I’ve been working hard on Special Biological Relativity and it is taking up most of my blogging energy. However, I do have some fun results: Define Biological Energy as the ability to do work, the ability to change the environment. Then Fitness can be related to Energy because the higher the fitness the greater the ability to change the environment. E ∝ f If we consider an organism that lives in a place with infinite resources […]
Tag: fitness
Special Relativistic Fitness, Preliminary Thought Experiment
Imagine two different tribes of biologists. The first tribe is comprised of very fast people. They survived for thousands of years by studying biology and being faster than their competitors. The second tribe is comprised of very strong people. They survived for thousands of years by studying biology and being stronger than their competitors. After all this time, the first tribe is filled with very fast biologists and the second tribe is filled with very […]
Deriving Natural Selection = Fitness × Acceleration
As you can see from my previous post, I now have postulated a direct relation between Natural Selection and Fitness (N.S.=F.×A.). This relation follows from the theory. The short short short version of the theory is this general postulate: one organism’s traits are another’s environment and vice versa. Hence all competition can be viewed as environmental phenomena. This gives Natural Selection as a result of Fitness and an environmental factor, which I refer to as […]
Natural Selection = Fitness × Acceleration
Natural Selection is the force that changes species. Fitness is the resistance to change in the rate of change of the species. Acceleration is change in the rate of change of the species. Natural Selection = Fitness × Acceleration
Rewrite of Evolution
New theory of evolution! Hooray! Patched a bunch of things together to make a nice story. Fixed the little issue about fitness being circular. Expanded natural selection to apply more generally. Causal structure. Epistemological foundations. ooOoOO0Ooooooo. And it’s good fun. I swear. Epistemology, history of physics, evolution… makes me happy. You should really read it. Download here. [pdf, 304kb]
Sexual Reproduction, The Case for, Round 2
Let us assume that there are different kinds of adaptations. Specifically, some are better than others in the long run: some adaptations will only make a difference in an organism’s ability to reproduce viable offspring over a short period of time, whereas others will be beneficial for many generations. In asexual reproduction there is no mechanism for distinguishing between a short term beneficial adaptation and a long term beneficial adaptation. This subjects long term beneficial […]
Sexual Reproduction
Say you are a single celled organism. To reproduce you have to double your size and then you need to split yourself in half. Repeat indefinitely. Now say you are a single celled organism that has the option to reproduce sexually. To reproduce you need to increase yourself to 3/2 your original size and find a similar mate. Then you both contribute 1/2 to the new organism and repeat indefinitely. Asexual reproduction requires you to […]
Dismantling Fodor’s Argument
Fodor argued that the theory of evolution is not a legitimate theory of science because it is either vacuously true or wrong. He accused Darwin of committing the intentional fallacy. (synopsis here) Insofar as he made no logical mistakes in his reasoning, we need a different strategy to defend the theory of evolution. In this post I will argue that his argument is an instance of gerneral underdetermination, and hence not a problem of evolution […]
What Fodor Got Wrong
Jerry Fodor recently (4 March) gave a talk entitled “What Darwin Got Wrong” at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City. He accused Darwin of committing the intentional fallacy and hence said, straight out, that he didn’t believe in the theory of evolution. So what exactly does Fodor think Darwin got wrong? He believes that the theory of evolution is vacuously true (or just wrong) and hence not a worthwhile theory of science. You […]
Why Evolutionary Principles Cannot be Used to Support Racial Prejudices DRAFT
Evolutionary principles are sometimes used to justify racial prejudices. While no rigorous scientific study has yet proven one race to be inferior to any others it should be recognized that it is in principle impossible to prove racial superiority/inferiority and hence no study ever will. Firstly a note on the meaning of ‘more evolved’ and ‘less evolved’. Every species on the face of the earth today has been evolving for the exact same amount of […]