Re: Me against the meme

From: Derek Gatherer (d.gatherer@vir.gla.ac.uk)
Date: Wed 09 Nov 2005 - 08:46:05 GMT

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    > A species
    > > is self-determined to the extent that an
    > > intelligently chosen functional
    > > adaptation has generated a structural variation to
    > > be selected or not by the
    > > environment.

    >Intelligently chosen?
    >[snip]
    >Why do psychological features that
    >evolved within one branch of great apes apply to
    >distinct branches such as plants or bacteria? I just
    >don't get it.

    Nor do I. And there's also a deeper problem with the notion of an kind of "chosen" functional adaptation (intelligent or otherwise), which is that there is no empirical evidence for such a process, despite a century of failed attempts (from Kammerer to Steele via Michurin and Lysenko) to find it. The reason why the cornfields of Mid-West North America fed a rapidly expanding population while those of the Ukraine failed to keep up with a declining one, are largely due to the difference between the practical results obtained by
    (Mendelian) US scientists as opposed to their (Lysenkoist) Soviet counterparts.

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