population would quickly be doubled. But now, a more-privileged class always suffers less from deficiency of food than a less-privileged class does. Therefore, if food-supply is indeed the fundamental determinant of population-size, a more-privileged class would always be a more prolific one; just as proposition 9 says.

William Godwin, as early as 1820, pointed out that Malthus had managed to get the relationship between privilege and fertility exactly upside-down. In the 1860s and ‘70s W. R. Greg, Alfred Russel Wallace, and others, pointed out that Darwin, by depending on Malthus for his explanation of evolution, had saddled himself with Malthus’s mistake about population and privilege. It is perfectly obvious that all these critics were right. But Darwin never took any notice of the criticism. Well, trying to get Darwin to respond to criticism was always exactly like punching a feather-mattress: ‘suddenly absolutely nothing happened’.

The eugenics movement, which was founded a little later by Darwin’s disciple and cousin Francis Galton, was an indirect admission that those critics were right. For what galvanized the eugenists into action was, of course, their realisation that the middle and upper classes in Britain were being out-reproduced by the lowest classes. Such a thing simply could not happen, obviously, if Darwin and Malthus, and proposition 9, had been right. But the eugenists never drew the obvious conclusion, that Darwin and Malthus were wrong, and consequently they never turned their indirect criticism into a direct one. Well, they were fervent Darwinians to the last man and woman, and could not bring themselves to say, or even think, that Darwinism is false.

A later Darwinian and eugenist, R. A. Fisher, discussed the relation between privilege and fertility at length, in his important book, The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, (1930). But he can hardly be said to have made the falsity of proposition 9 any less of an embarrassment for Darwinism. Fisher acknowledges the fact that there has always been, in all civilized countries an inversion (as he calls it) of fertility-rates: that is, that the more privileged have always and everywhere been the less fertile. His explanation of this fact is that civilized countries have always practised what he calls ‘the social promotion of infertility’. That is, people are enabled to succeed better in civilized life, the fewer children they have.

But this is evidently just a re-phrasing of the problem, rather than a solution of it. The question, for a Darwinian such as Fisher, is how there can be, consistently with Darwinism, such a thing as the social promotion of infertility? In every other species of organisms, after all, comparative infertility is a sure sign, or even the very criterion, of comparative failure. So how can there be if Darwinism is true, a species of organisms in which comparative infertility is a regular and nearly-necessary aid to success?

Fisher’s constant description of the fertility-rates in civilized countries as ‘inverted’, deserves a word to itself. It is a perfect example of an amazingly-arrogant habit of Darwinians, (of which I have collected many examples in my forthcoming book Darwinian Fairytales). This is the habit, when some biological fact inconsistent with Darwinism comes to light, of blaming the fact, instead of blaming their theory. Any such fact Darwinians call a ‘biological error' an ‘error of heredity’, a ‘misfire’, or some thing of that kind: as though the organism in question had gone wrong, when all that has actually happened, of course, is that Darwinism has gone wrong. When Fisher called the birth-rates in civilized countries ‘inverted’, all he meant was that, exactly contrary to Darwinian theory, the more privileged people are the less fertile. From this fact, of course, the only rational conclusion to be drawn is, that Darwinism has got things upside-down. But instead of that Fisher, with typical Darwinian effrontery, concludes that civilised people have got things upside-down!

Fisher, who died in 1962, is nowadays the idol of ultra-Darwinians, and he deserves to be so: he was in fact a sociobiologist ‘born out of due time’. And the old problem for Darwinism, to which he had at least given some publicity, even if he did nothing to solve it, remains to this day the central problem for sociobiologists. The problem (to put it vulgarly) of why ‘the rich and famous’ are such pitiful reproducers as they are.

Of course this ‘problem’ is no problem at all, for anyone except ultra-Darwinians. It is an entirely self-inflicted injury, and as such deserves no sympathy. Who, except an ultra-Darwinian, would expect the highly-privileged to be great breeders? No one; just as no one but an ultra-Darwinian would expect women to adopt-out their babies with maximum expedition. For ultra-Darwinians, on the other hand, the infertility of the privileged is a good deal more than a problem. It is a refutation.

But they react to it in accordance with a well-tried rule of present-day scientific research. The rule is: ‘When your theory meets with a refutation, call it instead "a problem", and demand additional money in order to enable you to solve it.’ Experience has shown that this rule is just the thing for keeping a ‘research program’ afloat, even if it leaks like a sieve. Indeed, the more of these challenging ‘problems’ you can mention, the more money you are plainly entitled to demand.

10. If variations which are useful to their possessors in the struggle for life ‘do occur, can we doubt (remembering that many more individuals are born than can possibly survive), that individuals having any advantage, however slight, over others, would have the best chance of surviving and of procreating their kind? On the other hand, we may feel sure that any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed.’

This is from The Origin of Species, pp. 80-81. Exactly the same words occur in all the editions.

Since this passage expresses the essential idea of natural selection, no further evidence is needed to show that proposition 10 is a Darwinian one. But is it true? In particular, may we really feel sure that every attribute in the least degree injurious to its possessors would be rigidly destroyed by natural selection?

On the contrary, the proposition is (saving Darwin’s reverence) ridiculous. Any educated person can easily think of a hundred characteristics, commonly occurring in our species, which are not only ‘in the least degree’ injurious to their possessors, but seriously or even extremely injurious to them, which have not been ‘rigidly destroyed’, and concerning which there is not the smallest evidence that they are in the process of being destroyed. Here are ten such characteristics, without even going past the first letter of the alphabet. Abortion; adoption; fondness for alcohol; altruism; anal intercourse; respect for ancestors; susceptibility to aneurism; the love of animals; the importance attached to art; asceticism, whether sexual, dietary, or whatever.

Each of these characteristics tends, more or less strongly, to shorten our lives, or to lessen the number of children we have, or both. All of them are of extreme antiquity. Some of them are probably older than our species itself. Adoption, for example is practised by some species of chimpanzees: another adult female taking over the care of a baby whose mother has died. Why has not this ancient and gross ‘biological error’ been rigidly destroyed?

‘There has not been enough time’, replies the Darwinian. Well, that could be so: perhaps there has not been enough time. And then again, perhaps there has been enough time: perhaps even twenty times over. How long does it take for natural selection to destroy an injurious attribute, such as adoption or fondness for alcohol? I have not the faintest idea, of course. I therefore have no positive ground whatever for believing either that there has been enough time for adoption to be destroyed, or that there has not. But then, on this matter, everyone else is in the same state of total ignorance as I am. So how come the Darwinian is so confident that there has not been enough time? What evidence can he point to, for thinking that there has not? Why, nothing but this, that adoption has not been destroyed, despite its being an injurious attribute! But this is palpably arguing in a circle, and taking for granted the very point which is in dispute. The Darwinian has no positive evidence whatever, that there has not been enough time.

Mercifully, Darwinians nowadays are much more reluctant than they formerly were, to rely heavily on the ‘not-enough-time’ defence of their theory against critics. They have benefited from the strictures of philosophers, who have pointed out that it is not good scientific method, to defend Darwinism by a tactic which would always be equally available whatever the state of the evidence, and which will still be equally available to Darwinians a million years hence, if adoption (for example) is still practised then.

