Subject: Re: NANFA-L-- two interesting articles
From: Bruce Stallsmith (fundulus at hotmail.com)
Date: Thu Oct 21 2004 - 00:16:18 CDT
Any adaptations that seem to improve an organism's fitness (its ability to
pass on its genes and leave descendants) are better in only a relative way.
There's almost never a "best", only "what has worked better, maybe by
chance". This distinction is commonly missed by both professional and lay
commentators...
--Bruce Stallsmith
along the former Cherokee River
Huntsville, AL, US of A
>And none of this "better" or "improved" rubbish. There's no direction,
>those words have inherit perspective, which if I've learned one thing...
>When doing science, you need to be as aware of your perspective bias as
>much
>as possible. There's also no "choose" as is usually the lazy choice of
>words to describe species' evolutionary process. I think some of these
>ideas
>pervade the public psyche's conception of what "evolution" is, I know it
>threw me for the longest time. Perhaps it's time for Biology to clean up
>its act a little bit and come across with a sharp non-conflicting
>vocabulary
>for what we are understanding on at least the surface.
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: Fri Dec 31 2004 - 11:27:51 CST