Guy Hoelzer  wrote in message
news:...
> in article bh4fp1$rcb$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org, Jim McGinn at
> jimmcginn{at}yahoo.com wrote on 8/9/03 8:56 PM:
> 
> >> I agree in the physical sense.  The language associated with
genetic drift
> >> as a force is used because drift happens whenever sampling
happens, so there
> >> is the language used is really intended to indicate the
association between
> >> sampling and fluctuation.  I think it is more accurate to
think of sampling
> >> and drift as aspects of a single process, rather than as a
sequential cause
> >> and effect.
> > 
> > I agree.  In fact this is my main argument for why I
> > consider the phenomena associated with GD to actually
> > be part of NS.  I just don't think it was ever
> > designated/established that NS is a process devoid of
> > "sample variance."
> 
> Darwin and Wallace may have appreciated that "chance" or
sampling variance
> could have evolutionary effects, but I think that they tried to keep
> stochasticity apart from the concept of natural selection.

Darwin explicitly included it.

  I would be
> interested in seeing written statements from them to the contrary.  Their
> overarching goal was to postulate a physical process that caused adaptive
> evolution.  One thing they did not mention was that stochasticity tends to
> degrade adaptation

Not in my opinion.  

 when the population is reasonably well adapted in the
> first place.

Well adapted to what?

  Stochasticity would have no such bias on an initially random
> network, and would tend to cause adaptation of an initially
> worse-than-random network.  Because all organisms and populations of them
> are enormously better adapted than random networks, stochasticity always
> tends to degrade biological adaptedness, so its effects run counter to the
> very condition that Darwin and Wallace set out to explain.

None of this makes sense to me.  Adaptedness has no meaning except
with regard to a specified environment.  Environments always have
stochasticity.

  I suspect this
> is still the reason that drift and selection are thought of as independent
> processes, rather than two complimentary phases of a single evolutionary
> process.

IMO, the reasons are psychological.

Regards,

Jim
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