On Thu, 13 May 1999, Rick Strong wrote:

> > You know, the more I think about it the less I see anything
> > "evolutionary" about this diet.  Perhaps it is because I am
> > becoming more skeptical about neodarwinism every day, the more I
> > study the literature on it.Todd Moody
>
> Todd,  what is your working definition of neodarwinism??

Neodarwinism centers on the following three propositions:

(1)  The environment provides selection pressures that affect
gene frequencies in succeeding generations of a population.

(2)  The way in which (1) happens is by certain phenoytpes
achieving greater reproduction rates than others, because the
individuals with these phenotypes live longer and attract more
mates.

(3)  The way in which the variation in genotype and its
consequent variation in phenotype arises in the first place is
through random mutation.

The thing that I have found most disconcerting is that there is
virtually no empirical evidence for (3).  But without (3) natural
selection (items (1) and (2)) can only interact with the
variation that is already present in the gene pool.  Since
biologists are unhappy with this, (3) is *assumed* to be true.

The only really clear examples are cases of "nanoevolution", as
in antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Todd Moody
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