phillip smith  wrote:-

> > JE:-
> > Phillip, you are only attempting to reinvent the
> > wheel. Darwin (implicitly) defined fitness as
> > the total number of fertile forms reproduced
> > into one population by one parent.

PS:-
> To measure the fitness of an individual you must know how many
> offspring it
> will have and how many offspring they will have etc. In other
> words you must
> know the reproductive future  of the individual. How you can do this with
> out a time machine.

JE:-
A finite, simple and testable concept
of fitness does exist! I can outline
an experiment that can test it to
refutation.

> PS:-
> I need to be careful here, perhaps more correctly I should have said I am
> working on a concept to replace fitness rather than to
> reformulate fitness.
> Science is prediction. If I cannot predict the reproductive success of an
> individual then I cannot measure their fitness.

JE:-
It is not correct to say "If I cannot predict the
reproductive success of an individual then I cannot
measure their fitness". Science can validly retrospectively
make predictions because both valid points verification and
valid points of refutation are required. Gene centric
Neo Darwinism simply deletes what it does not like.
One of these deletions is the Popperian process of
refutation!


> PS:-
> I can, perhaps,
> extrapolate
> the mean reproductive success of the previous generation but that
> is not the
> same thing as fitness being a property of an individual.

JE:-
I would amend that to: TOTAL fitness being a property of
an individual. A correct prediction of an individual total
fitness is the ultimate aim. In the meantime, refutable
retrospective predictions of the total fitness of an individual
is what we must work towards.

> > JE:-
> >Epistatic
> > gene fitness is _totally_ fertile organism centric
> > and not at all gene centric. In order to provide
> > a REAL gene level of selection gene fitness must NOT
> > be epistatic, i.e. all gene fitnesses must be
> > additive and not non additive. The Darwinian
> > total fitness concept is the only fitness
> > concept that can be tested to refutation.

> PS:-
> If I understand you correctly you are suggesting that evolution
> is not about
> genes. I would completely agree with you. For my purposes I prefer genomes
> but selection only acts of phenotype.

JE:-
Evolution is not about additive gene fitnesses
it is all about non additive gene fitnesses, i.e.
_heritable_ epistatic fitness information. This
means all genomic genes are dependently selected at
just the Darwinian fertile (phenotype) level, no
exceptions. Genes do not today, or ever have,
represented _independently_ selectable entities.
Hamilton's gene level of selection remains
just a misused model heuristic. At the moment
heritable epistatic fitness information remains
deleted from Neo Darwinism only because of Fisher's
dictum: just additive genetic information is
heritable and therefore selectable. The tiny
size of the human genome refuted Fisher's
dictum making a mockery out of "Haldane's
Dilemma" because no dilemma even existed. The
dilemma was entirely based on the human
genome being huge because additive heritable
information requires a huge genome. The
fact that it is tiny refutes additive
information as the only valid heritable
information. In attempting to just
paper over this basic error Neo Darwinians have
redefined epistasis to mean "additive epistasis",
which is the same as redefining black to mean
white. Additive epistasis is just a contradiction
in terms where real epistasis STILL REMAINS DELETED.

C. H. Waddington attempted to provide a variable
for Haldane's basic population genetic equation
that would allow heritable genetic epistatic fitness
over 50 years ago: "developed in x". Prof. Felsenstein
who occasionally posts here was (incredibly) one
of Waddington's students. He can provide you with
the reference. Waddington's revision has been
soundly ignored by gene centric Neo Darwinism which
has ploughed on regardless entirely based on
Hamilton's Rule spawning Dawkins mine of
disinformation from the university of Oxford
and Wilson's Sociobiology in the USA. Both
utterly misrepresent evolutionary _theory_.

___________________________________________
Gene centric Neo Darwinians live in never
never land that has no basis in reality.
Not one, single independent gene fitness
has ever been documented within nature.
This includes meiotic drive genes.
___________________________________________


My Regards,

John Edser
Independent Researcher

PO Box 266
Church Pt
NSW 2105
Australia

edser{at}tpg.com.au
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