Wynne-Edwards ( was Homosexuality)



> Back around 1960, a scientist named V. C. Wynne-Edwards published a
> book which suggested something similar. While he didn't (as far as I
> know) mention homosexuality, he did theorize that a lot of other
> behaviors evolved because they help to keep populations down to
> reasonable levels.
> This ignited a famous controversy. It is generally believed today that
> Wynne-Edwards was wrong and that it is impossible for natural selection
> > to produce adaptations in organisms that serve to keep the population
> down. But there are still some people who think that the kind of thing
> that Wynne-Edwards was talking about might be possible.

JE:-
Nobody mentions, including the professionals who have this duty of care,
that Wynne-Edwards actually retracted group selection in his final book.
Originally he argued that group selection was natural selection operating
between groups, i.e. each group can be validly considered to be just the
one, single INDEPENDENT selectee. He reversed this argument to each group
can constitute a selective force on Darwinian individuals which is Lloyd
Morgan's concept of organic selection otherwise known as the "The Baldwin
Effect". Put very simply, selection FOR the group contradicts selection BY
the group because the former incorporates two independent selectees: the
Darwinian individual and the group but the latter only incorporates ONE: the
original Darwinian individual.

The reasons why group selection has failed are twofold:

1) It was always invalid to compare apples (individual selection) with
oranges (group selection) unless one is converted into the other. Hamilton's
solution was to convert c and b into gene centric using relatedness so that
they could now be validly compared. Unfortunately his and his many
colleagues conversion of the group centric b within Hamilton's Rule rb>c or
-rb<-c was and remains to this very day, incorrect, hopelessly distorting
Hamilton's 100% relative rule in favor of the evolution of organism fitness
altruism within nature.

2) Group selection was and remains a multi-level theory because it
incorporates a minimum of TWO independent levels of selection.
No THEORY as to how two or more independent levels of selection can work
together has been proposed by anybody, i.e. the so called "multi level"
approach only blandly states that more than one independent level of
selection exists without proposing how this could possibly work. Just
stating something because you quite like the idea is NOT a theory of
anything. All the hard work is coming up with a fully testable and detailed
proposition as to how what you argue actually works in NATURE (not just on
paper). It seems nobody today wishes to do any of the really hard work
within evolutionary theory.

Regards

John Edser
Independent Researcher

edser@xxxxxxxxxx






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Relevant Pages

  • Re: Reviews of Unto Others
    ... Darwinian, i.e. "traits of the group or the ... OFA into evolutionary theory using just a non ... > book on natural selection and adaptation has a preface from 1996. ... In his last book Wynne-Edwards reversed his position. ...
    (sci.bio.evolution)
  • Re: Reviews of Unto Others
    ... > In his last book Wynne-Edwards reversed his position. ... > selection BY the group. ... then both levels of fitness are selected ... within genetic fitness OR the reverse. ...
    (sci.bio.evolution)
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