Natural selection

[Show Me the Wire]

hcap,

You keep on insisting I do not understand Darwin's theory on natural selection. This is not a discussion if Darwin is correct, but about my understanding of his theory, which you tell me I do not understand.

Here is my understanding. Natural selection is based on the concept successful species acquire adaptations that are favorable for their environment and will pass down those adaptations to their offspring. Meaning only the individuals in that species will survive and that is how the species evolves over time.

Is my understanding correct, if not where am I in error?

[hcap]

Originally Posted by Show Me the Wire

hcap,

You keep on insisting I do not understand Darwin's theory on natural selection. This is not a discussion if Darwin is correct, but about my understanding of his theory, which you tell me I do not understand.

Here is my understanding. Natural selection is based on the concept successful species acquire adaptations that are favorable for their environment and will pass down those adaptations to their offspring. Meaning only the individuals in that species will survive and that is how the species evolves over time.

Is my understanding correct, if not where am I in error?

However our understanding of Darwin, don't you think what I said about.....

Just as well since your wrong analysis does not consider centuries of slavery, colonialism and imperialism culminating in inhumanity to black and brown people.

We must also remember Laissez-Faire economic theory and the awful Southern Strategy of Nixon in promoting racism. In other words it was not real science that promoted racism, but power and politics.

Should be considered in racial attitudes and the Loving decision?

Be back mañana.

[Tom]

Like global warming - those who adapt - move iland - will survive.

[hcap]

Originally Posted by Tom

Like global warming - those who adapt - move iland - will survive.

Just as I thought you are a social Darwinist.

You think Darwin coined the phrase "survival of the fittest" He did not Herbert Spencer did. And mainly contributed to the misunderstanding of Darwin theories and led to the Nazis racial propaganda and eugenics.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Social_Darwinism

The term "Social Darwinism" originated in Great Britain with the work of Herbert Spencer, who used the phrase "survival of the fittest"Wikipedia's W.svg in 1864

Social Darwinism is a philosophy[note 1] based on flawed readings of Charles Darwin's biology text On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859). The philosophy came into existence towards the end of the 19th century, though one can trace its origins all the way back to the ideas of Thomas Malthus (1766-1834).

Social Darwinists took the biological ideas of Charles Darwin (often mixing them with the theories of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and of Malthus) and attempted to apply them to the social sciences. They became especially interested in applying the idea of "the survival of the fittest" (their words, not Darwin's) in a social context, as this would excuse existing applications of racism, colonialism, and unfettered capitalism (for them, at least). Social Darwinism also became a tool to argue that governments should not interfere in human competition (as it existed at the time) in any way; and that the government should take no interest in, for example, regulating the economy, reducing poverty or introducing socialized medicine. In other words, have a laissez-faire policy.

However....

The basis of sympathy lies in our strong retentiveness of former states of pain or pleasure. Hence, “the sight of another person enduring hunger, cold, fatigue, revives in us some recollection of these states, which are painful even in idea.” We are thus impelled to relieve the sufferings of another, in order that our own painful feelings may be at the same time relieved...

.Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man:

Darwin continued in Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals by stating that, “from the power of the imagination and of sympathy we put ourselves in the position of the sufferer.”

Darwin went on to propose two hypotheses to support this theory of empathic perspective-taking: 1) individuals would be expected to mimic the behaviors of another when observing them perform a difficult task and 2) they would be physically distressed when witnessing another individual’s pain and would seek to stop it. It would take nearly a century for these hypotheses to be tested, but once they were it placed the scientific study of empathy on a new foundation.

So your version of "adapting" is without the care or help of ones neighbors, is not at all funny or clever on so many different levels.

[hcap]

Since Darwin much work has been done studying human attributes of altruism, empathy and sympathy from an evolutionary perspective.


In 1975, Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson published Sociobiology, which was viewed by most people at the time to be the most important evolutionary theory since On the Origin of Species.

