I can't speak for LadyLorraine and won't try, but here's how I see it: - Edit 1
Before modification by Joel at 06/08/2011 06:50:44 PM
Natural Selection is the pressure put on a specie in an environment to survive. Animals with traits that are beneficial to the environment
Here I have to break in and ask: how does one know that a specific trait is beneficial to the environment?
can live longer and potentially contribute more to the gene pool. Animals with detrimental traits will live shorter lives and potentially contribute less to the gene pool.
This part seems to be oke
With these two influences, a specie's gene pool will, over time, be more beneficial to survival in that specific environment. It may not be enough to cause a deviation from specie (after all, look at the range of phenotype among humans), but it will be enough to increase the survival rate for that population.
Nothing intrinsically "wrong" with this part, but it is interesting none the less, since if you ask me, this part of your definition goes beond wat NS is, strictly speaking, and goes on to discuss the result.
There is however something else going on here, first you speak of "beneficial to the environment" (and I asked what that is), and here you say that the result is that it is beneficial to survival and even an increased survival rate for a population.
Now you make it a bit more complicated by importing the notion of a gene pool (a concept I think I understand), but something would be wrong here, if the book I'm reading is to be believed.
For you go from "beneficial to the enivronment" to "living longer/reproducing more often/contributing to the gene pool" (doesn't really matter how you label the 2nd step), to "increased survival rate".
Now first I asked you to define what you meant by "beneficial to the environment". Do you have a definition or perhaps an example?
Now, again: how would you know it is beneficial?
By the result, right? That is: if it helps to "increase the survival rate".
But if "increase of the survival rate" is the way to determine whether something is "beneficial to the environment", then the two are equal. By definition.
Hence we have a tautology.
A tautology is true (by definition), but it is not scientific in the sense that it can be tested.
I would be interested in hearing what he discussed. I'm trying to think of how one would discuss Natural Selection "philosophically", unless one is talking about cultural selection and natural selection in a society. Even then. I think that's more of a "borrowing" of the term than a true application.
I hope my repetition/application of what I think is his argument made sense to you
A benefit TO the environment seems like going too far, because that statement itself is an entry into the philosophical, but an increased survival rate is a metric for benefits IN the environment: The greater survival of organisms with a certain trait in a certain environment over that of organisms without it suggests a natural, mechanical and non-directed selection for such traits generally. Without guidance, traits that help an organism in a given environment come to predominate over those that either don't help or even harm organisms, because organisms with helpful traits live longer and breed more than others. The scientific test of the theory is whether we can observe the results it predicts over time: If we do, that's evidence the theory is valid; if not, that's counterevidence (bearing in mind, as always, that evidence does not necessarily reach the level of conclusive proof).
That's just one laymans limited understanding though, so take it for what it's worth; there's a reason I didn't leap up to give my opinion.
