Re: Think religion isn't a product of evolutionary forces?
- From: "John W Edser" <edser@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 01:24:32 -0500 (EST)
j.wilkins1@xxxxxxxxx (John Wilkins) wrote:-
JE:-
Neither Baldwin or Darwin knew about Mendel so originally it could not
have
been about "genes". Lloyed Morgan in the 1890's, who was also a
contemporary
of Darwin called it "organic selection", which described the Baldwin
Effect
without ambiguity.
http://www.brocku.ca/MeadProject/Groos/Groos_1898/editor_app.html
Baldwin:
"Assuming the operation of natural selection as currently held, and
assuming
also that individual organisms through adaptation acquire modifications
or
new characters, then the latter will exercise a directive influence on
the
former quite independently of any direct inheritance of acquired
characters."
The Baldwin effect, along with everything else has become reduced to
polycentic mathematics which defines genes as well as nefarious other
units
of selection in just contradictory ways as far as _empirically based
science
is concerned_.
That's beside the point, John.
JE:-
Hi John,
I cannot agree. It remains the historical truth so what is and what is not
the Baldwin Effect, as it is reworked today, must remain separated from
_what it was originally proposed to be_.
Darwin also didn't know about genes, so
I suppose you'd have to say that natural selection never operates on
genes.
JE:-
Correct, but not just historically so! At no time can it be validly
proposed within _any empirical science_ that genes (units of DNA/RNA) can
be selected. These are the falsifiable reasons:
1) All DNA/RNA genes remain selected/not selected via the polypeptides that
they code for because the falsifiable revised central dogma of biochemistry
empirically describes just a one way relationship between genotype and
phenotype only allowing heritable phenotypes to be selected.
2) All genes have an epistatic (non additive) fitness. This means that at
all times _a minimum of two genes phenotypes must be selected together
_within any valid model_.
The Baldwin Effect as presently understood operates on genes via
behavior.
JE:-
The Baldwin Effect as it is presently _empirically_ understood only operates
on _fertile_ forms via behaviour. Historically, the effect operated on
"organisms". Neither of these are at all the same thing as the effect
supposed as operating on just "genes", or are the same thing compared to
just each other. Therefore, any valid simplified i.e. not oversimplified
model must allow at least _two epistatically fit genes_ which can be
selected for via the one, single phenotype that they are allowed to code
for. A much better minimalist model will allow at least one epistatic gene
fitness per chromosome per heritable phenotype. The present model allows no
epistatic inheritance reducing everything to just an alphabet soup of
heuristic, additive populations composed entirely of _independently_
selectable genes.
Cultural selection is when cultural/behavioral phenomena modify the
adaptive fitness of cultural transmits, not genes.
JE:-
"Cultural transmits" are entirely epistatically inherited via large, non
additive groups of genes which must code for the incredibly complex
phenotypes required to hold above the gene forms of inheritance such as
"learning". The popular gene centric view that such gene groups only become
"shredded" at meiosis rendering them uninheritable is not empirically
sustained. Please refer to the work of Waddington et al.
JE:-
The above presents a popular Neo Darwinian non falsifiable polycentric
version which was and remains critically oversimplified from the
Darwinian/
Baldwin falsifiable monocentric version. What remains deleted within the
uncorrected Neo Darwinian version is: all gene _fitness_ epistasis.
Also wrong. There need to be units of heredity but they need not begenes (and we know that there is heredity in proteins, and of course
membranes, as well as oocyte polarity, etc.).
JE:-
No heritable epistatic gene groups, no cultural transmits, no Baldwin effect
just heuristic, additive populations of genes.
If a cultural entity is
fitter than another, there need be nothing genetic, or even especially
biological, involved.
JE;-
What you seem not to appreciate is that the very complex phenotypes which
alone can provide cultural (above the gene levels) of inheritance remain
epistatically based and epistatically inherited. Because polycentric Neo
Darwinism simply deletes all gene epistasis (including gene fitness
epistasis) as "inherited" but not "heritable" (just to be able to remain
polycentric), no mechanism exists within Neo Darwinism to allow above the
gene forms of inheritance even though we all know that it happens. For this
reason the Baldwin Effect was remained on the back burner. Yet, within our
own species, the Baldwin Effect is simply, massive.
Regards,
John Edser
Independent Researcher
edser@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
.
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