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 wrote in
message news:cbs4a8$12do$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org...
> TT:-
> So: mentioning fitness is confusing, because of the many meanings of
> the word - and because the popular meanings lead to misunderstanding.
> A measure of absolute fitness would be more acceptable to me.
>
> JE:-
> Why will nobody here admit that Darwinism
> does contain an implicit absolute fitness?
>
> ______________________________________
> box 1
> Darwinian fitness:
> The total number of fertile forms
> reproduced by each parent into one
> population.
> ______________________________________
>
> 
>
> 3) Darwinian fitness cannot be selected
> to be reduced. Thus selectees are not
> forced to do anything except maximise
> Darwinian fitness. This singular nature of
> Darwinism mimics a teleological system.
>
> NAS:-
>
> Number of fertile offspring is not enough. How to explain sex allocation?
>

Interesting point.  How can you tell whether a particular offspring is
fertile?  Presumably, you do so by checking whether it has offspring.
So, if the sex ratio were to become seriously biased toward males,
then presumably a large fraction of your male offspring would be
operationally non-fertile, as they would be unable to find mates.

One is tempted to define fertility more strictly, as the ability to
produce fertile offspring.  But, if we did that in John's proposed
experiment, we would find it difficult to actually get to the
stage of writing up the results.  In fact, we would never know for
sure that our starting population was fertile.  ;-)
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