TauTology

Tautology
(http://bit.ly/ds42t) A tautology is the generic semantic label for saying the same thing twice and what this means in each specific context can't be separated from the Pragmatics of the individual encoding his intent to signal receiver. Conclusions as to what it means to formulate the same concept twice will generally eminate from whomever is arbitrating the proper parsing of the words at issue. An element of interpersonal power-dynamics can infuse itself into definitional debates. The editor can label something a tautology(or not a tautology) so as to better dismiss the opposition's position if it conflicts with his world view. Saying the same thing twice takes on varying nuances either fallacious, logically valid or poetic: "... a concept irrefutable under all and any conditions, patterns or designs..."
 * Rhetorical tautologies or tautological propositions are fallacious.
 * Tautological expressions used for its stylistic effect in language verbosity, poetry and language redundancy aren't fallacious.
 * Logical validity such as x=x.
 * Axioms aren't tautologies but logical validity's. Many attempt to downplay a fallacious rhetorical tautology by equivocating between logical validity's and argumentation schemes which are non-sequiturs which might be called the fallacy of Innocence by association. Axioms such as X=X and (A or not-A), as an explanatory logically valid schema for mathematics is valid. "What happens, happens" also says the same thing twice but as part of an explanatory schema is fallacious.
 * Logically valid but unintended and thus a Logical Tautology - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tautology_(logic).
 * Repetition of the same idea in different words. (http://tautology.net/) such as Creationism isn't science, where a single word essentially says the same thing twice. The word Science isn't defined, but in the context that used the intention was: Creationism isn't materialistic, where the Pragmatics with "science" was the materialist belief system. Creationism is defined as not being materialistic thus the sentence really reduces to: Something which is defined as not being materialistic, isn't materialistic and therefore materialism is the correct world view which says the same thing twice making the conclusion a non-sequitur. Perhaps materialism is the correct world view but not as a result of the argumentation scheme.
 * In logic, a tautology is a proposition that is already true by definition, not because of any logical deduction.
 * Use of an extra word in a phrase or sentence which unnecessarily repeats an idea, eg the annual poetry festival is staged every year but if used in a colloquial sense for its stylistic effect is a tautological expression and not a fallacy.
 * An argument is said to be a tautology if it cannot be false.
 * Some arguments are disguised tautologies formulated such that it could be called Truthiness-Tautology, it is formulated so that it cannot be disputed, somewhere between a truism and tautology or a blending of a logical necessity, necessary truth, truism and rhetorical tautology.
 * Double Tautology: http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/browse_thread/thread/5947cbc2f3ae0a31/bbe4039c06b01a69
 * StrawTology: An attempt to at introducing false observational information relating to a tautological description of a phenomena in order to extract an argument which seemingly explained the observation from tautological implications. (Will update in due time, see this - http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/browse_frm/thread/557a525aebe1bddb# - thread for where it was discussed.)


 * QuesTology is an unanswerable question: "If the tree was made by God, who made God?" is a "Questology" , it is formulated in such a way that it can't be answered making any conclusion from it a non-sequitur: God could either exist or he couldn't. The implication by a user of the sentence who's world view is Atheism is that because the question can't be answered that therefore there is no God. If on the other hand a Theist were to ask the same question with his world view it would imply the existence of God because only he could answer such a question. The question and the fact that his creation(from either world view) could come up with such a question means there must be a supreme intelligence knowing everything and everything there is to know. To answer the question we with our limited knowledge would need to know everything. Imagine seeing a card-house and then concluding it wasn't designed because we don't know who designed the person that designed it and who in turn designed him in an infinite regress. It is tantamount to saying "because we don't know everything, we thus know nothing".  "Questologies" are the twin-brother of "Rhetorical Tautologies", used to make an argumentation narrative indisputable making any conclusion from such a non-sequitur.

A rhetorical tautology is defined as a series of statements that comprise an argument, whereby the statements are constructed in such a way that the truth of the propositions are guaranteed or that the truth of the propositions cannot be disputed by defining a term in terms of another self referentially: It says the same thing twice or repeats the same concept using words or terms in the synonymous sense. The argument is formulated in such a way that it cannot be refuted. A story in the New York Times isn't confirmed by reading it twice and neither is a world view confirmed by expressing it multiple ways.

Consequently the statement conveys no useful information regardless of its length or complexity making it Unfalsifiable. It is formulating a description in a way that masquerades as an explanation when the real reason for the phenomena cannot be independently derived. The statement "If you can't find something (that you lost), you are not looking in the right place" is tautological. It is true and can't be disputed, but conveys no useful information. As a physical example, to play a game of darts where the dart board was full of bulls-eyes could be called a "tautological" game. The player would not lose. Any argument containing a tautology is flawed and must be considered a LogicalFallacy and conclusions or world views derived from such as non-sequiturs. The world view very well might be correct but doesn't follow logically from the argumentation scheme employed.

A tautological argument is not an argument; a tautological game is not a game. Mathematical equations, such as E = mc2, are not tautologies. The terms on both sides of the equation are defined elsewhere independently. The equal sign does not mean "is defined by" but rather equal to, establishing an equivalence. It doesn't define one term in term's of another. Acceleration and mass independently don't equal force but their product MA as derived by Newton does, hence the equation F=MA isn't a tautology. The second law relates an external influence, the force, to the acceleration of an object in space and time, it isn't a tautological statement,they are independently measurable.

A tautology cannot be falsified simply because it is just a tautology. All that can be done is to non verify it. A non verification is not equivalent to a refutation. (http://groups.google.com/group/sci.bio.evolution/browse_thread/thread/ea6cb92232f2e69c/e49f197b34b00632?q=aristotle+OR+tautology#e49f197b34b00632)

X=X could be a logical validity,mathematical redundancy or a logical tautology depending on the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatics or motive behind it. There is no language without a motive. A Truism is true by definition, it is not a tautology but can be reformulated in a tautological manner in order to disguise the truistic nature of the original statement and underlying Premises. The dividing line between a Truism and an observation is Pragmatics. Neither is Begging the question a tautology. A Truism is embedded inside an argument in an attempt to disguise that the conclusion based on the argument's core is a Non_sequitur_(logic) Non sequitur (logic). The sun shines is an observation, it becomes a Truism if used in an argument to influence the hearer to come to a conclusion which doesn't follow logically from the core of the argument.

The truism in such a case should be considered a Red herring (logical fallacy) an irrelevant piece of trivia employed as a rhetorical smoke screen. Tautologies, CircularReasoning and Truisms are used together as a rhetorical device in a deceptive attempt to argue for a view if it isn't possible to independently establish the real reason for the viewpoint elsewhere. The seeming complexity of such an argument might comes across as well reasoned but is really just the articulation of a world view that can't be Falsified.

Rhetorical tautologies are a Synonymous play with words that alludes to the same fact but in doing so presents itself as an explanation giving the illusion of uncovering the actual reason for the observation. An example of this would be the following proposition: The word favorable and the term more common says the same thing twice, which doesn't tell us the actual reason the traits become more common. This is illustrated with two questions:
 * favorable traits become more common and unfavorable traits become less common.
 * Other than noting the traits became more common how was their favorability measured?
 * Other than noting the traits were favorable how was their capacity to increase measured?

The argument is formulated in such a way that it cannot be refuted. Furthermore the underlying Premise and word view of the formulator must be questioned because it might contain circularity, FalseDichotomies,RetrospectiveSpecification with the tautology an attempt to disguise these underlying Logical fallacies. What he assumes to be the truth will cast a different light on the sentence then another person with a different world view because there is no language without a motive and no sentence has a single true meaning, the sentence must be interpreted within the persons Pragmatics. If a cat walked over a keyboard and by random luck typed out the sentence it would have no meaning.

Tautologies from Aristotle, Empedocles, James Hutton and Henry F. Osborn
"...the idea of the 'Survival of the Fittest' must actually be traced back to Empedocles, six centuries before Christ....", p.117 'From the Greeks to Darwin'' by HenryFairfieldOsborn. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Reinhold_Treviranus and Buffon coined SoF and Spencer lifted it from them. Osborn more or less translated a German scholar and his book written in German from the Greeks to Darwin, he gave the citation for this German work in his book. Wilkins in a criticism of Osborn here http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/browse_frm/thread/557a525aebe1bddb# didn't make it clear whether he was also disagreeing with the German scholar..


 * Tribal wizard Gandalf, after the flood - (3000BC) "....the gods slayed the sea-monster....and out of this battle we are here today....". It is this mythology that was perpetuated under various guises up till our present era, molding itself to any world view, Atheism, Pantheism, Atomism, Deism, Theism etc.


 * The Prehistoric Traditions. 


 * The lonians.
 * Thales (624-548),
 * Anaximander (611-547),
 * Anaximenes (588-524),
 * Diogenes (440- ).


 * The Pythagoreans. (580-430.)


 * The Eleatics.
 * Xenophanes (576- 480)
 * Parmenides (544- ).


 * Physicists.


 * Heraclitus (535-475)
 * Empedocles-(495-435BC) "...Those animals perished immediately, for they were not fitted to live, and only those random coalitions of elements which were fittest to live survived, and continue to survive today...." http://www.hypatia-lovers.com/AncientGreeks/Section12.html. He also spoke of the love hate relationship between atoms.
 * Anaxagoras, (500-428)
 * ZenofElea(460 B.C) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno_of_Elea
 * LeuCippus(500 B.C) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leucippus, teacher of DemoCritus.
 * Democritus(450 B.C) - "...Those in harmony maintained themselves, while the unfit disappear... "
 * Socrates (470-399)
 * Plato (427- 347), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parmenides_(dialogue).
 * Aristotle(384-322BC) - "....Things appropriately constituted were preserved and things not appropriately constituted perished...."   http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/physics.html


 * The Peripatetics, or post-Aristotelian school


 * Theophrastus
 * Preaxagoras
 * Herophilus
 * Erasistratus.


 * The Stoics


 * EpiCurus (341- 270 B.C.). "...only those capable of life and reproduction have been preserved..."
 * LuCretius(50 BC) - "...combats the notion that the constitution of nature has been ... determined by Intelligent Design. The inter-action of the atoms throughout infinite time rendered all manner of combinations possible. Of these the fit ones persisted, while the unfit ones disappeared...." interpreted 1874 by JohnTyndall.
 * MarcusAurelius - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Aurelius
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herodes_Atticus
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollonius_of_Tyana (70 A.D)


 * The Sceptics


 * B. I. Eclecticism. Galen (131-201 A.D.).


 * Augustine(400AD)


 * 1348, it received distinct expression. ....osborn p.22


 * 17th century orthodox Catholic provost of Digne, Gassendi contemporary and friend of Hobbes and Malmesbury,...p.22. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Gassendi or http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Pierre_Gassendi. His best known intellectual project attempted to reconcile http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicureanism (EpiCurus), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomism with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity.


 * PierreMaupertuis 1759 - There is some mechanism out there by which individuals survived, they had an internal FITNESS and those that perished didn't.


 * JamesHutton 1794- "...Those not adapted will perish, while those adapted for the circumstances, will be best adapted. ..."


 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Reinhold_Treviranus (1830) Coined SoF, Spencer lifted it from him.


 * DR. W. C. WELLS, in 1813, then by


 * St. Hilaire the elder


 * PatrickMatthews 1831- "...Those individuals who possess not the requisite strength, fall without reproducing, their place being occupied by the more perfect of their own kind...."


 * MalThus 1838 - "...favourable variations would be ...preserved, and unfavourable ones ... destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species. Here, then, I had at last got a theory by which to work" (Charles Darwin, Autobio:120)....".


 * RobertChambers - 1844 with his VesTiges of the Natural History of Creation: "....Let us suppose that the conditions ....have been favourable for the development .... of the lower sentiments, ....the result will necessarily be a mean type of brain.....". He made heavy use of Dr. Fletcher's Rudiments of Physiology embryos argument. Back then the embryonic argument was the corner stone of transmutationism. But they selectively picked those stages which looked the most similar at each individual different stages of development. At the same stage of development the embryos don't look the same.


 * Naudin, in 1852.


 * Spencer - 1854


 * Tremaux - 1850


 * Darwin OoS: 1860 - "...This preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection...." and "..I have called this principle, by which each slight variation(a), if useful, is preserved, by the term of natural selection..."


 * HenryFairfieldOsborn(1898) From the Greeks to Darwin... " ... all the faulty ...disappeared, and that those that survived.... had the power of .....perpetuating themselves....." ''


 * KarlMarx Did a thesis on EpiCurus and DemoCritus.


 * RichardDawkins "...The changes that survive are accumulated ..." or to rephrase "...The changes that are selected gets accumulated..." or

"...The changes that are preserved gets accumulated.." as per EpiCurus


 * John Harshman "......But the ones that successfully reproduced best are those with the advantageous traits.......And that's natural selection. ..." from  AcloselookAtNaturalSelection and  "....the stronger has a better chance of passing their genes on....". Stronger and "better chance" alludes to the same fact.


 * HoWard1: "...The theory of evolution is ... taking advantage of novel accidents (to pre-existing material) that have some current utility...."  'taking advantage' and 'some current utility' alludes to the same fact, making it a Truthiness-Tautology. It is somewhere between a necessary truth, truism and rhetorical tautology, bordering closer to a rhetorical tautology.


 * JohnWilkins "...those that worked better were retained, that's selection in biology..." or to rephrase ".......those that worked better were retained , that's survival in biology..." or ".......those that worked better were preserved , that's preservation in biology..." as per EpiCurus

From Empedocles to JohnWilkins it is the same banality: The good one (survived,preserved, selected) the bad one died and therefore whatever my world view(theism, atheism, deism, pantheism, whatever it might be) is correct, which is a non-sequitur. PatrickMatthews claimed credit for "inventing the principle of natural selection" and so did Darwin. None of them invented anything, they labeled their reformulated Empedoclian and Aristotelian fallacy "Natural selection" which could be rephrased as "Natural survival" or "Natural Preservation" as per (EpiCurus).

