Hey, Cole.

Change in a genetic population caused by chance (there are theorists who believe that this occurs) would qualify as not natural selection because it doesn't operate in response to a survival or reproductive advantage. Anything that is caused by those two advantages is natural selection. It's a natural law, like gravity. You don't ask. yourself what kind of falling from a tall building (leaping or tripping) is gravity, do you?

Even direct genetic intervention, as described by Georg, if it is maintained by a reproducing variety, is still natural selection. Get rid of your vinous and agricultural, Rousseauian notions of natural. The only non-natural things that occur are the supernatural (and, of course, they don't occur).
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
In the case of cultivar's
Click to expand...
"cultivars"
if the term applied to flora
Click to expand...
"fauna"
originally posted by Brian C:
Wouldn’t “breed” be the animal equivalent
Click to expand...
I don't think so because they reproduce true. So breed = variety. Mutts, on the other hand, are hybrids but I suppose if you keep making the same one over and over, e.g., "Labradoodle", perhaps that is a faunal cultivar.
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
The only non-natural things that occur are the supernatural
Click to expand...
Note that Darwin used the term "artificial selection" to refer to what we would now call "selective breeding", which is, as you say, still a natural process but is highly accelerated by our intervention.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Change in a genetic population caused by chance (there are theorists who believe that this occurs) would qualify as not natural selection because it doesn't operate in response to a survival or reproductive advantage. Anything that is caused by those two advantages is natural selection. It's a natural law, like gravity. You don't ask. yourself what kind of falling from a tall building (leaping or tripping) is gravity, do you?

Even direct genetic intervention, as described by Georg, if it is maintained by a reproducing variety, is still natural selection. Get rid of your vinous and agricultural, Rousseauian notions of natural. The only non-natural things that occur are the supernatural (and, of course, they don't occur).
Click to expand...

But did not Darwin himself distinguish between natural and artificial selection? The latter being what humans do when breeding new varieties.
 
Darwin made the distinction at the behest of friends who read the work in manuscript and were troubled by the suggestion that natural selection, like human selction, was designed, thus leading to all the turmoil of the argumemt from design. Since he construed natural selection to be a causal mechanism and not the result of cosmic intention, such a confusion would have been problematic. He might have saved himself the trouble since the construal of natural selection as a form of cosmic design, alas, exists to this day. But the reason for the choice was that, whether operating in response to human design or not, the selection occurred and occurred in response to natural cause and effect. Human design is just another of the infinite causes in the world.

Mutts aren't varieties because there are only one of them. They aren't hybrids, either, at least in the sense that a mule is a hybrid. They are just offspring, like you and me, with mixed genetic heritage. If they become stabilized, as in labradoodle indeed,they are then a variety, varieties being groups of offspring that become genetically isolated. This all only follows, however, if one considers the dog to be its own species rather than a subspecies of wolves (as some taxonomists do). That, I would guess, would change the breeds to into subvarieties or genetic populations. But I am relatively agnostic about such taxonomic details. My only real objection to "cultivar" was that it leads to what this thread shows is a widely held belief that human breeding is not natural selection and thus needs its own special term.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Change in a genetic population caused by chance (there are theorists who believe that this occurs) would qualify as not natural selection because it doesn't operate in response to a survival or reproductive advantage. Anything that is caused by those two advantages is natural selection. It's a natural law, like gravity. You don't ask. yourself what kind of falling from a tall building (leaping or tripping) is gravity, do you?

Even direct genetic intervention, as described by Georg, if it is maintained by a reproducing variety, is still natural selection. Get rid of your vinous and agricultural, Rousseauian notions of natural. The only non-natural things that occur are the supernatural (and, of course, they don't occur).
Click to expand...

If a definition allows no exceptions, then there's no need to append the qualifier natural. You don't say "we fall because of natural gravity," do you?

My take is that you have a totalizing understanding of the term that is not a law of nature but a tautology, one where every consequence is folded into natural selection because you have defined natural selection as governing every consequence (rather like your view of terroir).

What I hear the two Marks (and others) proposing are non-tautological understandings which use the term to mean survival of the fittest in the stricter sense of biological fitness. Not, for example, survival of the cutest (e.g., French Bulldog, incapable of reproducing unassisted) or survival of the richest (trust fund babies neutered by money). These could be seen as short-term departures from natural selection because generated by mankind for entertainment or to protect offspring from competition. In the long run, survival of the fittest should extinguish aberrations, but in the short run there is plenty of non-natural selection going on (but no violations of gravity).
 
