Teaching Evolution to Evolutionists

[Montalban]

I am still thinking aloud over this but given recent massive errors made by Evolutionists regarding Evolution I thought I'd point to a few lessons.

• One is that Darwin used the term "Survival of the Fittest" and that he actually preferred this as a term to describe his theory.
  
  Whether he coined the term or not is irrelevant

• Two is that the term "Survival of the Fittest" is a tautology, in that it means 'That which survives survives".

 

[Montalban]

I'm also open to talking about Abiogenesis, if anyone wants to know about it

 

[BrendanMark]

If Darwin never used the phrase, why attribute it to him?

In Darwin's view, "survival" meant living long enough to reproduce (sexual selection is the important bit).

Species that do not reproduce do not survive, let alone produce mutations, adaptations and variations, which abound in nature.

Do you disagree?

 

[sfs]

I am still thinking aloud over this but given recent massive errors made by Evolutionists regarding Evolution I thought I'd point to a few lessons.

• One is that Darwin used the term "Survival of the Fittest" and that he actually preferred this as a term to describe his theory.
  
  Whether he coined the term or not is irrelevant

Not to point too fine a point on it . . . who cares?

• Two is that the term "Survival of the Fittest" is a tautology, in that it means 'That which survives survives".

No, it means "survival of those most likely to survive". It is indeed trivially true that the fittest are more likely to survive. Do you have a point here? "Survival of the fittest" is a term that is only of historical interest as far as evolutionary biology is concerned.

 

[mark kennedy]

I am still thinking aloud over this but given recent massive errors made by Evolutionists regarding Evolution I thought I'd point to a few lessons.

• One is that Darwin used the term "Survival of the Fittest" and that he actually preferred this as a term to describe his theory.
  
  Whether he coined the term or not is irrelevant

• Two is that the term "Survival of the Fittest" is a tautology, in that it means 'That which survives survives".

The phrase he coined that is important and significant was 'natural selection', survival of the fittest is really just an expression. Oh and by the way, Darwin's natural selection was what he proposed as the primary means change from one species to another. What it boils down to is the death of the less fit according to Ernst Mayr.

The discovery of natural selection, by Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, must itself be counted as an extraordinary philosophical advance. The principle remained unknown throughout the more than 2,000-year history of philosophy ranging from the Greeks to Hume, Kant and the Victorian era. The concept of natural selection had remarkable power for explaining directional and adaptive changes. Its nature is simplicity itself. It is not a force like the forces described in the laws of physics; its mechanism is simply the elimination of inferior individuals. This process of nonrandom elimination impelled Darwin's contemporary, philosopher Herbert Spencer, to describe evolution with the now familiar term "survival of the fittest." (This description was long ridiculed as circular reasoning: "Who are the fittest ? Those who survive." In reality, a careful analysis can usually determine why certain individuals fail to thrive in a given set of conditions.)​

Darwin's Influence on Modern Thought

If you wanted to help evolutionists understand evolution then you should be defining pivotal terms like 'evolution' and 'science' because what these words mean and how they are used are two very different things.

Now while I am deeply skeptical of Darwinism as an a priori assumption of universal common descent I think On the Origin of Species is a wonderfully written book that makes complex scientific philosophy conversational and comprehensive. I say that not meaning to be compromising or patronizing, I see great merit in Darwin's work despite a deep animosity for his conclusion that apes and humans had a common ancestor.

If you are interested in the concept of survival of the fittest perhaps you should take a look at social darwinism. The phrase would seem to have been coined by Herbert Spencer but he based it to a large degree on Darwin's concept of natural selection.

Grace and peace,
Mark

 

[Montalban]

If Darwin never used the phrase, why attribute it to him?

He did use the phrase.

