[WikiEN-l] Well-sourced nonsense vs. unsourced competence

[stevertigo]

David Goodman<dgoodmanny at gmail.com> wrote:
> From the excellent little book "Keywords in Evolutionary Biology" by
> Evelyn Fox Keller & Elisabeth Lloyd,
>  "Adaptation, Current uses" by Mary Jane West-Eberhard,
>
> "An 'adaptation' is a characteristic of an organism whose form is the
> result of selection in a particular functional context  Accordingly.
> the process of 'adaptation' is the evolutionary modification of a
> character under selection for efficient or advantageous
> (fitness-enhancing) functioning in a particular context....  p.13

By "characteristic" do they not mean "observed [quantity [result or
process]]?" By "organism" do they not mean "species?"  The point here
is that no "organisms" themselves "adapt" - "organisms" are instances
of a species, and its the species itself that "adapts."

But even that is not technically accurate - "adaptation" is a
perception of overall change - based in a *quantitative estimation of
things being different from what they were before. Then the
interesting point of "adaptation" is that the concept means something
more than just *quantifiable change(s) - that time and biochemistry
bring about some *qualitative improvements out of those changes.

Hence it's undeveloped meaning ("organism's change") is imprecise, and
its developed meaning makes it still just a colloquialism for
"evolution" or "natural selection" - even when breaking it down as I
just did. The authors get it only mostly right.

-Stevertigo