Isn’t it right to say Darwin’s concept has evolved because we know more know about genetics? If a genetic mutation occurs by any mechanism and the resulting DNA and protein sequences are stable and reproduce, isn’t that natural selection? (I’m putting aside taxonomy and how to characterize breed/variety/cultivar.)

Or is natural selection only the subset of that phenomenon that is not human-engineered, whether traditionally by breeding, or in more modern times, by genetic modification?
 
In defense of Jonathan’s position, I do understand the point he is making. In breeding an animal or producing a cultivar, humans merely substitute one selection pressure for another. Propagation of individuals relies on selection criteria chosen by a human rather than various environmental factors, but the mechanism remains unchanged. As I said above, that is technically correct but runs counter to the popular understanding of natural selection. As others have mentioned, it’s difficult to imagine what would constitute unnatural selection in this scenario.

Mark Lipton
 
originally posted by MLipton:
In defense of Jonathan’s position, I do understand the point he is making. In breeding an animal or producing a cultivar, humans merely substitute one selection pressure for another. Propagation of individuals relies on selection criteria chosen by a human rather than various environmental factors, but the mechanism remains unchanged. As I said above, that is technically correct but runs counter to the popular understanding of natural selection. As others have mentioned, it’s difficult to imagine what would constitute unnatural selection in this scenario.

Mark Lipton
Click to expand...

I think “human factors” is not the dividing line. Maybe not human-chosen factors either but closer. Like other species on the planet, we can influence natural mutation by where we choose to build or irrigate or divert. There is no intent there. A harder line to draw is when humans choose to cultivate a corn found by natural mutation to be drought resistant and that has an effect on other species. But that’s still a natural selection in the sense that the surrounding species are responding to a human driving force that was not directed at them. So I think some line can be drawn here around intent. I just don’t know if it’s the line Darwin had in mind.
 
originally posted by Jayson Cohen:
I think “human factors” is not the dividing line. Maybe not human-chosen factors either but closer. Like other species on the planet, we can influence natural mutation by where we choose to build or irrigate or divert. There is no intent there. A harder line to draw is when humans choose to cultivate a corn found by natural mutation to be drought resistant and that has an effect on other species. But that’s still a natural selection in the sense that the surrounding species are responding to a human driving force that was not directed at them. So I think some line can be drawn here around intent. I just don’t know if it’s the line Darwin had in mind.
Click to expand...
The McIntosh apple was discovered growing in a field, displacing several less-interesting types from the marketplace and, ultimately, the world --
A family of beavers dam a river, depriving Coad's Snail Darter of its only breeding ground, and it goes extinct --
Monsanto splices an anti-Roundup gene into live kernels, leading eager farmers to poison their neighbor's heritage crop by over-spraying --

These are natural or artificial, human or human-chosen, intent or no intent?
 
Darwin invented the term natural selection to distinguish it from designed creation. His problem was that since functionality generally resulted from that causation and function looks a lot like something designed, he wanted to insist on a non-designing, natural cause. He was completely unconcerned with distinguishing it from human selection, except to the extent that human selection, as intended and designed, always, in the nineteenth century and before, implied that other things that looked like it were also intended and designed and thus formed a teleology. Once we have extirpated the notion that there is a cosmic design, human selection is no different than any other animal activity that has an end and influences another species. Maybe the term has evolved to meet certain needs of ecological and environmental argument, but for evolutionary theory, that evolution is unfortunate. The term is not a tautology because any other natural, causal mechanism that led to speciation (chance genetic variation following a probabilistic pattern for instance or, from some viewpoints, sexual selection)would not be natural selection. The problem here seems as always that wetake "natural," as eighteenth century theorists, in order to distinguish it from "non-natural," frequently bad, things that nevertheless happened in nature. Darwin had no such bug up his ass.

"Survival of the fittest," by the way, was a term invented by Herbert Spencer in support of his transmogrification of evolution into Social Darwinism. Darwin very explicitly did not accept the term.