The cream of the jest, concerning proposition 10, is that Darwinians themselves do not really believe it. Ask a Darwinian whether he actually believes that the fondness for alcoholic drinks is being destroyed now, or that abortion is, or adoption - and watch his face. Well, of course he does not believe it! Why would he? There is not a particle of evidence in its favour, and there is a great mountain of evidence against it. Absolutely the only thing it has in its favour is that Darwinism says it must be so. But (as Descartes said in another connection) ‘this reasoning cannot be presented to infidels, who might consider that it proceeded in a circle’.

What becomes, then, of the terrifying giant named Natural Selection, which can never sleep, can never fail to detect an attribute which is, even in the least degree, injurious to its possessors in the struggle for life, and can never fail to punish such an attribute with rigid destruction? Why, just that, like so much else in Darwinism, it is an obvious fairytale, at least as far as our species is concerned.

It would not be difficult to compile another list of ten obvious Darwinian falsities; or another one after that, either. But on that scale, the thing would be tiresome both to read and to write. Anyway it ought not to be necessary: ten obvious Darwinian falsities should be enough to make the point. The point, namely, that if most educated people now think they are Darwinians, it is only because they have no idea of the multiplied absurdities which belief in Darwinism requires.

http://www.royalinstitutephilosophy.org/ar...ticle.php?id=26 (http://www.royalinstitutephilosophy.org/articles/article.php?id=26)

And, in case anyone asks, this guy is an atheist.

Anyone who wants to see these and other devastating arguments developed in detail should read Stove's book: 'Darwinian Fairytales'

http://www.amazon.com/Darwinian-Fairytales...d/dp/1859723063 (http://www.amazon.com/Darwinian-Fairytales-Avebury-Philosophy-David/dp/1859723063)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Darwinian-Fairytal...91265479&sr=1-1 (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Darwinian-Fairytales-Selfish-Heredity-Evolution/dp/1594032009/ref=sr_1_1/202-5044388-9795025?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1191265479&sr=1-1)

From here:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=993823&postcount=7

See also the rest of these threads:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/natural-selection-t62803/index.html

http://www.revleft.com/vb/science-morality-anyone-t93355/index.html

I have posted a PDF of Stove's book here:

http://rapidshare.com/files/163090803/Darwinian_Fairytales_complete.pdf.html

Anyone who wants this file can download it in the next 90 days.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

How stupid. Evolutionary scientists no more refer to Darwin's Origin of Species than physicists refer to Newton's Principia. Dawkins' gene-centric view of evolution is not accepted by all evolutionary scientists, in fact there are a number of different views of evolution if I remember correctly. This is normal and healthy for science.

Personally, I dislike the term "Darwinism" - it has the overtones of a political ideology rather than a scientific theory. Moreover, evolutionary science has moved since the days of Darwin, most significantly in the discovery of genes and DNA.

[DesertShark]

Everyone gets laid sooner or later and we do little to cull out the crapy gene stocks that result. If there's natural selection, it sure isn't evident.

That said, there may be in China a 1st-born dynamic yet to be realized
Getting laid is a lot different then reproducing. And natural selection is evident. China's one child policy has left the country with an overwhelming high ratio of males to females, which they are now only beginning to see the effects of.


Sorry it wasn't more clear, rat. Let me explain - it's called "science." It may "rock your bedroom" but you obviously know little about the subject. That probably explains your childish insults - go back to the bedroom little guy and "rock" yourself.
This seems inappropriate and off topic, especially because you weren't clear about anything in your original post and your original post had nothing scientific in it.


In our society, there is no obvious expression of natural selection. However, I suppose one could make the point that those society would consider more successful (economically, socially, etc) - more adapted - reproduce at a lesser level rate than those of lesser accomplishments - so there is hope for your DNA.
Natural selection is present and obvious in our society, you're just not paying attention or you don't completely understand what natural selection is.


Allow me to clarify the last comment that obviously went over your head. China has a one child policy. It is feasible that genetics of 1st born may be biased so that elimination of subsequent siblings results in a shift in population genetics. For example, a simple search of the literature found a report that homosexual men were less likely to be 1st born. Granted, homosexuality may not be so driven by genetics - but it illustrates the point.

Understand?
No, nothing in this is clear. What about the first born children that were females and subsequently killed because of their sex?

-DesertShark

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

DesertShark:


Getting laid is a lot different then reproducing. And natural selection is evident. China's one child policy has left the country with an overwhelming high ratio of males to females, which they are now only beginning to see the effects of.

But, if Darwinism applied to human beings, the above could not happen. Since it has, Darwinism cannot apply to human beings.

The article I posted above goes into more detail on this; the book I mentioned, even more.

[DesertShark]

I'd first like to say that I don't understand why the topic of Darwinism was brought up in the first place and since you brought it up, it would be helpful if you gave a clear and concise definition of the term and an explanation as to why you brought it up. I've tried to find a clear definition of it on the internet and have been unable to.

I did not respond to your post with this article in it because I felt the article was extremely far from any form of good writing, but since you brought it up again, I took the time to go through it.

So You Think You Are a Darwinian?

By David Stove

Most educated people nowadays, I believe, think of themselves as Darwinians. If they do, however, it can only be from ignorance: from not knowing enough about what Darwinism says. For Darwinism says many things, especially about our species, which are too obviously false to be believed by any educated person; or at least by an educated person who retains any capacity at all for critical thought on the subject of Darwinism.
It would be helpful if he defined his terms or if you could define them for him.

Of course most educated people now are Darwinians, in the sense that they believe our species to have originated, not in a creative act of the Divine Will, but by evolution from other animals. But believing that proposition is not enough to make someone a Darwinian. It had been believed, as may be learnt from any history of biology, by very many people long before Darwinism, or Darwin, was born.
Like he said, I don't think that understanding evolution makes someone a Darwinian. This is a terribly laid out paragraph, as is most of the rest of the article.

I'd also like to point out that his following "propositions" come from about 20 or more years ago, science has come a long way in that time and scientists continually get better at explaining things as time goes on and they learn more.
I give below ten propositions which are all Darwinian beliefs in the sense just specified. Each of them is obviously false: either a direct falsity about our species or, where the proposition is a general one, obviously false in the case of our species, at least. Some of the ten propositions are quotations; all the others are paraphrases. The quotations are all from authors who are so well-known, at least in Darwinian circles, as spokesmen for Darwinism or ultra-Darwinism, that their names alone will be sufficient evidence that the proposition is a Darwinian one. Where the proposition is a paraphrase, I give quotations or other information which will, I think, suffice to establish its Darwinian credentials.

1. The truth is, ‘the total prostitution of all animal life, including Man and all his airs and graces, to the blind purposiveness of these minute virus-like substances’, genes.

