Differential reproductive success.
Perhaps “success” naturally leads to connotations of competition, but we could instead say “Differentiation in reproductive rates” or something like that.
-FrL-
What do the words have to do with the math in this case? Are you saying that if I use some other word to describe two enzymes that bond to the same site that the math will have been thrown out? I’m sorry but my point from the start was that the math is the math and evolution is what it is no matter what word you use.
To me it sounds like you’re hoping the words will inherit some kind of objectivity from the math. I don’t think it’s going to work.
Should they drop survival of the fittest since a lot of people seem to misconstrue that as well?
Let us all start calling addition “egalitarian consummation”, and division “rationalization of parts”, and see how long it takes for actual communication to come screeching to a halt.
Even when there’s a good reason to change terminology, it can take half of forever; witness the metricationdebacle in the US. You start changing words because they might hurt someone’s feelings, and you’ll likely only get yourself laughed at.
If the gal thinks “competition” isn’t the right term, let her right down her equations for the process, and point out how they differ from the classic definition of competition.
I’ve always found the difference between the language used to describe evolution by natural selection and human-directed cultivation and breeding very interesting, despite the similar mechanisms. For instance, you might say that an organism “become adapted” to a particular environment, or evolved a specific trait (Giraffes evolved long necks in response to environmental pressure, etc.) But if you couch breeding in similar terms, it just sounds strange. You would never say maize evolved large kernels as a strategy for adapting to the the environmental pressures of human agriculture. You would instead say that humans cultivated maize to have larger kernels.
In natural selection, the organism is seen as an actor competing with other organisms in an external environment, whereas in breeding the environment (human desires) is the actor engaged in altering the hapless organism. I suppose it is a limitation of language that makes it difficult to express the nature of complex, non-deterministic systems like evolving ecosystems, where organisms and their environments both change and are changed by each other, without assigning motivation to some component of the system.
Why do you call it a non-deterministic system? Is it due to quantum randomness in our environment which influences reactions, or are you thinking that an organism’s response to it’s environment is non-deterministic?
That term is definitely Spencerian, and not Darwinian, and has been very unfortunate. Fittest only means reproductive success, but implies that the toughest of the species wins, which is not always true. I suspect that a lot of biologists would love to see this term deep sixed.
But that is the result, not the process.
I think we are hard wired to impute intelligence and consciousness into non-conscious things (which is where tree and volcano gods come from) so I don’t see any alternative.
“Adapted” is the operative word in this context. Those individual organisms that are best adapted long enough to pass on their genes and help their descendants pass on their genes (go Grandparents!) drive the evolutionary process. “Fitness” has nothing to do with it. The fittest mega fauna will die in an environment that doesn’t have enough food for such a large animal but can support smaller animals that are sickly.
Individual organisms do “compete” with other organisms, within and outside their own species, for resources such as food, habitat and mates. These are not organized competitions with sanctioning bodies, but empty larders and loneliness await those that can’t find what is needed.
Internal drives are ones that require some involvement of the organism’s own systems in some fashion. Merely reacting to gravity by falling is an external drive. Gravitropism is an internal drive.
Are you denying that tropisms exist, or are you claiming there’s no difference between a rock falling and a tree growing? Because to me, one involves the subject as actor, and one doesn’t.
Please write down the equation and show me where it contains the word “competition”.
As an example of changing terminology without actual communication screeching to a halt:in the last twenty years the use of gender specific pronouns in English has nearly been eliminated. If you’d asked me twenty years ago how long that would take I’d have said “never. It will never happen just because some people want it to.”
I was wrong. Communication didn’t halt.
Yes please.
Clearly it’s survival of the most able and willing to please the massa.
Non-deterministic is the wrong term for it (sorry, being a bit cavalier with my terminology). I actually meant that it is a non-linear, chaotic system, rather than necessarily non-deterministic. What I mean is, that it is nearly impossible to predict the future state of the system from its initial conditions (an an usually intelligent dinosaur in the Jurassic would not have been able to foresee the evolution of the zebra, for instance). This is one reason why the phrase “survival of the fittest” is inaccurate. It implies that there is some objective measure of “fitness” this must always be increasing as evolution proceeds forward in time. But in actuality, what is “fittest” in one environment can be detrimental if that environment changes, and environments change often.
But that is not really what “fittest” means, in this context. It means “being best fitted to your situation”, not in a “red in tooth and claw” way, but in a round peg kind of sense. Which makes it tautological, really - whatever is evolutionarily successful is what is fittest, always. There can be no scaled measure of fitness, it’s binary - something either is or isn’t fitted to “survive” (pass its genes on, strictly speaking). Everything that survives is equally fit. All the losers are equally unfit.
Which is why I put “fittest” in quotes, since it is an ill-defined concept that can be interpreted many ways, and why “survival of the fittest” is a poor description for the evolutionary process.
This is true only if you look at whether or not an individual reproduced it’s genes, and ignore the fact that the rate of success of a genotype and not an individual is what’s important. It’s very rarely a black and white situation, because multiple genotypes can exist within the same species. Unless the different genotypes are physically separated, it’s almost never going to be binary. If 30% of a species with genotype A reproduce and 50% of genotype B reproduce then genotype B is the fittest, but that doesn’t mean that genotype A will never reproduce successfully again. Genotype B will dominate and eventually there will be more B than A, but A will probably still exist. ‘Survival of the fittest’ is an oversimplification, and is only a tautology if you ignore the actual meaning and look solely at the words as given.
In college one of my biology professors also had that hang up about using certain words to explain evolution.
To him, creatures don’t compete, they become adapted to thrive under the circumstances of their environment. Competing suggest an active and conscious struggle between two individuals or groups.
Tijauna, I disagree with your professor, because it could sound, to someone not as familiar with it as you and I, like he’s saying that individuals become adapted to survive. To convey the idea that it’s populations that adapt, I think it’s more clear to talk about individuals competing, resulting in populations that become adapted.
What about if instead of two asteroids heading toward the earth you had two night drivers heading toward a surprise deer waiting in the center of the road? Are they competing to hit the deer? They’re conscious, but that isn’t their goal. Which is why asteroids aren’t competing to hit the earth. No reward for that. You could however accurately say they’re racing toward earth, or maybe just take anthropomorphism as a function of communication necessary for communication of some ideas in a not so logical species.
I think the defining thing of competition is reward or perceived reward. Fish genes have the reward of passing themselves on.