"Robert Karl Stonjek"
bigpond.net.au> wrote:-
> Subject: Article: Group selection, a theory whose time has come...again
> Organization:
> Group selection, a theory whose time has come...again
> Sociobiology, the discipline founded on Darwin's theory of group
> evolution,
> is in theoretical disarray. In a landmark article for the December issue
> of
> the Quarterly Review of Biology, eminent evolutionary scientists David
> Sloan
> Wilson and Edward O. Wilson usher in a new era in evolutionary science.
> "Although a high standard of morality gives but a slight or no advantage
> to
> each individual man and his children over the other men of the same
> tribe...an advancement in the standard of morality will certainly give an
> immense advantage to one tribe over another."
JE:-
The Wilson's have only provided back to the future Neo Darwinism allowing
the group selection debate to endlessly revolve (at public expense, of
course). Their evolutionary theory _rationale_remains fatally flawed because
the fitness of one tribe was and remains, the simple sum of the fitness of
each tribal member (no matter how you define fitness). Total Darwinian
Fitness (TDF) is _falsifiably_ defined as: the total number of (strictly)
fertile forms reproduced into one group (in this case one tribe) per parent
(which reader's should note must be fertile to be a parent). Therefore the
group (in this case one tribe) cannot validly be regarded to constitute just
the one single independent grouped selectee because empirically, these
groups represent a collection of independent Darwinian selectee's attempting
to mutually increase their TDF. Darwinian selectee's (fertile forms) do not
form fitness dependent groups like cells within bodies. The simple
biological facts are these: TDF has never been understood within Neo
Darwinism, yet TDF alone provides a falsifiable frame of reference for
Darwinism. The net result: Neo Darwinists cannot tell a group from an
individual allowing continuous circular argument re: group selection.
> With these words, Charles Darwin proposed an evolutionary explanation for
> morality and pro-social behaviours- individuals behaving for the good of
> their group, often at their own expense-that anticipated the future
> discipline of Sociobiology. A century after this famous passage was
> published in The Descent of Man (1871), however, Darwin's explanation
> based
> on group selection had become taboo and has not recovered since.
JE:-
It was Wallace and not Darwin who created group selection and formally
incorporated it within his theory of evolution by natural selection. Darwin
discussed group selection (and just about everything else!) but did not
incorporate it into his theory. This singularly sets Darwin apart from
Wallace. If you combine Wallace's poorly thought out group selection
proposition with Herbert Spencers tautological demolition of Darwinism
expressed as the ever popular tautology "survival of the fittest", you end
up with just a mush of mathematics.
> In a landmark article for The Quarterly Review of Biology, "Rethinking the
> Theoretical Foundation of Sociobiology," eminent evolutionary scientists
> David Sloan Wilson and Edward O. Wilson-whose book Sociobiology:The New
> Synthesis brought widespread attention to the field in 1975-call for an
> end
> to forty years of confusion and divergent theories.
JE;-
Predictably, the empirical result was the opposite. Mass confusion persists
to this very day. Because the Darwinian TDF frame of reference had not been
incorporated within Neo Darwinism organism fitness altruism cannot be
empirically differentiated from organism fitness mutualism. The use of just
heuristic altruism Vs selfishness based on Hamilton's rule which does not
incorporate a single algebraic constant fitness, was and remains,
_critically insufficient_. The rule makes the same error as Zeno's Paradox.
This ancient hare and the tortoise race paradox, which entertained the
Ancient Greeks (very little is new under the sun), remains unsolved within
mathematics only because the solution is 100%% _outside of mathematics_:
always measure the distance of the hare from the tortoise relative to just
the defined start and ending points of the race and never just relative to
each other. Because the start (critical limiting frame of refernce) and the
end (critical controlling frame of reference) were omitted, only because
they represent constants, the race cannot start let alone finish simply
because the tortoise has no way of knowing which direction to take a head
start. Unless rb and c within Hamilton's Rule are measured relative to TDF
representing a falsifiable controlling frame of reference within Darwinism,
nobody can empirically differentiate rb > c from rb
just fitness variables.
> They propose a new consensus and theoretical foundation that affirms
> Darwin'
> s original conjecture and is supported by the latest biological findings.