This is a thumbnail-sketch, and an accurate one, of the contents of The Selfish Gene (1976) by Richard Dawkins. It was not written by Dawkins, but he quoted it with manifest enthusiasm in a defence of The Selfish Gene which he wrote in this journal in 1981. Dawkins’ status, as a widely admired spokesman for ultra-Darwinism, is too well-known to need evidence of it adduced here. His admirers even include some philosophers who have carried their airs and graces to the length of writing good books on such rarefied subjects as universals, or induction, or the mind. Dawkins can scarcely have gratified these admirers by telling them that, even when engaged in writing those books, they were ‘totally prostituted to the blind purposiveness of their genes Still, you ‘have to hand it’ to genes which can write, even if only through their slaves, a good book on subjects like universals or induction. Those genes must have brains all right, as well as purposes. At least, they must, if genes can have brains and purposes. But in fact, of course, DNA molecules no more have such things than H20 molecules do.
I'm confused about the relevance of this claim to the subject of Darwinism and natural selection; and also what the quote means. A lot of times scientists personify molecules and things to make interactions easier to understand for children and students new to the subject, but they usually explain that the personification is just for that purpose. For example: saying that chloride is "attracted" to sodium, or that a positive ion "wants to bind with" a negative ion; anyone in the scientific field knows that these molecules do not have desires/wants/etc., but being human it makes the natural interactions of these molecules easier to understand when explained in everyday language.

2 '…it is, after all, to [a mother’s] advantage that her child should be adopted’ by another woman.

This quotation is from Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene, p. 110.

Obviously false though this proposition is, from the point of view of Darwinism it is well-founded, for the reason which Dawkins gives on the same page: that another woman’s adopting her baby ‘releases a rival female from the burden of child-rearing, and frees her to have another child more quickly.’ This, you will say, is a grotesque way of looking at human life; and so, of course, it is. But it is impossible to deny that it is the Darwinian way.
Again, I don't understand the relevance of this claim and he doesn't explain at all how this is Darwinian.

3. All communication is ‘manipulation of signal-receiver by signal-sender.’

This profound communication, though it might easily have come from any used-car salesman reflecting on life, was actually sent by Dawkins, (in The Extended Phenotype, (1982), p. 57), to the readers whom he was at that point engaged in manipulating. Much as the devil, in many medieval plays, advises the audience not to take his advice.
This is true for communication between neurons, I don't think it was meant to extend past that. Again, I'm not clear as to the relevance of this claim to the topic being discussed on this thread.

4. Homosexuality in social animals is a form of sibling-altruism: that is, your homosexuality is a way of helping your brothers and sisters to raise more children.

This very-believable proposition is maintained by Robert Trivers in his book Social Evolution, (1985), pp. 198-9. Professor Trivers is a leading light among ultra-Darwinians, (who are nowadays usually called ‘sociobiologists’). Whether he also believes that suicide, for example, and self-castration, are forms of sibling-altruism, I do not know; but I do not see what there is to stop him. What is there to stop anyone believing such propositions? Only common sense: a thing entirely out of the question among sociobiologists.
Again, I'm not clear as to the relevance of this claim, nor have I ever heard that statement made in any scientific discussion or classroom. Also, the extension into suicide and self-castration is not clear to me either.

5. In all social mammals, the altruism (or apparent altruism) of siblings towards one another is about as strong and common as the altruism (or apparent altruism) of parents towards their offspring.

This proposition is an immediate consequence, and an admitted one, of the theory of inclusive fitness, which says that the degree of altruism depends on the proportion of genes shared. This theory was first put forward by W. D. Hamilton in The Journal of Theoretical Biology in 1964. Since then it has been accepted by Darwinians almost as one man and has revolutionized evolutionary theory. This acceptance has made Professor Hamilton the most influential Darwinian author of the last thirty years.
In my studies of evolution, I've never heard this claim so I don't understand how "has revolutionized evolutionary theory". Also, it is not congruent with what is seen all over nature where animals pick mates that are genetically different in order to further the survival of the species by mixing up the gene pool.

6. '…no one is prepared to sacrifice his life for any single person, but everyone will sacrifice it for more than two brothers [or offspring], or four half-brothers, or eight first-cousins.'

This is a quotation from the epoch-making article by Professor Hamilton to which I referred a moment ago. The italics are not in the text. Nor are the two words which I have put in square brackets; but their insertion is certainly authorized by the theory of inclusive fitness.
Relevance?

7. Every organism has as many descendants as it can.

Compare Darwin, in The Origin of Species, p. 66: ‘every single organic being around us may be said to be striving to the utmost to increase in numbers’; and again, pp. 78-9, ‘each organic being is striving to increase at a geometrical ratio’. These page references are to the first edition of the Origin, (1859), but both of the passages just quoted are repeated in all of the five later editions of the book which were published in Darwin’s lifetime. He also says the same thing in other places.

But it would not have mattered if he had not happened to say in print such things as I have just quoted. For it was always obvious, to everyone who understood his theory, that a universal striving-to-the-utmost-to-increase is an essential part of that theory: in fact it is the very ‘motor’ of evolution, according to the theory. It is the thing which, by creating pressure of population on the supply of food, is supposed to bring about the struggle for life among con-specifics, hence natural selection, and hence evolution. As is well known, and as Darwin himself stated, he had got the idea of population permanently pressing on food, because of the constant tendency to increase, from T. R. Malthus’s Essay on Population (1798).

Still, that every organism has as many descendants as it can, while it is or may be true of most species of organisms, is obviously not true of ours. Do you know of even one human being who ever had as many descendants as he or she could have had? And yet Darwinism says that every single one of us does. For there can clearly be no question of Darwinism making an exception of man, without openly contradicting itself. ‘Every single organic being’, or ‘each organic being’: this means you.
It actually is true for our species, it's just not seen in a lot of Western cultures today because our offspring tend to survive into reproductive age and the need to have a lot of offspring to perpetuate the species because most of them will die isn't there. There are many families in America alone that have over 8 children, just turn on your tv they're everywhere. In addition, it's important to note that this claim by Darwin was made in a different time then we live in now and modern medicine has played a huge role in reducing the amount of children that need to be born in order to have a decent number survive to reproductive age.

8. In every species, child-mortality - that is, the proportion of live births which die before reproductive age - is extremely high.

Compare Darwin in the Origin, p. 61: ‘of the many individuals of any species which are periodically born, but a small number can survive’; or p. 5, ‘many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive’. Again, these passages, from the first edition, are both repeated unchanged in all the later editions of the Origin.

Proposition 8 is not a peripheral or negotiable part of Darwinism. On the contrary it is, like proposition 7, a central part, and one which Darwinians are logically locked-into. For in order to explain evolution, Darwin had adopted (as I have said) Malthus’s principle of population: that population always presses on the supply of food, and tends to increase beyond it. And this principle does require child-mortality to be extremely high in all species.

Because of the strength and universality of the sexual impulse, animals in general have an exuberant tendency to increase in numbers. This much is obvious, but what Malthus’s principle says is something far more definite. It says that the tendency to increase is so strong that every population, of any species, is at all times already as large as its food-supply permits, or else is rapidly approaching that impassable limit. Which means of course that, (as Malthus once put it), the young are always born into ‘a world already possessed’. In any average year, (assuming that the food-supply does not increase), there is simply not enough food to support any greater number of the newborn than is needed to replace the adults which die. But such is the strength of the tendency to increase that, in any average year, the number of births will greatly exceed the number of adult deaths. Which is to say, the great majority of those born must soon die.

