Re: Addressing Scientific Reductionism
- From: "John Edser" <edser@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2006 11:36:35 -0500 (EST)
dkomo dkomo871@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:-
If the interaction matrix between gene products and their
affected traits is such that everything affects everything, evolution
becomes impossible. The entire design becomes a house of cards. You
can't change any bit of code without affecting the entire organism.
Ok, but that is not an argument using natural selection at the organism
level for maximum advantage here and now. It is an argument appealing
to retaining the potential for future improvements.
If a species cannot easily evolve it cannot respond to environmental
changes and it will go extinct. Evolvability has itself been selected
"here and now". It is as key a trait of an organism as any trait. It
means an organism can more easily produce offspring with new characters
that can take advantage of changed environments. The rapidly evolving
beaks of the Galapagos finches are an example.
JE:-
Yes, nature has to beak up just the one non plastic epistatic fitness that
exists per selectee per population into what appears on just the surface to
represent separate in fitness traits. This illusion is maintained by any
selected system because parts of itself must be made respond to selection in
a quasi independent way. This is achieved by using epistatic (non additive)
gearing. If this gear is set very high then traits are either highly
conserved (canalization) OR change very quickly (become assimilated). The
former is associated with stasis and the latter with evolutionary change.
OTOH if this gearing is set at low, traits will appear to be selected on an
independent basis. C. H. Waddington's pioneering research into the fertile
new field of gene centric relationships remains almost entirely ignored by a
population genetics utterly transfixed by natures illusion of independent in
fitness traits. Please refer to Waddington's model that I posted without
comment in the thread: "Waddington's Revision of Haldane". Waddington's
model increases the explanatory power of Haldane's single bi-nomial
expansion of two alleles at one locus within an infinite population to _four
competing_ bi-nomial expansions because he included epistatic variables for
the very first time.
Regards,
John Edser
Independent Researcher
edser@xxxxxxxxxx
.
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