Re: Darwin misquoted on Wikipedia Natural Selection



backspace wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Natural_selection#Darwin.27s_hypothesis_section_fraudulent_misquotation

The "Darwin's hypothesis" section contains a fraudulent misquotation:
"I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if
useful, is preserved."
:The full quotation is:
"I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if
useful, is preserved, by the term natural selection, in order to mark
its relation to man's power of selection.
and the next paragraph
"But the expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer, of the Survival
of the Fittest, is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.
We have seen that man by selection can certainly produce great
results, and can adapt organic beings to his own uses, through the
accumulation of slight but useful variations, given to him by the hand
of Nature. But Natural Selection, we shall hereafter see, is a power
incessantly ready for action, and is as immeasurably superior to man's
feeble efforts, as the works of Nature are to those of Art."

Darwin seems to imply that Natural Selection as some sort of nature
selection force is superior to mans "feeble" efforts.

Or perhaps he's using figurative language. I know that fundies have
trouble with metaphors. That's why they're fundies, after all. But try
to wrap your mind around the concept. Note that I'm not asking you to
literally wrap anything here; that too is a metaphor.

[snip further confusion caused by your apparent inability to understand
figurative language or to search for meaning beyond a short sound bite,
when Darwin wrote a whole chapter to explain the subject]

.



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