The theists like Blyth, Ken Ham and GilDoDgen posting on http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/jerry-fodor-natural-selection-has-gone-bust/#comment-142129 tend to latch on the negative part of the tautology "...unfavourable ones ... destroyed..." and therefore God still exists. While the atheists latches onto the positive part "..favourable variations would be ...preserved..." form which they deduce that there is no God. Both conclusions from either side derives a world view which is a non-sequitur: Whether God exists or not must be deduced by some other means, the MalThusian argument(derived from DemoCritus and Aristotle) is a tautology, a logical fallacy.

Natural selection was the grammatical gargoyle that enabled the re-introduction of Aristotelianism and Empedoclianism into our culture, science, religion and politics. Selection(selectus Latin), adaptation, evolution(EvolVere, unrolling action - Latin), "descent with modification" etc. were all words used in the strong volitional sense by theists for thousands of years. By an act of strategic language deceit Aristotle's concept of "...result of accident...." or chance was associated with these words. It was an exploitation of English, a language that allows for much ambiguity. For example "...the assembly was favored by accident...." or ".... he favored that particular layout..." , favored like selection and any other word can be used in the PatternOrDesign sense. EvolVere was used to communicate the volitional intent of reaching a goal by unrolling something.


 * (Aristotle, in his "Physicae Auscultationes" (lib.2, cap.8, s.2) OoS:".............So what hinders the different parts (of the body) from having this merely accidental relation in nature? as the teeth, for example, grow by necessity, the front ones sharp, adapted for dividing, and the grinders flat, and serviceable for masticating the food; since they were not made for the sake of this, but it was the result of accident. And in like manner as to other parts in which there appears to exist an adaptation to an end. Wheresoever, therefore, all things together (that is all the parts of one whole) happened like as if they were made for the sake of something, these were preserved, having been appropriately constituted by an internal spontaneity; and whatsoever things were not thus constituted, perished and still perish.........."

(JamesHutton said essentially the same thing but left out the result of accident part due to his Deistic world view, if Aristotle had said that we weren't the result of accident but divine intervention, this conclusion would also be a non-sequitur, a point which Blythe, Ken Ham, GilDoDgen, DavidBerlinski and others in their attempt at accommodating Aristotle's indisputable proposition misses.).

PatrickMatthews in all probability got his tautology from Hutton and Darwin lifted "natural means of selection" from Matthew while reading his book on the Beagle which most probably was required reading - (http://probaway.wordpress.com/2009/10/15/darwins-questionable-priority-over-thomas-matthew/)

Aristotle's passage reduces to: Things appropriately constituted were preserved and things not appropriately constituted perished. Or in other words: The good ones lived, the bad ones died, which explains everything. Appropriately constituted and preserved are a synonymous play with words that alludes to the same fact but it doesn't independently derive the actual reason something was preserved. To identify the tautology take any of the synonymous terms or words and formulate a question:
 * Other than noting it was preserved how was it's constitutability measured?
 * Other than noting it wasn't constituted how was it's perishability measured?

Wasn't constituted and perishable says the same thing twice, making Aristotle's argument watertight, explaining everything , it cannot be refuted and is thus a LogicalFallacy. His tautology reduces to: The good(atom,idea,gene,allele,phenotype) lived(selected, survived,preserved) while the the bad(animal,atom,gene,idea) one died. It is rooted in ancient mythology, the battle between Gods and Seemonsters, Zeus, Apollo, Mars God of war etc. which became the battle between good and bad atoms from the Atomists(600BC), which today is formulated by Dawkins as: ".....the good (gene,allele,phenotype) survived, the bad (gene,allele,phenotype) died...." in the light of OriginOfSpeciesAsMyth - http://lostborders.wordpress.com/2009/03/09/the-origin-of-species-as-myth. The mythology is extended to anything in existence,matter abstract ideas, and as new discoveries are made through the ages, the myth is retold by the secular priesthood and incorporated by the religious priesthood. Reproductive success, genotype,fitness, and phenotype etc. are semantic and stylistic ruses that enables the myth to be retold by the Neo-Empedoclians within our reference frame of genes as a CyberneticAbstraction. If a cow was meant to produce beer instead of milk would it still be a success? For who is what a success - see DernavichInfidels on this issue.

After quoting Aristotle, Darwin went on to say: "...... we can see here the principle of NaturalSelection shadowed forth....". The question is how did Darwin solve the problem of genes as a CyberneticAbstraction if he couldn't define the problem? This question must be extended back to Aristotle and the answer is that Aristotle explained everything: past, present and future, thus nothing. Furthermore Aristotle's premise that everything was the result of accident means that everything he said ultimately is the result of accident, including the very paragraph itself, why then should we believe a word he said?

Aristotle formulated a rhetorical tautology in order to convince that the apparent design in the universe was a result of accident. He allowed no means for his world view to be Falsifiable, thus his conclusion based on proposition which cannot be refuted was a Non_sequitur_(logic) Non sequitur (logic). The world view might have been correct but not as a result of logical deduction. His tautological formulation is open ended allowing one to come to any conclusion because it reduces to: What happens, happens and therefore atheism,theism,random, non-random or whatever the user of the tautology wishes to be the as the correct world view. This is why the modern day Aristotelians formulates the same tautological core as Darwin but come to a different(evolution doesn't happen by chance) conclusion then the conclusion drawn by CharlesKingsley(1864), JohnBurroughs(1918) of "evolution happens by chance". HenryFairfieldOsborn in 1898 in his book "From the Greeks to Darwin" also interpreted evolution as happening by chance but changed his mind by 1922 after being influenced by Waagen. Note that HenryFairfieldOsborn never defined what exactly he meant with "evolution not happening by chance". Was it "directed" then, we don't know because English isn't like Greek: Any word can be made mean anything by a user in any context. A person for example might say "non-random" but not mean by this that it was "directed", what then is meant can't be deduced because there are only two options: Patterns or designs, volition or non-volition.

These tautologies and battle-between-atoms-and-organisms myth was originally from Empedocles 600B.C, reformulated and expanded through the centuries by Aristotle, Democritus, EpiCurus,....Darwin right up to our modern era by JohnWilkins, Dawkins etc who all basically said the same thing: The good live, the bad die. But from such a banality each propogates different world views, Deism, Atheism, Pantheism and Theism. None of them realized that their world view didn't logically follow from the Empedocles tautology. It was't really Darwin that was responsible for the Hitler and Stalin but Empedocles, it seems.


 * CharlesKingsley in a letter dated 1863 to FrederickMaurice he interpreted Oos as: ".. Darwin is conquering everywhere, and rushing in like a flood, by the mere force of truth and fact. The one or two who hold out against Darwin are forced to try all sorts of subterfuges as to fact or else by invoking the tedium theologium.... The state of the scientific mind; they find that now they have got rid of an interfering God - a master magician as I call it -- they have to choose between the absolute empire of accident and a living, immanent, ever-working God..."


 * JohnBurroughs in his book The Last Harvest(1922) interpreted Darwin as: "....Try to think of that wonderful organ, the eye, with all its marvelous powers and adaptations, as the result of what we call chance or Natural Selection. Well may Darwin have said that the eye made him shudder when he tried to account for it by Natural Selection. Why, its adaptations in one respect alone, minor though they be, are enough to stagger any number of selectionists...."


 * HenryFairfieldOsborn wrote New York Times 1922, 5 Aug. "....Waagen's observations that species do not originate by chance as Darwin had once supposed, but through a continues and well ordered process has since been confirmed, has since been confirmed by an overwhelming volume of testimony, so that we are now able to assemble and place in order line after line of animals in their true evolutionary succession, extending, in the case of what I have called the edition de luxe of the horses , over millions of years. ..... Evolution takes the place with the gravitation law of Newton.."

Osborn has a different concept with "natural selection", "evolution" etc. then the concept Kingsley, Burroughs and Darwin had. Which demonstrates the point that no word or phrase has a single true meaning. Somebody said: Outside there is a selection of rocks. If Peter put it there then "selection" is used in volitional sense, if a storm hit a mountain then non-volitional. What does the various authors today mean with "selection" : volition or non-volition?

NaturalSelection is an OxyMoron(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxymoron) a contradiction in terms. See http://www.partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=2808 for a particular view on this. JohnBurroughs interpretation of Darwin as chance or Natural Selection meant Burroughs used "Natural" to mean by nature or chance and "selection" means volition, two contradictory concepts in one term with the whole term used by Burroughs to convey his interpretation of Darwin's concept: "chance". But the natural selection oxymoron can be used in reverse to convey a volitional concept.

Today many use NaturalSelection in the volitional sense. NS like "You have a green light" has no single true meaning, the various concepts is important by many authors and their world view. The difficulty is that they all used NaturalSelection but what they meant by it differed like day contrasts with night, with the oxymoronic nature of natural selection exacerbating such confusion.

FoxnewsJonathanPragmatics and JerryAdler says random natural selection, Dawkins talks of non-random natural selection or directed natural selection. NaturalSelection as an Oxymoron allows itself to be used in either sense volitional,non-random,directed or non-volitional,random,"what happens,happens". Darwin, JohnBurroughs and CharlesKingsley interpreting Darwin, used the "random side" of natural selection - natural, while given the world view or Pragmatics of HenryFairfieldOsborn, he would probably have used it in reverse, the directed side - selection. Further research is needed on the world view of HenryFairfieldOsborn. Darwin used evolution and natural selection interchangeably and it is so widely done today to the extent that there isn't really any difference in the concept a user is projecting: Either volition or non-volition, patterns or designs. Darwin's Theory of evolution formulation is the same concept as his reformulation of Aristotle which he called principle of natural selection.

During the 19th Tremaux (http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00003806/01/Tremaux-on-species.pdf) differed with the belief held then that the mind is an illusion. If a person says: "My mind is an illusion created by the brain" then that very sentence itself is an illusion because it was formulated by his mind. In addition why should one believe a word he says if he thinks everything he says is the result of illusions in his head?

Identify tautology
Identify the terms in a sentence or passage used in the synonymous sense. Take any of these terms or words and reformulate the sentence as a question in terms of the other word. This will show whether the terms or words says the same thing twice.

Circular reasoning isn't a tautology
Begging the question assumes the premise in the conclusion, such as Tiktaalik. How does one know whether he had kids or not, if he had no offspring, how could he be the ancestor of anybody? Circular reasoning isn't saying the same thing twice. Gould's PunkEek confuses the issue, it deals with a perception of scale but doesn't escape the circularity of the argument. A fossil of a Great Dane on Australia and a poodle in the USA are of the same species. Many fossils found on different continents are classified as separate species after tossing a coin, from the bones themselves it can't be deduced. Their theory don't allow for the same species to be discovered on different continents and thus arbitrarily classify fossils which might be the same species as different. The way the word "adaptation" as used by the Neo-Aristotelians also begs the question, their premise with it is that species did in fact transform into others, but this is the very issue that needs to be demonstrated. Something which will remain impossible to do because we don't know whether a single fossil anywhere is the ancestor of anybody.

Lets presume that every single fossil ever found died as a result of a flood, then the notion of different species descending from such fossils would be impossible. It might be that species transformed into others with no ancestor fossils left behind, but there would be no way to falsify such a notion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Reinhold_Treviranus (Transmutation) used transmutation, today common descent is used which is a game with words: It depends what is meant with the terms. Vernacular for simian,ape, Bonobo is "monkey".

Sentences have no meaning, they symbolically represent only an idea
http://www.alanrhoda.net/blog/2007/04/propositions-and-make-believe.html#links by poster http://iliocentrism.blogspot.com/ There is not one word in any language which intrinsicly means "this" or "that." Rather, all words are symbols representing "this" or "that." Since not a single word actually *means* anything at all, of itself, it follows that no number of them strung together can mean anything. And yet, we use both words and sentences continuously; we cannot communicate very much without them. Even the effective communication of most emotions requires words. Ideas/concepts/ propositions have meaning, certainly; but sentences are not ideas. Rather, sentences, whether spoken or written, are are symbolic representations of ideas, they are signals by which one mind seeks to create an idea in another mind ... or "flesh-out" an idea to one's own self. We (including I) quite often call sentences, or at least a certain sort of sentence, "propositions," but they really aren't themselves propositions.

The closer conscious subjects stick to common words, idioms, phrasings, and topics, the more easily others can surmise their meaning; the further they stray from common expressions and topics, the wider the variations in interpretations. This suggests that sentences don't have meaning intrinsically; there is not a meaning associated with a sentence or word, they can only symbolically represent an idea. - SentencesHaveNoMeaning

http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/2008/05/on_ontology_and_metaphysics_su.php wrote: ".....Ideas, whether "simple" or "complex" exist solely as semantic relations between individuals in language communities. They are originated at some time, evolve over time in response to various conditions and influences, and eventually will become extinct or atavistic. They have no ontology other than this. This means that every idea has a history, and only a history......"

What does Quark mean ?
In Atomic theory a quark is an invisibly small particle. In Germany it is a type of cheese. If you pick up blank paper in the street with only quark written on it, not know who wrote it, what would it mean(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatics0? Phenotype, like quark has no meaning it can only symbolically represent an idea. In one context it is an acceptable synonym for "organism", in another it isn't clear what is being referred to because there are thousands of different ideas for which a few words are being used: Phenotype, fitness, genotype, meme, selection, preservation, retention, survival, common ancestor etc..

A rock only represents itself, in the same way "quark" spelt out with stones on a mountain, visible from the air only represents itself - it has no meaning. A rock might be a spherical rock, or triangular or square, placed side by side. Each square,triangular and square rock only represents itself, it remains a rock, it doesn't mean anything. By analogy make the shapes "q", "u" and "a", "r", "k" placed side by side chiseled out of a rock. And then place the spherical, triangular and square rocks side by side. What then is the meaning of the three rocks side by side? Individually they remain rocks, they only represent themselves, collectively they remain a cluster of rocks, round, square and triangular. But to signal sender and signal receiver they now symbolically represent "quark", which in turn only represents whatever you want to make it symbolically represent.