I understand the desire to set human influence aside for numbers of ideological reasons, some of them valid. But we shouldn't think that the distinction is biologically valid.
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:

originally posted by Brian C:
Wouldn’t “breed” be the animal equivalent
Click to expand...
I don't think so because they reproduce true. So breed = variety. Mutts, on the other hand, are hybrids but I suppose if you keep making the same one over and over, e.g., "Labradoodle", perhaps that is a faunal cultivar.
[
Click to expand...
“There’s that word again. I do not think it means what you think it means”

I’m starting to think you’re trolling me, Jeff. The vocabulary of this debate might be the least interesting aspect but let’s get the terminology right. You’re getting hung up on “cultivars” needing genetic instability as their defining factor, which is not true. While a variety Is simply a population sharing trait similarities that exist within wild populations (ie outside of human interventions), a cultivar is defined by existsance and maintainance through human interventions. The intervention always involves the selection of desirable traits that define the population but how they are maintained can vary widely. Genetically unstable plants like apples, wine grapes, and potatoes as well as hybrids represent the extreme in terms of maintenance, but genetically stable things like open-pollinated food crops are no less dependent on human intervention to exist. Same goes for poodles where the human intervention is controlling the parentage. Take humans out of the equation and poodles cease to exist within a generation or two. Cultivar is a very broad term.
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
originally posted by Jayson Cohen:
I think “human factors” is not the dividing line. Maybe not human-chosen factors either but closer. Like other species on the planet, we can influence natural mutation by where we choose to build or irrigate or divert. There is no intent there. A harder line to draw is when humans choose to cultivate a corn found by natural mutation to be drought resistant and that has an effect on other species. But that’s still a natural selection in the sense that the surrounding species are responding to a human driving force that was not directed at them. So I think some line can be drawn here around intent. I just don’t know if it’s the line Darwin had in mind.
Click to expand...
The McIntosh apple was discovered growing in a field, displacing several less-interesting types from the marketplace and, ultimately, the world --
A family of beavers dam a river, depriving Coad's Snail Darter of its only breeding ground, and it goes extinct --
Monsanto splices an anti-Roundup gene into live kernels, leading eager farmers to poison their neighbor's heritage crop by over-spraying --

These are natural or artificial, human or human-chosen, intent or no intent?
Click to expand...

I don’t understand what you are saying Jeff because there are distinctions to be made here among your examples that I think go to the questions being raised and how it relates to Darwin’s or our own conception of natural selection.

If humans found and isolated the naturally occurring Macintosh and then cut down the other apple trees to grow Macintosh, that’s not natural selection I think by any definition.
 
"If humans found and isolated the naturally occurring Macintosh and then cut down the other apple trees to grow Macintosh, that’s not natural selection I think by any definition."

Why not? It's well known that leopards went through some kind of evolutionary bottleneck that makes them unusually genetically identical. To my knowledge, we don't know what the bottleneck was, but it would effectively have destroyed all leopards but one genetic population. If the bottleneck were some form of predation by a non-human living entity, would it not be natural selection?
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
"If humans found and isolated the naturally occurring Macintosh and then cut down the other apple trees to grow Macintosh, that’s not natural selection I think by any definition."

Why not? It's well known that leopards went through some kind of evolutionary bottleneck that makes them unusually genetically identical. To my knowledge, we don't know what the bottleneck was, but it would effectively have destroyed all leopards but one genetic population. If the bottleneck were some form of predation by a non-human living entity, would it not be natural selection?
Click to expand...

It would. But it’s not the same thing. No one intentionally sought to cause the selection of one leopard form over another.
 
We're going around in circles. Yes the issue is whether human intention is somehow not a natural event. I dont see why it isn't but all other animal intention (animals, some of them at least, do have intentions), is. If biologists were Martians, I doubt they would feel this way. But I also don't think any evidence could change the issue for either of us. As I said, above, I do think Brian should now be persuaded by my worry that the category of cultivar cultivates this belief is not unfounded.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Darwin invented the term natural selection to distinguish it from designed creation. His problem was that since functionality generally resulted from that causation and function looks a lot like something designed, he wanted to insist on a non-designing, natural cause. He was completely unconcerned with distinguishing it from human selection, except to the extent that human selection, as intended and designed, always, in the nineteenth century and before, implied that other things that looked like it were also intended and designed and thus formed a teleology.
Click to expand...

