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From: eich@uiuccsb.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Observing Evolution - (nf)
Message-ID: <3699@uiucdcs.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 7-Nov-83 23:03:15 EST
Article-I.D.: uiucdcs.3699
Posted: Mon Nov  7 23:03:15 1983
Date-Received: Wed, 9-Nov-83 23:59:00 EST
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#R:duke:-369600:uiuccsb:11900007:000:1520
uiuccsb!eich    Nov  4 21:22:00 1983

I didn't say natural selection is not evolution, just that it is not
nearly the whole story.

I think I meant by `natural selection' something narrower than what you
mean.  Most texts I have read treat the issue of what genotypes the
survival criterion selects separately from the selection itself.  Thus
natural selection acting on primordial organisms doesn't account for
new species.  For that you need (and the Modern synthesis posits)
mutations.

So part of the synthesis is the observation that mutagens and ionizing
radiation create a background of `spontaneous' mutations, and the
postulate that enough of these over a long period result in beneficial
changes (beneficial by the survival of the fittest criterion)
sufficient to produce a new species.  Microbiology supports this by
finding an evolutionary history in genetic material (`Ontogeny
recapitulates Phylogeny' in miniature).

On the other hand the Modern Synthesis is under quiet attack right now
from biologists like Stephen Gould, partly because steady, slow
progress by random mutation isn't too well supported, especially by
(not to give Creationists comfort, but I must say it) the fossil
record.  Gould holds that evolution is a saltational process, occuring
disjuctively in a fury of mutation and selection between the epochs.

But the point I was making is that all of this evolution controversy in
biology deals with more than natural selection: namely, where does the
great variety of life come from, granted that it obviously was
selected?