Is the Darwinistic Selection Principle False?

yeah but get real
natural selection is about biology
our physical bodies have the same abilities
as did our ancestors for 200000 years
we only just invented agriculture 10000 years ago
it’s not like we’ve gone retarded because we shop at the grocery
shit takes time

“We” didn’t have a CCP and genetic engineering 200,000 years ago.

do you have a point?

Not sure what you think you are trying to say here.
Presumably you are talking about Social Darwinism?
Natural Selection reuqires only references to successful progeny. By whatever means the next generation has only to live. Social success or being “sponsored” by the state has no relevance to Darwin.
Your last sentence is meaningless.
All humans are genetically capable of individual thought. In fact all more than any other animal on the planet.

Nearly all mammals, and certainly ALL homonids and simians have relied on the collective.
You seem to be struggling with something.

This is particularly funny since you live in the first time in history where society has meant a lower reliance on the collective that at any other time.
Maybe you are just pissed off that your dream of freedom is greater than your own personal ability to live that dream.
I say the fault seems to lie with you here and not the model, not society.

Yes. It’s the language. It is itself a product of the unique development of the brain, both of which have hyped each other up. Body and mind/spirit, spirit/mind and body; later also: body against mind/spirit, spirit/mind against body.

It started with the upright walk and then with the development of the hands. The hands became more and more graceful. But the real process that made humans successful was the one after that: cerebralization.

There were three conditions for these developments:

  1. Exogenous (environmental changes with corresponding necessities for adaptation).
  2. Endogenous (further development of certain organs, atrophy of others).
  3. Autogenous ( as a distancing mode as production of self-created changes in conditions).
    For humans, the importance of these 3 conditions to each other has shifted more and more in favor of the autogenous factors (see: 3.). For this relationship system the meaning of the migration into the savannah (exogenous) or the meaning of the upright walk (endogenous) or the meaning of the hand for the culture construction (autogenous) is emphasized again and again. However, a decisive basis was the cerebralization, i.e. the size development of the brain, which was triggered in a network from all 3 directions. The brain of an early hominid in the animal-human transition had a volume of approx. 500cm^3 (example: Australopithecus) and grew up to approx. 600-800cm^3 (Homo rudolfensis and Homo habilis), approx. 750-1250cm^3 (Homo erectus), 1200-1800cm^3 (Neanderthal man), up to approx. 2000cm^3 (Neanderthal man and Now man).

The cerebralization enabled the superstructure of repressed instinctual programming through conditioning (trial and error) and cognition (imagination and thought).

These humans would never have been successful without this brain development, but would have disappeared from evolution after only a short time.

Everything that humans have created, their culture (including technology), goes back to their intelligence. That made them successful. Thus, the characteristic of human fitness is their intelligence.fitness is their intelligence.

Yes. See my response to Obsvr.

The 19th century was a century of natural science. Everything was interpreted in terms of natural science. Philosophy was also strongly influenced by this, of course. This can be seen exactly in the history of phisosophy in the 19th century.

The turning point came with the turn to the 20th century, in dates: 1900; in terms of cultural history: World War 1 (1914-1918).

Let’s wait and see, because the 21st century will not be like the 20th century. That’s for sure!

Yes.

I have a tendency to investigate the root cause of things when accrediting their fruition or condemnation. And sometimes that gets tricky, mundane, and not really worth the effort to discern. So with that in mind, I will concede that the intelligence of the homosapian is the most noteworthy distinction that led to his dominance (and probably his demise as well).
:smiley:

Intelligence AND fine motor skill

Let us not forget the the thought that if something doesent feel right, if it does not appear sensible or just doesent cluck, it may be not worth pursuit

Until mimicking becomes a rote mascarade, always on the lookout for that self gratious model to follow, the direction of human progress will always be reactive and debolutiomary.

Just as you said, intelligence is the fitness characteristic of human beings, and therefore, according to Darwin, the most intelligent humans must be those humans who have the most offspring.

