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Re: Adaptationism's Lessons (was Re: Evolution, "adaptation")
John Wilkins (wilkins@wehi.edu.au)
Tue, 17 Sep 1996 13:36:13 +1000
In article <m-pg0123.842836231@granny>, m-pg0123@granny.cs.nyu.edu (Paul
Gallagher) wrote:
| mycol1@unm.edu (Bryant) writes:
|
| >Why is this important? We were discussing genes, not memes. For the
| >record, I'm not too impressed with Dawkins' take on signal evolution
| >either. But most of the adaptationist notions we were discussing weren't
| >Dawksinian ideas.
Sorry, I interpolated memes here (since it's an obsession and this is
sci.anthro and cultural change may be relevant :-).
However, remember that Williams calls genes a "cybernetic abstraction", so
it is relevant.
|
| I owe an explanation. I was returning to a discussion I had with Wilkins
| back in July on talk.origins - (the "High Table" thread, in case anyone
| wants to check the archives).
|
| >This is an interesting point. Adaptations being the traits which
| >contribute to differential reproductive success because of the specific
| >socio-environmental or homeostatic challenges they help overcome is
| >tautological? How would you propose biologists define adaptation, then?
|
| That's not the definition Wilkins gave. He defined adaptation solely
| in terms of the selection coefficient at an individual allele. (I posted
| an article about various definitions of natural selection on
sci.bio.evolution.
| It may still be available on http://www.dejanews.com.)
I don't think I did give that definition, although it may very well be the
logical outcome of what I think. Williams' 1966 book says that for general
theory purposes we can treat the selection coefficient as the difference
contributed to the mean arithmetic fitness of a single unlinked allele,
but I'm paraphrasing here and that might be a misconstrual.
--
John Wilkins, Head of Communication Services, Walter and Eliza
Hall Institute of Medical Research
<http://www.wehi.edu.au/~wilkins/www.html><mailto:wilkins@wehi.edu.au>
It is the glory of science that it finds the patterns
in spite of the noise - Daniel Dennett
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