JE:-
Not only has Darwin been misrepresented, only a consensus now replaces
falsifiability within today's ignorant epistemology reducing evolutionary
theory to consensus politics. Historically the disastrous result this
produced remains for all to see (and wonder).
> Wilson and Wilson trace much of the confusion in the field to the 1960's,
> when most evolutionists rejected "for the good of the group" thinking and
> insisted that all adaptations must be explained in terms of individual
> self-interest. In an even more reductionistic move, genes were called "the
> fundamental unit of selection," as if this was an argument against group
> selection.
JE:-
Here is where Neo Darwinian argument takes on the Monty Python aspect of
unchecked mathematics (mathematics without any frame of reference attempting
to replace science). Just a mathematically based polycentricity
incorporating gene centricity was allowed to replace falsifiable,
moncentric, fertile organism Darwinism (and Wallace's contradictory
dicentric group selection notion). Now falsification can always be
heuristically evaded by simply substituting one polycentric unit of
selection with another. It makes great mathematics but nonsensical science.
> Scientific dogma became entrenched in popular culture with the
> publication of Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene (1976). Although evidence
> in favor of group selection began accumulating almost immediately after
> its
> rejection, its taboo status prevented a systematic re-evaluation of the
> field until now.
JE:-
Dawkins' defence of Darwinism was polycentric and therefore entirely
heuristic. In other words it was no defence at all. The net result, it did
more to demolish Darwinism that just about anything else (with perhaps the
exception of Spencer's "survival of the fittest" empty tautology). Dawkins
based his gene centric argument on Hamilton's uncorrected-to-this-day
heuristic notion that genes can be INDEPENDENTLY selected at the DNA/RNA
level when empirically, is the exact opposite: individual genes can only be
selected via their phenotype (not their genotype) and remain entirely
fitness DEPENDENT to at least one another locus. IOW Neo Darwinism and
Darwinism remain 100%% gene group centric and not at all gene centric. A
valid gene group fitness requires non additive gene fitness epistasis
deleted by Fisher and Haldane within their basic population genetics
equations. C.H. Waddington attempted to correct this deletion but remains
ignored.
> Based on current theory and evidence, Wilson and Wilson show that natural
> selection is unequivocally a multilevel process, as Darwin originally
> envisioned, and that adaptations can evolve at all levels of the
> biological
> hierarchy, from genes to ecosystems.
JE:-
Again, Darwin's THEORY remains misrepresented. It was and remains,
moncentric (defined only the one unit of selection) allowing just adults to
be selected and only populations of them to evolve. The reverse is nuts.
Yet, this reversal is absolutely required within mathematically based
polycentic, heuristic Neo Darwinism.
> They conclude with a rallying cry that
> paraphrases Rabbi Hillel: "Selfishness beats altruism within groups.
> Altruistic groups beat selfish groups. Everything else is commentary,"
> Wilson and Wilson free sociobiology to once again pursue all lines of
> inquiry within its discipline.
> Source: University of Chicago
>
http://www.physorg.com/news115476686.html
JE:-
Marx penned the same emotive nonsense, i.e. you can heuristically account
to individuals AND/OR groups when you cannot do any such thing. You can only
empirically account to individuals AND groups OR, individuals or groups. In
the former groups within capitalist society become the same as they are in
monocentric Darwinism: 100%% reversible mutual associations of fitness
independent Darwinian selectee's (fertile forms) each seeking to increase
their own TDF using both cooperation and competition. The gains any
mutualistic fitness associations provide are by far in excess of their
costs. One of these costs is increased risk, e.g. mostly males have been
programmed by selection to defend their tribe which provides each tribal
member with so much. As long as the gains exceed the costs no organism
fitness altruism is required. When costs exceed gains the group simply
breaks up. IOW, fertile organism group centric selection was and remains,
just a myth.
Gene centric Neo Darwinists have got it wrong simply because they reversed
empirically based cause and effect within (misused) over simplified models
which have no constant (Galilean) frame of reference.The amazing thing is
that they have gotten away with it for so long. One day they will be made
accountable for their actions/inactions.
Regards,
John Edser
Independent Researcher
edser@
ozemail.com.au
