{"id":12615,"date":"2009-05-25T15:27:35","date_gmt":"2009-05-25T15:27:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/05\/25\/ernst-mayr-on-natural-selection\/"},"modified":"2009-05-25T15:27:35","modified_gmt":"2009-05-25T15:27:35","slug":"ernst-mayr-on-natural-selection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/05\/25\/ernst-mayr-on-natural-selection\/","title":{"rendered":"Ernst Mayr on Natural Selection"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another of the concepts we need to be clear about is that of natural selection. What I will do in this post is pull some quotations from Ernst Mayr, <\/font>What Evolutions Is<\/font><\/a> (Basic Books, 2001), and raise some questions. An important point will emerge: natural selection is not teleological!<\/font><\/p>\n

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1. Mayr tells us in the chapter on Natural Selection that "Every species produces vastly more offspring than can survive from generation to generation." (117) Sorry to be such a quibbler, but is this true? 'Every' includes homo s<\/em>. Does our kind produce vastly more offpsring than can survive from generation to generation?<\/font><\/p>\n

Then we read: "All the individuals of a population differ genetically from each other. They are exposed to the adversity of the environment, and almost all of them perish or fail to reproduce." (117) Really? Almost all of the members of our species perish or fail to reproduce?<\/font><\/p>\n

2. There is both artificial and natural selection. In the case of the former, <\/font><\/p>\n

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. . . it is indeed the animal or plant breeder who selects certain superior individuals to serve as the breeding stock of the next generation. But, strictly speaking, there is no such agent involved in natural selection. What Darwin called natural selection is actually a process of elimination. (117)<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Refreshingly clear. Natural selection is just elimination. There is nothing or no one who selects — unlike the case of artificial selection. There is no agent of natural selection with a conscious or unconscious purpose for selecting this trait or that to be passed on.<\/font><\/p>\n

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The progenitors of the next generation are those individuals among their parents' offspring who survived owing to luck or the possession of characteristics that made them particularly well adapted for the prevailing environmental conditions. All their siblings were eliminated by the process of natural selection. (ibid.)<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Since natural selection just is a process of elimination, what Mayr said boils down to this: all their siblings were eliminated by a process of elimination. There is "survival of the fittest." (118) <\/font><\/p>\n

Mayr appears to be saying that selection is not something over and above elimination. After raising the question of whether selection and elimination differ in their evolutionary consequences, he writes: "A process of selection would have a concrete objective, the determination of the 'best' or 'fittest' phenotype." (118) Now a concrete objective would be a purpose or goal or telos<\/em>, and as we shall see in a moment, selection for Mayr is not teleological. So selection reduces to elimination. Indeed, one of his subheadings says as much: "Natural selection is really a process of elimination." (117)<\/font><\/p>\n

3. Natural selection is a two-step process. At the first step, "chance rules supreme." (119) This step is where new variation is produced and includes "all the processes leading to the production of a new zygote (including meiosis, gamete formation, and fertilization). . ." (119) The second step is that of selection or elimination. This is the step at which the individual is tested, from the embryonic stage through the period during which it can reproduce. The individual must fend off threats from the environment, from other members of its species, and from the members of other species.<\/font><\/p>\n

It is annoying that Mayr uses the same word 'selection' to refer both to the two-step process and also to the second step. But that may not be a problem. His main point is that while "chance rules supreme" at the first step, at which genetic vatiation is produced, there is much less chance at the second step, that of differential survival and reproduction. Therefore, "To claim that natural selection is entirely a chance process reveals total misunderstanding." (120) ". . .evolution is the result of both chance and necessity."<\/font><\/p>\n

4. Natural selection is not teleological:<\/font><\/p>\n

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Selection is not teleological (goal-directed). Indeed, how could an elimination process be teleological? [It can't be, my man!] Selection does not have a long-term goal. [Or a short-term one either!] It is a process repeated anew in every generation. The frequency of extinction of evolutionary lineages, as well as their frequent changes in direction, is inconsistent with the mistaken claim that selection is a teleological process. Also there is no known genetic mechanism that could produce goal-directed evolutionary processes. . . . To say it in other words, evolution is not deterministic. (121)<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This makes excellent sense, except for the last sentence, which is a product of confusion. Mayr appears to be saying that evolution is not deterministic because it is not teleological; but that is not the reason why it is not deterministic: it is not deterministic because the first step is dominated by chance or randomness.<\/font><\/p>\n

5. In sum, natural selection, the mechanism that drives evolution, is not goal-oriented. It has no purpose or purposes whether conscious or unconscious. It intends nothing, and so cannot be said to design anything. The products of evolutionary processes, therefore, exhibit no design. How then can Dawkins suggest that natural selection "builds up" "efficiency of design"? ((BW 169). There is no design!<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another of the concepts we need to be clear about is that of natural selection. What I will do in this post is pull some quotations from Ernst Mayr, What Evolutions Is (Basic Books, 2001), and raise some questions. An important point will emerge: natural selection is not teleological!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[258],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-darwinism-and-design"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12615\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}