Re: On a proposal to make a correction to Wikipedia's definition of "Evolution".
- From: cri@xxxxxxxx (Richard Harter)
- Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 22:27:20 GMT
On Wed, 10 Oct 2007 10:28:57 -0500, Mark VandeWettering
<wettering@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 2007-10-10, J. J. Lodder <nospam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Faustino Núñez Hernández <faustnh@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Wikipedia page of Evolution: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution
The following proposal has also been included on that article's
discussion section : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Evolution
Important discussion needed: I propose a very important and necessary
correction to this article's base approach. (A new definition of
Evolution).
I copy and paste literally from the main article (first words of
Wikipedia's article) :
------------------
"In biology, evolution is the change in the inherited traits of a
population from generation to generation"
------------------
All the rest of the article revolves around this idea ; so the article
gives a central importance , for example , to notions such as
inheritance .
I consider that's not a sound definition of Evolution .
I propose here a much more sound definition or pro-definition of
Evolution . I hope you will understand it and accept it . Of course
I'm open to discussion :
------------------
(In biology) Evolution is the fact that living beings (that is,
species, patterns or homogeneous groups) change, transform or mutate,
to re-adapt to new environments, or to environmental changes, or to
new environmental conditions.
------------------
Any definition which states that 'evolution is a fact' must be wrong,
Evolution is a fact. But yes, the rest of the definition is rubbish.
Evolution is a process. That evolution has occurred and is
occurring is a fact. Be that as it may, definitions that state
that something is a fact are fundamentally flawed.
I've always liked "Evolution is the heritable changes in the
lineages of life over time." The "allele" definition -
"evolution is the change in the allele distributions in a
population over time" - doesn't really work. It is "breeding
population centric". That is, viruses and bacteria don't have
populations and species in the same way that diploid species do.
For that matter, populations are intrinsically fuzzy - there are
all sorts of things that blur the boundaries at any particular
time, and in the fullness of time populations and demes
differentiate and disappear. A further difficulty is that the
population concept doesn't deal with horizontal transfer very
well.
In short, the allele/population definition is useful for people
doing breeding experiments on fruit flies.
Richard Harter, cri@xxxxxxxx
http://home.tiac.net/~cri, http://www.varinoma.com
But the rhetoric of holistic harmony can generate into a kind of
dotty, Prince Charles-style mysticism. -- Richard Dawkins
.
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