Survival of the fittest.

[Arjen]

Sirvival of the fittest is often regard as a way of nature in which the strongest (or, more literally, the fittest) survive and reproduce so as to ensure the continued existence of the species or of the being itself.

In reality things are almost as describe above, but not quite. The predicate "fittest" is an a posteriori jusgement. Humanity "labels" the surviving species or being as "fittest". In reality sometimes a being not nearly as fit as another survives a fight, or a "fit" species can be eradicated by a flash flood for instance. The difference between what the term means in reality and what it means in reality can be quite different: the luckiest.

I mean to seperate the thoughts of a process from the actual occurances. It is not the "fitness" that makes a being or a species survive; it is survival that makes us call them that.

[NeitherExtreme]

A few similar thoughts from a very old book:

I have seen something else under the sun:
The race is not to the swift
or the battle to the strong,
nor does food come to the wise
or wealth to the brilliant
or favor to the learned;
but time and chance happen to them all.

Moreover, no one knows when their hour will come:
As fish are caught in a cruel net,
or birds are taken in a snare,
so people are trapped by evil times
that fall unexpectedly upon them.

[Fido]

Originally Posted by NeitherExtreme

A few similar thoughts from a very old book:

I have seen something else under the sun:
The race is not to the swift
or the battle to the strong,
nor does food come to the wise
or wealth to the brilliant
or favor to the learned;
but time and chance happen to them all.

Moreover, no one knows when their hour will come:
As fish are caught in a cruel net,
or birds are taken in a snare,
so people are trapped by evil times
that fall unexpectedly upon them.

People defeat natural selection, and minimize chance through government and social organization. If Government and other social organizations did not so often fail us, we would not stop to pray, or count our lucky stars. That we must so often count upon hope to save us, and fortune to guide us is a curse against our leaders.

[Aedes]

Originally Posted by Arjen

I mean to seperate the thoughts of a process from the actual occurances. It is not the "fitness" that makes a being or a species survive; it is survival that makes us call them that.

So if I take a fish and a dog and I drop them in the middle of the ocean, we cannot say in advance that the fish isn't fitter to survive in that environment, a priori? That would be the occurence, of course, not the thoughts, I do understand the issue you raise.

But what happens when you predict survival based on fitness?

We do this in my subspecialty of infectious diseases quite a bit. Drug resistant organisms are fitter to survive under the pressure of drugs to which they're resistant. That's obvious. But take away that drug pressure and the population reverts quickly to drug sensitive -- and it will do this predictably. Why? Because there is a fitness cost to developing drug resistance, by which it is only advantageous in the presence of drug pressure.

So we can determine in advance which populations will be fit before imposing selective conditions.

Would you still regard this as an a posteriori judgement?

[Arjen]

Percentagewise one can predict which creature will have the most chance of survival, but it tells one nothing of what will happen. Statistics are not something one can use as a soothsayer. They only throw dust in the eyes.

In the medical line of work realising what would boost the odds of certain species (or substrains) can be very valueble, but you are now speaking of a controlled environment. Reality is in no way controlled, nor controllable.

To get to your question if I would still call it a posteriori: yes, I would.

The reason huanity knows certain strains are drug-resistant is because that has been observed. Therefore it is an a posteriori judgement. It also is an a posteriori judgement because one can only say so for sure after having observed said process again.

This is not what the topic was about though. It was about the distinction between reality and what we think in the subject of survival of the fittest. Indeed the difference of what takes place and what humanity deems to take place. No matter how accurate, the two are not the same and no matter if a judgement is equal to what takes place it is always a posteriori.

You seem to be mixing the two up Aedes.

[Aedes]

You bring up judgement of "the fittest" in this thread.

Can't your argument be applied to any adjective or quality at all? It applies just as much to calling something "big" or "red" as to calling something "fit". (Or the superlatives, biggest, reddest, or fittest).

So what do you find unique about "survival of the fittest" that merits its own thread?

[Arjen]

You are right Aedes, I was basing this argument on the thought that universals do not exist as such. I have posted a great text on this by William of Ockham (here) by the way. For anyone who hasn't read it: enjoy!.