Lets map the spherical, round and triangular in our minds: round -> q, square -> u and triangular -> a and place these rocks side by side. They now symbolically represent another symbol which in turn represents an idea. What is the meaning then of a round,square or triangular rock? It has no meaning,it remains a rock, but it can be used to symbolically represent a meaning, with such a meaning being abstract, like the number 7 neither here nor there. The meaning has no physical location, like the environment we are in, or condition of existence, it isn't a geographical location.

One can't therefore point to the symbols "quark" laid out on the mountain and say they mean something in Atomic theory or means German cheese. Like a cluster of rocks they only represent their own shapes and matter, they mean nothing, but can be used to symbolically represent whatever idea one wishes - HumptyDumpty principle. In the same way the word "random" has no meaning, depending on the various contexts it is used either the idea of intention or no intention is represented. "Natural selection" and "Survival of the fittest" means nothing, the terms were symbolic representations of a "chance" concept by JohnBurroughs, CharlesKingsley and HenryFairfieldOsborn within their reference, cultural context and biases. Fisher used the term "Fundamental theorem of natural selection" within his advanced mathematics background, representing a different idea than Darwin because Darwin couldn't do mathematics. Natural selection as some sort of universal mechanism is just as implausible as a single differential equation explaining all of physics.

The confusion comes in that we have thousands of different concepts for which the same term "natural selection" is being used, with many insisting that their particular theory is the meaning of natural selection. But "natural selection", "natural preservation or natural retention" and "survival of the fittest" which Darwin insisted was a "better expression" like quark has no meaning, it can only symbolically represent an idea. To which idea is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection referring to? We don't know because there is no citation. It states that ".... natural selection is a key mechanism of evolution....." , which idea formulated by who with what background knowledge is a key mechanism of evolution, in terms of the transition matrix that maps polypeptide space into frog space?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducible_complexity ".....Irreducible complexity (IC) is an argument by proponents of intelligent design that certain biological systems are too complex to have evolved from simpler, or "less complete" predecessors, through http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection acting upon a series of advantageous naturally occurring chance mutations. It is one of two main arguments intended to support intelligent design, the other being specified complexity.[1] It is rejected by the scientific community,[2] which overwhelmingly regards intelligent design as pseudoscience.[3]..."

Which idea with "natural selection" is being referred to in the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducible_complexity article? Does X+Y = Z ? Who knows, without knowing what is X and Y the question can't be answered. Likewise we don't know what idea "natural selection" from the IC article is being represented.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducible_complexity "....Moreover, even cases where removing a certain component in an organic system will cause the system to fail do not demonstrate that the system couldn't have been formed in a step-by-step, evolutionary process......" CharlesKingsley's idea with an 'evolutionary process' was 'absolute empire of accident'. What concept did which editor have in mind with his symbol "...evolutionary process...."? Many authors say "Evolution doesn't happen by chance" which wasn't the same concept in 1863, why then is Darwin's terms being used.

Our minds consisting of grey matter, carbon atoms firing electrical impulses isn't where the real thought processes are being made, it symbolically represents the real you and will live for eternity when your matter turns to dust. Just like the idea of "7" has no physical location and the idea of "7" will never cease to exist, so your consciousness will live for ever. The idea of "7" existed from before time began and will only cease if consciousness ceases. If the last human dies tomorrow on this planet, will the idea of "7" cease to exist and if so then where exactly is the location of "7" ?

Darwin's 'Theory of Evolution' - what theory?
The idea Darwin symbolically represented with Theory of evolution was a reformulation of MalThus:




 * rephrase: "...the preservation of ... of individuals, which varied .... in any favourable direction, and of the destruction

of those which varied in an opposite manner.....". 'preservation' and 'favourable direction' alludes to the same fact, it says the same thing twice, but it doesn't explain why something was preserved. From this rhetorical tautology now follows Darwin's non-sequitur - "...That many species have been evolved in an extremely gradual manner, there can hardly be a doubt...."

Because Darwin's proposition can't be disputed it lead the Victorian reader to think that his conclusion was therefore ironclad. But as Popper pointed out theories which are ironclad aren't really theories but logical fallacies. All scientific theories are always in doubt. Species might have descended from a CommonAncestor but not because of the argumentation scheme used by Darwin. Darwin plagiarized Malthus idea and labeled it Theory of gradual evolution. Note that Gould also spoke of the Theory of Evolution, he didn't have the 'gradual' idea but the Punk-eek idea. Same term different concepts. The idea is that we descended from a CommonAncestor but an actual theory as to how this could have happened doesn't exist. Using the term Theory of Evolution doesn't mean one has an actual theory.

Did the pink Unicorn on Proxima Centauri reveal his inner thetan to Roger Rabbit - True or False? The question is a false dichotomy, there is no pink unicorn on Proxima Centauri. What http://www.icr.org, http://www.uncommondescent.com and http://www.talkorigins.org are doing is the same thing: Setting up a false dichotomy with either rebutting or defending the Theory of Evolution. Did it ever occur to them there might not even exist such a thing?

"..We are told dogmatically that Evolution is an established fact; but we are never told who has established it, and by what means. We are told, often enough, that the doctrine is founded upon evidence, and that indeed this evidence 'is henceforward above all verification, as well as being immune from any subsequent contradiction by experience;' but we are left entirely in the dark on the crucial question wherein, precisely, this evidence consists." Smith, Wolfgang (1988) Teilhardism and the New Religion: A Thorough Analysis of The Teachings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Rockford, Illinois: Tan Books & Publishers Inc., p.2.."

Darwin used the symbol ToE, but on closer inspection it is a rhetorical tautological reformulation of MalThus, the same tautology he associated with the term Theory of natural selection. ToE and ToNS are different symbols for the same Malthusian, Empedoclian, Aristotelian rhetorical tautology: The good ones lived, the bad ones died.

In the book publishing business the book has to sell and the public is under the impression that there is such a thing as a ToE, thus the book has to rally the base by refuting the non-existent ToE. In the same way that a book couldn't tell them pink unicorns don't exist if they had believed in such. Selling a book, it is easier to appeal to the biases, stupidity, prejudices and assumptions of the readers, rather than trying to convince them that they are hopelessly deceived to such an extent that like many Scientologists they won't recover their mental equilibrium.

The concept Darwin symbolically represented with ToE and ToNS was Aristotle's rhetorical tautology, something which in principle can't be falsified, all attempts at disproving it are doomed. A theory is something which can be tested or falsified. One can call any concept anything one wishes such as ToE or ToNS, but this doesn't mean there is an actual theory. Darwin arbitrarily used the symbol ToE, he also could have used Theory of Ninja Turtles.

Dembski, Ken Ham, JohnWilkins and RichardDawkins never define what exactly the idea or concept is that the term Theory of Evolution is supposed to be a proxy for. Are they referring to Darwin and the only passages where he symbolically represented a specific idea with the symbol ToE ? Like "quark" the symbol ToE has no meaning, it can only symbolically represent an idea.

One of the greatest evidences there is no such thing as a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Evolution is that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Evolution redirects to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution. Neither will the Wikipedia Aristotelians allows the page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwins_theory_of_evolution ,so that Darwin's ideas that he symbolically represented with the term ToE can documented within his context, reference frame and background knowledge.

From Darwin onwards we have many different ideas as new knowledge and insight surfaced, the authors such as Fisher then arbitrarily associated their new idea with the terms natural selection. But the idea Darwin had differed from the idea Fisher had, since Darwin couldn't do math. How could Darwin have solved a problem he couldn't define. We aren't dealing with some single universal ToE or ToNS but thousands of different ideas all trying to herd themselves under the rubric or "natural selection".

JerryFodor asked on LRB: "....What then is the intended meaning of natural selection..?..." And the answer is whatever the user of the symbol NS intends it to intend by intending it within his reference frame and possible tautological induced thinking from Aristotle, Empedocles and Democritus. Natural selection like the word "quark" has no meaning, it can only be used to symbolically represent an idea: What idea and by whom, with what mathematical background and metaphysical assumptions such as the multi-universe theory?

On the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitation page it lists over ten different theories of gravity such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotelian_theory_of_gravity and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitehead%27s_theory_of_gravitation where Aristotle and Whitehead had different ideas within their reference frames and background knowledge. The idea Darwin symbolically represented with the symbol ToE was yet another reformulation of Aristotle, Democritus and Empedocles tautological banality: What happens, happens.

Darwin's idea that he represented with NS was the same idea that Aristotle had, just reformulated in different symbols: Evolution, selection, natural etc. As Darwin stated after quoting Aristotle: "..... we can see here the principle of natural selection shadowed forth ...."

Darwin had an idea, Whitehead and Aristotle had an idea. To which idea is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution referring to, what is the theory and who formulated this theory in terms of the question of What is Life? The gatekeepers of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_Selection are infusing their ideas and concepts that they symbolically represent with natural selection such as non-random natural selection into the articles creating a sort of Dummies guide to the universe, instead of documenting the historical context and reference frame, with the ideas that was symbolically represented by ToE and natural selection in the time era of 1859 and how these ideas were interpreted by CharlesKingsley, JohnBurroughs , JohnTyndall, Waagen , Osborn etc. Osborn for example differed from Darwin that Evolution happened by chance, being influenced by Waagen, but he seems to have only came to this conclusion after writing his book "From the Greeks to Darwin" 1898.(this needs further research and citations). He therefore seemed to have avoided the term NaturalSelection in his New York times article 1922 5Aug because of the idea of 'chance' being associated with it by JohnBurroughs who used 'natural selection' as a synonym for chance in his interpretation of Darwin and had a wide influence on the culture of that time, having written many articles in The Atlantic for example. The Atlantic also seems to be censoring JohnBurroughs criticism of the idea with NaturalSelection because they refuse to provide a full index of his articles, only selectively listing them. Had it not been for the Nytimes article 1922, 5Aug we might never have known about JohnBurroughs unhappyness with the 'chance' idea Darwin used to symbolically represent with NaturalSelection.

In short they are engaging in history revisionism. A history of Napoleon should be exactly that a history, not a running commentry on how wrong he was and what he should have done or should have written, to such an extent that the history writer completely misrepresents what Napoleon actually intended with his words. For example the Wikpedia Aristotelians are very unhappy that Darwin wrote "...survival of the fittest is a better expression than natural selection..." - it doesn't exactly jell with clarity of thought because the idea with SoF was an outright rhetorical tautology. The term was widely used by John Tyndall, Osborn and others as a formidable example of intellectual acumen.

Today it is recognized as an example of supreme stupidity by atheists, YEC and ID, thus the attempt to massage the idea the authors had with SoF in the time era and context of 1870/80 out of Wikipedia by telling us for example that ".... Dawkins avoided the term completely in his latest work etc....." Which is just irrelevant as telling as that Dawkins avoided invading Egypt like Napoleon and shooting at the sphinx with his canon. Dawkins has his ideas and Darwin, John Tyndall had theirs. What Napoleon did is history, what he should have done is an arbitrary view, why are the arbitrary views of Dawkins being infused into http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution? Rather create the following entries:
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwins_idea_with_Evolution
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilkins_idea_with_Evolution
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawkins_idea_with_Evolution
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_before_genetic_discovery
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_after_genetic_discovery

There seems to be the view that Darwin could only finally have been falsified after the discovery of the complex interactions in the cell. Darwin reformulated Aristotle's tautology and a tautology can by definition not be falsified. Aristotle's tautology:"....the good live ,the bad die...." can't be falsified. Aristole thus explained everything past, present and future. How did the abstract algorithm map polypeptide space into frog space? Using Aristotles logic the good or constituted algorithm was preserved and bad or non-constituted algorithm perished. The good forex trader profited on the EURUSD, the bad one didn't. The good idea flourished, the bad idea didn't, which doesn't explain why the Forex trader actually generated profits, it just says the same thing twice. Aristotle and Democritus fallacious reasoning runs like a fissure through our collective thought, culture, journals, patents, religions and politics, wrecking havoc with societies ability to evaluate complex ideas.

Wikipedia's Fitness article uses John Tyndall's interpetation of Democritus
DemocritusFitnessPost

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_of_the_fittest uses JohnTyndall]'s interpretation of [[DemoCritus: "....That great enigma, 'the exquisite adaptation of one part of an organism to another part, and to the conditions of life, more especially the construction of the human body, Democritus made no attempt to solve....."

Which was reformulated as "... Darwin meant it is a metaphor for "better adapted for immediate, local environment", not the common inference of "in the best physical shape....." on Wikipedia. Darwin meant no such thing, he meant "suitable" with fitness the meaning intended by Specer. A reader and JohnTyndall in 1870 interpreted Darwin in terms of Spencer.

JohnTyndall's "...The exquisite adaptation of one part of an organism to another part, and to the conditions of life..." reduces to "....the adaptation of ... an organism .... to its environment...."

[NOTE: Can't find this quote under JohnTyndall, this section needs further citations, review and research]

Fitness, like quark and natural selection have no meaning. Darwin didn't symbolically represent some modern day author's idea of "better adapted for immediate, local environment" - which had nothing to do with how a Spencer immersed reader understood Darwin. There are two senses to the word environment: 'Conditions of life' and 'geographical location' sense. Wikipedia's Fitness article used it in the geographic location sense and is thus erroneous. A "local environment" is a geographic location. Your condition of existence isn't a geographical location.

The concept back then was "suitability". There is a distinct attempt at history revisionism by downplaying the effect Spencer had (sold over a million books) on Victorian society back then and how his ideas influenced them. Darwin was interpreted in terms of Spencer as JohnTyndall usage of SoF shows. The understanding back then was that whites were more suitable, fit or better fitted then blacks, such a suitability metric isn't a "local geographic location" but an abstract "condition of existence", an arbitrary social cultural subjective contrivance. Today different ideas are represented under the rubric of "fitness". Because the symbol "fitness" doesn't mean anything it is used to convey "physical strength" in one context and "better suited for marriage" in a another context. A reader in 1870 such as JohnTyndall used "fitness" in the "better suited for marriage" sense. Such suitability isn't a "local geographic location". The Aristotelians rewriting history on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_of_the_fittest are infusing their arbitrary ideas into the article instead of providing a historical narrative of ideas that were symbolically represented with the word the last 300 years from Buffon, Treviranus etc. English is a crippled language and it doesn't allow complex ideas to be expressed using single words so easily.