Let's look at what Darwin actually had to say about it. Look at this chapter from Darwin's own book. He uses it as an alternative for the term "Natural Selection"
On the Origin Of Species (1859)
Chapter IV: Natural Selection; Or the Survival of the Fittest
The Origin Of Species
The Origin Of Species

"This preservation of favourable individual differences and variations, and the destruction of those which are injurious, I have called Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest."
THE BRITISH LIBRARY - The world's knowledge

In fact, he states it's a better term
"But the expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer, of the Survival of the Fittest, is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient."
from the 6th edition of "Origin of the Species"
Literature.org - The Online Literature Library


But that's what this thread is all about

In Darwin's view, "survival" meant living long enough to reproduce (sexual selection is the important bit).

Species that do not reproduce do not survive, let alone produce mutations, adaptations and variations, which abound in nature.

Do you disagree?

I'm not here to argue AGAINST evolution. I'm here to educate good people such as yourself.

 

[Montalban]

If you wanted to help evolutionists understand evolution then you should be defining pivotal terms like 'evolution' and 'science' because what these words mean and how they are used are two very different things.

I already defined it as Darwin did - that which survives survives

 

[Montalban]

Not to point too fine a point on it . . . who cares?

I often wonder when people make such statements if they see the irony in them making such statements.

Then I realise, no they don't.

No, it means "survival of those most likely to survive".

No. It's not survival of the most likely. What is 'most likely' to survive is known post facto by seeing which survived

It is indeed trivially true that the fittest are more likely to survive. Do you have a point here? "Survival of the fittest" is a term that is only of historical interest as far as evolutionary biology is concerned.

Are you disowning it?

 

[mark kennedy]

I'm also open to talking about Abiogenesis, if anyone wants to know about it

I already know about it, there is no such thing.

 

[mark kennedy]

I already defined it as Darwin did - that which survives survives

Darwin never defined evolution, in fact he only used it a few times in On the Origin of Species. It was defined by Ernst Mayr as the change of alleles in populations over time. That's a far cry from universal common descent.

 

[Montalban]

Darwin never defined evolution, in fact he only used it a few times in On the Origin of Species. It was defined by Ernst Mayr as the change of alleles in populations over time. That's a far cry from universal common descent.

Really, I thought he had when he says what it is. "Natural Selection" being a term used to describe it

Maybe you're thinking of Neo-Darwinistic evolution.

"Darwin's conceptualization of natural selection was a remarkable accomplishment in the mid-19th century, and Darwin was right, within the limits of the science at the time. However, that Darwin's natural selection is perhaps too easy to understand led to misunderstandings such as "survival of the fittest", and its sad extrapolation to social Darwinism. Darwin's natural selection could not incorporate gene inheritance or random gene mutation because genes had not yet been discovered. Modern evolutionary theory describes decent with modification at the level of genes, phenotypes, and populations whereas Darwin described evolution at the level of organisms, speciation and individuals."
EVOLUTION

As I say, here to help

 

[Montalban]

I already know about it, there is no such thing.

Really? Where did life come from?

 

[sfs]

I often wonder when people make such statements if they see the irony in them making such statements.

Then I realise, no they don't.

What's ironic about it? Whether Darwin used the term "survival of the fittest" is (to me) too unimportant to be worth bothering with. Someone trying to lecture others on evolutionary biology without understanding the subject is worth bothering with, however.

No. It's not survival of the most likely. What is 'most likely' to survive is known post facto by seeing which survived

I'm sorry, but this is wrong. Fitness is a statistical characteristic, not a deterministic one. This is trivially true in modern evolutionary biology, in which fitness is characterized by an increased probability of reproduction (usually expressed as 1+s, where s is the selection coefficient). But Darwin also understood this, as is clear from The Origin of Species. Thus, when introducing natural selection, he writes, "If such [useful variations] do occur, can we doubt (remembering that any 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?" He describes an increased chance of surviving; nowhere does he offer the simple tautological formulation you give.

