I doubt Lloyd will disagree at all with your bottom line ("mutation is a
non-adaptive evolutionary process"), nor would he attribute such disagreement
to Dawkins. I think that's why he was initially confused by Wesley's response.
By "union" and "intersection" I meant to suggest only their set theory
meanings: When Lloyd referred to (Dawkins believing that) evolution occurring
only via "mutation plus natural selection", he didn't mean to be considering
only cases where BOTH mechanisms were operative (where the "sets" overlap,
their intersection), but to also include cases where EITHER mechanism was
operative (their union), which would permit mutation to operate without
selection in relevant cases, which seemed to be the thrust of what you and
Wesley have been getting at.
--John
-----Original Message-----
From: Greg Billock [SMTP:billgr@cco.caltech.edu]
Sent: Monday, December 15, 1997 11:16 AM
To: evolution@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: That was amusing
John Rylander:
> I think you have misunderstood Lloyd's point. Lloyd obviously can speak for
That is a most definite and real possibility :-).
> himself, but I think he'll see your reply as unrelated to what his note, for
> the same reasons Wesley's response seemed off-topic.
Just to make sure we're all on the same page, here's what I see as the
point of disagreement: Lloyd is portraying Dawkins as believing that
mutation and natural selection are the sole processes responsible for
evolutionary change. I (and Wesley) are disputing that.
> Did you glance at my reply to Wesley's most recent reply to Lloyd, Wesley
> making points similar to yours? Roughly, Wesley was taking
> Lloyd as seeing NS
> as driving evolution to the exclusion of random mutation operating neutrally
I thought Wesley was arguing the above line, not about Lloyd's understanding
of the role of NS.
> wrt NS, but that wasn't what Lloyd was getting at. When Lloyd speaks of NS
> plus mutation, he means their union, not their intersection. So random
> mutation without NS is a perfectly permissible possibility in
> Lloyd's overview.
According to Wesley and I, this is true for Lloyd, Dawkins, and every other
evolutionist, thus our disagreement. The bit about relative rates is
interesting, and various views will lead to various phrasings, but the
bottom line is that mutations seem to proceed oblivious to selective
pressures, that is, mutation is a non-adaptive evolutionary process.
I'm not sure what 'union' and 'intersection' have to do with mutation and
natural selection, however. If this is important, perhaps we can get
into it further...
-Greg