Ok...thanks. I understand your position now. I am afraid I still disagree with you, and unless I am still misunderstanding you, you are indeed using the term differently than I have ever seen.
It does not apply only to organisms. It does apply only to things which reproduce. The process of natural selection can explain the year-to-year evolution of teddy bears (as more fit designs, which sell better, are copied for the next year, and unsuccessful designs go extinct) or automobiles (same process).
The marble population will not evolve. It will experience iterative selection pressure resulting in removal of some traits from the population. It will evolve if a) the marbles replicate and pass traits on to descendants and b) that replication is subject to mutation.
Neither contain heritable information. It's not the objects themselves which undergo natural selection, but the manufacturers' ideas about what the objects should be like. Those ideas do not reproduce in any conventional sense - rather, the essentially static population of manufacturers' ideas on the subject changes as the individual ideas are modified in response to consumer demand. The selection pressure operates over time, but in determining what ideas will persist, not which ones will reproduce.
Or he's a poseur, or both... That's why I'm ignoring the turkey. His game is fairly apparent to me. I'll leave it to others to determine their individual "fed up" points.
Nonsense. Malarky. There is no communication without definitions. This definition was first created by Darwin, and since amended by other biologists. It is not determined by consenus, vote, or any other idiotic bastardization of democratic principlies.Is it just me or is just an argument about definitions?
You're all free, along with Humpty Dumpty, to define 'natural selection' anyway you like. If you want to discuss together then I suggest you look up ' The Bumper Book of Biological Words', Wikipedia or whatever other source you can agree on. Otherwise that's it, end of story, there's no point arguing about whose definition's right.
Incorrect. The idea or information represents the heritable template of the physical object, that which is passed from generation to generation. It is only subject to selection pressure in the form of expression. Ergo, recessive genes are not subject to selection pressure if they are not expressed, and so can remain in a population. The information is there and heritable, but until it is expressed (via a double-recessive) it is not subject to selection pressure.
Small correction, Pat: this is true for simple dominance, but not true for incomplete dominance.
The template is not passed from one generation of objects to another. Again: it's not the objects that are subject to selection pressure. A car that is built or bear that is sewn exists, and people do not go around destroying the ones they don't like - or copying ones they do. People's behavior towards the objects determine the success of the templates - but templates do not reproduce in any conventional sense. They do not recombine. They don't mutate. And people starting new teddy bear or car production lines do not simply copy inherited blueprints.
That IS false. The argument is not that a population of physical objects changing over time represents selection pressure. The argument is that the differential viability of the properties of physical objects represents selection pressure.
I'm not in the auto industry, but correct me if I am wrong in stating I think engine designs from previous years are not discarded? That popularity drives things like, oh I don't know, a prevalence of SUV designs as gas prices plummeted, and that now that gas prices are high, people are turning away from SUV designs? Don't cars wear out, too? I'm not currently aware of a car with a lifetime warranty, but again, I may be incorrect. Don't most of them run on gasoline too, after the steam designs didn't quite catch on?
Thought of including it, but did not want to confuse the issue.
Best example I can think of is sickle-cell anemia.I thought that might have been the case. There's always a problem with trying to explain something just enough to get the point across versus failing to cover some of the details. Sickle cell anemia is always the first example that pops into my mind as well. (Also a good example of why seemingly deleterious alleles can be maintained in a population.)Thought of including it, but did not want to confuse the issue.
It says a great deal that you can't recognize a genuine example of Intelligent Design. (Although whether car manufacturers said be said to be intelligent designs is another matter.)
Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary
Surely you are not saying that '97 Mustangs do not resemble '96 Mustangs more than they resemble '97 Impalas...I know you are not saying that.
Interestingly, the same debate exists in biological organisms--is an organism simply DNA's method of reproducing itself?
Recall, the definition does not specify a method of reproduction. Cars (and teddy bears) are parasitic; they rely on humans for their reproduction.
I have never actually seen an idea. I have seen cars and teddy bears. Their characteristics are selected by consumers. I have yet to see a child prefer a particular bear's idea over another's.
Um....no. Actually, I can see your claim, in the same sense as DNA undergoes selection rather than the whole organism...but in the normal use of the term, I must disagree.
Unless you are saying that stars reproduce, and that daughter stars inherit characteristics from mother stars (likewise for metals)...no. I agree only with the parts of your posts that are right.
As I said above, with tongue in cheek, teddy bears reproduce parasitically. They depend on us. Natural selection does not specify a method of reproduction, only that the second generation resemble the first, with some variability. This is certainly the case with teddy bears.