The conditions of life or conditions of existence an organism experiences is not a geographical location but is defined in terms of its attributes. A description of such an environment is rendered in terms of the attributes of the creature in the same way that the SQL computer code environment is described in terms of its attributes. SQL code exists only as a description in terms of its attributes, it inhabits an abstract "condition of existence" by virtue of an attribution description, which like the number 7 is neither here nor there: It exists only as an abstract concept in somebodies mind. The algorithm it implements is done in some physical space, but the physical space doesn't define its condition of existence. In the same way a complex organism real existence isn't physical space but in somebodies mind. The only reason it or anything else in the universe exists is because somebody knows about it. This is from the premise that Mind came before matter.

Because scientists know that "survival of the fittest" is a tautology (they are not stupid you know) they came up with a new formulation of the phrase that gave us an independent criterion of fitness - the environment. Success in survival is now tick-boxed as: "better adapted for the immediate, local environment".

[NOTE: Fitness as a symbol has no criteria or meaning. The modern idea(whatever that might be) has an criteria. Some modern day Aristotelian is representing his idea and criteria that survival is now tick-boxed as: "better adapted for ...... the environment". The idea a reader of Darwin and Spencer had in 1860 with "fitness" was suitability. As in whites being more suitable than blacks. Osborn noted how DR. W. C. WELLS, in 1813 first promulgated the theory of natural selection by noting the skin of white female that had negro characterists. The idea that was represented with natural selection had strong racialist overtones.]

But this is a tautology too. An environment, like a destination, isn't a geographical place. A description of an environment is cast in terms of a creature's attributes. As my environment is already described by my attributes I can't be adapted TO my environment. And even less can I be "better adapted" to my environment. What am I saying then? "Survival of the fittest" There is only one thing being considered here. "Survival" describes the "fittest" as the scientists know. Adaption/environment There is STILL only one thing on offer here, as adaption describes an environment, as the scientists have failed to notice.

Fitness isn't a measurable quality. A creature is, by being an existing creature, fit. The creature doesn't "have" fit parts or alleles. If parts and alleles constitute the creature, then they don't also require a property called "fitness" that helps it exist.

http://omgili.com/newsgroups/alt/atheism/h32j297jh1newseternal-septemberorg.html don't see the significance of saying that evolution is about populations. Like the term "fit" can't apply to individuals, the term "evolve" can't apply to populations. There aren't properties and processes (fit, evolve,) above and beyond the individual and the population. An environment is, at the same time, logically entails, a description of a set of attributes.

At a superficial level a rock is adapted to it's environment or a rock is adapted at being a rock. Anything that exists is thus adapted to its condition of existence, which says the same thing twice - a tautology. Thus it is syntactically meaningless to say an organism is adapted to its environment, it sounds as though a meaningful statement is being made, it has a pleasing grammatical nuance to it, but in reality is just as meaningless as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorless_green_ideas_sleep_furiously.

Such an environment or condition of existence, like the destination of an IP packet on the Internet isn't a physical location. There are two senses to the word environment: 'Conditions of life' and 'geographical location' sense. Note that the word "random" can also be used in two senses, the "probability sampling"(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability_sampling#Quota_sampling) or "non-random" sense and in the devoid of all intent sense.

As the organism's environment is already described by its attributes it can't be adapted TO its environment. To a greater extent it can't be "better adapted" to its environment. SQL code can't be adapted to its environment, neither can it be better adapted. With an organism we are dealing with a more advanced code than SQL a mechatronic AI algorithmic processing device that also flips switches, just like SQL code flips transistors on and off: It makes no sense to talk of SQL being adapted to its environment, it exists purely because of its descriptive attributes, which had to exist in somebodies mind, likewise it makes no sense talk of organisms being adapted to their environment. An organism, rock or any other living and non-living thing expresses only a condition of existence due to its descriptive attributes existing in somebodies mind (that would be the Lord Jesus Christ from the YEC view).

An environment logically entails a description of a set of attributes. With the "Adaption/environment" clause we are only referring to one thing, as adaption describes an environment or conditions of life, melting pot or set of social and cultural conditions affecting a community. Fitness isn't a measurable quality. A creature is, by being an existing creature, fit. The creature doesn't "have" fit parts or genes. If genes constitute the creature, then they don't also require a property called "fitness" that helps it exist. I don't see the significance of saying that evolution is about populations. Like the term "fit" can't apply to individuals, the term "evolve" can't apply to populations. There aren't properties and processes (fit, evolve,) above and beyond the individual and the population.

SQL is the coda or semantics that conveys the idea of a master/slave database relationship or dictionary key:value pairs in Python. By saying SQL, signal sender and signal receiver understand a set of algorithms that achieves key:value iteration or database mapping. That's the concept, saying that "..SQL is intended to be independent of its condition of existence...." is just as meaningless as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorless_green_ideas_sleep_furiously and "...SQL is adapted to its condition of existence..." Your sentence is grammatically correct though.

SQL isn't separate, independent or adapted to anything. You can't be adapted or independent from your condition of existence because your "existence" is who you are. Cheese isn't "adapted" to being cheese, cheese condition of existence or environment is defined by its attributes (soft, tasty, yellow etc.)

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B14117_01/appdev.101/b10807/13_ele... "...A cursor variable declared in a PL/SQL host environment and passed to PL/SQL as a bind variable. The datatype of the host cursor variable is compatible with the return type of any PL/SQL cursor variable. Host variables must be prefixed with a colon......"

Explain how saying "....SQL is either adapted, independent,separate, linked or in love with its condition of existence......" relates to the Pragmatics of the above SQL tutorial. ?

On a scale of adaptability 1-10, how would I measure your adaptation to your condition of existence ? Magnetic flux is measured using Gauss, and current is measured in  a standardized way. In order to measure something we agree apon a standardized metric so that 3amps has some sort conceptual meaning universally understood as the ratio between voltage and resistance. What standardized metric other than being in existence was agreed apon to measure the fitness of an elephant and how would such a measurement differ from a gazelle? If a pig had wheels mounted on ball bearings instead of trotters, on what scale of porcine fitness would it be.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Survival_of_the_fittest#Reproductiv... "....Such misunderstandings have been normal rather than the exception ever since 1900. This page unfortunately seems to have misunderstood the meaning the word "fit" had in the 1800s, and it should be radically revised. "Fit" meant suitable or appropriate. For example, women of the middle class could often be considered "not a fit wife for her excellent son"(Anne Bronte's novel "Agnes Grey"). The modern and usual meaning of the word is a product ot the 1900s, and Darwin and Spencer had no concept of physical fitness -- a modern luxury. The old concept "fit" represents in itself a relative quality, relative to something,, just like the verb "to fit", as a lid fits on its box. Darwin wanted such a relative concept, so he adopted Spencer's expression. It expressed "suited or adapted to its environment", which is exactly his basis for natural selection. It follows that he could have written "survival of the fit", it expresses almost the same idea. But "fittest" makes the idea of selection of only the best suited characteristics clearer. Mondin (talk) 16:42, 22 February 2009 (UTC) ...."

One person's view of marriage suitability is dependent on the cultural context and is subjective. A reader of Darwin understood "fitness" to be "suitable" the word meaning intended by Spencer. Spencer sold over a million books and Darwin was interpreted within the Spencer reference frame with Spencer's terminology and world view. Current is measured in amps, would "fitness" or "suitability" then be measured in "naturals"? The measurement of a women's "suitability" is an emotionally charged subjective assesment, not something that can be measured as current is measured, which is emotion free. There is no scale of suitablity 1-10 like there is with amps 1-10, suitablity and its modern synonym fitness can't be measured, they aren't measurable qualities but emotion laden subjective comparisons by people in the Spencerian/Darwinian cultural context. She didn't take a Gauss meter and measure "suitability flux" on a scale of 1-10 with the women coming in at 7,2 naturls but the cut-off point for "fitness" or suitability being 8 naturals. What was understood in the 1800s context by a reader of Darwin and Spencer's usage of "suitable" or "fitter" was that the white people were more "Fit" or "better fitted" or "suitable" to dominate the world then black people.

If fitness is a measurable quantity then on what scale of "fitness" would black and white people be in the socio-cultural context of the 1800's? On what scale would they be in the context of a politically correct driven social studies class at Harvard. Obviously at Harvard in 2010 they would be at exactly the same point, mentally, culturally etc.. Which thus demonstrates the point: Fitness(suitability) can't be measured. But the word "fitness" is widely used in the Neo-Empedoclian community(not evolutionary or Darwinian) in reference to human beings. Thus the usage of of "fitness" in a narration that is supposed to provide a well reasoned description of what we observe(not science, nobody knows that that word means) is just as sense destroying as trying to include "Julio cranks his wooden cheese" - it makes no sense.

Natura non facit saltum, nature makes no sudden leaps. In the context used "nature" is a synonym for "environment" which is used in the "the condition of existence" sense. To rephrase the sentence it means: "Your condition of existence makes no sudden leaps". By definition your condition of existence can't speed up or slow down, at the pragmatics level the sentence is a Truthiness-Tautology. Always bear in mind that words such as Nature, selection, decision, random etc have no meaning, they can only symbolically represent an idea in a specific context which allows one to use synonyms where one wouldn't ordinarly do so.

Everything that is in a condition of existence plays out in a linear time trajectory, such a time can't "jump" into the future speed up or slowdown. I am part of nature in the sense that my nature is in a condition of existence in the here and now, my existence isn't slowing down or speeding up. In the condition of existence sense nature is a synonym for environment. Try and measure "nature" on a scale of 1-10 and point out where the demarcation is between sudden and slow in the same way one would demarcate between a weak and strong magnetic field in Gauss units. What would be the units of measurement, "naturals" perhaps?

In other words the term "Natura non facit saltum" is just as meaningless as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorless_green_ideas_sleep_furiously. By saying that the condition of existence makes no sudden leaps it invokes an image of increasing or decreasing slopes, such as those "fitness landscapes" abstractions. Whatever the graphs are supposed to represent, they can't represent a "fitness landscape" or "suitability landscape" - there is no such thing that can be measured or calibrated on scale of -10 to +120 in the same sense an A/D converter Span and Zero would be calibrated to digitally represent a physical measurement.. If a "fitness landscape" can be measured how would one then calibrate its Zero and Span ?

Note that no matter in what context "Natura non facit saltum" is used with whatever intent(Darwin had a specific intent) it remains just as invalid as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorless_green_ideas_sleep_furiously in any context.

The same logic applies to "NS acts". A selection is a decision, decisions aren't "natural" but could be contemplated or hasty etc., decisions don't act on anything because only a being can make a decision or act on something. Darwin used the term "natural selection acts" but the idea he had was in the pattern and not design sense. Even though he used "acts" he didn't mean there was a conscious entity "acting". Which is why he shouldn't have written the book and kept silent, instead out of anger towards God for the death of his daughter he has induced Aristotelian mental illness from YEC to Atheist. Neither YEC, ID and atheist comprehends that words such as "natural selection acts" don't mean anything, only ideas have meaning.

Neither can one "add in selection" as a Discovery institute bacterial resistance video narrated by Stephen Myer claimed. You can't "add in selection" to the bacteria but could make decisions influencing the outcome of bacteria interacting. (Which is why the ID and Ken Ham YEC side are doing more damage than Dawkins because they use the same terminology, the Neo-Aristotelians get to define the rules of the game and the game with words is rigged if you play by their rules, you can't win the argument because you can't win an argument against a mentally ill person thinking that decisions can be natural. YEC is correct view though because that is what Christ implied) What is a natural decision or a natural preservation(Darwin meant preservation with selection)? What is a colorless green idea.....

“Natural Selection acts on genes, not individuals or groups of individuals.” True or false? could just as well have been http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorless_green_ideas_sleep_furiously. True or false? The question is a false dichotomy, both answers are wrong because the sentence is grammatically correct but meaningless. The Neo-Empedoclians are using grammatically correct but meaningless sentences formulated in a tautological way to induce one to accept their world view. Using grammatically correct by meaningless sentences is just as mentally damaging as believing a traffic light can be green and red at the same time. We are dealing with an insidious assault on our language, that not a single YEC dinosaur adventure land will solve. In the Bible it is forbidden to make images of things in heaven, because one then focuses on the images instead of the words, engaging in visualizations instead of trust by faith in the words of God alone. Job engaged in a whole dialogue where the words carried forth power. Jesus Christ asked Job:"....Who darkeneth council by words without wisdom ?...." AIG, Dembski, http://www.icr.org are using words without wisdom (natural selection, differential reproductive success, adapted to its environment) which darkeneth council. The language guile and deceit of the Neo-Aristotelians won't be solved by museums stuffed with dinosaur bones.

What does Fitness mean?
The problem with the huge language confusion we have in 2010 is that virtually everybody before 1858 believed Mind came before matter and their language reflected this innate volition. As JohnWilkins wrote:"..... lets face it, ordinary language with its volition isn't suitable for discussing concepts in biology...."

Today the same symbols are used by those who believe that matter came before Mind. 2000 years ago Selectus was used to express the concept of making a decision. Today the Neo-Aristotelians tell us that "selection" doesn't mean that anymore. They are incorrect, 'selection' like 'quark' has no meaning, they symbolically represented specific concepts (decision, will volition). By invoking the HumptyDumpty principle the Neo-Empedoclians represent arbitrary ideas with selection - which they certainly can do, but like Alice protested nobody knows what they are trying to say. They have invented a sort of Falun-Gong secret language. In China the Falun-Gong cult have resulted in children inventing their own dialect of Chinese so that even their own parents can't understand them. The language confusion extends from 'group selection', 'kin selection', 'selection-for', 'selection-about', 'memes to 'fitness landscape' to 'differential reproductive success'.

