Naked Science Forum

Life Sciences => Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution => Topic started by: thedoc on 20/06/2016 13:50:01

Title: Do Darwin and Dawkins say different things about natural selection?
Post by: thedoc on 20/06/2016 13:50:01

Paul Gray asked the Naked Scientists:
   Dear Naked Scientists

In Origin of Species, Darwin asserts that "natural selection acts only by the accumulation of slight modifications of structure (of the organism) ...", whereas in The God Delusion (pg 247) Richard Dawkins asserts that "organism(s) ... are not the right kind of entity to serve as a unit (of natural selection) because they do not make exact copies of themselves". Is this a contradiction, and who's right?
What do you think?

Title: Re: Do Darwin and Dawkins say different things about natural selection?
Post by: PhysBang on 01/07/2016 21:15:47

Dawkins is wrong. Organisms are what actually live and die, and "selection" is a euphemism for surviving long enough to breed productively. Genes don't make exact copies of themselves, either. It is only within the machinery of an organism that genes are copied and this copying is not always exact (hence there is the variation for evolution to work upon).