Short Essay
Natural Selection: The Explanation that Explains Very Little
Throughout the teachings of the biological sciences, and within the many fields of research connected to evolutionary biology, it is implicit that natural selection is the ‘driver’ of adaptation in living things. Described by Darwin as a ‘Power’, selection is said to provide the generative force or ‘pressure’ responsible for creating biodiversity. Yet from the very beginning, the creative power attributed to natural selection has been greatly exaggerated, and is to a large extent illusory – whatever survives was already there! If I remove 2 bad apples out of a bag of 6, the remaining 4 good apples are preserved, but no apples are modified. Preservation is neither creation nor evolution.
Natural selection can certainly modify the proportions of traits in a population, and allow the group to adapt to changing conditions. But it achieves this only thru the crude tool of elimination. No trait itself is generated, originated, made, molded or modified by the action of selection. Nor can selection steer the direction of adaptive change in a reproductive group, unless adaptive traits in that direction have already emerged in some individuals. All adaptations must pre-exist before they can be preserved, and selection does not create the fit any more than it creates the unfit.
As a scientific theory, evolution by means of natural selection falls short of the task, providing little in the way of testability, predictability or falsifiability. Indeed, it is remarkable that this explanation of origins even ranks as a proper scientific theory – as several nonconformists have argued. Beneath it all, the prevailing theory of evolution by means of natural selection is really a theory of evolution by means of random mutation.
Read or download short essay pdf and comment below. Comments will be published following approval.
Just came across this paper on hybrid speciation (Nature 628: 811). Also, looks like the importance of slow speciation is being overtaken by quite a few studies especially on Darwin’s Finches.
Interesting paper Colin. It’s an example of what is sometimes termed a ‘species complex’, where 2 or more very similar species live together and sometimes hybridize. This begs the question, if they can interbreed are they actually different species to begin with?
There appear to be many ways (both slow and rapid) by which 1 specie (singular spelling intended) can give rise to a new slightly different specie. The real problem for evolutionary theory is not speciation, but the origin of new orders, classes and phyla, which require the arrival of new organs and novel body plans that cannot be explained by the mixing or selection of small variations.
Just had a quick look and the quote from Delage and Goldsmith is a bit below the belt since the work of Mendel had not been made known to the world due to the language of publication. We see so much variety in all sorts due at least in part to genetic variation.
Note that Ho and Saunders made a similar point in 1979, many decades after the rediscovery of Mendel; that the focus on selection doesn’t account for the origin of the adaptation. Certainly there is much genetic variation in populations, but whether what we observe is sufficient to account for anything more than minor change remains contentious in evolutionary theory, and is discussed further on in the essay.