The Aristotelians run the public education system and they are just as destructive as a mother pointing to the color red with her baby on her lap and saying "Green". We find ourselves in a sort of a mad-hatters language mad house where "selection" no longer represents making decisions. The IEEE society have defined ATM protocol as using fixed byte widths of 57. What the Aristotelians like Pinker and Dawkins are doing is imagine that by government decree ATM packet width because anything any engineer wishes it to be, our telecoms system will jam and the Internet won't work. In the same way our language isn't working anymore as means to consistently convey specific concepts. It is an assault on our collective mental health a situation worsened by http://www.icr.org, Ken Ham and Dembski who have capitulated to the Inquisition like mental torture of having the Neo-Empedoclians continually use "selection" but then not mean "decision". It is like imagine every driver decides to invent his own reality and drive when the robot is red instead of green.

The debates between YEC, materialists and ID are doomed because of this. Steven Pinker as the professorial overlord intimidates his students to think like him, speak like him and invent their own language reality as they invoke the HumptyDumpty principle.

Especially the ID movement Dembski etc. have worsened the situation and are being sucked into the Aristotelian language madness. YEC apologetics movement is no longer defending the Word of God, they can't because their brains have been scrambled by the sheer force of mass media, Pinker, Dawkins , the attack of mass media as they went straight for the jugular: Language, semantics, words and the meaning they used to symbolically represent the last 5000 years before language became undefined in 1859.

The Aristotelians are caught in a tautological feedback loop that sucks in ever more words and terms. Especially 'differential reproductive success' is an interesting term because Darwin never uttered the phrase and nobody can explain what sort of technical significance it is supposed to have, see DarwinNeverSaidDifferentialReproduction. 'Differential reproductive success' has no meaning it can only represent an idea - which idea by whom? For who is what a success. A success is some predetermined goal that has been reached, who had this goal. If the frog is a 'successful' frog then why isn't it a happy frog. If natural selection is blind, why isn't it stupid.

Where Dembski, Ken Ham and http://www.irc.org have lost the whole argument form the word go, is that you can't win an argument against multi-universe theorists inventing their own real-time reality in HumptyDumpty space as the atoms in their head collides. The molecules in PZMyers head for example have undergone a sort of quantum flux making him animated for the purpose of proving that he is purposeless. If the atomic spin in his head is correct and there is no God ,the YEC will die with their delusions and the atheist will die never knowing he actually was correct and thus so what? Why the frantic animation from the atheists, if they actually believed that there really was no God they would be tolerant towards the YEC and give them an indifferent shrug. Instead they are very concerned about what the "truth" is not knowing how self-defeating their own position really is because if there is no God and they die, they will never find out.

By forcing through ridicule, dismissal, economic sanction they have intimidated even Atheists to say selection doesn't represent decision in the usual sense of the word. A selection is a decision, there is no such thing as natural or artificial decision, this is by arbitrary decree in the same way that we have arbitrarily defined ATM as being fixed and Ethernet variable frame rates.

Imagine the reaction we would get from IEEE engineers if Pinker and Dawkins decrees that ATM is no linger fixed packet widths but variable like Ethernet. But this is the exact same mess we know have with the term "natural selection": What naturaled (VerbingNouns) and who did the selecting? The IEEE would protest such lunacy, but http://www.icr.org, Ken Ham and Dembski aren't even raising the issue. As Ken Ham said: ".... I believe in Natural Selection...". A YEC saying NS in any context other than to ask "what naturaled and who did the selecting" is imperiling his soul whether he realizes it or not. The early Xtians could worship Christ, they just had to say:"...Caeser is Lord..." but they refused and were tortured to death. And the same with Natural Selection: Dawkins, Wilkins and the US/EU funded Aristotelian tautological inducing mind control institutions expect Xtians to have one set of beliefs on Sunday and another on Monday. It makes a mockery of the Xtian faith and will not be tolerated by Jesus Christ who is Truth incarnate.

Pinker and Dawkins can't kill you for refusing to say "natural, natural I am going to get all naturaled" but they can refuse that degree and thus a job. Xtianity involves persecution and today it is becoming ever more impossible to be a Xtian. Expecting a Xtian to say "natural selection" is expecting him to say "Aristotle is Lord".


 * At http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Talk/talk.origins/2009-10/msg08585.html poster iain_inkster@DOMAIN.HIDDEN wrote: "...Each time somebody here uses the phrase 'natural selection', your quibble is that ' "selection" implies intent'. It does not. In whatever respect you say " 'selection' implies intent ", you are wrong......"

My reply to iain_inkster is that they symbol Selection like the symbol Fitness has no criteria nor can it imply anything since it means nothing. Only a conscious being can imply something and used the symbol 'selectus' 2000 years ago to do such implying. What "selectus" was used to symbolically represent or imply the last 2000 years was the the concept of intent or making a decision. What Dawkins and Pinker have done is like imagine Harvard University forces all their students to drive from now on as though a red robot means go and green means stop. Any protestations from the students would result in immediate dismissal from the university. The third time you ask Pinker "What naturaled and who did the selecting" you will be kicked out of Harvard.

University students are the mercy of their Empedoclian professorial overlords, they aren't there to learn critical thinking but to be induced into the cult of Aristotelian tautological thinking because that is the official belief of the US federal government and EU. The term "natural selection" is a sort of means to bind societies collective mind into a common purpose, to make everybody think the same. It has been so successful that even Ken Ham says".... I believe in Natural selection....."

We have Ken Ham supposedly representing the YEC view and Pinker representing the atheist view. One is forced to choose between the two sides, what about the option that Ken Ham, Pinker, Dawkins and Dembski could all be wrong? Ken Ham is obviously correct that the earth was made 6000 years ago, but that is what Genesis says, but his argumentation scheme suffers from an Aristotelian logical fallacy as does Dembski and Dawkins. You could be correct but for the wrong reasons.

Because they all use the grammatical gargoyle natural selection in a meaningful sense. Which means they are just as mentally ill as trying to use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorless_green_ideas_sleep_furiously in a meaningful sense. The only option nobody is willing to consider is that we are in an abyss of language undefinedness, where YEC, atheists and ID are having endless debates not realizing that their arguments are doomed because neither of them comprehend what they mean with the symbol "selection". Who did the selecting? Nobody, well then why is a word that symbolically represented exactly that meaning then being used!?

If you tell the driver:"The robot is red!" , you are telling him to stop. We have arbitrarily by some decree if you wish decided that "red" represents stop. Now we could have used "green" is we wished but didn't. With "selectus"(Latin) 2000 years ago and "Selection" 200 years ago the intended meaning was plain: Making of a decision. It the last 150 years where the confusion over this has come in.

By government decree "red" is being used to mean stop. The same US government have also decreed to Pinker that "selection" no longer means "decision". The question: Who did the selecting? is forbidden. Xtian students studying Biology are given litmus tests where they have to answer multiple choice questions concerning 'natural selection'. The only answer they can give: "What naturaled and who did the Selecting" isn't on the question sheet. It amounts to imagine forcing Paul to answer the question with either Zeus or Apollo: " ...Which God made the universe, Zeus or Apollo...?" We are thus presented with a false dichotomy.

Thus wehave a huge language mess on on our hands where the the ruling elite from our universities are arbitrarily decreeing that "red" no longer means "stop" so speak, that "selection" no longer means "decision". The last 150 year we have witnessed a process that amounts to making people believe they can all invent their own language reality where "non-random" no longer is the synonym for "directed". We witness the same phenomena in China where the spiritual void left by atheism is filled with the Falun Gong cult, the spiritual void in atheist society is dealt with by making language itself undefined really.

What does Common Ancestor mean?
Spiders belong to the class Arachnida, insects to the class Insecta - http://www.washington.edu/burkemuseum/spidermyth/myths/notinsects.html. The vernacular for spider though is insect. A child at the zoo tells how he saw a "big monkey" and a "little monkey" he is using the vernacular for Gorilla and ape.

The common ancestor between a brother and sister is their mother. If man and ape descended from a "common ancestor", what would this CA have looked like to an observer back then? Both JohnWilkins and John Harshman stated that it would have looked like a "monkey", "ape", "simian', "flea scratching baboon" or any other vernacular that one would wish to use. John Harshman insists that our CA was a monkey hanging by its tail in the trees a few million years ago. Wilkins stated that using "ape like ancestor" instead of "monkey" for the CA merely replaces one vernacular for another.

In one context a "common ancestor" is a human being, in another it represents symbolically a monkey(vernacular usage, use simian if it makes you feel less stupid). RichardDawkins stated that the ancestor between fish and land dwelling creatures wasn't a fish but a "common ancestor". But to an observer back then wouldn't this CA have looked like a fishy thingy? If the neo-Empedoclians are this confused as to what they mean with CA then imagine the confusion we have with 'natural selection'. JohnWilkins in his audio podcast that he linked from on scienceblogs.com stated that if you read RichardDawkins books you are guaranteed to get it wrong.

PZ Myers on 'precursor populations: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/12/ray_comfort_gets_it_half_right.php#comment-1236746 PZ wrote: "......We evolved from precursor populations containing both males and females........"

These precursors, did they look like monkeys,simians, bonobos or did they look like a "precursor"? What would the precursor of this precursor have looked like, a common ancestor. What does a *precursor* between you and your sister look like. Precursors, common ancestors, Arachnida, Insecta, monkey and baboon have no meaning they can only symbolically represent an idea. There is no rule that says one isn't allowed to refer to a spider as an insect in the vernacular sense. In the same way there is no rule which says that "selection" always must be used in the decision making sense. Neither is there a rule that forbids referring to your mother as your "precursor" or her "precursor" as a "common ancestor" hanging by its tail in the trees 10mil years ago.

Lets presume this "precursor" gave birth to another "precursor" at what point would this "precursor" say: Mommy why are your teeth so long!? Did monkeys give birth to talking monkeys. The reply to this question is what did the first speaker of French mother speak, which is a false analogy because his mother's morphological features would have been exactly the same. For the monkey man transition morphological changes would have had to taken place. How many such changes for example was there in the cow whale transition, a billion, 100 million.

Is a tautology true by definition?
* http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/browse_thread/thread/4828cd8302a35bfa/d5d1bc415669f3d8 * http://www.evolutiondebate.info/ThoughtsonNS.pdf

Quote:This is an amazing argument, but I have seen it in more than one place (including an indirect nod by Howard Hershey in the last section below) so it must be making the rounds. Apparently Patella believes that in order for there to be tautology problem natural selection must argue that the fitter ³always² survive."

Wilkins wrote: Well yes. That's rather what "tautology" means - it can never not be true. If it can be false at any point then it is simply not a tautology, no matter what one might think of the claim as a statistical likelihood.

Both Wilkins and Patella didn't discern between a tautological expression, proposition and logical validity. "A or not-A" can't every be false, it is a logical validity. But the sentenc "A or not-A and therefore a monkey gave birth to a human" is a rhetorical tautology, the conclusion is a non-sequitur.

Is a tautology defined as something which is true by definition or something which is a necessary truth? This depends what is meant with "tautology", no word has a single true meaning as per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatics. There are a range of concepts for which one word will not suffice particularly in the English language, Greek in contrast has single words with a single meaning such as Agape. A rhetorical tautology involves a deceitful attempt at persuasion by coming to a conclusion which is a non-sequitur. Tautological expressions are used in poetry and informal speech. The logical validity A or Not-A could also be a rhetorical tautology or tautological proposition if used in a different context such as:A or Not-A and therefore a monkey gave birth to a human(Non_sequitur_(logic)).

It depends on the context in which terms and words are used by signal sender and how signal receiver decodes it. In computer generated theorem verification the idea is to avoid logical tautologies such as X=X since this is not the result to be obtained. The result would be logically valid but unintended and thus a Logical Tautology( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tautology_(logic))  If X=X is generated it is assumed that the set theorist wasn't trying to deceitfully convince others of his world view, hence logical tautology and not rhetorical tautology. Obviously A or Not-A but when tutoring entry level set theory A or Not-A might not be so obvious and the logical validity of A or Not-A needs to be grasped as a low level concept. A or Not-A in one context says the same thing twice in order to convince of a world view which is a Non_sequitur. In another context affirms it as a logical validity for its pedagogical use and in another context is a logical validity but not intended(logical tautology).

JohnWilkins confuses these subtleties by defining a tautology:".... something which is defined as being true by definition..." due to his particular world view and his realization that SurvivalOfTheFittest by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Reinhold_Treviranus, Buffon and Spencer was a tautological proposition. See JohnWilkins for his post on this issue. There are threads by Wilkins on Usenet talk.origins dealing with the http://www.talkorigins.org tautology article that he wrote where he stated that the article is out of date, and needs to be rewritten. Quantum physics, mathematics etc. or what is considered as the hard sciences are formulated in such a way that the Empedoclian world view is embraced.

A or Not-A and what happens, happens are true by definition but what is the context in which it is used or the Pragmatics? The issue isn't the semantic definition of a word but the multiple concepts that can be communicated with words such as for example "random,selection, accumulation etc.", which elsewhere in this document is shown to be able to be used in both the volitional and non-volitional sense. There are five Greek words for love: Agape, Phile, Eros. Agape is used in the New Testament to describe God's love for man.

In English the context or Pragmatics with the word "love" determines what is meant by signal sender to signal receiver. The Neo-Aristotelians, -Neo-Empedoclians (not Evolutionists, a word coined by Darwin in OoS) are exploiting the English language to hide what they mean by words such as selection(who did the selecting?), modification(who did the modifying) accumulation, evolution etc: What will be , will be. Their Premise is the RetrospectiveSpecification fallacy: A widely held premise is the multi-universe theory,out of billions of possible universes we were the one that happened to be in existence, but the sample space is actually two: Either we exist or we don't.


