Tautology Blogs

Sandwalk
Larry Moran

If you ever thought that the concept of natural selection was easy then you must read Understanding Natural Selection: Essential Concepts and Common Misconceptions by T. Ryan Gregory. The article appears in the latest issue of Evolution: Education and Outreach and it contains many references to studies of how students perceive evolution.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/2331741806807x22/fulltext.pdf

Natural selection is a non-random difference in reproductive output among replicating entities, often due indirectly to differences in survival in a particular environment, leading to an increase in the proportion of beneficial, heritable characteristics within a population from one generation to the next......It is one of the core mechanisms of evolutionary change and is the main process responsible for the complexity and adaptive intricacy of the living world. According to philosopher Daniel Dennett (1995), this qualifies evolution by natural selection as “the single best idea anyone has ever had.” Natural selection results from the confluence of a small number of basic conditions of ecology and heredity

“There is probably no more original, more complex, and bolder concept in the history of ideas than Darwin's mechanistic explanation of adaptation.” Ernst Mayr (1982, p.481)

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