He is more explicit about the issue later in the same chapter, when he writes, "It may be well here to remark that with all beings there must be much fortuitous destruction, which can have little or no influence on the course of natural selection. For instance a vast number of eggs or seeds are annually devoured, and these could be modified through natural selection only if they varied in some manner which protected them from their enemies. Yet any of these eggs or seeds would perhaps, if not destroyed, have yielded individuals better adapted to their conditions of life than any of those which happened to survive. So again a vast number of mature animals and plants, whether or not they be the best adapted to their conditions, must be annually destroyed by accidental causes, which would not be in the least degree mitigated by certain changes of structure or constitution which would in other ways be beneficial to the species. But let the destruction of the adults be ever so heavy, if the number which can exist in any district be no wholly kept down by such causes, -- or again, let the destruction of eggs or seeds be so great that only a hundredth or a thousandth part are developed, -- yet of those which do survive, the best adapted individuals, supposing that there is any variability in a favourable direction, will tend to propagate their kind in larger numbers than the less well adapted." His understanding is precisely that of modern evolutionary biology (although without the mathematical framework): a trait gives greater fitness if those having it are more likely to survive.

The other key fact that makes natural selection an observation about the world, rather than a mere tautology, is that some traits are heritable. The combination of the two facts -- that some traits are more conducive to survival than others, and that some of those advantageous traits can be inherited -- means that species change over time and can adapt to their environments.

Are you disowning it?

I never owned it in the first place, so how could I disown it? I'm just pointing out that you're arguing (incorrectly) about a term that isn't even part of contemporary evolutionary biology.

 

[Mallon]

Two is that the term "Survival of the Fittest" is a tautology, in that it means 'That which survives survives".

From http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA500.html:

1. "Survival of the fittest" is a poor way to think about evolution. Darwin himself did not use the phrase in the first edition of Origin of Species. What Darwin said is that heritable variations lead to differential reproductive success. This is not circular or tautologous. It is a prediction that can be, and has been, experimentally verified (Weiner 1994).

2. The phrase cannot be a tautology if it is not trivially true. Yet there have been theories proposing that the fittest individuals perish:
-Alpheus Hyatt proposed that lineages, like individuals, inevitably go through stages of youth, maturity, old age, and death. Towards the end of this cycle, the fittest individuals are more likely to perish than others (Hyatt 1866; Lefalophodon n.d.).
-The theory of orthogenesis says that certain trends, once started, kept progressing even though they become detrimental and lead to extinction. For example, it was held that Irish elks, which had enormous antlers, died out because the size increase became too much to support.
-The "fittest" individuals could be considered those that are ideally suited to a particular environment. Such ideal adaptation, however, comes at the cost of being more poorly adapted to other environments. If the environment changes, the fittest individuals from it will no longer be well adapted to any environment, and the less fit but more widely adapted organisms will survive.

3. The fittest, to Darwin, were not those which survived, but those which could be expected to survive on the basis of their traits. For example, wild dogs selectively prey on impalas which are weaker according to bone marrow index (Pole et al. 2003). With that definition, survival of the fittest is not a tautology. Similarly, survival can be defined not in terms of the individual's life span, but in terms of leaving a relatively large contribution to the next generation. Defined thus, survival of the fittest becomes more or less what Darwin said, and is not a tautology.

(FWIW, I don't believe the crap about orthogenesis.)

 

[gluadys]

Darwin never defined evolution, in fact he only used it a few times in On the Origin of Species. It was defined by Ernst Mayr as the change of alleles in populations over time. That's a far cry from universal common descent.

However, Ernst Mayr also defined speciation, and that is the basis of common descent.

 

[shernren]

If "survival of the fittest" were a tautology, it would be no less true. "All bachelors are unmarried" is a definitional tautology but I have yet to meet a married bachelor.

As it is, though, "survival of the fittest" is not a tautology. In addition to the excellent reasons provided by everyone else on this thread, sometimes it simply isn't true in nature that the fittest actually produce the most offspring. That's what a bottleneck is. Let's say an environmental disaster destroys all but a hundred of the population of fish in a lake. Of that hundred which have survived, some are "fit", but others are plain lucky, especially if the disaster is something which the fish have no natural responses for (like a meteor strike). As such, the genetic pool of a hundred crisis survivors is slightly different from what it would be if you were choosing the absolute hundred fittest fish.

