Ahem...Hayseed? — T Clark

Hayseeds of the Bread Basket Unite. The urban parasites have nothing to lose but their bread and butter, their pate foi gras, their fried chicken McNugguts; their almond milk, salad greens, chick peas, and steak tartare.

Hayseeds of the Bread Basket Unite. The urban parasites have nothing to lose but their bread and butter, their pate foi gras, their fried chicken McNugguts; their almond milk, salad greens, chick peas, and steak tartare. — Bitter Crank

Yes, my favorite is a Big Mac - two all beef patties, special sauce, pickles, foi gas, onions on a sesame seed bun.

As I indicated in another post, the primary mechanism of evolution, natural selection, acts only on individuals. I'm not sure if that contradicts what you are saying or not. — T Clark

It's a difficult knot.

The 'species' doesn't think, react, hunt, shop, cook, and eat. That's all done by individuals. On the other hand, individuals don't survive, thrive, change, or die out over long periods of time. Individuals are a flash in the pan. Individuals do not decide to talk in 7000 different tongues; language belongs to the species. But each individual has to learn their language one by one. If you and I had gotten run over by a Lamborghini Veneno ($5 million) roaring down the street at 200 kph, before we (well, you) had reproduced, the net effect would be zero. Not because you are unimportant, but because your (our) part in the scheme of things is vanishingly small and transient. The species has been evolving for what... 14 million years since the last common ape/human ancestor, and maybe 200,000,000 years for all of us mammal species. We've been around for a measly 70+ years.

On the one hand every individual is more important than the species, but the species is where our future lies, or doesn't.

As I indicated in another post, the primary mechanism of evolution, natural selection, acts only on individuals. — T Clark

This is not really the case, although it is often thought to be. Natural selection acts on any entity or entities which exhibit variation, reproduction and heritability. Although individual organisms fit this bill nicely, these constraints are broad enough to be applicable to genes, populations, and even species. That this is the case is captured in the idea that natural selection operates at various levels of selection. Thus for a long time it was argued that genes were the only units of natural selection, and not organisms at all. This has changed in recent times with the acknowledgement that all aspects in a developmental system can be subject to selection, up to and including the entire system itself. The unit of natural selection doesn't even have to be alive. You can use natural selection principles to come up with new circuit boards or even architecture.

Right and wrong. From the individual's point of view, our efforts at work or education have approximately NOTHING to do with our individual survival, as you said. But... From the view of collective society, it does. The account clerk at a brokerage, a social worker, a housewife, a city street worker, the check out at Target, etc. are all engaged in the maintenance and reproduction of society as a whole. — Bitter Crank

That is a good point..When is the individual duped by social mechanisms that their labor is meant for them, vs. the collective? The invisible hand perhaps hides this more than other economic hands- usually ones of a dictatorial or totalitarian bent. However, the best way to engender more work from people is to get them to take on the burden of ideology themselves.

This is not really the case, although it is often thought to be. Natural selection acts on any entity or entities which exhibit variation, reproduction and heritability. Although individual organisms fit this bill nicely, these constraints are broad enough to be applicable to genes, populations, and even species. That this is the case is captured in the idea that natural selection operates at various levels of selection. Thus for a long time it was argued that genes were the only units of natural selection, and not organisms at all. This has changed in recent times with the acknowledgement that all aspects in a developmental system can be subject to selection, up to and including the entire system itself. The unit of natural selection doesn't even have to be alive. You can use natural selection principles to come up with new circuit boards or even architecture. — StreetlightX

I take your opinion seriously on this. I remember the thread you did on how genes work as a complex interaction of many genes related to a complex system of traits. I go back and read it from time to time. It really changed my understanding of genetics. I remember you reject a one to one relationship between genes and traits.

Down to business. Before your thread, my understanding of the situation was that there are qualified scientists who do believe that there are levels of selection other than organisms but that it was a controversial issue. My prime source for that information is Stephen Jay Gould's writing. Since he died in 2002, I don't know what changes in theory have taken place. After reading the article in the link you sent, it seems that my understanding is still correct. I read through it quickly, but I'll go back to read it in more detail.

Some thoughts and questions - The article identifies four actors in the evolutionary process 1) interactor, 2) replicator, 3) beneficiary, and 4) manifestor.

Interactor and replicator - I don't think I understand these issues very well. I need to go back and reread the section. Off the top of my head, it seems these would be in conflict with the issue I mentioned above - the fact that it is a system of genes that causes a system of traits. Again, let me think some more.

Beneficiary and manifestor - These seem more like semantic questions than scientific ones. In my post, I acknowledged that evolution acts on species and other levels, but that natural selection acts on individuals. Evolution emerges out of the action of natural selection on individual organisms much as the market emerges out of the behaviors of individual economic actors.