Consider a schematic example. Suppose there is a population, with a constant food-supply, of 1000 human beings. Suppose - a very realistic supposition, in fact a conservative one - that 700 of them are of reproductive age. Suppose that this population is already ‘at equilibrium’, (as Darwinians say): that is, is already as large as its food can support. According to Malthus’s principle, people (or flies or fish or whatever) will reproduce if they can. So, since there are 350 females of reproductive age, there will be 350 births this year. But there is no food to support more of these than are needed to replace the adults who die this year; while the highest adult death-rate which we can suppose with any approximation to realism is about 10%. So 100 adults will die this year, but to fill their places, there are 350 applicants. That is, there will this year be a child-mortality of 250 out of 350, or more than 70%.

It was undoubtedly reasoning of this kind from Malthus’s principle which led Darwin to believe that in every species ‘but a small number’ of those born can survive, or that ‘many more’ are born than can survive. What did Darwin mean by these phrases, in percentage, or at least minimum-percentage, terms? Well, we have just seen that Malthus’s principle, in a typical case, delivers a child-mortality of at least 70%. And no one, either in 1859 or now, would dream of calling 30 or more, surviving out of 100, 'but a small number’ surviving. It would be already stretching language violently, to call even 23 (say), surviving out of 100, ‘but a small number’ surviving. To use this phrase of 30-or-more surviving, would be absolutely out of the question. So Darwin must have meant, by the statements I quoted above, that child-mortality in all species is more than 70%.

Which is obviously false in the case of our species. No doubt human child-mortality has often enough been as high as 70%, and often enough higher still. But I do not think that, at any rate within historical times, this can ever have been usual. For under a child-mortality of 70%, a woman would have to give birth 10 times, on the average, to get 3 of her children to puberty, and 30 times to get 9 of them there. Yet a woman’s getting 9 of her children to puberty has never at any time been anything to write home about; whereas a woman who gives birth 30 times has always been a demographic prodigy. The absolute record is about 32 births. (I neglect multiple births, which make up only 1% of all births.) As for the last 100 years, in any advanced country, to suppose child-mortality 70% or anywhere near it, would be nothing but an outlandish joke.

It is important to remember that no one - not even Darwinians - knows anything at all about human demography, except what has been learnt in the last 350 years, principally concerning certain European countries or their colonies. A Darwinian may be tempted, indeed is sure to be tempted, to set all of this knowledge aside, as being of no ‘biological’ validity, because it concerns only an ‘exceptional’ time and place. But if we agreed to set all this knowledge aside, the only result would be that no one knew anything whatever about human demography. And Darwinians would then be no more entitled than anyone else to tell us what the ‘real’, or the ‘natural’, rate of human child-mortality is.

In any case, as I said earlier, Darwinians cannot without contradicting themselves make an exception of man, or of any particular part of human history. Their theory, like Malthus’s principle, is one which generalizes about all species, and all places and times, indifferently; while man is a species, the last 350 years are times, and European countries are places. And Darwin’s assertion, that child-mortality is extremely high, is quite explicitly universal. For he said (as we saw) that ‘of the many individuals of any species which are periodically born, but a small number can survive’, and that ‘many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive’. Again, this means us.
It was true during the time he wrote, it is still true today but not to the same extent in most Western cultures.
7 out of 10 (70%) is not a conservative number of people of reproductive age, in fact it is as high number (low 50% is a more realistic number). By only looking at old-age death, this person is ignoring deaths due to injury, disease, and illness; in addition, he is assuming that all the fetuses conceived will make it to birth and that all the mothers will survive the birthing process.
Man has continually tried to make an exception of himself, not the other way around. We are not exempt from natural selection or the process of evolution (decent with modification).

9. The more privileged people are the more prolific: if one class in a society is less exposed than another to the misery due to food-shortage, disease, and war, then the members of the more fortunate class will have (on the average) more children than the members of the other class.

That this proposition is false, or rather, is the exact reverse of the truth, is not just obvious. It is notorious, and even proverbial. Everyone knows that, as a popular song of the I 930s had it,

The rich get rich, and
The poor get children.

Not that the song is exactly right, because privilege does not quite always require superior wealth, and superior wealth does not quite always confer privilege. The rule should be stated, not in terms of wealth, but in terms of privilege, thus: that the more privileged class is the less prolific. To this rule, as far as I know, there is not a single exception.

And yet the exact inverse of it, proposition 9, is an inevitable consequence of Darwinism all right. Malthus had said that the main ‘checks’ to human population are misery - principally due to ‘famine, war, and pestilence’ - and vice: by which he meant contraception, foeticide, homosexuality, etc. But he also said that famine - that is, deficiency of food - usually outweighs all the other checks put together, and that population-size depends, near enough, only on the supply of food. Darwin agreed. He wrote (in The Descent of Man, second edition, 1874), that ‘the primary or fundamental check to the continued increase of man is the difficulty of gaining subsistence’, and that if food were doubled in Britain, for example, population would quickly be doubled. But now, a more-privileged class always suffers less from deficiency of food than a less-privileged class does. Therefore, if food-supply is indeed the fundamental determinant of population-size, a more-privileged class would always be a more prolific one; just as proposition 9 says.

William Godwin, as early as 1820, pointed out that Malthus had managed to get the relationship between privilege and fertility exactly upside-down. In the 1860s and ‘70s W. R. Greg, Alfred Russel Wallace, and others, pointed out that Darwin, by depending on Malthus for his explanation of evolution, had saddled himself with Malthus’s mistake about population and privilege. It is perfectly obvious that all these critics were right. But Darwin never took any notice of the criticism. Well, trying to get Darwin to respond to criticism was always exactly like punching a feather-mattress: ‘suddenly absolutely nothing happened’.

The eugenics movement, which was founded a little later by Darwin’s disciple and cousin Francis Galton, was an indirect admission that those critics were right. For what galvanized the eugenists into action was, of course, their realisation that the middle and upper classes in Britain were being out-reproduced by the lowest classes. Such a thing simply could not happen, obviously, if Darwin and Malthus, and proposition 9, had been right. But the eugenists never drew the obvious conclusion, that Darwin and Malthus were wrong, and consequently they never turned their indirect criticism into a direct one. Well, they were fervent Darwinians to the last man and woman, and could not bring themselves to say, or even think, that Darwinism is false.

A later Darwinian and eugenist, R. A. Fisher, discussed the relation between privilege and fertility at length, in his important book, The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, (1930). But he can hardly be said to have made the falsity of proposition 9 any less of an embarrassment for Darwinism. Fisher acknowledges the fact that there has always been, in all civilized countries an inversion (as he calls it) of fertility-rates: that is, that the more privileged have always and everywhere been the less fertile. His explanation of this fact is that civilized countries have always practised what he calls ‘the social promotion of infertility’. That is, people are enabled to succeed better in civilized life, the fewer children they have.

