Natural Selection: Can we drop the qualifier, "Natural"? It's time.

[Red Baron Farms]

Also remember that this term isn't without historical context. Sure, we shouldn't be slaves to history--but at the same time, there are real, practical consequences to dramatic shifts in the way words are used. Read an 18th or early 19th century geology publication, for example, and you will quickly become confused--they used the term "fossil' to mean "something dug up", so you get curious constructions like "organic fossil" or "inorganic fossil". Makes life confusing for folks who have to dig into the past. Plus, there's a certain amount of respect owed to the folks who founded such a key dicipline as evolutionary biology. Even if the terms aren't 100% literal, we can use them as a silent salute to the folks who made our work possible.

I ran into the same thing in my research of agriculture. Before "fertilizer" became common usage, the concept was expressed by using the earlier term "manure". So you find research comparing the effects of chemical manures VS animal manures VS mineral manures. Using common definitions now and a term like "chemical manure" sounds like an oxymoron. In this case it probably was an improvement to change the terminology slightly to avoid confusion. Although recently I have seen people purposely equivocate "chemical" as well. So the same types of errors can still be made. The difference is that these errors are almost always purposeful as opposed to honest mistakes.

 

[jaydeehess]

Natural Selection... as opposed to... what, exactly?

Everything is "Natural", is it not? Else, what? "Supernatural"?

Yes, as opposed to supernatural. Why bring gods into it at all?

 

[jaydeehess]

Natural


Let's drop the qualifier. The same "selection" that operates on our Earth-based organisms operates on vast clouds of dust and massive bodies and the cores of stars and the structures of our favorite molecules.

Um, no. The selection that applies to dust clouds and molecules is plain chemistry. The selection that applies to living organisms refers to those traits that allow the organism to improve its progeny's chances of survival.

Put hydrogen and oxygen together under the proper range of circumstances and you get water, every time.

 

[CapelDodger]

That way, when anyone says "How did this come about?" we can answer "Nature!"

Call me old-fashioned but I'm sticking with "Stuff happens".

 

[Checkmite]

I think "natural selection" is a bad term - not because of the first word, but because of the second. "Selection" implies that something is being chosen, which in turn implies someone or thing making the choice. But this doesn't accurately describe the phenomenon: nothing, not even "nature", actually chooses what things survive and what things do not. These things just happen.

Cumulatively, over long stretches of time, this creates the illusion of systemic selection. But it's just an illusion. Even the colloquial phrase "survival of the fittest" describes the illusion, rather than the actual phenomenon; it's more accurately "survival of whatever happens to survive".

 

[Perpetual Student]

As opposed to just plain selection, when used for breeding.

In the time of Darwin, people who raised livestock were in the process of developing new breeds of domestic animals by means of selective breeding. They selected which animals could mate with each other based on desired characteristics, and this selective breeding resulted in new varieties of animals that had characteristics that would be shared by their descendants.

Darwin theorized that nature itself also performed this sort of selection, based on fitness to the environment in which organisms lived. His use of the term "natural selection" was meant to draw a parallel between the way nature selected organisms based on their ability to survive and breed in a specific environment, and the way that the herdsman selected organisms based on them having characteristics that the herdsman desired. In other words, "natural selection" was selection that was performed by nature, rather than by man.

In "On the Origin of Species" Darwin makes this quite clear.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

I think "natural selection" is a bad term - not because of the first word, but because of the second. "Selection" implies that something is being chosen,

That's why we need the word 'natural' in there. Just saying 'selection' by itself implies some kind of conscious choice, whereas the qualifier 'natural' means that it just happens.

Which brings us back to the OP's mistake. Natural in this case does not mean 'of Nature (Man included)' but only that which is not man-made. This specifically excludes things like selective breeding, GMO and global warming. If we made it, then by definition it's not natural.

Natural
adjective
1. existing in or derived from nature; not made or caused by humankind.​

 

[Checkmite]

I think OP's point is that the qualifier 'natural', used to distinguish a product of 'nature' as distinct from a product of 'humans', is archaic. It is handed down to us from a time when mankind was thought of as something separate from and above everything else, a somewhat anachronistic way of thinking. A rocket booster built by humans isn't really any less a product of natural processes than something that didn't exist until it was intentionally built by another animal - say, a beaver dam or a beehive.

 

[Puppycow]

I think "natural selection" is a bad term - not because of the first word, but because of the second. "Selection" implies that something is being chosen, which in turn implies someone or thing making the choice. But this doesn't accurately describe the phenomenon: nothing, not even "nature", actually chooses what things survive and what things do not. These things just happen.

Cumulatively, over long stretches of time, this creates the illusion of systemic selection. But it's just an illusion. Even the colloquial phrase "survival of the fittest" describes the illusion, rather than the actual phenomenon; it's more accurately "survival of whatever happens to survive".

Uh, "survival of whatever happens to survive" sounds like a tautology. As far as "selection", well, words can have different meanings in different contexts, and when I look up the word in a dictionary I see that it gives a different definition for when it is used in biology, one which does not imply choosing.