Is Darwin’s ‘Survival of the Fittest’ theory going Extinct?

I think I got hooked on the grail because of peoples different views on the numerous subjects here. Each subject carries within it its own intellectual freedoms given by the bounds of the body of evidence in that subject; such as with gravity, evolution, thermodynamics, QM, NDE’s, UFO’s etc. We can stay inside these subjects, within their evidences, and discuss implications, or contradictions. We can put one foot outside and discuss the different interpretations of evidence. Or we can put both feet outside and free ourselves within the unbounded realm of philosophical possibility.

I am quite concerned about this article. Firstly ‘Darwinism’ is a label and as with any use of a label it reveals something of the user. In our politically correct world we are all used to correct label use, and the implications of incorrect use. The first thing to spot here is that going through education and higher education you will never see ‘Darwinism’ used. The correct terms are evolution, natural selection, sexual selection, diversity, fitness etc etc etc – each describing a different part of a wider idea. Darwin died a long time ago and I find the use of his name as a label verging on an ad-hominem attack telling. We do not use Einsteinism to label those who have accepted the evidence of space-time dilation (even if we broaden and accept that their philosophies accept it to, and especially since I am seeing QM incorporated philosophically so often now); or Sheldrakeism, and if we saw this being used we would oppose it.

One thing I have found here is that understanding something when you are philosophically opposed to it is actually quite hard. I guess it’s difficult to describe why in a short post and we all have our opinions. We can learn facts, but our minds do not seem great at setting them out into the wider context if we are opposed to them. New ideas do not form well and our minds just tend to find conflict and report ‘that is wrong’ to problems that have already been solved by those who are further ahead with the idea. I would consider this to be a psychological issue, rather than an intellectually factual or honesty one, and it is one reason why I am here to try and spot where I do it myself.

Whenever I see evolution and natural selection labelled as Darwinism or Neo-Darwinism I pretty much shake my head and go ‘not again’. Its almost getting boring; if it wasn’t so frustrating. Imagine you are a cook and someone writes a book criticising your Neo-Chefism and says that your culinary theories are falling apart because you cannot cook a cake with just flour, when you already know that. Who would the fool be?

The ‘new’ constraints they consider include ‘constraints imposed “from below” by physics
and chemistry’. Who here honestly thinks that scientists have not considered the constraints of chemistry and physics to be absolutely fundamental to the engine of molecular genetics?

This book represents a step on the learning curve of these men in their own personal understanding of the theory, not of the wider understanding available. It seems almost like they are criticising a cultural component, a misunderstanding, rather than the actual idea. Bare in mind that though evolution’s building blocks and principles might be quite simple (especially in a school text book) the emergent chemical structures, such as genes, their expression, interactions, and the colonial behaviours of cells, organs and organisms, is anything but. We all love the complexity of emergent systems and behaviours here. These two authors seem to be just starting to understand one of the natural worlds most complex. As such their understanding is shown incomplete and they have unwittingly written a book about their lack of understanding, but for some reason have decided it is not their own, but everyone else’s. By doing this they reveal something of themselves, not of others.

As the saying goes ‘We must be cautious.’