Sociobiology: The New Synthesis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociob..._New_Synthesis

Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975; 25th anniversary edition 2000) is a book by the biologist E. O. Wilson. It helped start the sociobiology debate, one of the great scientific controversies in biology of the 20th century and part of the wider debate about evolutionary psychology and the modern synthesis of evolutionary biology. Wilson popularized the term "sociobiology" as an attempt to explain the evolutionary mechanics behind social behaviour such as altruism, aggression, and the nurturing of the young. It formed a position within the long-running nature versus nurture debate. The fundamental principle guiding sociobiology is that an organism's evolutionary success is measured by the extent to which its genes are represented in the next generation.[1]

It has much in common with many religions.

[Tom]

Well I'll be a monkey's uncle!!!

[hcap]

Originally Posted by Tom

Well I'll be a monkey's uncle!!!

You are obviously both

[hcap]

Originally Posted by Show Me the Wire

hcap,

You keep on insisting I do not understand Darwin's theory on natural selection. This is not a discussion if Darwin is correct, but about my understanding of his theory, which you tell me I do not understand.

Here is my understanding. Natural selection is based on the concept successful species acquire adaptations that are favorable for their environment and will pass down those adaptations to their offspring. Meaning only the individuals in that species will survive and that is how the species evolves over time.

Is my understanding correct, if not where am I in error?

Pretty close.

But my objection to your understanding of evolution is that you along with a "cottage industry" of anti-Darwinists confused Darwinism with social Darwinism. Further thinking racism and inhuman treatment of people was based on the advent of the theory of evolution in the 1860's, when the origins of racism precedes evolutionary theory by hundreds if not thousands of years.

Prejudice and all sorts of justifications for slavery led to the bigotry against blacks that the civil war was fought over. Slave owners of the south believed they were right to own another human. And they then passed down those beliefs through Jim Crow laws to form a regrettable part of our culture still around today

Slavery, colonialism and imperialism were the factors that led to marriage discrimination which was rightfully overturned in the Loving decision. Not your "racial Darwinism." Even social Darwinism had long lost it's appeal to the racial diehards during Hitler's third Reich.

The official description.

Darwin's Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection

More individuals are produced each generation that can survive.
Phenotypic variation exists among individuals and the variation is heritable.
Those individuals with heritable traits better suited to the environment will survive.
When reproductive isolation occurs new species will form.

These are the basic tenets of evolution by natural selection as defined by Darwin. The following is a quote from Darwin.

"Variation is a feature of natural populations and every population produces more progeny than its environment can manage. The consequences of this overproduction is that those individuals with the best genetic fitness for the environment will produce offspring that can more successfully compete in that environment. Thus the subsequent generation will have a higher representation of these offspring and the population will have evolved."

[hcap]

You must explain how come at the height of southern slavery.........

Why Bibles Given to Slaves Omitted Most of the Old Testament.
The so-called “Slave Bible” told of Joseph’s enslavement but left out the parts where Moses led the Israelites to freedom.
https://www.history.com/news/slave-b...-old-testament

When slavery was legal, its proponents often justified it with the Bible; specifically, a verse that tells servants to obey their masters. There were also a lot of verses that abolitionists could and did use to argue against slavery. But you wouldn’t find those in the heavily-redacted “Slave Bible.”

Most of the Old Testament is missing, and only about half of the New Testament remains. The reason? So that the enslaved Africans in the Caribbean islands of Jamaica, Barbados and Antigua couldn’t read or be read anything that might incite them to rebel.

The Slave Bible was actually titled Parts of the Holy Bible, selected for the use of the Negro Slaves, in the British West-India Islands.

It’s not clear who exactly directed these changes. British planters in the Caribbean had long been weary of missionaries, and could’ve demanded that they only teach enslaved people certain parts of the Bible. But some missionaries may have also believed that it was only appropriate to teach enslaved people excerpts that reinforced their enslaved status.

Whoever the Slave Bible’s editors were, “they’re really highlighting portions that would instill obedience,” says Anthony Schmidt, a curator at Washington, D.C. Museum of the Bible, which has a copy of the Slave Bible on display. There are only two other known copies.
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Btw, The first Slave Bible was published in 1807.....long before Darwin