"Guy Hoelzer"  wrote in message
news:c8098p$2347$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org...
> in article c7rcps$ktb$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org, Perplexed in Peoria at
> jimmenegay{at}sbcglobal.net wrote on 5/11/04 1:24 PM:
> > Second, let me complain about the term
"self-organization" that is being
> > offered as a conceivable alternative to selection.  I don't know what
this
> > term means in the current context - population genetics.  I can imaging
a
> > process of spatial structure creation analogous to Turing or Brusselator
> > dynamics in chemical thermodynamics.  But I don't see what this has to
> > do with the current question.  I'm talking about species-level traits
here -
> > there is no spatial structure.
>
> Of course there is spatial structure to species level traits.  There is
> spatial structure to species-level biogeography.

Yes, but I don't see how spatial differences of traits *within* a species
are relevant to the origin of heritable traits *of* a species.

> Also, I though the current context was species selection, rather than
> population genetics.  This has been a pretty long and wide ranging thread,
> so I may have lost the context.

I said that the context was population genetics because the three
species-level examples that I was defending are all pop gen
traits maintained, I postulate, by pop gen processes.

> Regarding the relevance of "self-organization," it is argued that
> self-organization generically results in adaptive change over time.  You
> might google the term "complex adaptive system" to get a sense of the
> argument.  My point was that natural selection is only one kind of
adaptive
> process among others observed in complex adaptive systems, so documenting
> adaptive change at some level of organization is not sufficient to
conclude
> that natural selection occurred at that level.  If this explanation seems
> unclear or suspect to you, consider the phenomenon of adaptive phenotypic
> plasticity at the organism level.  This is an adaptive process (e.g.,
> getting a sun tan) easily distinguished from natural selection.

Yes, but is that sun tan heritable?  And does the species get tanned?
The three examples I was defending are all clearly adaptation traits,
rather than adaptability (plasticity) traits.

With your help, I now understand the sense in which self-organized
systems are said to be adaptive.  However, is there variation - are some
SO systems better or differently adapted than others?  Is this variation
heritable?  And, as I'm sure John would ask, are you sure that this
self-organization is a species-level phenomenon, rather than simply a
population-level phenomenon, or a universal thermodynamic phenomenon?
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