Because of the time he lived in, Darwin may have also needed to distinguish design by nature from design by some deity, but the distinction we are concerned with (in this thread of mostly non-believers) is the one he also made between "not man-made" (which he called "natural") and "man-made" (which he called "artificial"). The "not man-made" was exactly the "non-designing, natural cause" you mention that looks designed but isn't, whereas the "man-made" was the designing, not natural (without any negative connotation up anyone's ass) cause that looks designed and is. This distinction, that Darwin himself made, seems to me at odds with your claim that he shared your definition.

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Once we have extirpated the notion that there is a cosmic design, human selection is no different than any other animal activity that has an end and influences another species.
Click to expand...

Human selection may be at odds with the self-interest of the species in a way that non-human animal activity cannot be. Hence our gradual and suicidal degradation of the environment, etc. Darwin distinguished between human design (artificial) and (other) animal activity (natural). This is a useful distinction (and not because of ideology) because artificial selection can lead to our demise, unlike what I would call natural selection, which generates improved adaptation.

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
The term is not a tautology because any other natural, causal mechanism that led to speciation (chance genetic variation following a probabilistic pattern for instance or, from some viewpoints, sexual selection) would not be natural selection.
Click to expand...

These exceptions make the picture of what you are saying clearer to me, that intention is a necessary ingredient and chance doesn't count. I had understood to be your position that unintentional human activity also is part of natural selection.

If you are going to claim that all natural selection must be intentional, then all the non-designing activity would have to be excluded, confining natural selection to a narrow subset of teleological actions.

Your comment about survival of the fittest is well-taken, so I withdraw that term.
 
After a late night working and a long work day ahead, I am completely lost and feel like I would need a government grant to go back and try to understand what anyone else is saying in this thread. But since neither science nor history is valued in current times, I fear my naturally-selected path is to bow out.
 
1)The term artificial entails a distinction between human and non-human that is frequently useful. Darwin used it precisely to distinguish that natural selection was not neceesarily produced by a designing intelligence, not that designing intelligences don't exist in nature. A reading of Origins, Descent, Expression of Human Emotions and Variations of Animals and Plants more than adequately shows that he believed that human actions were both evolutionarily conditioned and evolutionarily meaningful. Variants of Animals and Plants may be most striking because it analyzes selection as the extended title shows in terms of occurrences under domestication. Your idea that he made a strict distinction between human and non-human just isn't the case. Once he gave up the notion that he could articulate the theory without offending people, he made very clear that he saw human action as like any other animal action because human beings were animals.
2)There may be human activity that is qualitatively different than non-human activity, though if human beings are animals, it's hard to see that distinction hold up. In either case, self-destructive practices are not one of them. Predators regularly endanger themselves by eating up so much resources that there environmental niche will not support them. The usual control on this is famine, the regeneration of the resource and a restoration of balance. Such a cycle could well "solve" climate change. You just wouldn't like the process, which might take a couple of hundred years and the death of 90% of humanity. This kind of thing is barely a nick in evolutionary history. It's just that your focus on human beings is more microscopic than your focus on everything else.
3)You still haven't caught what a non natural selection form of evolutionary change would be. It's not that it doesn't include intention. It's that it isn't driven by reproductive benefit. Some changes might occur because a genetic change could go only one of a limited number of ways, none of those ways has a significant reproductive advantage (whether this can ever happen is what makes the theory controversial; some people believe there will always be some reproductive advantage or disadvantage to any change and thus natural selection will always prevail, but that doesn't make the theory tautological, only empirically inescapable) and the outcome is simply chance in the sense of it following probability calculations of outcome rather than any selective outcome. Darwin himself originally developed his theory of sexual selection to explain the development of features that seemed to be obvious survival disadvantages, such as the peacock's tail. I won't bother you with the ongoing and difficult history of that concept since the point isn't whether Darwin's formulation was right or wrong but whether there can be alternative mechanisms driving genetic change.

But all this is intellectual history, not science. Darwin might just have been wrong in not seeing human, intended activity as different in kind from naatural selection. As I said to Jayson, I just don't see the significance of he distinction except in terms of the human belief in being somehow special, a belief that Darwin always challenged and that various people have always tried to smuggle back in.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top