But this is evidently just a re-phrasing of the problem, rather than a solution of it. The question, for a Darwinian such as Fisher, is how there can be, consistently with Darwinism, such a thing as the social promotion of infertility? In every other species of organisms, after all, comparative infertility is a sure sign, or even the very criterion, of comparative failure. So how can there be if Darwinism is true, a species of organisms in which comparative infertility is a regular and nearly-necessary aid to success?

Fisher’s constant description of the fertility-rates in civilized countries as ‘inverted’, deserves a word to itself. It is a perfect example of an amazingly-arrogant habit of Darwinians, (of which I have collected many examples in my forthcoming book Darwinian Fairytales). This is the habit, when some biological fact inconsistent with Darwinism comes to light, of blaming the fact, instead of blaming their theory. Any such fact Darwinians call a ‘biological error' an ‘error of heredity’, a ‘misfire’, or some thing of that kind: as though the organism in question had gone wrong, when all that has actually happened, of course, is that Darwinism has gone wrong. When Fisher called the birth-rates in civilized countries ‘inverted’, all he meant was that, exactly contrary to Darwinian theory, the more privileged people are the less fertile. From this fact, of course, the only rational conclusion to be drawn is, that Darwinism has got things upside-down. But instead of that Fisher, with typical Darwinian effrontery, concludes that civilised people have got things upside-down!

Fisher, who died in 1962, is nowadays the idol of ultra-Darwinians, and he deserves to be so: he was in fact a sociobiologist ‘born out of due time’. And the old problem for Darwinism, to which he had at least given some publicity, even if he did nothing to solve it, remains to this day the central problem for sociobiologists. The problem (to put it vulgarly) of why ‘the rich and famous’ are such pitiful reproducers as they are.

Of course this ‘problem’ is no problem at all, for anyone except ultra-Darwinians. It is an entirely self-inflicted injury, and as such deserves no sympathy. Who, except an ultra-Darwinian, would expect the highly-privileged to be great breeders? No one; just as no one but an ultra-Darwinian would expect women to adopt-out their babies with maximum expedition. For ultra-Darwinians, on the other hand, the infertility of the privileged is a good deal more than a problem. It is a refutation.

But they react to it in accordance with a well-tried rule of present-day scientific research. The rule is: ‘When your theory meets with a refutation, call it instead "a problem", and demand additional money in order to enable you to solve it.’ Experience has shown that this rule is just the thing for keeping a ‘research program’ afloat, even if it leaks like a sieve. Indeed, the more of these challenging ‘problems’ you can mention, the more money you are plainly entitled to demand.
They were being "out reproduced" because their children were surviving. If all your offspring always survive to reproductive age, you don't need to keep having more. High fertility rates are a sign that the population is doing poorly: this quote is from Amartya Sen's book Development as Freedom, "High fertility rates can be seen, with much justice, as adverse to the quality of life, especially of young women, since recurrent bearing and rearing of children can be very detrimental to the well-being and freedom of the young mother. Indeed, it is precisely this connection that makes the empowerment of women (through more outside employment, more school education and so on) so effective in reducing fertility rates, since young women have a strong reason for moderating birthrates, and their ability to influence family decisions increases with their empowerment. (144-145)" Fertility rates are different then birth rates and I think there has been a confusion of the two here.

10. If variations which are useful to their possessors in the struggle for life ‘do occur, can we doubt (remembering that many more individuals are born than can possibly survive), that individuals having any advantage, however slight, over others, would have the best chance of surviving and of procreating their kind? On the other hand, we may feel sure that any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed.’

This is from The Origin of Species, pp. 80-81. Exactly the same words occur in all the editions.

Since this passage expresses the essential idea of natural selection, no further evidence is needed to show that proposition 10 is a Darwinian one. But is it true? In particular, may we really feel sure that every attribute in the least degree injurious to its possessors would be rigidly destroyed by natural selection?

On the contrary, the proposition is (saving Darwin’s reverence) ridiculous. Any educated person can easily think of a hundred characteristics, commonly occurring in our species, which are not only ‘in the least degree’ injurious to their possessors, but seriously or even extremely injurious to them, which have not been ‘rigidly destroyed’, and concerning which there is not the smallest evidence that they are in the process of being destroyed. Here are ten such characteristics, without even going past the first letter of the alphabet. Abortion; adoption; fondness for alcohol; altruism; anal intercourse; respect for ancestors; susceptibility to aneurism; the love of animals; the importance attached to art; asceticism, whether sexual, dietary, or whatever.

Each of these characteristics tends, more or less strongly, to shorten our lives, or to lessen the number of children we have, or both. All of them are of extreme antiquity. Some of them are probably older than our species itself. Adoption, for example is practised by some species of chimpanzees: another adult female taking over the care of a baby whose mother has died. Why has not this ancient and gross ‘biological error’ been rigidly destroyed?

‘There has not been enough time’, replies the Darwinian. Well, that could be so: perhaps there has not been enough time. And then again, perhaps there has been enough time: perhaps even twenty times over. How long does it take for natural selection to destroy an injurious attribute, such as adoption or fondness for alcohol? I have not the faintest idea, of course. I therefore have no positive ground whatever for believing either that there has been enough time for adoption to be destroyed, or that there has not. But then, on this matter, everyone else is in the same state of total ignorance as I am. So how come the Darwinian is so confident that there has not been enough time? What evidence can he point to, for thinking that there has not? Why, nothing but this, that adoption has not been destroyed, despite its being an injurious attribute! But this is palpably arguing in a circle, and taking for granted the very point which is in dispute. The Darwinian has no positive evidence whatever, that there has not been enough time.

Mercifully, Darwinians nowadays are much more reluctant than they formerly were, to rely heavily on the ‘not-enough-time’ defence of their theory against critics. They have benefited from the strictures of philosophers, who have pointed out that it is not good scientific method, to defend Darwinism by a tactic which would always be equally available whatever the state of the evidence, and which will still be equally available to Darwinians a million years hence, if adoption (for example) is still practised then.

The cream of the jest, concerning proposition 10, is that Darwinians themselves do not really believe it. Ask a Darwinian whether he actually believes that the fondness for alcoholic drinks is being destroyed now, or that abortion is, or adoption - and watch his face. Well, of course he does not believe it! Why would he? There is not a particle of evidence in its favour, and there is a great mountain of evidence against it. Absolutely the only thing it has in its favour is that Darwinism says it must be so. But (as Descartes said in another connection) ‘this reasoning cannot be presented to infidels, who might consider that it proceeded in a circle’.
This seems to be a common misconception about natural selection and evolution. Neither are a progression towards anything, evolution does not mean progress. Evolution and natural selection can only "weed out" traits that make unvaible offspring. Environmental factors, such as mass extinctions, do the rest of the work.

What becomes, then, of the terrifying giant named Natural Selection, which can never sleep, can never fail to detect an attribute which is, even in the least degree, injurious to its possessors in the struggle for life, and can never fail to punish such an attribute with rigid destruction? Why, just that, like so much else in Darwinism, it is an obvious fairytale, at least as far as our species is concerned.

