"John Edser"  wrote in message
news:biij54$1v96$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org...
>
>
> > JE:-
> 
> > The misuse of random drift to contest selective evolution
> > is an example of a destructive misuse of chance. For
> > years this misuse has blocked rational thinking as
> > to how random temporal variation affects selection
> > and what the logical connection of heritable variation
> > is to Darwinian natural selection (the differential
> > reproduction of fertile adult forms). 
>
> PF:-
> It is easy for me to feel loosely aligned with your attitude to the
"drift"
> concept, but not so in respect of your own "blocked rational
thinking"..
> >snip<
> An unusually clear example of this is your dogged defining (and defending)
> of your idea that Darwinian natural selection is "the differential natural
> selection as a reproduction of fertile adult forms".
>
> JE:-
> Darwinian selection theory, the only testable
> theory of evolution we have, is entirely,
> i.e. ONLY based on  "differential natural
> selection as a reproduction of fertile adult forms".
> To my knowledge, all contesting views are just misused
> oversimplified models of this ONE, Darwinian theory.
> The constant misuse of all these over simplified models,
> e.g. to be able to contest and win against the ONE testable
> theory they were all just over simplified from, is just a
> gross act of inductive stupidity. I have taken great care
> in showing this using Hamilton's rule. The rule is a misused
> model of Darwinism that has deleted at least two
> constants. Any change in constants must change everything.
> When these 2 constants are replaced Hamilton's rule now
> fails to justify Darwinian fitness altruism because rb
> can never be > c! Multi units of selection, which you seem
> to embrace, are just figments of the imagination caused
> by a drastic lack of logical rigor. This lack of rigor
> is based on major epistemological faults. IMHO, your EPT
> attempt at being "all things to all people" has too big
> a price tag: non testability.



(As if filled with dread even though being dead, Charles Darwin pleads:}

Dear John Edser,

I feel flattered by your staunch defense of what you believe to be the
essence of my theory.

However, what you proclaim to be a key theoretical unit of mine is
regrettably not smeared-out (complex, dynamic, and "Tolerance Principle
reflecting") enough to be anything but a positively utterly unrealistic
misinterpretation of the meat of what I meant.

To say that natural selection is a principle (or, at a philosophical pinch,
a process) whereby differential reproduction of fertile adult forms is
achieved, is to commit an act of logically and theoretically passable,
though potentially ultimately useless, utterance.

So please, refrain from draining my theory of explanatory power by pushing
any main-point-obscuring-or-omitting interpretations of what I wrote.

Such as, as you do, to keep on claiming that the Darwinian unit of selection
is the adult fertile organism.

The *biologically* relevant "unit" of selection (i.e. unit upon which
natural selection pressures operates) is phenotypes. Full stop!

(Had I had the opportunity to learn about genes *and other* biomolecular
units of inheritance I might have written "genophenotypes" -- if just for a
more explicit emphasis.)

Phenotypes is the notion at the center of my theory's explanatory focus --
because phenotypes are being naturally presented or "placed on offer" (by
Nature) for testing by SELECTIVE PRESSURE (the concept of mine of which I am
most proud, by the way).

[By "naturally presented or placed on offer", I merely generally
referred to
that the laws of physics and chemistry are played-out, not in the too
obvious fact of that, but in how, the universe (or, more generally, What Is)
spontaneously produces and evolves patterns, some of which we all can
perceive and some of which (at least up to and including the non-perfectly
self-replicating cellular organisms that were at the center of my
dangerously explanatory insight) that we ARE.]

I leave it to currently undead other people, even to someone like that Peter
F, to unify and/or generalize further.

Respectfully yours,

"Charles Darwin"
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