 * A or Not-A, and therefore a monkey gave birth to a human(Non_sequitur) - ''Rhetorical tautology' or fallacious.
 * A or Not-A, in an entry level class on algebra stated for its pedagogical use - Logical validity and not fallacious.
 * X=X, in computer theorem verification, but unintended result - Logical tautology and not fallacious.
 * X=X, Jokingly said by one set theorist to another - Tautological expression and not fallacious.
 * (A or Not-A), Random paper picked up in the street what does it mean? It depends on who said X = X - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatics. And the same goes for natural selection which like You have a green light has no single true meaning.
 * 4=3, random paper picked up in the street means what? Without knowing who wrote it isn't even wrong.
 * Hidden tautology or Truthiness-tautology - Fallacious.

Wikipedia's Neo-Empedoclians
The subtleties and nuances of what it means to say the same thing twice can't be separated from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatics, the context, time era, background knowledge and assumptions of the user. The editors of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tautology_(rhetoric) don't incorporate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatics with it due to their Aristotelian, Empedoclian and Epicurian world view. This world view of atoms fighting on another with the best atom surviving have been retold for modern man as the battle between organisms, resulting in an unfalsisfiable tale because if the dingbat won instead of the wombat we would be told the same story.

Original the tale was the battle between the Gods and see-monsters, narrated by the tribal wizard 5000 years ago to village peasants, in return he got free food and didn't have to do back break work. The myth was modified by Empedocles, Aristotle, Atomists, Democritus and Lucretius etc.. as the battle between the atoms to explain the origin of the universe due to their atheistic world view. If atoms became established because the "good" atom outwitted the "bad" atom then the story can't be falsified because if it was the other way around we would be told the same thing. The fact that atoms do exist means thus that one of the atoms had to "win the fight" so to speak but this doesn't allow for a third option and presents a FalseDichotomy. JamesHutton(1794), Darwin, Wells(1813), PatrickMatthews(1836) extended the Lucretius myth by having the "good" animal outwit the bad, not knowing about genes. Our modern day secular priests extended the myth by having the "good" Allele or gene outwit the "bad" allele, as can be seen with the book "The Selfish Gene" by dawkins, which is incorrect because genes are a CyberneticAbstraction. It really is bringing a cowboys-and-indians fight for survival fantasy world into science, where imagine that the existence of cowboys is explained by telling a tale of how they killed all the Indians, which raises the question where did the Indians and Cowboys come from in the first place.

Genotype, phenotype,allele,evolution,selection,group selection,punk-eek,gradualism and specifically the terms fitness and reproductive success with its battle for survival overtones are the word terms that enables the narration of the underlying mythology, it doesn't explain the transition matrix that maps polypeptide space into frog space for example: There is no math because these terms aren't meant to provide a mechanistic description but as a means for the Neo-Aristotelians to perpetuate the Lucretius world view in their universities and science. They are intermixed with mathematical equations but are superfluous to the actual descriptions. For example the term "fitness landscape" might just as well have been called "Conan banana landscape" or fitness coefficient mathematical variables was arbitrarily called that in population genetics but has no bearing on comprehending the actual differential equations explaining inheritance.

natural selection as used by the neo-Empedoclians when narrating an exciting story about the fight for survival between the "alleles" should be seen at the same level as "expialidocis" from Mary-Poppins and "kwabanga-dude!" by Donatello from the Ninja Turtles: As a stylistic device to spice up the story, not an actual attempt to explain anything. For this reason "allele", "genotype" and "phenotype" has no specific meaning whatsoever, nobody can point to the exact definition of what an "allele" is nor who defined it. For example Howard wrote:"...not all phenotypes are the result of genotypes..." which is a sentence crafted not actually to explain anything but as just one more addition of a rhetorical weapon in the arsenal of the modern day Gandalfs to spice up their argumentation scheme in the narration of their Empedoclian world view.

Which version of natural selection with what concept?
Selection was the synonym for "survival" and Darwin's writings was interpreted as such by Osborn in 1898 - EpiCurus. Wilkins wrote: "...The core of the criticism against natural selection is that it is a logical tautology, which amounts to it being an a priori truth (which most philosophers now consider a problematic notion at best, anyway)...."

The problem with this sentence is Wilkins never defines to which concept exactly he is referring to as used by which person. Only a person can have a concept, PatrickMatthews the originator of the term "natural means of selection" had a very specific concept. The term "natural selection" like the term "Ninja Turtles" isn't a concept but a the semantic means of encoding the Pragmatics that a specific user has. A Ninja turtle could be a ninja putting on a turtle suite or a turtle putting on a ninja suite,it all depends on who uses the semantics. We are for example told that evolution "happens in populations but not individuals", the only thing we are not told is who established it and whether it is established at all. All scientific theories are always formally established.

From the Greeks to Darwin by Henry Osborn
p.246 "...The idea of Evolution, rooted in the cosmic evo- lution and ' movement ' of Heraclitus and Aristotle, has passed to the progressive development and succession of life seen in Empedocles, Aristotle, Bruno, Descartes, Goethe, and in the more concrete mutability of species ' of Bacon, Leibnitz, Buffon, Lamarck, and St. Hilaire.

The direct transition from the inorganic to the organic is seen to have had a host of friends, nearly to the present time, including, besides all the Greeks, Lucretius, Augustine, Maillet, Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, Lamarck, Treviranus, Oken, and Chambers- Then we have seen the difficulty of ' origin ' removed one step back by the ' pre-existent germs ' of Anaxa- goras, revived by Maillet, Robinet, Diderot, and Bonnet. Again, the rudiments of the monistic idea of the psychic properties of all matter, foreshadowed by Empedocles, are seen revived by Maupertuis and Diderot. The difficulty of origin has been avoided by the assumption of primordial minute masses, which we have seen developed from the ' soft germ ' of Aristotle, to the 'vesicles' and 'filaments' of Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, Lamarck, Oken, and finally into our primordial protoplasm.

To the inquiry : Where did life first appear ? we find the answer, ' in the sea,' given by Thales, Anaximander, and Maillet; 'between sea and land,' is the answer of Anaximenes, Diogenes, Democritus, and Oken; 'from the earth,' is the solitary reply of Lucretius. Now we are too wise to answer it. For the succession of life we have followed the ' ascend- ing scale ' of Aristotle, Bruno, Leibnitz, and others, until Buffon realized its inadequacy, and Lamarck substituted the simile of the branching tree. Of man as the summit of the scale, and still in process of becoming more perfect in his endowments, we learn from Empedocles, Aristotle, Robinet, Diderot, Erasmus Darwin, Lamarck, and Treviranus....|

'''THE SELECTIONISTS. '''

"....The modern theory of Natural Selection was ex- pressed first by DR. W. C. WELLS, in 1813, then by St. Hilaire the elder, then by Matthew, in 1831, and  finally, with considerably less clearness, if at all, by  Naudin, in 1852. Darwin gives us references to  the two English writers. That of Wells is the first  statement of the theory of the survival, not simply  of fittest organisms, as understood by previous  writers, such as Buffon and Treviranus, but of or-  ganisms surviving because of their possession of  favourable variations in single characters. Wells'  paper, read before the Royal Society in 1813, was  entitled, " An Account of a White Female, part of  whose Skin resembles that of a Negro " ; it was not  published until iSiS. 1 He here recognizes the principle of Natural Selection, as applied to the races  of men, and to the explanation of the origin of single characters....."

TAutology part
"....That of Wells is the first statement of the theory of the survival, not simply  of fittest organisms, as understood by previous  writers, such as Buffon and Treviranus, but of organisms surviving because of their possession of  favourable variations in single characters....|

rephrase
The theory of the survival, is organisms surviving because of favorable variations.

rephrase
"...Those that survived had favorable variations...." Obviously or they would be dead.

Tautological expressions and propositions
The tautological expression (an unmarried bachelor) contains a redundant word ("unmarried"), but has meaning and can be used to form a meaningful proposition, e.g. "John is an unmarried bachelor". This proposition is not a rhetorical tautology because the intent isn't to deceive. It could be considered as unnecessarily language verbosity. The tautological proposition (all bachelors are unmarried) stated in a class on formal logic theory on the other hand, gives us no information that is not already contained in the definition of the word "bachelor". The Pragmatics or context with 'unmarried bachelor' by the user would determine whether it is a proposition,expression, logical validity, or language verbosity. In an academic setting such as a journal propositions are put forward in an attempt at deriving an independent explanation for an observation. Tautologies in such a setting would be a tautological proposition and unacceptable. Tautological expressions used in an informal setting such as a sports event with its associated colloquial speech is acceptable because of the Pragmatics] with it. The dividing line between a tautological proposition and expression is [[Pragmatics.

Example of a tautological proposition

 * The geological record features episodes of high dying, during which extinction-prone groups are more likely to disappear, leaving  extinction-resistant groups as life's legacy. S.J. Gould &amp; N. Eldredge, "Punctuated equilibrium comes of age", Nature (1993) 366:223-7, p. 225.

Gould formulated the proposition so that it cannot be disputed: "..certain groups were extinction prone because they disappeared.." But the real reason for their extinction needs be derived independently elsewhere. Nothing is explained by stating that because they were extinction prone they died, their death implies that they were extinction prone. Extinction and disappear or death are a synonymous play with words that alludes to the same fact but masquerades as an explanation. It is derived from Aristotle and EpiCurus philosophy: The good (robot,gene rabbit etc) lived while the bad one died or in other words: What happens happens.
 * How was this "extinction-proneness" measured, except by noting that the groups disappeared?
 * How was their disapearability measured except by noting that they were "extinction-prone"?

Talk origins
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-meritt/evolution.html According to the Talk.Origins Archive, sharks haven't changed because they "are excellently adapted to their particular niche in their environment." Does anyone know how this "excellent adaptation" was measured (apart from observing that sharks haven't changed, that is)?

Irish Elk
Mayr, trying to explain why things like the giant antlers of the "Irish Elk" and the canines of saber-toothed tigers aren't problematic for Darwinism: quote: "All these features would seem, at first sight, to be highly deleterious, and it was claimed that natural selection could not possibly have favored or even tolerated their evolution. However, the studies of Rensch, Simpson, Gould, and various other paleontologists have demonstrated that the species that had these "excessive" characters always flourished for considerable periods of time when these characters clearly were of selective advantage and that their ultimate extinction coincided with a climatic or broad faunal change which simultaneously led to the extinction of nummerous other species without such `excessive' characters." E. Mayr, Toward a New Philosophy of Biology: Observations of an Evolutionist, (Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 250. Ques:These species "flourished", so their structures must have been favored after all?

Wikipedia natural selection Nov.2009 revision
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection "....Natural selection is the process by which heritable traits that make it more likely for an organism to survive and successfully reproduce become more common in a population over successive generations. It is a key mechanism of evolution...."
 * rephrase:The process by which.... traits that make it more likely for an organism to .... reproduce become more common in a population over successive generations. It is a key mechanism of evolution...."
 * rephrase:The ... traits that make it more likely for an organism to .... reproduce become more common in a population over successive generations. It is a key mechanism of evolution...."
 * rephrase:The ... traits that .....enables .... reproduction become more common in a population................ It is a key mechanism of evolution...."
 * rephrase:The traits that enables reproduction, become more common.

"Enables" and "more common" are a play with words that alludes to the same fact: It says the same thing twice. The "truth of the proposition cannot be disputed"(Darwin's exact words), there is no way to falsify or test this. How could it possibly be incorrect. We are told that certain traits became more common. But why did they become more common?
 * Ans: Because the traits were enabling. But obviously the traits were "enabling" or they wouldn't have become more common now would they? It is the same tautological essence form OoS where Darwin explained that the dinosaurs went extinct because they were "less improved"- which is an irrefutable proposition.

http://creationmuseum.org/ AIG is adding to the confusion by not comprehending that this tautology was ad-hocly associated with "natural means of selection" from PatrickMatthews, an arbitrary choice of words. Darwin, Aristotle, EpiCurus, EmpeDocles, JamesHutton and Patrick Matthews tautology, if labeled Ninja Turtles wouldn't make a turtle putting on a ninja suite a tautology. No sentence or term has a single true meaning. Only an argument containing a motive from some individual can be a tautology, such an argument might contain the term NaturalSelection, Roger rabbit or Wizard of Oz. http://www.answersingenesis.org/get-answers/topic/arguments-we-dont-use have removed the section that "natural selection is a tautology" shouldn't be used. Many in the academic world from JerryFodor to others realize that there is serious issues with this term and the concepts associated with it.

Wikipedia's natural selection opening paragraph

 * Dec 2008 to Dec2007 revision of natural selection on Wikipedia main article

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Natural_selection&oldid=259585753 "....Natural selection is the process by which favorable heritable traits become more common in successive generations of a population of reproducing organisms, and unfavorable heritable traits become less common, due to differential reproduction of genotypes...." But no citation is given of any modern or ancient works, nor do we know who was the author and what is his world view, background knowledge or Pragmatics and who he was interpreting. If Darwin was interpreted how did Darwin explain something he didn't know about: Genes? What was this Wikipedia contributor's view on the question of: WhatIsLife - http://seedmagazine.com/news/2007/09/the_meaning_of_life.php?page=all The meaning of Life? For all we know a cat could have walked over a keyboard.

Where did matter come from ?
Neo-Aristotelians would say that "evolution" doesn't deal with this, which is an appeal to AbstractAuthority: Mr.Evoluton, Mr.Science and Mr.Religion don't exist, they don't say anything neither do they inhabit separate domains a mistake Gould makes with his NOMA. Only a conscious being can say something or not deal with something, be religious or materialistic. The Neo-Empedoclians don't wish to deal with the question because the of the notion that their spiritual leader had about "atoms fighting each other". Empedoclian tautological thinking infused into our science, culture religion and politics. The entire premise of our society at large pivots on a battle-for-survival myth formulated in such a way that it cannot be disputed(Darwin's term). The mythology was arbitrarily associated with selection, adaptation, words given the atheistic premises of most isn't available to them as per DernavichInfidels

Saying the same thing twice
Is the contention that "free gift" is a tautology true? . To assert that such a phrase always says the same thing twice is to misframe the particular premise of a user. For example: A man's gift of a dinner and a movie to his date may be a "gift" but it sometimes comes bundled with expectations. But, if the recipient of the free dinner asks first "if I go with you, are you expecting anything?" and gets the answer "no", then it's accurate to say the invitee got a "free gift" of dinner. It is incorrect that no gift can ever have non-free implications attached to it.

