I'm going to address the following to only James and Write4U on the grounds that you are the only two contributors to this thread that I have been impressed by, among those that I've interacted with anyway (the rest are beyond hope lol).
That's zero for two for you being an astute judge of character or ability, so far.
I look forward to observing your ongoing interactions with Write4U, who has impressed you so much. I wonder how long it will take you to realise that you're wasting your time with him. Meanwhile, you've told me that you're going to stop interacting with me because I'm such a meanie to you. And yet you claim to want intelligent discussion. Go figure.
"First there were 10000 light moths and only 2000 dark moths. A struggle ensued. Due to factors (cf. causes) such as a gradual darkening of tree bark making the dark moths harder for predators to see, the proportion gradually swung in favor of the dark moths, until at the very end it was 90% dark moths and only 10% light moths."
....
Note that it would never cross your mind to suppose that there was some kind of selection process going on here because your natural selection goggles have been removed. Good thing too, because no selection is happening!
Something made the population swing from 1 ratio of 5:1 in favour of light moths to a ratio of 1:9 against them. It looks a lot like the dark moths were "selected" for "preferential" survival/reproduction.
One mustn't get too literal. One must understand that "natural selection" is an
analogy. Darwin made that very clear in
On the Origin of Species, which I'm sure you've read (right?).
Perhaps Darwin's biggest mistake was to liken artificial selection to his own postulated mechanism for evolution. "Nature does the same kind of thing", James suggests.
It's an
analogy. Do you understand that?
It's similar to a physicist saying something like "The Moon in its orbit tries to fall towards the Earth, due to gravity, but it keeps missing the ground and orbits the Earth instead." The Moon has no consciousness. It is not an actor that makes a choice to do something. But we can anthropomorphise, by analogy.
I suggest nature does nothing remotely like what happens in cases of artificial selection.
It sounds like you
haven't read Darwin.
I suggest Mother Nature does nothing at all. There is no "Mother" nature!
I think that maybe you've missed the role that analogy often plays in science, which is both significant and very often useful in promoting understanding and in appealing to intuition.
Now, finally turn your attention to artificial selection. First thing to note -- selection is happening! Duh! Certain organisms actually are being selected.
"But, c'mon now, no one ever really thought any actual selection was happening in nature!", you protest. "It's a . . . um . . . metaphor or something."
Damn right it's a metaphor -- perhaps the worst metaphor ever chosen in the history of the world!
Why is it the worst ever metaphor? It seems like a very sensible comparison to me.
Second thing to note, in every case of artificial selection -- unlike so-called natural selection -- there is a common cause! And I'll leave you to figure out what it is and report back to me.
That's not
quite true, but I'm guessing you've managed to identify an
important causal factor. I'll leave you to figure out what other factors are in play, then you can report back to me.