Indeed, on a genetic level, "survival of the fittest" is a routinely tested question. The pseudogene GULOP is contained in all humans: it has "survived". But has it survived because it increases the fitness of humans who contain it? Or has it survived simply because it was contained by the first recent common ancestor of humans? In this case, the question is testable: if GULOP were being maintained in our genome by selection, then the gene would show many more "synonymous" point mutations (ones which don't change the amino acid output of the codons) than "nonsynonymous" point mutations, because the nonsynonymous mutations cause the gene to malfunction and are thus weeded out. On the other hand, if GULOP is present only due to a founder effect, we would expect to see synonymous and nonsynonymous point mutations in similar frequencies.

This is the Ka/Ks ratio, and testing for it shows that GULOP is indeed present in the human genome merely as an genetic artifact of human ancestry. Survival is not necessarily of the fittest gene, in this case.

 

[Montalban]

What's ironic about it? Whether Darwin used the term "survival of the fittest" is (to me) too unimportant to be worth bothering with. Someone trying to lecture others on evolutionary biology without understanding the subject is worth bothering with, however.

Thank you for letting me know, again.

I'm sorry, but this is wrong. Fitness is a statistical characteristic, not a deterministic one. This is trivially true in modern evolutionary biology, in which fitness is characterized by an increased probability of reproduction (usually expressed as 1+s, where s is the selection coefficient). But Darwin also understood this, as is clear from The Origin of Species. Thus, when introducing natural selection, he writes, "If such [useful variations] do occur, can we doubt (remembering that any 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?" He describes an increased chance of surviving; nowhere does he offer the simple tautological formulation you give.

He is more explicit about the issue later in the same chapter, when he writes, "It may be well here to remark that with all beings there must be much fortuitous destruction, which can have little or no influence on the course of natural selection. For instance a vast number of eggs or seeds are annually devoured, and these could be modified through natural selection only if they varied in some manner which protected them from their enemies. Yet any of these eggs or seeds would perhaps, if not destroyed, have yielded individuals better adapted to their conditions of life than any of those which happened to survive. So again a vast number of mature animals and plants, whether or not they be the best adapted to their conditions, must be annually destroyed by accidental causes, which would not be in the least degree mitigated by certain changes of structure or constitution which would in other ways be beneficial to the species. But let the destruction of the adults be ever so heavy, if the number which can exist in any district be no wholly kept down by such causes, -- or again, let the destruction of eggs or seeds be so great that only a hundredth or a thousandth part are developed, -- yet of those which do survive, the best adapted individuals, supposing that there is any variability in a favourable direction, will tend to propagate their kind in larger numbers than the less well adapted." His understanding is precisely that of modern evolutionary biology (although without the mathematical framework): a trait gives greater fitness if those having it are more likely to survive.

The other key fact that makes natural selection an observation about the world, rather than a mere tautology, is that some traits are heritable.

No. It's trivially true. Two lions might have genetic differences where-in one gives the lion a stronger frame, and the other might say be able to go a little longer without water.

What makes one more 'fit' isn't know till circumstances roll-out. IF the one with the water advantage were able to pass its genes on and a drought happened and its offspring prevailed where the other's offspring didn't, then that which was 'fit' was determined by that drought. However it might not have been able to pass on its genes because in the immediate future the other was stronger and got all the mates.

The combination of the two facts -- that some traits are more conducive to survival than others, and that some of those advantageous traits can be inherited -- means that species change over time and can adapt to their environments.

That which survives, survives

I never owned it in the first place, so how could I disown it? I'm just pointing out that you're arguing (incorrectly) about a term that isn't even part of contemporary evolutionary biology.

I've suggested that Darwin used it. He preferred it. I've evidenced that.

