Monday, August 14, 2006

Right, then, about that Evolution thing.

See entries below; time to see if I can nail this. For starters, let's just check what Natural Selection actually means, because I think that there are a lot of people who have never understood this. It's actually blindingly simple. It depends on only two observations. The rest barely constitutes an argument; it's really just a statement of a necessary truth.

Observation One: Changes in the form of an animal (including people) can occur between generations.
Observation Two: These changes can often be inherited.

Yup, that's it, and I'd just like to see anyone try to say that either of those points has not enough evidence to support it. We'd be a lot colder if it wasn't true, because we wouldn't have such marvelously woolly sheep.

Now here's the logic bit.
If such a change confers an advantage upon its possessor, then those who possess it will do better than those who don't. (As you see, this is basically a definition of "advantage". It's an important step, though, because it sets up the next one.)
This means that, over time, the proportion of creatures (in the particular context) with the trait in question will increase.

And. That's. It. That's what it means, for a particular trait to be naturally selected. Everything else we know is just icing on the cake, really.

This is survival of the fittest, and for those amongst you who have never gotten over the misinformation which was promulgated in (particularly) America post-Darwin, please note the complete absence of it being all about getting one over on the other guy, or of any feature which could allow it to be mistaken for any sort of moral imperative.

I'm not saying that this is enough to account robustly for all that is attributed to the process of evolution. But this is what is meant by Natural Selection, and this is what is meant by the Survival of the Fittest; please, show me how the existence of these forces is just a matter of opinion, do.

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