Selection and non-random variation

[Chris J. Durden]

  People and the selections they perform are quite natural, we are just a
rampant weed species at the moment and can expect the fate of all weeds.
 
 ... or a wave upon the ocean, or a little bend in the edge of the
Mandelbrodt figure.
........Chris Durden

At 08:56  30/08/99 -0400, you wrote:
>When it comes to natural selection, why are we eliminating our own
>actions from consideration. Are we supposedly unnatural or something?
>Man has been responsible for the extinction of quite a few mammals,
>either because they were tasty or because they were scary. 
>We are now rapidly removing everything tasty from the ocean, and will
>end up with only the fish that are too ugly to eat. 
>When God put us in charge, perhaps the instructions should have been
>more clear? As we seem to be trashing the joint. 
>For purposes of this argument, I have reread Genesis, as well as looking
>up panspermia (mentioned on Entomo-L).
>I am impressed by people who can take all of Genesis as literally true
>... at least in the King James version. I believed a good deal of it, in
>my youth, but fortunately went to a splendid school where many creation
>myths were studied. There seems to be a consensus ... a central truth. 
>I don't see that the notion of God the Creator contradicts our notion
>that evolution describes the way creation looks, if you happen to be
>temporarily among those created. All a matter of perspective. 
>As for panspermia, if you read much science fiction, you recognize many
>of the theories and can put names to the wise ones who originated them. 
>I turn to the poets for theology, and to the science fiction writers for
>social sciences. Their thought processes have greater clarity, and their
>communications skills are so fine ... 
>And perhaps I am only a butterfly dreaming that I am Anne Kilmer
>Cheers
>
>
>John Grehan wrote:
>> 
>> Kenelm Philip
>> 
>>  You can argue all you
>> >like about whether other processes operate as well as natural selection--
>> >but no one can maintain that natural selection won't work at all.
>> 
>> I agree with the latter part of this statement, but the implication of the
>> first
>> that other processes are somehow just a matter of argument would be
>> inaccurate since patterns of concerted evolution (basically involving
>> an orthogenetic process) have been demonstrated. Like selection, the
>> arguement comes down to how much significance such procesess
>> have in the long-term.
>> 
>> John Grehan
>
>