It would not be difficult to compile another list of ten obvious Darwinian falsities; or another one after that, either. But on that scale, the thing would be tiresome both to read and to write. Anyway it ought not to be necessary: ten obvious Darwinian falsities should be enough to make the point. The point, namely, that if most educated people now think they are Darwinians, it is only because they have no idea of the multiplied absurdities which belief in Darwinism requires.
"Nature was NOT "producing" the variation within the finch populations - it already existed. Rather, nature "selected" from among the population variation the traits that better fostered survival and reproduction, a process known as "natural selection". The process guides evolution across the entire Tree-of Life (http://www.fossilmuseum.net/TreeOfLife.htm)" (from http://www.fossilmuseum.net/Evolution/DarwinsFinches.htm, this was the clearest explanation of evolution I could find right now).


DesertShark:
But, if Darwinism applied to human beings, the above could not happen. Since it has, Darwinism cannot apply to human beings.

The article I posted above goes into more detail on this; the book I mentioned, even more.
The topic of this discussion was natural selection, not Darwinism. So again, if you could explain where Darwinism fits into this, what exactly it is, and why you brought it up, it will make discussing this easier.

-DesertShark

[mikelepore]

in the sense that they believe our species to have originated, not in a creative act of the Divine Will, but by evolution from other animals. But believing that proposition is not enough to make someone a Darwinian. It had been believed, as may be learnt from any history of biology, by very many people long before Darwinism, or Darwin, was born.

Before Darwin, there were some, such as Georges-Louis Buffon, who argued that observations indicate that the categories in Linnaeus's taxonomy change over time. What was new with Darwin was to realize the mechanism to be natural selection.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

DesertShark, thanks for that detailed reply; I will respond to it if I can summon up the enthusiasm to do so.

[MarxSchmarx]

For what it is worth, let me add that I am sorry to have apparently missed the boat on this.

As regards bulk sheeps' querry, I think the artificial/natural selection divide is, well, umm... artificial. How are human's "not natural?"

Reading through the other posts, DesertShark, I will jump Rosa's gun on this b/c you raise some points that need addressing.


Like he said, I don't think that understanding evolution makes someone a Darwinian. This is a terribly laid out paragraph, as is most of the rest of the article.

I'd also like to point out that his following "propositions" come from about 20 or more years ago, science has come a long way in that time and scientists continually get better at explaining things as time goes on and they learn more.

I honestly don't see how your separation of what you call "Darwinism" from "evolution", much less natural selection, is particularly helpful. Evolution without natural selection is just genetic drift. I'll leave this one up to the historians of science, but the goal is, and arguably always has been, to explain adaptation, rather than heritable variation. Drift, in one form or another, has essentially been known (or at least implied by) since the concept of probability came about.

As far as 20 year old science is concerned, let me assure you that the adaptationist paradigm is alive and kicking. I say that as an anti-adaptationist.


Again, I'm not clear as to the relevance of this claim, nor have I ever heard that statement made in any scientific discussion or classroom. Also, the extension into suicide and self-castration is not clear to me either.

Why does a soldier throw himself on a grenede to save his platoon? Some misplaced sense of sibling altruism, perhaps. This is not an uncommon view. Also, if you've already had your kids, and you (mistakenly or not) feel they're better off without you, then killing yourself isn't a bad bet. Think of male black widow spiders.


In my studies of evolution, I've never heard this claim so I don't understand how "has revolutionized evolutionary theory". Also, it is not congruent with what is seen all over nature where animals pick mates that are genetically different in order to further the survival of the species by mixing up the gene pool.

Your studies of evolution have been limited, because inclusive fitness is THE novel idea in evolution from around 1950-1970. I also add that no individual ever cares about the survival of teh species.


6. '…no one is prepared to sacrifice his life for any single person, but everyone will sacrifice it for more than two brothers [or offspring], or four half-brothers, or eight first-cousins.'

This is a quotation from the epoch-making article by Professor Hamilton to which I referred a moment ago. The italics are not in the text. Nor are the two words which I have put in square brackets; but their insertion is certainly authorized by the theory of inclusive fitness.
Relevance?

A proof by contradiction of hamiltonian determinism; whether this is a fair reading of Hamilton I leave to the historians to decide. In the mean time, it is meant to point out the absurd conclusions of following hamilton's logic. FYI I think Hamilton was the best entomologist of all time and will probably be so for ever and ever.

It actually is true for our species, it's just not seen in a lot of Western cultures today because our offspring tend to survive into reproductive age and the need to have a lot of offspring to perpetuate the species because most of them will die isn't there. There are many families in America alone that have over 8 children, just turn on your tv they're everywhere. In addition, it's important to note that this claim by Darwin was made in a different time then we live in now and modern medicine has played a huge role in reducing the amount of children that need to be born in order to have a decent number survive to reproductive age.

If my offspring will survive pretty much no matter what thanks to modern medicine, the natural "Darwinian" conclusion is to have as many as possible. What have you got to loose by this reasoning? This is contradicted by sociological evidnece, so clearly something is not correct about "vulgar Darwinism" here. Ditto about your next point.

I will get back to the rest later, assuming no one else does before me.

Over all, tho, nice try Desert Shark. Having not read this David Stove, I think ( contrary to RL) that evolutionary biologists have been making variants of his critiques for quite some time. Many categorically reject the sweeping generalizations Stove seem to attribute to some of them, and the "Darwinism" he describes is probably directed at right-leaning scholars of animal behavioral and sociobiologists rather than the evolutionary biology community as a whole.

[DesertShark]

I'm going to restate my question which was not answered because I think it will help me understand what is actually being talked about here.

I'd first like to say that I don't understand why the topic of Darwinism was brought up in the first place and since you brought it up, it would be helpful if you gave a clear and concise definition of the term and an explanation as to why you brought it up. I've tried to find a clear definition of it on the internet and have been unable to.
he article.
So again, if someone could give a definition of Darwinism that would be extremely helpful.


I honestly don't see how your separation of what you call "Darwinism" from "evolution", much less natural selection, is particularly helpful. Evolution without natural selection is just genetic drift. I'll leave this one up to the historians of science, but the goal is, and arguably always has been, to explain adaptation, rather than heritable variation. Drift, in one form or another, has essentially been known (or at least implied by) since the concept of probability came about.
Is this addressed to me? If so, I haven't called "Darwinism" anything, mostly because I don't know what it is and I asked for clarification of the word. I separated "Darwinism" from "evolution" because it appears that "Darwinism" is philosophy, while "evolution" is the unifying principle of biology. I also don't think I separated "evolution" from natural selection, natural selection is the mechanism for evolution. So evolution doesn't exist without natural selection. (Those are text book definitions.)


As far as 20 year old science is concerned, let me assure you that the adaptationist paradigm is alive and kicking. I say that as an anti-adaptationist.
What is this "adaptationist paradigm" you are referring to?