Another example is "suddenly, without warning". If two armies oppose each other in the field and one commander sends the opposition a warning message as follows "I instruct you to retreat or I will attack", any subsequent attack, sudden or otherwise, was warned. "Sudden" means "happening or coming unexpectedly". But students of military history have noted; via effective deception, any attack can be seen as "sudden", even if fair warning was previously given.

An expression (as opposed to an assertion) is considered tautological if it contains redundant information. For example, "to return back again" is tautological because the sense of "back again" is already fully contained within the word "return", and so is redundant.

In the context of above and paraphrasing JerryFodor: What then is the intended meaning of : natural,selection, FitNess, genotype,phenotype, FitnessLandscapes, EcologicalNiches, evolution, evolutionary, DarWinism,AdapTation, AlleLe, DarWinian, random natural selection, non-random natural selection, random design, non-random design ? To answer the question we must be told who is the individual using the terms, from what time era and knowledge.

Darwin on propositions which cannot be disputed
http://www.omgili.com/newsgroups/alt/talk/creationism/955c938b-640c-4383-a32c-b6b9398fb7e1o40g2000prngooglegroupscom.html There are key passages where Darwin reformulated PatrickMatthews, JamesHutton, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Baptiste_Julien_d%27Omalius_d%27Halloy, EpiCurus, Democritus, Spencer and Aristotle labeling their concept   natural selection and makes his argument irrefutable or Unfalsifiable by using the phrase propositions which cannot be disputed. d'Halloy's concept with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_with_modification in 1848 was labeled natural selection by Darwin.


 * OoS For if each part is liable to individual variations at all ages, and the variations tend to be inherited at a corresponding or earlier age--propositions which cannot be disputed--then the instincts and structure of the young could be slowly modified as surely as those of the adult; and both cases must stand or fall together with the whole theory of natural selection.


 * OoS".......... That many and serious objections may be advanced against the theory of descent with modification through variation and natural selection, I do not deny. I have endeavoured to give to them their full force. Nothing at first can appear more difficult to believe than that the more complex organs and instincts have been perfected, not by means superior to, though analogous with, human reason, but by the accumulation of innumerable slight variations, each good for the individual possessor.  Nevertheless, this difficulty, though appearing to our imagination insuperably great, cannot be considered real if we admit the following propositions, namely, that all parts of the organisation and instincts offer, at least individual differences--that there is a struggle for existence leading to the  preservation of profitable deviations of structure or instinct--and, lastly, that gradations in the state of perfection of each organ may have existed, each good of its kind.   The truth of these propositions cannot, I think, be disputed. ........."

The words preservation, profitable, perfection, perfected and good are a synonymous play with words that alludes to same fact as shown by reducing the passage it to its core proposition which cannot be disputed: Species are engaged in a struggle for existence leading to the preservation of  those profitable structures that allowed them to survive.


 * OoS:".........IF under changing conditions of life organic beings present individual differences in almost every part of their structure, and this cannot be disputed; if there be, owing to their geometrical rate of increase, a severe struggle for life at some age, season, or year, and this certainly cannot be disputed; then, considering the infinite complexity of the relations of all organic beings to each other and to their conditions of life, causing an infinite diversity in structure, constitution, and habits, to be advantageous to them, it would be a most extraordinary fact if no variations had ever occurred useful to each being’s own welfare, in the same manner as so many variations have occurred useful to man. But if variations useful to any organic being ever do occur, assuredly individuals thus characterised will have the best chance of being preserved in the struggle for life; and from the strong principle of inheritance, these will tend to produce offspring similarly characterised. This principle of preservation, or the [survival of the fittest], I have called Natural Selection. It leads to the improvement of each creature in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life, and consequently, in most cases, to what must be regarded as an advance in organisation....."


 * Question: Other than noting the offspring survived how was their fitness or suitability(Spencer's word) measured?

Darwin's definitions of Natural Selection
His usage of natural selection or natural preservation(his preferred term) must be viewed in the light of Fitness and it's meaning in 1800's. "...I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term natural selection, in order to mark its relation to man's power of selection. But the expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer, of the Survival of the Fittest, is more accurate ...."

"...This preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection...."

"...favourable variations would be ...preserved, and unfavourable ones ... destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species. Here, then, I had at last got a theory by which to work" (Charles Darwin, Autobio:120)...., interpreting MalThus".


 * How did Darwin measure the variations usefulness other than noting they were preserved?
 * How did Darwin measure the variations preservability other than noting they were useful?

Darwin on the preservation of individuals
"....All these results, as we shall more fully see in the next chapter, follow from the struggle for life. Owing to this struggle, variations, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if they be in any degree profitable to the individuals of a species, in their infinitely complex relations to other organic beings and to their physical conditions of life, will tend to the preservation of such individuals, and will generally be inherited by the offspring..."

Which reduces to: Variations that are profitable will result in the preservation of such individuals. "profitable" and "preservation" alludes to the same fact guaranteeing the truth of the proposition. It reflects Aristotle and EpiCurus, Democritus underlying philosophy : What happens, happens.

Natural selection
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Natural_selection/Archive_8 Natural selection is the process by which individual organisms with favorable traits are more likely to survive and reproduce than those with unfavorable traits.

Question: Other than noting that the traits survived how was their favorability measured? more likely and favorable alludes to the same fact guaranteeing the truth of the proposition and is thus fallacious. The tautology also assumes the underlying premise, thus begging the question: It is assumed that all species today are descendant from other species, this is the very issue that must be proven. See this thread for further clarity by author NoShellSwill on Google groups - http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/browse_frm/thread/ac52c73b1fc53deb/8a86863346c98d5d?#8a86863346c98d5d

The term natural selection Darwin lifted from PatrickMatthew natural means of selection. The concept with NS though was from JamesHutton in 1794 and can be traced back all the way to Aristotle and EpiCurus. No word or sentence has a single true meaning or concept. SoF for example is either a tautological proposition or expression depending on who says SoF, just like "Beer is Beer"  has an intention, either fallacious or poetic depending  on who uttered the phrase, as this http://maverickphilosopher.powerblogs.com/posts/1114725461.shtml. SoF and Beer-is-Beer etc. doesn't have a single true meaning. JamesHutton(1794), PatrickMatthews, Wallace,HerbertSpencer, Darwin and others reformulated Aristotle and EpiCurus original tautology in many different ways. The grammatical gargoyle natural selectionwas the term coined to associated this tautology with by Darwin.


 * talk archive revision of Natural selection

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Natural_selection/Archive_8 Natural selection is the process by which individual organisms with favorable traits are more likely to survive and reproduce than those with unfavorable traits.


 * Dec 2008 to Dec2007 revision of natural selection on Wikipedia main article

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Natural_selection&oldid=259585753 "....Natural selection is the process by which favorable heritable traits become more common in successive generations of a population of reproducing organisms, and unfavorable heritable traits become less common, due to differential reproduction of genotypes...."


 * Sept 2009 revision

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection  Sept 2009 "...Natural selection is the process by which heritable traits that make it more likely for an organism to survive and successfully reproduce become more common in a population over successive generations. It is a key mechanism of evolution...."

Neither of these revisions cite any pages in Darwin's OoS, who wrote these paragraphs ? The 2008 one had "Genes", which Darwin and Aristotle didn't know about. Why was genes removed in the 2009 revision, it is like imagine somebody removes the word "Newton" in a revision of the gravity article.

Lucretius
http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=text&itemID=A12&pageseq=1 "...p.7,8 Lucretius" The mechanical shock of the atoms being in his view the all-sufficient cause of things, he combats the notion that the constitution of nature has been in any way determined by intelligent design. The inter-action of the atoms throughout infinite time rendered all manner of combinations possible. Of these the fit ones persisted, while the unfit ones disappeared. Not after sage deliberation did the atoms station themselves in their right places, nor..."

"...p.22 During the Middle Ages the doctrine of atoms had to all appearance vanished from discussion. In all probability it held its ground among sober-minded and thoughtful men, though neither the church nor the world was prepared to hear of it with tolerance. Once, in the year 1348, it received distinct expression. But retraction by compulsion immediately followed, and, thus discouraged, it slumbered till the seventeenth century, when it was revived by a contemporary and friend of Hobbes and Malmesbury, the orthodox Catholic provost of Digne, Gassendi. But before stating his relation to the Epicurean doctrine, it will be well to say a few words on the effect..."

Right up to our present day with "alleles" fighting it out amongst themselves: http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/browse_thread/thread/deac2432776866c6/b7fce5490e4d08d6#b7fce5490e4d08d6 WilliamMorse wrote 2 July 2009: "....Let me try to illustrate my thinking. The importance of a rate of increase would be if we had two alleles competing to become fixed in a population. Both of them are superior to the current predominant allele, and the one with the greatest rate of increase is the one that will become the new predominant allele. I don't think this describes any common real world scenario...."

Democritus
From JohnTyndall - http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=text&itemID=A12&pageseq=1 He is said to have discovered and educated ProtaGoras the sophist, being struck as much by the manner in which he, being a hewer of wood, tied up his faggots as by the sagacity of his conversation. DemoCritus returned poor from his travels, was supported by his brother, and at length wrote his great work entitled DiaKosmos which he read publicly before the people of his native town. He was honoured by his countrymen in various ways, and died serenely at a great age.

The principles enunciated by Democritus reveal his uncompromising antagonism to those who deduced the phenomena of nature from the caprices of the gods. They are briefly these:


 * . From nothing comes nothing. Nothing that existscan be destroyed. All changes are due to the combination and separation of molecules.


 * . Nothing happens by chance. Every occurrence has its cause from which it follows by necessity.


 * . The only existing things are the atoms and empty space; all else is mere opinion.


 * . The atoms are infinite in number and infinitely various in form; they strike together, and the lateral motions and whirlings which thus arise are the beginnings of worlds.


 * . The varieties of all things depend upon the varieties of their atoms, in number, size, and aggregation.


 * . The soul consists of fine, smooth, round atoms, like those of fire. These are the most mobile of all. They interpenetrate the whole body, and in their motions the phenomena of life arise.

The first five propositions are a fair general statement of the atomic philosophy, as now held. As regards the sixth, Democritus made his fine smooth atoms do duty for the nervous system, whose functions were then unknown. The atoms of Democritus are individually without sensation; they combine in obedience to mechanical laws; and not only organic forms, but the phenomena of sensation and thought are the result of their combination.

That great enigma, 'the exquisite adaptation of one part of an organism to another part, and to the conditions of life, more especially the construction of the human body, Democritus made no attempt to solve.

Empedocles, a man of more fiery and poetic nature, introduced the notion of love and hate among the atoms to account for, their combination and separation. Noticing this gap in the doctrine of Democritus, he struck in with the penetrating thought, linked, however, with some wild speculation, that it lay in the very nature of those combinations which were suited to their ends (in other words, in harmony with their environment) to maintain themselves, while unfit combinations, having no proper habitat, must rapidly disappear. Thus more than 2,000 years ago the doctrine of the 'survival of the fittest,' which in our day, not on the basis of vague conjecture, but of positive knowledge, has been raised to such extraordinary significance, had received at all events partial enunciation.3..."''


 * rephrase "...Democritus struck  with the penetrating thought ..... that it lay in the very nature of those combinations which were ...... in harmony with their environment... to maintain themselves, while unfit combinations disappear. Thus more than 2,000 years ago the doctrine of the 'survival of the fittest,'......... has been raised to significance...."


 * rephrase "...Democritus struck  with the penetrating thought ..... that those in harmony with their environment  maintained themselves, while the unfit combinations disappear. Thus more than 2,000 years ago the doctrine of the 'survival of the fittest was has been raised to significance.

...."


 * rephrase for tautological essence "...Those in harmony maintained themselves, while the unfit disappear. '' This proposition cannot be disputed hence is a logical fallacy. It reflects Aristotle philosophy : What happens, happens. See Creationism and Its Critics in Antiquity - http://www.amazon.com/Creationism-Critics-Antiquity-Classical-Lectures/dp/0520260066/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1228971065&sr=1-1...."

Is survival of the fittest a tautology ?
Spencer got SurvivalOfTheFittest from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Reinhold_Treviranus, Buffon. Depends on who says SoF and in what context with what background knowledge and Pragmatics since a term only means what an individual intends it to mean. Try and contact Herbert Spencer and ask him two questions:
 * Other than noting the species survived how was their fitness or suitability measured?
 * Other than noting they were suitable how was their survivability measured? 

Spencer sold over a million books, OoS was read by a person in 1860 with Spencer's ideas, today Spencer is hardly ever mentioned. From his writing with fitness he meant suitable, he was widely sited during the 19th century. As Darwin wrote:"..natural selection or survival of the fittest which is a better expression....." which to a read back then meant: "....survival of the most suitable is a better expression....." Today nobody knows what is meant with the word "fitness", what concept is being conveyed isn't clear. "Fitness" isn't a concept, but a means for signal sender to encode his particular concept within in his reference frame a 150 years after Spencer.

Natural Selection or Natural Preservation ?
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/tree/browse_frm/thread/557a525aebe1bddb/65e7f5e644080d89?rnum=91&_done=%2Fgroup%2Ftalk.origins%2Fbrowse_frm%2Fthread%2F557a525aebe1bddb%3F#doc_14e8bfadb9bedff0

Howard when you say "...planetary attraction follows an inverse square law..." you aren't formulating a new theory but interpreting an existing theory. In every single established theory following a process where the formulator provided a description that at very least was well reasoned(not science - nobody knows what that word means), we know who this person was - without exception.

