Tweeting evolution-the shortlist!
| 2 September, 2010 | Richard P. Grant |
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How would you define ‘evolution’ in just a few words?
In the competition inspired by the genegeek blog, about fifty of you had a go at this on twitter, with another 30 or so entries in the comments here on Naturally Selected. Whittling that down to a short list you could vote on wasn’t easy, but here are seven for you, in no particular order (with the names removed):
[poll id=”6″]
Please vote for your favourite definition. The lucky winner will score a Naturally Selected sweatshirt. I’ll give a copy of My Life in Science by Sydney Brenner to two runners up.
There is also an honorable mention for Jeremy Yoder, who came up with
Hmm. I’d just tweet the Price Equation but I’m not sure TweetDeck can handle Greek characters.
The Price Equation is given by
Price Equation, from Wikipedia
Voting will be open until Monday, when I’ll announce the winner!
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I know we’re too late, but Evolution is
The process through which man must go in order to realize there’s no such ting as a Holy War.
Did you ever find my entry for the evolution thing?
If it was tagged it would have made it to the long list, sure.
If not then here it is (anyway?)
#evo140 The progressive unfolding through time of all life forms, advancing them with infinite complexity from that which already exists.
Evolution is the adaptation of a species to the pressures put upon it by the environment.
Are you still a believer of the EH(=Evolution Hypothesis)?
150 years are enough to realize that we are facing scientific bullshit.
In the first place: it’s not a hypothesis; it’s a fact.
In the second place: you’re too ignorant to be wasting meat volume; please give it up to someone smarter.
Felix should realize that this question is addressed to only rational thinkers and not to “faith” based individuals who believe in miracles!
None of these “descriptions” mention _changing or changed environment_, which is crucial to evolution. The available answers mention “mutation,” “variation” and “random changes” of DNA/biology* (the environment doesn’t change randomly), but fail to mention the most important factor, the determinant.
Even those (*) characteristics, which merely reprise the so-called modern synthesis, are strictly wrong and anachronistic.
What is the point of promoting glibness at the expense of accuracy and coherence? Do we not question the simplistic and anachronistic dogmas? Are we aping tabloid journalism? Or are we rewarding ignorance?
No, we’re winning a sweatshirt.
I reluctantly voted for the next to last one. None of these are very good, and some are flat-out wrong.
Hmmm, all of the options are explicitly or implicitly a) gene-centric, and b) adaptationist.
Evolution is not the same as natural selection. Evolution is also not the same as book-keeping of gene frequencies taken straight out of population genetics. Genes are invisible to the selecting environment, which (even if one focuses only on Natural Selection) sifts between phenotypes, which are, in turn, the result of development, which is dependent on, but not completely determined by the underlying genetics.
As the two key components of evolution – development and ecology – are missing from all the definitions above, I cannot vote for any one of them as they focus on a small subset of evolution and only one aspect of evolution and miss both the key elements and the big picture.
“Evolution is not the same as natural selection” no indeed; we had that discussion on Twitter. Natural selection is a mechanism of evolution, and we were after the big picture.
Yeah. I am not happy at all with the focus on “improvement” and “selection” in most of the entries. That was my main beef with them, which is different still from Bora’s point. The one I voted for (which will never make it to the top anyway, so I might as well mention it) was the “evolution is the interaction between heritable variation superabundance and time” because it doesn’t imply improvement so much. Sometimes, things just change. A lot of counter-“arguments” against evolution can go straight out the window if you admit that it’s not all a fight to be the fittest/best/strongest/sexiest/prettiest but that in many environments (ah, there’s Bora’s point) some random variation in phenotypes just doesn’t *have* a particular benefit – it just *is*.
Yes, that’s the one I voted for. I might award an Editor’s Special Prize.
There are many selection pressures, of which environment is just one. Therefore, it is best left out in a short one-liner. I felt that the statement “..increases organisms survival odds”, covers all the bases of selection pressure in a nutshell. Nice work.
Flippancy with accuracy is the key – so No. 2 HAS to get a sweatshirt too!
D’you mean “Maximizing mutations to monopolize munching and mating”? I must admit, that is very good.
Evolution is the process by which nature designs and generates new species.
It consists of the complex interplay of variation and selection, where variation is the motor and selection the steering wheel.
Oh, that’s nice, John. I do, however, twitch whenever I hear ‘design’ used in the context of a blind process.
Change within a distinct gene pool through genetic mutation and natural selection.