Re: Species Selection Redux

From: Perplexed in Peoria (jimmenegay_at_sbcglobal.net)
Date: 03/14/05 

Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 01:07:42 -0500 (EST)

"Guy Hoelzer" <hoelzer@unr.edu> wrote in message news:d0tfau$23g2$1@darwin.ediacara.org...
> in article d0rc88$1dde$1@darwin.ediacara.org, Perplexed in Peoria at
> jimmenegay@sbcglobal.net wrote on 3/10/05 10:01 PM:
>
> > ... While I agree that ecosystems "evolve", I think that it would
> > be incorrect to say that they evolve under natural selection. An ecosystem
> > doesn't have a fitness. Of course, an understanding of NS is certainly
> > necessary for an understanding of ecosystem evolution.
>
> Do you recognize your claim that ecosystems don't have a fitness is an
> assertion without empirical support? Many professionals (perhaps most
> ecosystem scientists, for example) would disagree.

I didn't realize that it could be considered an empirical question. Looking
for empirical support for the claim that ecosystems have fitnesses is a bit
like looking for empirical support for the claim that automobiles have legs.
The dispute is not about the empirically determined facts, the dispute must
be about whether the definitions (of "fitness" or of "legs") can be usefully
stretched to apply outside their original domains.

So how would you define "fitness" as applied to ecosystems? What aspect
of the standard meaning of the word "fitness" do you preserve? If you are
claiming that the process of ecosystem evolution has a maximand (I remain
agnostic on this) I would prefer that you call this maximand a "maximand",
rather than calling it a "fitness". I would prefer to reserve the word
fitness for entities that replicate with the offspring likely to be almost
identical in its information content with the parent.

Relevant Pages