Why does a soldier throw himself on a grenede to save his platoon? Some misplaced sense of sibling altruism, perhaps. This is not an uncommon view. Also, if you've already had your kids, and you (mistakenly or not) feel they're better off without you, then killing yourself isn't a bad bet. Think of male black widow spiders.
Evolution doesn't act on individuals, it acts on the level of populations (therefore populations evolve, not individuals). And natural selection only acts on heritable variations (as opposed to acquired characteristics). That means to even bring up suicide, self-castration, sibling-altruism, etc. in the discussion of evolution and natural selection they have to be heritable traits, if they're not then they don't have a place in the discussion.


Your studies of evolution have been limited, because inclusive fitness is THE novel idea in evolution from around 1950-1970. I also add that no individual ever cares about the survival of teh species.
Hopped up on pain killers after surgery and the term escaped my mind. Indeed, but inclusive fitness isn't necessary nor sufficient to explain evolution/natural selection. Its a way of explaining something we see in a lot of social species (maximizing the family over the individual). Individuals do not need to "care about the survival of the species" for the species to survive. Single celled organisms, plants, and some animals don't even have the concept of caring and they're doing fine. And on the other side, there are sure there's a least one human who cares about the survival of our species.


A proof by contradiction of hamiltonian determinism; whether this is a fair reading of Hamilton I leave to the historians to decide. In the mean time, it is meant to point out the absurd conclusions of following hamilton's logic. FYI I think Hamilton was the best entomologist of all time and will probably be so for ever and ever.
It sounds like he took a reasonable idea and stretched it to the end of its limits. I did not know you were so into insects or the people who study them, that's cool. I always think of E.O. Wilson as one of the best entomologists, but that's for a different discussion.


If my offspring will survive pretty much no matter what thanks to modern medicine, the natural "Darwinian" conclusion is to have as many as possible. What have you got to loose by this reasoning? This is contradicted by sociological evidnece, so clearly something is not correct about "vulgar Darwinism" here. Ditto about your next point.
I wasn't trying to argue for Darwinism at all in this, I was trying to point out that all of this was a misrepresentation of evolution and that the article sucked and appeared to lack relevance.


Over all, tho, nice try Desert Shark. Having not read this David Stove, I think ( contrary to RL) that evolutionary biologists have been making variants of his critiques for quite some time. Many categorically reject the sweeping generalizations Stove seem to attribute to some of them, and the "Darwinism" he describes is probably directed at right-leaning scholars of animal behavioral and sociobiologists rather than the evolutionary biology community as a whole.
Ummm...thank you? Yea, Stove seems to be an idiot after reading that article.

-DesertShark

[DesertShark]

Important definitions about natural selection, which I think show that humans are still subject to it.

Natural selection is differential success in reproduction (an unequal ability of individuals to survive and reproduce), and it occurs through an interaction between the environment and the variability inherent among the individual organisms making up the population. The product of natural selection is the adaption of populations to their environment (decent with modification or evolution). Natural selection is non-random and acts only on heritable variations, as opposed to acquired characteristics. Evolution acts on the level of populations (populations evolve, not individuals). Mutations and recombination lead to genetic variation (random process).

The following are well-supported observations and their logical inferences that explain the above.
1) Variation in Natural Populations is Widespread. The individuals of a natural populations will vary for almost any character we can measure, whether it is a morphological character (shape, size) or a biochemical character (metabolic rates, enzyme levels).
2) Most Variations are Heritable. While some individual variation is the result of the environment, most characteristics are inherited in a quantitative manner from one generation to the next. Inheritance is produced by the Mendelian process, which is now understood at the molecular level. New variation can arise randomly via mutation and recombination.
3) In Nature, There is a Struggle for Existence. All species have such great reproductive potential that their population size would increase exponentially if the environment would allow it. However, resources are limited, and thus in any population, more organisms are born than can survive to reproduce.
4) Survival in the Struggle for Existence is not Random, but depends on inherited Characteristics. Those individuals whose inherited characteristics provide the best "fit" to the limited environmental conditions are likely to leave more offspring than those less fit individuals.
Therefore:
5) The unequal ability of individuals to survive and reproduce will lead to a gradual change in a population, with favorable characteristics accumulating over generations. Natural selection occurs through an interaction between the environment and the variability inherent in the population. Each generation, environmental factors screen heritable variations, favoring some over others. While the underlying variation is random, natural selection is distinctly non-random.

I think humans are still subject to this. It may not be as obvious as it is in other animals, but that doesn't make it not present. Also, adding our own selection pressures doesn't mean it is not present, it just changes some of the selection parameters.

-DesertShark

[mikelepore]

Those individuals whose inherited characteristics provide the best "fit" to the limited environmental conditions are likely to leave more offspring than those less fit individuals.

I wonder if there is a list of some of the general types of fitness, such as:

1. Ability to gather food (wolf's nose, eagle's eyes, bear's claws) and make shelter (bee hive, beaver nest)

2. Ability to escape from predators (gazelle's speed, chameleon's color)

3. Ability to have many offspring simultaneously (quantity of fish eggs, scatter of pollen)

etc.

[Foldered]

I don't believe in Darwinism; it's the product, and justification, of capitalism.

I'm more sympathetic to how Peter Kropotkin views evolution, etc.

[MarxSchmarx]

DS:

Sorry for the delayed response. Here goes.

So again, if someone could give a definition of Darwinism that would be extremely helpful.

Anything and everything articulated in the works of one Charles Darwin.


I separated "Darwinism" from "evolution" because it appears that "Darwinism" is philosophy, while "evolution" is the unifying principle of biology. I also don't think I separated "evolution" from natural selection, natural selection is the mechanism for evolution. So evolution doesn't exist without natural selection. (Those are text book definitions.)

No. Evolution happens without natural selection (e.g., genetic drift). What you are (I'm guessing) saying is that evolution without natural selection isn't particularly interesting. If so, excepting this "Darwinism" term, we are in general agreement.


What is this "adaptationist paradigm" you are referring to?

In essence, the view that any and every biological character (like the color of your kidney) resulted from natural selection.


Evolution doesn't act on individuals, it acts on the level of populations (therefore populations evolve, not individuals). And natural selection only acts on heritable variations (as opposed to acquired characteristics). That means to even bring up suicide, self-castration, sibling-altruism, etc. in the discussion of evolution and natural selection they have to be heritable traits, if they're not then they don't have a place in the discussion.


Och aye. First of all, evolution doesn't "act on" anything. Natural selection may act on genes, individuals, and in extremely, super-rare cases, populations or ecosystems. Second, natural selection has been shown to involve non-heritable characteristics - epistasis and dominance that lead to linkage groups are the most obvious examples.


Indeed, but inclusive fitness isn't necessary nor sufficient to explain evolution/natural selection.

Whoever said it was?



I always think of E.O. Wilson as one of the best entomologists, but that's for a different discussion.

The father of sociobiology? What kind of leftist are you?

Having read Wilson's awesome autobiography, though, the guy is definitely good. No doubt he is a bright scientist, but is he the best? I do share a grudging admiration for Wilson. How somebody could make such a name for themselves out of deeply flawed right-wing theories that are derivative of Hamilton and MacArthur, and erect a career on quibbling with punctuated equilibrium, while also being regarded as a foremost conservation biologist for reactionary and inane blather, obviously the man knows how to peddle his craft. He is a bang-up student of the Formicidae no doubt, but at the end of the day he is better known than Hamilton. So, touche.


