Re: Modeling the origins of life: New evidence for an 'RNA World'

On 16/03/2024 11:17, Richmond wrote:

j.nobel.daggett@gmail.com (LDagget) writes:
 

Richmond wrote:
>

John Harshman <john.harshman@gmail.com> writes:

>

JTEM has his own vocabulary. By "evolution" he means the modern
synthesis, also called (which JTEM would detest) neoDarwinism. What he
seeks to attach Darwin's name to is Lysenkoism or neoLamarckism. If
you make all those switches what he says is more or less correct.
>
Not sure whether Mao or the CCP adopted Lysenkoism, but it doesn't
seem out of the question.
>

>

The phrase "survival of the fittest" has always seemed suspect to me. We
hear it repeated to justify capitalism. But there isn't any requirement
to be 'fit' as far as I can see. There is only a requirement (for genes)
to survive. For example the camel which sits on the calf of its rival
and crushes it to death, or the chimpanzee which kills and eats the
infant offspring of its rivals. In what way is it 'fit'? A biologist
would define it as merely fit to survive, but then the phrase becomes
redundant as survival of the survivor. And we see the same results in
captialism with corporations swallowing up rivals rather than competing
with them.

>
You want to argue against a metaphor by considering it literally.

 It's not a metaphor.

Darwin's original phrase was Natural Selection - an analogy with Artificial Selection. The phenomenon is differential reproductive success causally correlated with hereditary traits. (As opposite to differential reproductive success not correlated with hereditary traits, which is genetic drift.)
As I understand, Darwin was frustrated that people failed to understand the concept of Natural Selection, and hoped that perhaps people would find Spencer's Survival of the Fittest more comprehensible. The issue perhaps is that fittest has shades of meaning - Survival of the Best Adapted would seem to closer to how Darwin understood it. See Selection in Relation to Sex.
I'm not sure what literary classification to place Survival of the Fittest in. It's not obviously an analogy like Natural Selection. It's not a definition. (Lawyer Daggett's complaint may be that you were treating it as a definition.) Perhaps it's a catchphrase or a sound bite. One could certainly make a case for it being a metaphor - survival of the fittest for persistence of adaptive traits. (Now I wonder how contemporaries interpreted the trait - modern understanding has been modified by the rhetoric of Creationists and Social Tennysonists (often the same people).

 

That
is some mix of dishonest, foolish, and stupid.

 Oh please fuck off.
 

--
alias Ernest Major