Tim Tyler  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.

> TT:-
> Tho usual approach here is to use the term "expected fitness" if the 
> outcome is not yet known with certainty.
> Expected fitness represents a guess at the evential fitness - based
> on currently-available information.


JE:-
An exact, finite, measure of fitness DOES exist 
which is not just a guess! Further more it can
be tested to refutation, i.e. it does meet a 
minimal Popperian requirement for the sciences. 
I have termed it: Absolute Darwinian fitness.
This fitness was always implicit within
Darwin's writings. 

_____________________________________________
Absolute Darwinian Fitness (ADF):

The total number of fertile forms reproduced
into one population by each parent.

Notes:

1) At the gene level this fitness is 
entirely gene fitness epistatic, i.e. it
is measured as a _non_ additive fitness.
This being the case it is just deleted 
within gene centric Neo Darwinism using
Fisher's dictum: only non epistatic traits
are heritable and thus selectable. The
refutation of Haldane's basis for the so
called "Haldane's Dilemma" refutes Fisher's
proposition that only non epistatic fitnesses
are heritable. The human genome is too small
to restrict heritability to just additive gene
information.

2) ADF is not infinite it is finite.

3) ADF cannot be selected to be lowered so it
constitutes a valid fitness maximand for the 
science of biology.

4) This maximand can be tested to refutation.

5) I have outlined an experiment that can test
ADF to refutation. It also allows so called
"evolution" via random processes such as genetic
drift to be tested to non verification (which
is not definitive).
_____________________________________________

In BIOLOGY fitness remains finite and objective
so that it can be exactly measured. It can be shown
that Darwinian fitness is just the default
comparison of the ADF of each selectee within
one population where ADF is assumed to
have a high heritable component. PS's infinite 
view of  fitness remains entirely gene centric and 
not at all organism centric forcing fitness to 
become just an infinite non testable model. A 
model is  not a theory it is just a simplification 
of an existing theory. The only way you can attempt 
to measure an infinite model fitness is by just 
a guess.  A guess cannot VALIDLY compete against 
any exact measure, especially a measure that 
allows a point of refutation! Infinite
models of gene centric fitnesses are
utterly misused when they attempt to replace
the theory they were simplified from.


Regards,

John Edser
Independent Researcher

PO Box 266
Church Pt
NSW 2105
Australia

edser{at}tpg.com.au
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