I created this topic because of a turn in my discussion with Pyth on Hobbes' Social Contract Theorey (HSCT). It seemed prudent to discuss "survival of the fittest" before continuing. Do you think I should have mentioned that in the opening post?

[GoshisDead]

The term itself was coined by Thomas Huxley, sometimes refered to as Darwin's Bulldog.
Evolutionary fitness has never refered to the strongest anything. It has always been about Luck. The "random mutations" that in most cases would make an individual in a species less fit to survive, happen to make it more fit to survive in another ecological niche. So things like natural disaster and general environment change factor into survival evolutionary fitness. The point behind the theory of evolution is debunk any claim to progressional evolution, meaning that a better species replaces the one before it, or better versions of the same species replace worse ones. The theory is to show that evolution is random at its heart and is no respecter of strentgh, progression, species, or individual.

[Arjen]

Wel said GoshisDead. Allthough I did not know what the reason for the formulation was I think it was well formulated. Do you think the formulation is correct Gosh?

[Aedes]

Originally Posted by Arjen

I created this topic because of a turn in my discussion with Pyth on Hobbes' Social Contract Theorey (HSCT). It seemed prudent to discuss "survival of the fittest" before continuing. Do you think I should have mentioned that in the opening post?

Doesn't matter, it's a good topic. I certainly appreciate your point that at least some prior understanding is required either for determining past selective events or preducting future selective events.

But we certainly recognize this in science, so it's nothing new. Journals and funding agencies specifically require that you declare and define your outcome measures before doing a study. So if you're doing a study to determine fitness in a past era, you need to in advance decide which data in your study sample will meet your criteria of greater or lower fitness. Similarly, in a prospective report (say I predict that mosquitos will be more fit than polar bears if global warming continues), I still need to define that term and there has to at least be some logic to it. The definition and/or the logic will come from prior understanding.

Originally Posted by Arjen

Statistics are not something one can use as a soothsayer. They only throw dust in the eyes.

Well, that may be a bit extreme. Statistics don't provide any access to absolute truth, but in a practical world they do provide confidence and guide practice. And strong statistics provide the direction for future study. Sure, they mean nothing in the absolute because you can never study a denominator of infinity -- but I'm not sure epistemology in the practical world really requires that. We're all comfortable saying to patients that everyone is different and statistics don't predict the outcome of an individual -- after all, we've all seen plenty of exceptions.

Originally Posted by GoshisDead

Evolutionary fitness has never refered to the strongest anything.

Natural selection is the most rapid and extreme influence on genetic evolution. You can see when doing things like haplotype mapping and population genetics that rapid "genetic sweeps" happen in the face of selective pressure. One great example is the rapid sweep of drug resistance that happens in microorganisms once an antibiotic enters widespread use. Another great example in humans is the rapid sweep of sickle cell anemia (as well as numerous other protective genes) that happened at least 4 times in Africa during the last 10,000 to 20,000 years because of the rise of Plasmodium falciparum malaria. However, the dominant force in evolution over time is not natural selection, but rather genetic drift caused by finite populations with non-random mating. This is particularly true in small, isolated populations who have a 'founder effect', i.e. they don't have identical gene frequencies to their ancestral population.

The theory is to show that evolution is random at its heart and is no respecter of strentgh, progression, species, or individual.

Well, evolutionary theory as most laypeople understand it is quite a bit different in the age of molecular genetics (and for that matter Mendelian inheritance is a gross oversimplification as well). Mutations are NOT at all entirely random -- but at the same time (as you imply) they're not teleologically directed either (though there may actually be exceptions to this). Fundamentally, though, you are correct that the unit of evolution is the mutation and the selective pressure is exacted on an already genetically heterogeneous population.

One interesting side note is that many organisms have been shown to reproduce more quickly under environmentally adverse conditions (this is actually true in human populations in which there are high infant / child mortality rates). Thus, adverse conditions may lead to higher reproductive rates that introduce a greater likelihood of advantageous genotypes arising. The mechanism for this is being studied closely in animals in the Chernobyl containment area.