However in modern biology all they do is word-play..
"Survival of the fittest" should be rephrased as "survival of the more adequate".
Evolution and Chance
Which is the same thing.

Natural selection is the cornerstone of modern biology and Darwin said that the term "Survival of the Fittest" is his preferred way of terming "Natural Selection".

That Biologists don't now generally use the term to describe the same thing doesn't matter.

 

[Montalban]

If "survival of the fittest" were a tautology, it would be no less true. "All bachelors are unmarried" is a definitional tautology but I have yet to meet a married bachelor.

You wouldn't need to say "All bachelors are unmarried"

Certainly in describing the term 'bachelor' you could say "they are all unmarried". However "survival of the fittest" is true but only in a trival sense because it simply means that which survives, suvives.

As it is, though, "survival of the fittest" is not a tautology.

Yes, it is. It means that all that survives survives. In that sense it is a tautology.

In addition to the excellent reasons provided by everyone else on this thread, sometimes it simply isn't true in nature that the fittest actually produce the most offspring.

That's not what I maintained. You could have 60 kids and I have one but if my child had a gene that enabled it to combat a viral outbreak, then my child would be 'fit' because he survives whereas all your children would die.

HOWEVER if there were never such a outbreak of such a virus then this trait doesn't make him more 'fit' than your children.

Fitness is here determined only retrospectively. What survived survived.

That's what a bottleneck is. Let's say an environmental disaster destroys all but a hundred of the population of fish in a lake. Of that hundred which have survived, some are "fit", but others are plain lucky, especially if the disaster is something which the fish have no natural responses for (like a meteor strike). As such, the genetic pool of a hundred crisis survivors is slightly different from what it would be if you were choosing the absolute hundred fittest fish.

How were some of those which survived 'fit' rather than lucky?

Indeed, on a genetic level, "survival of the fittest" is a routinely tested question. The pseudogene GULOP is contained in all humans: it has "survived". But has it survived because it increases the fitness of humans who contain it? Or has it survived simply because it was contained by the first recent common ancestor of humans? In this case, the question is testable: if GULOP were being maintained in our genome by selection, then the gene would show many more "synonymous" point mutations (ones which don't change the amino acid output of the codons) than "nonsynonymous" point mutations, because the nonsynonymous mutations cause the gene to malfunction and are thus weeded out. On the other hand, if GULOP is present only due to a founder effect, we would expect to see synonymous and nonsynonymous point mutations in similar frequencies.

That's a great mental exercise which doesn't help at all. It has survived. It is therefore fit to survive – because it's survived

This is the Ka/Ks ratio, and testing for it shows that GULOP is indeed present in the human genome merely as an genetic artefact of human ancestry. Survival is not necessarily of the fittest gene, in this case.

That's not true. It's survived, therefore it was fit to survive.

I'm not aware of the scientific papers on 'survival of the luckiest' perhaps you could post some links as I'd be interested to read up on this.

 

[Montalban]

From http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA500.html:

1. "Survival of the fittest" is a poor way to think about evolution. Darwin himself did not use the phrase in the first edition of Origin of Species. What Darwin said is that heritable variations lead to differential reproductive success. This is not circular or tautologous. It is a prediction that can be, and has been, experimentally verified (Weiner 1994).

I don't trust sources that misrepresent the evidence.

Here they try a neat trick by saying that he did not use the term in the 1st edition. Whilst true, it's deceptive because it deflects people from the fact that Darwin, on reflection chose to use it in later editions and said in fact he preferred the term

 

[Mallon]

I don't trust sources that misrepresent the evidence.

Here they try a neat trick by saying that he did not use the term in the 1st edition. Whilst true, it's deceptive because it deflects people from the fact that Darwin, on reflection chose to use it in later editions and said in fact he preferred the term

So what if he did? I really don't see what you're trying to get at by saying that Darwin used the term "survival of the fittest". Do you think all of evolution theory crumbles if this is true?