No that is not what Darwin says AT ALL.
Selection is just about viable progeny. If intelligent people decide to have no children then they shall not pass on that trait. If stupid people breed like rabbits, and the leads to viable progeny, then it is THEY that get to pass on their traits.
It is not rocket science.
During the last 120,000 years when anatomically modern humans energed from Africa it took intelligence to compete against Neanderthals, and to master the wild, build weapons and shelters and to colonise the whole world.
During those times it was only the smartest that could survive. Intelligence was selected because stupidity usually meant death and not reproductive success. These days, at least in the West, there are few pressures as there were before, and family planning is now a choice whereas before it never had been.
But what Darwin said stays- no matter what traits you have it is reproductive success ONLY that drives evolution.

Everyone here has so far agreed that it is true that Darwin was concerned with the survival of the fittest, and everyone here has also so far agreed that intelligence is a characteristic of fitness. That those will survive who have more offspring than others, that was probably known tens of thousands of years ago. But Darwin, clever as he was, also said that. :slight_smile:

So the characteristic of fitness and those with the most offspring must be related. And according to Darwin, they are related, namely causally. Their relation is the causality. Darwin was a typical 19th century scientist (thank you, Great Again, for pointing this out), always and everywhere looking after natural causes.

Natural selection does not only reuqire references to successful progeny - that would had been nothing new under the sun for Darwin -, but requires also the cause for the successful progeny! Regardless whether Darwin was right or not on this.

The way I understand it, to say that someone is fit in Darwin’s sense of the word is to say that that someone has reproduced or that he will reproduce at some point in the future. Thus, if you do not reproduce, you are unfit. Doesn’t matter how intelligent you are.

But to say that someone is fit in the usual sense of the word is to say that that someone has what it takes to perform certain task in a desirable way. So when your employer tells you that you are fit for the job, he’s telling you that he thinks that you have what it takes to do what he wants you to do. He’s talking about your potentials and not about what happened and/or what will happen.

It’s easy to confuse the two and I think it’s Darwin’s fault to an extent.

But I didn’t read Darwin, so there’s a possibility that I am wrong. Is there anyone here disputing my claim? What about you, Kathrina? Are you claiming that Darwin didn’t define the word “fitness” this way?

No. It is not Darwin’s fault!! LOL

He never used the phrase “survival of the fittest”. That was a shorthand for people who knew how to read, but the phrase originated with Herbert Spenser.
The fault lies with the people who do not take the trouble to find out for themselves.

Well, there are people who think that he did use the phrase.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_of_the_fittest

They aren’t saying that he invented the phrase but they seem to be saying that he used it.

Do you at least agree that whoever came up with that particular notion of “fitness”, as well as every single person who embraced it, did some harm by confusing it with the usual notion of “fitness”?

If you want to continue the discussion, you should consider refraining from doing what you’re doing in the above two quotes.

No. You cannot legislate for idiots.
The word usage is perfectly reasonable. And the word never meat “physicall fit” until the 20thC. You can’t expect Darwin to have predicted a change in the meaning of the world.

etymonline.com/word/fitness

Have you ever thought of reading a book?

The Origin of Species is clear and well written.
You can read it free online.
darwin-online.org.uk

From the same link that you posted:

That’s not the same as “the number of offspring the individual has”.

See below (the bold print).

Have you ever been kind to people in your life? Always only communist? Anyone who disagrees with you is against you? Always only orders and obedience like in the communism!

Written by a communist.

[b]In the Darwinistic sense, “fit” or “fitness” describes the degree of adaptation to the environment (i.e. adaptive specialization), or the ability to reproduce despite low specialization. This means that not that species survives which defies everything and displaces other species, but the one which either adapts to the environment or manages to reproduce continuously despite adverse environmental conditions.

Darwin had recoined the 18th century idea of development through national economic tendencies, which he took from his teacher Malthus and projected into the highest animal kingdom.[/b]

Facts. Period. Facts are not for communists though, which can be seen in this forum.