What many do today such as Wilkins is inventing their own theories, whole new conceptualizations but are to modest to announce that they have brand new idea because of the possible peer pressure or non-favorable reception, especially by those who would decide on tenure positions. Wilkins said of Dawkins "....if you read his books you are guaranteed to get it wrong...." which didn't go down very well with Myers, leading to Wilkins leaving Scienceblogs. Both Dawkins and Wilkins says "selection", but as a single word it is a proxy for conflicting viewpoints when used by either user: They are not neccessarily talking about the same thing. All language, sentences, phrases and words either conveys the concept of a patter or a design and a clear cut distinction between these two. The sentence "Outside was formed a selection of rocks" means what? Without knowing who says so we can't infer whether "selection" is used in the pattern or design sense. If a tornado hit a mountain it would be a "pattern", but if John selected the rocks it would be a "design". Not being able to distinguish between patterns or designs indicates a mental illness. Elsewhere you wrote: "... design is subset of pattern...." , you specifically left the "a" out, and refused to explain why, Knowing what you believe about the "pattern-design" distinction helps us in interpreting what you say, something which can't be deduced form the sentence itself.

What one needs to get clarity about what you are writing Howard, are you interpreting various authors or are you actually formulating your own theory? Lets presume you are interpreting Darwin who wrote to Wallace that he made a mistake with his choice of "selection" because it anthromorphosizes nature and he should have used "preservation" to formulate the concepts surrounding the Malthusian struggle for existence. (The struggle for existence is a False Dichotomy and unfalsifiable, it doesn't explain how complex chemical reactions results in control algorithms or whether the algorithms are even dependent of the chemical processes or the transition matrix that maps polypeptide space into frog-space.)

Thus lets replace every instance of "selection" by "preservation" because that was the intent of Darwin. Perhaps you would say that you are not dealing with Darwin, but who then? No conclusion can then be inferred because we wouldn't know to what concept you would be referring to. It could for example be a brand new theory that you personally crafted but haven't shared yet. A reader reading Dawkins on how Darwin was the greatest scientist that ever lived, who has deeply immersed himself in Dawkins view might then come to an erroneous conclusion when reading your post.

The insistance on knowing whose concept with "selection" we are referring to isn't unreasonable or meant to be disingenious, but rooted in a Biblical world view where who said what when and where defines the force of the sentence. Note that I said "sentence" not "word", with "selection,preservation,survival,random" we are dealing with a word, a tool or device , a mechanism or means for communicating whatever concept the wielder of the tool wishes it to be: No single true pattern or design can be associated with it. Even the word "random" when used in a sentence can actually be used by the user to communicate design or intent. For example when you do a probability sample by "selecting at random" any marble from either of ten bags filled with marbles, there was an intentional decision being made at random not a completely "random" occurence. Which is why the English language is such huge fun, it can be used to say one thing but mean something completely different. "By the process of selection this organism evolved" - Selection what? Or as one professor wrote on his bio:"....I study selection...." - What selection? Wilkins says he is in the "Selectionist camp", but if we read Darwin this should be "I am in the Preservationist camp"..... depends though if Wilkins is interpreting himself or another person or Darwin we can't come to any conclusion as to his work: It isn't even wrong.

Elsewhere Wilkins wrote that the distinction between AS and NS is incorrect it should just be selection(whatever this is supposed to mean). Lets combine this view with what some unknown author on Wikipedia with his yet to be defined concept with NS between 2007 and 2008 wrote: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Natural_selection&oldid=259585753 "....Natural selection is the process by which favorable heritable traits become more common in successive generations of a population of reproducing organisms, and unfavorable heritable traits become less common, due to differential reproduction of genotypes...." wrote with what Darwin wrote that he meant "natural preservation" and replace "natural selection" with just "preservation":

rephrased wikipedia quote: '''Preservation is the process by which favorable.... traits become more common .... and unfavorable ....traits become less common....'''

rephrase again: '''Preservation is the process by which favorable.... traits become more preserved .... and unfavorable ....traits become less preserved....'''

How must we interpret this in terms of Darwin, Wilkins and some unknown author. Was "preservation" used in the pattern or design sense and what would this mean in terms of Howards "....design is subset of pattern....".

selection of rocks
Selection, modification, random, "selection at random", random selection, probability sample, directed selection, non-random selection are all symbol strings, they are not concepts. Only a conscious being can have a concept and uses these symbol strings to encode his concept.


 * 1) What happens happens.: There was a selection of rocks on the mountain after the earthquake. The earthquake had no intent to assemble an assortment or selection of rocks, the symbol string selection in this case isn't associated with consciousness.
 * 2) The mountaineers assembled a selection of rocks to form a camp. Selection here conveys the concept of consciousness.
 * 3) Outside there lies a selection of rocks. What this means depends on who says so Pragmatics. For example Peter could have placed a selection of rocks outside(design) or a storm could have dislodged a selection of rocks(pattern) from a mountain. The sentence would be just as meaningless as "You have a green light" if it isn't known who said so as per the Pragmatics article on Wikipedia.
 * 3) Random selection or Selection at random - what is the difference? See http://bit.ly/19lJrY

See http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Talk/talk.origins/2007-12/msg04506.html for the concept John Harshman has with "selection". JH wrote: "......Selection does not implicitly denote intellegence....." Which is correct in the same way that "random" isn't always used in "what happens happens" sense as per http://bit.ly/19lJrY. The examples JH gave are in the sense of 1) - what will be, will be. The problem is that it isn't always clear in what context "selection" is being used or why it is being used at all because in 99% of cases "selectus or selection" is used to convey the concept of volition. Who did the selecting? - nobody then why are transmutationists using selection.
 * Sam wrote: "...Get a jar of peanuts. Close your eyes and reach into the jar, selecting a peanut. You have now randomly selected a peanut! Don't they have bingo where you live? Or the lottery?..." which was addressed here http://bit.ly/19lJrY

accumulation
http://www.richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&amp;t=51836&amp;p=1171619#p1171619 LogosCalamus wrote:".....I use the word "accumulation" in preference to "selection". Accumulation does not imply intelligent choice. Selection is a good word to use if you believe god did it, or if there exist a mathematical patern. There are scientists, evolutionary humanists and evo-psychologists who debate the usefulness of "selection"....."

It depends what is your intent with "accumulation".
 * A) There was an accumulation of sand over time on the mountain
 * B) There was an accumulation of fish by the fishermen.
 * C) See http://www.perrymarshallspeaks.com and http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/ for the pattern - design distinction.

A- is a pattern and B- is a design. You either have patterns or designs. There is no intent behind a pattern but a design always has an intent. "selection" implies a choice 99% of the time as per the "selection of rocks" example.

principle of divergence
To answer the question: What is the principle of Divergence or more specific the difference between the concept Darwin had with it and the concept he had with Theory of Evolution? None: ToNS, ToE, selection, divergence, Survival of the most suitable (Spencer)...., etc..... were all different word fillers for the same tautological essence from PatrickMatthews: Those that didn't reproduce were less perfect while those that did reproduce were more perfect or what is adapted is adapted from JamesHutton, Which Darwin restated as "....The preservation of individuals, which were favorable, and the destruction of those which weren't favorable......" , labeling it ToE which he also called Theory of Natural selection 36 times, which was that the dinosaurs died because there were less improved.

With the error continuing here at Harvard http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/06/wrangham-we-are-what-we-eat-and-what-we-cook/ ",,,Wrangham says. “We are biologically adapted to cook food. It’s part of who we are and affects us in every way you can imagine: biologically, anatomically, socially...” How did Wrangham deduce that were are adapted to cook food other than noting we do cook food? He might as well have said a rock is adapted at being a rock.

What is the theory of evolution?
What is the difference between the concepts encoded with the word "evolution" or "evolvere"(Latin) and the term "Theory of evolution" and who is encoding for such a concept from what knowledge base? On Wikipedia "Theory of evolution" redirects to the page marked Evolution: Why? Who is the person that decided that the concept Darwin encoded for with the word couplet "Theory of evolution", used only twice in OoS can't have a separate page nor be allowed to be quoted in the main article of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution. There are multiple concepts from many authors (punk-eek, gradualism) who are encoding for different ideas with the word "evolution". Why isn't there a separate entry dealing with the concept Darwin had with the term "Theory of gradual evolution" or "Theory of evolution". Gould's PunkEek concept with "theory of evolution" differs from Darwin's concept with "Theory of gradual evolution", used only once. Darwin objected to "evolution" the word because back then it meant God was involved, "evolution" appears only a few times in the book.

http://www.harunyahya.com/books/darwinism/atlas_creation/atlas_creation_01.php doesn't say what exactly is the ToE, what he is refuting isn't clear.

Natural selection as successful algorithm from patent filings
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6266654.html - Patent5824312Selection :"....Natural selection is the most successful algorithm known for the generation of solutions to problems. Some philosophers of science characterize the algorithm in quite general terms--the differential reproduction of randomly generated successful variations--and assert that it is the only solution-generating algorithm there can be....."

"...the differential reproduction of randomly generated successful variations-...". Which rephrased reduces to: Successful variations replicate. "replicate" and "successful" alludes to the same fact, it says the same thing twice. Natural selection, differential, randomly are word fillers obscuring the underlying Aristotelian tautological fallacy.

If natural selection is blind, why isn't it stupid?
KennethMiller said in his Youtube video concerning IC that :"..... natural selection is blind......" But if NaturalSelection is blind then why isn't it stupid? Only a conscious being can be blind and stupid, the OxyMoron NaturalSelection allows a duel meaning to be intended by a user. If NaturalSelection is conscious then what is a NaturalSelection? Is it a being, a monster with a tail and long teeth on which is written NaturalSelection, what precisely is KennethMiller trying to communicate. Did he use "blind" as a metaphor and if so why are metaphors even being used because they are a means to cloud a concept if the user doesn't know what he is trying to say. Miller is wielding the term Natural Selection as some sort of universal mechanism which would make it just as implausible as a single differential equation explaining all of physics, depending though on what he defines as a Natural selection.

Notes on Darwin
http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=dawkins_29_2 Dawkins wrote "...Less obnoxious but still intellectually unhelpful is the loose and uncritical way in which amateur biologists apply selection at inappropriate levels in the hierarchy of life. “Survival of the fittest species, extinction of poorly adapted species” sounds superficially like true natural selection, but the apparent resemblance is positively misleading. As Darwin himself was at pains to point out, natural selection is all about differential survival within species, not between them....."
 * Darwin never said "reproductive success", "random mutations", "differential survival" or "differential reproduction''.


 * He said chance was an "...incorrect expression...." after using "chance" throughout his book to mean just that.
 * RM surfaced in the journals around 1910, after Darwin died.
 * He was the Beagle's gentlemanly companion, the doctor was the naturalist, OoS is wrong on this account.
 * In a letter to Asa Gray he noted how he deduced the principle of "Descent with modification" between 1840 and 1850, but it was a paper by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Baptiste_Julien_d%27Omalius_d%27Halloy in 1848 form which he got the term. The term DWM darwin labeled Natural Selection. Halloy was a catholic theist.
 * Why does http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_with_modification redirect to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution ?
 * Read http://seedmagazine.com/news/2007/09/the_meaning_of_life.php?page=all The meaning of Life

W3FH
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/c69e53509969c6b2 Atheist Bob and scientist by trade:  "...the concept of 'volition' is absent in science. again you prove my point. you insist on analyzing 21st century science with language from hundreds, if not thousands of years ago. science did not exist then. the concepts we think of in science started to be structured in the 16th and 17th century. creationism is rooted in a time before this and so can not understand, nor express, these ideas. That's why your comments are useless except for, perhaps, archival purposes. You yourself are, in a sense, a transitional...a living linguistic fossil caught in amber...."

Bob is creating his own language reality based on the belief that his mind consists of illusions, created by the atoms banging together in his head. If all consciousness, all thought and language is ultimately the result of atoms spinning in our heads then we can't believe a word we say or think because if the atoms spin in a different direction, Bob might argue that he is a boiled egg. Providing a well reasoned description(not science, science isn't defined) of a phenomena means it at least can be somewhat defined, but Life itself within the materialist world view isn't defined as Cleland(http://seedmagazine.com/news/2007/09/the_meaning_of_life.php?page=all). The very thing that atheists are: Alive, they can't define, all their talk about empiricism, "scientific" are hyperbole used for its rhetorical effect in affirming their world view. The very word "Biology" meaning either 'study of life(what is life?)' or just 'life' depending on the context isn't available to them. And neither should "selection(who did the selecting?)", "evolution(what made progress?)", "descent with modification(who did the modifying?)".

Ken Ham and the EU "believe" in natural selection
Both Ken Ham and the EU believe in natural selection. Are they talking about the same thing?

Openings definisie
AfrTautology http://af.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bespreking:Natuurlike_seleksie

".....Natuurlike seleksie is 'n verskynsel in die natuur waar sekere voordelige evolusionêre kenmerke aan organismes deur middel van voortplanting bó die kenmerke van ander organismes gekeur word, en dus mettertyd 'n groterwordende prominentheid handhaaf....."

Buiten die feit dat die organismes meer prominent geword het, hoe was hulle voordeligheid onafhanklig gemeet?
 * Die enigste maatstaf is om te kyk watter skepsels dit gemaak het en watter nie. Die inleiding is wel 'n bietjie lomp, maar ek kan nie nou aan 'n beter bewoording dink nie. Anrie (kontak) 19:43, 5 Oktober 2009 (UTC)
 * Dus die wat dit maak is voordelig en die wat dit nie maak nie is sleg? Dit klink na n herformulering van Aristotle, sien http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/TauTology vir my notas in verband hiermee.


 * Buiten die feit dat hulle voordelig was, hoe was hulle prominentheid gemeet? Kan jy sien dat "prominent" end "voordelig" dieselfde ding twee keer se, wat dus die openings paragraaf onbetwisbaar maak, dit is 100% waterdig. Geen argument kan dit weerle nie wat dit n a logisie falsheid maak. Dit is soos Darwin gese het:".... the truth of the proposition cannot be disputed...". Maar dit is omdat Darwin sy konsep so geformuleer het dat dit nie weerle kan word nie.

Links
AristotleTautological