I wasn't trying to argue for Darwinism at all in this, I was trying to point out that all of this was a misrepresentation of evolution and that the article sucked and appeared to lack relevance.

It seems in essence we are in agreement. I do think it has relevance insofar as there are quite a few social-darwinists that roam this earth who are impervious to science but listen to scholars like this Stove.

Finally,

Survival in the Struggle for Existence is not Random, but depends on inherited Characteristics. Those individuals whose inherited characteristics provide the best "fit" to the limited environmental conditions are likely to leave more offspring than those less fit individuals....
I think humans are still subject to this. It may not be as obvious as it is in other animals, but that doesn't make it not present. Also, adding our own selection pressures doesn't mean it is not present, it just changes some of the selection parameters.

Prey tell, give me one example of precisely how heritable variation implicated in the current human "struggle for existence?"

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Thanks for those comments MarxSchmarx. I have stayed out of this debate since I cannot afford the time right now, and cannot summon up the enthusiasm to get involved.

But, have you actually read Stove's book?

I have posted a PDF of it on-line, and posted a link to it. Here it is again:

http://rapidshare.com/files/163090803/Darwinian_Fairytales_complete.pdf.html

Now, some of his material is slightly out-of-date (but that is because he died in the mid-1990s, and his researches ended largely in the late 1980s), and his article was deliberately provocative (partly to advertise his book and partly because he liked winding Darwinians up -- from the reaction here, it seems he succeeded yet again), but he raises serious conceptual issues that still have not been addressed, most particularly over 'inclusive fitness'.

[DesertShark]

Prey tell, give me one example of precisely how heritable variation implicated in the current human "struggle for existence?"

Really any genetic disorder can show this, or lacking a genetic disorder.

For example, a recessive sex-linked disorder called Duchene Muscular Dystrophy (DMD). It is a mutation found on the X chromosome and therefore is more common in males then females because 'they don't another copy to compensate for the genetic defect.' (There's an article about it in Nature: http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/Sex-linked-Diseases-the-Case-of-Duchene-800). "It affects about 1 in 3,500 males." The following is another quote from the article:

Normally, a balance exists between mutation and selection. Deleterious mutations, such as sex-linked disease genes, disappear over time because affected individuals often die before they reach reproductive age or are unable to reproduce. In effect, these mutations are ousted from the gene pool by natural selection. (...)
In the past, before prenatal testing or embryo sexing was an option, with no way to know whether a fetus had or might be carrying a deleterious sex-linked mutation, parents were not able to make these reproductive decisions. All fetuses affected with disease genes were born. Then, in the case of DMD, for example, if the affected child was a boy, he would mostly likely either die before reproducing or be incapable of reproducing, thereby removing that individual affected gene from the population. For this reason, diseases such as DMD have continued to occur at relatively low frequencies in the human population.

"Those individuals whose inherited characteristics provide the best "fit" to the limited environmental conditions are likely to leave more offspring than those less fit individuals."
So the people without the mutation would be reproducing more then the people with the mutation.

[RebelDog]

DesertShark:



But, if Darwinism applied to human beings, the above could not happen. Since it has, Darwinism cannot apply to human beings.

The article I posted above goes into more detail on this; the book I mentioned, even more.

I'm interested in in how you believe this is the case. At the moment I haven't the time to read through the article, could you quote the paragraph(s)?

[MarxSchmarx]

But, have you actually read Stove's book?
I have posted a PDF of it on-line, and posted a link to it. Here it is again:

http://rapidshare.com/files/16309080...plete.pdf.html (http://www.anonym.to/?http://rapidshare.com/files/163090803/Darwinian_Fairytales_complete.pdf.html)Thank you for the link. I was actually thinking of getting a copy through an inter-library loan when I first came across it here, but never got around to it.


Originally Posted by MarxSchmarx http://www.revleft.com/vb/../revleft/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.revleft.com/vb/../showthread.php?p=1291415#post1291415)
Prey tell, give me one example of precisely how heritable variation implicated in the current human "struggle for existence?"

Really any genetic disorder can show this, or lacking a genetic disorder.

For example, a recessive sex-linked disorder called Duchene Muscular Dystrophy (DMD). It is a mutation found on the X chromosome and therefore is more common in males then females because 'they don't another copy to compensate for the genetic defect.' (There's an article about it in Nature: http://www.nature.com/scitable/topic...of-Duchene-800 (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/Sex-linked-Diseases-the-Case-of-Duchene-800)). "It affects about 1 in 3,500 males." The following is another quote from the article:
Quote:
Normally, a balance exists between mutation and selection. Deleterious mutations, such as sex-linked disease genes, disappear over time because affected individuals often die before they reach reproductive age or are unable to reproduce. In effect, these mutations are ousted from the gene pool by natural selection. (...)
In the past, before prenatal testing or embryo sexing was an option, with no way to know whether a fetus had or might be carrying a deleterious sex-linked mutation, parents were not able to make these reproductive decisions. All fetuses affected with disease genes were born. Then, in the case of DMD, for example, if the affected child was a boy, he would mostly likely either die before reproducing or be incapable of reproducing, thereby removing that individual affected gene from the population. For this reason, diseases such as DMD have continued to occur at relatively low frequencies in the human population.
"Those individuals whose inherited characteristics provide the best "fit" to the limited environmental conditions are likely to leave more offspring than those less fit individuals."
So the people without the mutation would be reproducing more then the people with the mutation.I'm not convinced. Genetic disorders that result in almost certain death are a problematic example. The problem is the "struggle for existence" implies differential survival or reproduction that arises out of competition. Death from genetic disorders isn't the same thing as death or reduce fecundity from competitive exclusion.

Indeed, on some level the challenge for finding a trait whose variation is implicated "in the struggle for existence" comes down not so much to "Does this trait not screw me" (negative selection), but rather "Does this trait benefit me" (positive selection). Only in the latter sense does the Malthusian "struggle for existence" in the context of natural selection make sense.

Having said that, they are examples of traits under "negative selection". And technically, this is a consequence of variation. But on the other hand, these are phenotypes that are weeded out so quickly that it's a stretch to claim that the human population is evolving simply because there are genetic disorders out there. Put another way, you really don't need to invoke natural selection to explain why there aren't more people with DMD among us.

This problematic example not withstanding, I happily concede that genetic resistance to disease, even in humans, can be adaptive, and as to the presence of variation in the population, there is the case of sickle cell anemia and most likely small pox in the New World. However, even these examples are dwarfed and essentially curios relics, as public health and modern medicine have done far more to cure human diseases than natural selection than natural selection could have ever dreamed of.

In any event, the focus of Stove's critique, having glanced through the book, is on variable traits that are somehow linked ultimately to intra-, or possible inter-specific competition. This is how the theory of natural selection was originally formulated, and what is meant by "the struggle for existence."

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

RD:


I'm interested in in how you believe this is the case. At the moment I haven't the time to read through the article, could you quote the paragraph(s)?

Ok, then read it when you have time. [I myself am far too busy to summarise it -- sorry!:(]