I find it useful to refer to 'selective adaptation' when I focus on resulting
adaptations or to 'adaptive selection' when I focus on selection mechanisms. I
also prefer something like 'human'-'nonhuman' or 'natural'-'cultural' when
discussing selection mechanisms -- I find that equating 'human' with
'artificial' somehow does not facilitate understanding human behavior toward
solution-oriented thinking. After all, human behavior may be mental (ha ha),
but it is nonetheless 'natural' to humans.
In terms of system variability, I also find it useful to think of variability
producing mechanisms in two broad categories: (1) inter- or intra-system
variability introducing mechanisms that introduce previously nonexistent
variability into a given system, and (2) deterministic or stochastic
variability sorting mechanisms that sort previously existing variability within
a given system. In terms of system variability, 'adaptive selection' is a
deterministic variability-sorting mechanism.
Note that this system-variability approach is a useful analytical construct,
not a hardened ontological statement, but it does suggest that a number of
variability-producing mechanisms work continuously on all variability at all
levels, even if 'adaptive selection' is the Big Kahuna. Who said, Nature is
not more complicated than we think; nature is more complicated than we can
think? Seriously, I have always liked this quote, but I cannot find a
definitive attribute.
Steve Lohse
Futures Studies
Dept. of Political Science
University of Hawaii at Manoa
You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes
the existing model obsolete.
--Buckminster Fuller
----- Original Message -----
From: William Silvert <[email protected]>
Date: Monday, December 28, 2009 3:51 am
Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Ecology as Science Status and Future
To: [email protected]
> Since we seem to be celebrating the New Year with a
> philosophical twist, I
> have a question to pose -- why do we focus on Natural Selection
> rather than
> simply Selection? I have difficulty drawing the line betwen what
> occurs
> naturally and what is artificial, namely caused by humans.
>
> For example, is there a fundamental difference between horses
> that run
> faster because predators catch the slower ones and horses that
> run faster
> because humans geld the slower ones? Was the famous change in
> the colour of
> moths when trees were darkened by industrial activity Natural
> Selection?
> If evolution is driven by natural changes in the environment,
> then clearly
> Natural Selection is at work. But if environmental change is
> driven by human
> activities, is it still Natural Selection at work?
>
> For me it seems that Selection is Selection and I don't see
> where the
> Natural part comes in, other than as the term that Darwin used.
>
> There is a practical side to this question. There is so much
> evidence for
> selective breeding that it is hard for any Creationist to deny
> it. By
> considering the selective processes of the past to be somehow
> different, it
> is possible to deny Natural Selection whle acccepting selective
> breeding.
> Bill Silvert
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "malcolm McCallum" <[email protected]>
> To: <[email protected]>
> Sent: domingo, 27 de Dezembro de 2009 16:11
> Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Ecology as Science Status and Future
>
>
> > Evolution by Natural Selection.
> > Its the basis of ecology.
> > It always shocks me though when people try to separate it from
> ecology.