This is really interesting. I'll come back after I've read some more, and thanks for the link.

The 'species' doesn't think, react, hunt, shop, cook, and eat. — Bitter Crank

Or, more importantly, die or fail to reproduce. Yes, of course species become extinct, but that is a long-term manifestation of the action of many organisms over many years. If my memory is correct, the average life of a species is a million years or more. Another question - how many species die out without a successor species? For example - birds evolved from dinosaurs, i.e. dinosaurs didn't die out, at least not all of them, they became something else.

See my @StreetlightX's post and my response above.

'Evolution' applies to groups, not individuals - genes, species & ecologies (Darwin), not organisms & persons — 180 Proof

Exactly! That seems to make sense because fitness (whatever that is actually thought to be) does nothing to guarantee reproduction on an individual level, but simply makes it more likely if averaged out over sufficiently large populations; so there is no correlation of fitness with genetic inheritance on the individual level, but only on the group or species level.

Exactly! That seems to make sense because fitness (whatever that is actually thought to be) does nothing to guarantee reproduction on an individual level, but simply makes it more likely if averaged out over sufficiently large populations; so there is no correlation of fitness with genetic inheritance on the individual level, but only on the group or species level. — Janus

Fitness does definitely promote reproduction on an individual level - that's how natural selection works. To vastly oversimplify, an individual with some trait that gives it a survival or reproductive advantage is more likely to pass its genetic makeup on to descendants. Then there are more offspring with that advantageous trait. They then pass it on and the frequency of that trait in the population increases, thus helping the population adapt to changing conditions, i.e. evolution.

Organisms don't evolve. Species evolve. Maybe some other levels of genetic organization evolve. The mechanism by which species evolve is by the action of individuals that have some survival or reproductive advantage passing it on to their off-spring.

To clarifiy - natural selection acts only on organisms. That action may or may not manifest itself as an evolutionary change in a species or other taxonomic grouping. — T Clark

:shade: No doubt Lamarck would agree; however, Alfred Russel Wallace, Ernst Mayr, Richard Dawkins, E.O. Wilson, Niles Eldridge, Stephen J. Gould ... & Daniel Dennett certainly would not.

Maybe I misunderstood. — T Clark

Maybe. :roll:

Ernst Mayr, Richard Dawkins, E.O. Wilson, Niles Eldridge, Stephen J. Gould ... & Daniel Dennett certainly would not. — 180 Proof

A sketch, please, of the grounds for their disagreement? If natural selection is not acting on organisms only, what else is it acting on?

Fitness does definitely promote reproduction on an individual level - that's how natural selection works. — T Clark

Sure, I said it doesn't guarantee it, and what I should have added is that, in the case that reproduction occurs, it doesn't guarantee that offspring will be fit either. So, instead both are mere likelihoods that become manifest as more or less guaranteed effects in sufficiently large populations. So, a fit organism is more likely to survive and reproduce than an unfit organism, and their offspring are more likely to be fit. And all this says nothing about what constitutes fitness either. At least that's my lay understanding which I will be more than happy to have corrected by someone more knowledgeable.

And all this says nothing about what constitutes fitness either. — Janus

Exactly. You do not have to be "fit to fuck".. you just have to be hard. For women, just spread eagle.

People with severe medical complications, illnesses, and other are demonstrably still having sex and reproducing, surviving fine - even those with dormant sub-optimal genes. That is how we are producing all this gene variation in the first place. Precisely because you do not have to be a chimpanzee from 3,000 BC to pass on genes.

That's right, with humans what constitutes fitness is an even harder question to answer than it is with animals, due to the massive complexification brought about by language and the insitutionalization of culture.

What should you do now? — Purple Pond

Well, you either adapt or succumb.

A sketch, please, of the grounds for their disagreement? If natural selection is not acting on organisms only, what else is it acting on? — tim wood

You must have missed this ...

'Evolution' applies to groups, not individuals -  genes, species & ecologies (Darwin), not organisms & persons (Spenser) - the latter merely expressing traits adapted to proliferating the former. — 180 Proof

hint: On the Origin of Species ... not 'origin of organisms'.

I accept the correction in terms of its intent. But I think I know what a category error is, and I think your reply is one big one. It is as if a person should shoot and kill a group of people but that it would be quite impermissible to say that any individual had been killed - after all, it was a group that was killed. That is, the "acting on" is the hands-on of the thing, and that can only apply to individuals however many there are. To discuss groups, there are all manner of abstract expressions for that. Strange to me you'd confuse the two.