tautological evolution was RE: [Marxism] Re: the clitoris-orgasm thread

[Mike Friedman <mikedf@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This argument, the alleged tautology of fitness and selection, was
originally expressed by Popper and more recently taken up by creationists
of various stripes. It is based on a misunderstanding of how fitness,
adaptation and natural selection work. This is what Serene Pha, the student
I quoted in my last post on this subject [who at what? 20 years of age? has
a better understanding of evolutionary theory than Fort or Ranney], has to
say
(http://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/phibalas/dialogue2001/serene%20phua%20UPI2203.htm):


>     The theory of evolution has faced much criticism since conception
> till present, with a major argument against the theory being that the
> usage of a circular argument renders it unfalsifiable and hence suspect.
> Specifically, the perceived circular argument is that organisms survive
> because they are adapted to the environment and are adapted to the
> environment because they have survived. However, this charge against
> evolution is not credible, for the simple reason that underlying
> assumptions are wrong.
>
>      Evolution advocates not that the fittest organisms will invariably
> survive, but that the fittest organisms have the greatest expected
> chances of survival. Indeed, there are two mechanisms involved in the
> process: one is that of natural selection, where organisms which are
> better adapted to the environment have a greater tendency to survive, and
> the other is that of chance mutation, which involves the random mutation
> of genes, such that new species are created [this formulation is somewhat
> faulty, as obviously, not every mutation gives rise to new species --
> Mike]. Evidently, though being adapted does increase an organism's
> chances of survival, the existence of the two mechanisms indicates that
> which organism will eventually survive through the subsequent generations
> cannot be known with absolute certainty. Therefore, evolution cannot be a
> tautological argument, since the necessary survival of the best adapted
> is not an a priori truth.

SUNY evolutionary biologist Massimo Pigliucci, writing about Popper's
retreat from an older position holding that "Darwinian evolution" was
non-scientific, wrote (http://www.rednova.com/news/display/?id=83304):


> Why, then, did the Austrian philosopher change his mind? Because it turns
> out that while it is true that evolutionary biologists predict (i.e.,
> deduce) the survival of the fittest (and the much more important fact that
> s/he is going to have the most offspring) by means of natural selection,
> they have independent ways to assess which members of a population of
> organisms actually are the "fittest." For example, biologists employ
> optimization analyses to predict which combinations of morphological,
> behavioral, or physiological traits are more likely to be advantageous
> (i.e., to increase "fitness") in the range of environments actually
> encountered by a given living form. They then sample natural populations
> of organisms, determine in which environments they actually live, measure
> those traits they hypothesize are more likely to make a difference, and
> obtain statistical predictions on where natural selection should push the
> population next. Finally, biologists wait until the next generation of
> organisms comes out and measure their characteristics again.
>
> If the theory were correct (and given some other verifiable conditions,
> such as the presence of adequate genetic variation for the traits in
> question), the population's mean for the characters under selection should
> have shifted in the predicted direction. This is an eminently falsifiable
> hypothesis, in the same sense in which predictions made by astronomers or
> physicists are falsifiable, and very much unlike the explanations of human
> behavior put forth by psychoanalysts, which are notoriously so flexible
> that they can fit (a posteriori) virtually any observed pattern.

Finally, for a fairly thorough summary discussion of the tautology
argument, I'd refer the reader to John Wilkins' piece, "A Good Tautology is
Hard to Find," on the Talk.Origins website
(http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolphil/tautology.html).  He starts his
article with the following observation:


> The simple version of the so-called 'tautology argument' is this:
>
> Natural selection is the survival of the fittest. The fittest are those
> that survive. Therefore, evolution by natural selection is a tautology (a
> circular definition).
>
> The real significance of this argument is not the argument itself, but
> that it was taken seriously by any professional philosophers at all.
> 'Fitness' to Darwin meant not those that survive, but those that could be
> expected to survive because of their adaptations and functional
> efficiency, when compared to others in the population. This is not a
> tautology, or, if it is, then so is the Newtonian equation F=ma
> [<http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolphil/ackbib.html#Sober1984>Sober
> 1984, chapter 2], which is the basis for a lot of ordinary physical
> explanation.
>
> The phrase 'survival of the fittest' was not even Darwin's. It was urged
> on him by Wallace, the codiscoverer of natural selection, who hated
> 'natural selection' because he thought it implied that something was doing
> the selecting. Darwin coined the term 'natural selection' because had made
> an analogy with 'artificial selection' as done by breeders, an analogy
> Wallace hadn't made when he developed his version of the theory. The
> phrase 'survival of the fittest' was originally due to Herbert Spencer
> some years before the Origin .

 Mike


At 10:08 AM 1/29/2005, you wrote:
> Message: 6
> Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2005 19:56:47 -0500
> From: "Mark Lause" <MLause@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: RE: [Marxism] Re: the clitoris-orgasm t thread
> To: "'Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition'"
>         <marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Message-ID: <001601c5059d$68babcc0$d41bb941@yourkf1y8xksrv>
> Content-Type: text/plain;       charset="us-ascii"
>
> Charles Fort deserves honorable mention in this discussion.  The old
> iconoclast used to tweek the nose of science at every opportunity.  He
> was the earliest I know of who punctured the "survival of the fittest"
> as a tautology.  We know the "fittest" by who survives," so all the
> statement really says is "the survivers survived."
>
> I have a real soft spot for Fort and urge anyone interested in some
> classic puncturings of the science bubble to go to him rather than to
> the New Age silliness.  Then, too, the thing about Fort was that he
> never really lept from the
> "stop-being-pompous-about-what-none-of-us-know" response to making his
> own claims to know.  The "Forteans" are about as true to what Fort was
> doing as are most of the self-labelled Jeffersonians and the ... well
> ... (ahem) ...Marxists.
>
> ML


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