[Ian]
> Hi SA, you said
> "Stephen Jay Gould emphasized the positive, creative
> aspect of natural
> selection"
> Presonally,
> Accentuate the positive is my middle-name. Decrying
> excluded middles
> is my cracked record. I have pointed out a hundred
> times on here that
> the naive "tooth and claw of nature" take on
> neo-Darwinism is gross
> ignorance and misrepresentation of the positive,
> creative, nurture
> aspects. Darwin and a zillion other enlightened
> neo-Darwinian
> evolutionary scientists recognise these. People
> emphasising the
> negative have their own (political) agendas in my
> experience.
Excellent, so, you have heard of this gross
distortion, too. Gould discussed the lack of studying
the old historical documents on this topic to be maybe
not THE degenerative slippage on evolutions
theoretical understandings, but it is sure a big one.
Thus, one reason why Gould called his very long book
("The Structure of Evolutionary Theory") 'one long
argument'. He covered many perspectives on the
theories generation.
[Ian]
> Anyway, As you point out, Rayners choice of "natural
> inclusion" is an attempt
> to emphasise a more positive view than "natural
> selection".
> One source of confusion is the focus on "species" of
> individual
> biological organism, evolution is far more than
> that. People have
> pointed out that Darwin's "Origin of Species" says
> very little about
> the subject in it's title. "A theory of evolutionary
> processes" would
> have been more honest.
From what I understand, Darwin's long discussions
about pigeons and bees, etc... were his efforts to tie
evolution upon the empirical path. You can see and
touch evolution in the field and notice it's wonderful
arrays. Thus, his discussion on where evolution would
have worked - the individual organisms. How do you
empirically pin-down a species? He we may notice the
old-enlightenment empiricism where grouping organisms
is helpful and scientifically a category, but not
strictly empirical where you can physically touch it.
Species would have been too subjective. In time,
reproduction theories summed up what a species is. I
can't think of the technical terms at this time, but
one of the concepts has to do with categorizing
species according to how they appear, the second
concept (a more recent one solidified with gene
understanding) is categorizing species according to if
parents mate and their children can reproduce with
others of their species then the parents where of the
same species, too. The further locked the physical,
purely observational science into a 'Hey, I can see
what a species is' - notice their genes and their
reproductive habits, genes are an observational must.
There were some once-thought species, after gene
categorization came along, those organisms were found
to be of different species.
I agree with you that Darwin was trying to
uncover not a species ORIGIN (due to his reference to
the Creator's wonders are beautiful, etc...).
Evolutions processes would also keep in mind that
Darwin knew that natural selection wasn't the only
process of evolution. Darwin thought it was just the
most frequent process.
thanks
windy, cool, very blue sky with passing white and gray
clouds,
SA
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