Evolution May Be Scientific, but Natural Selection Clearly Isn't!

ABSTRACT: Evolution should not be castigated in whole or as a term, if for no other reason than the fact it now means a great many different things in the English language. However, criticizing it in part is another story. Natural selection gets criticized, even among evolutionists themselves.

Privately among evolutionists, natural selection is sometimes treated with disdain, although the core idea of the evolution of species is not questioned. It is only the matter of how species evolved that gets criticized in this connection. I have personally heard natural selection lambasted repeatedly by a notable evolutionist talking with groups of his peers. I attributed it to his discontent with Darwinism, but not with the more modern syntheses of evolution.

When I was a doctoral student in anthropology, one young and famous assistant professor in my department repeatedly spoke openly against natural selection. It was obvious that he had made the critique his pet pieve. He made a point of challenging each graduate student he screened in committee meetings to somehow justify natural selection's limitations and define genetic drift correctly. Then he would use their responses to his pointed questions as a basis to reiterate his view that almost no one in anthropology could correctly define genetic drift. He implied that there was an overreliance on natural selection in explanation and not on other features of evolution. Personally, he attributed nearly all evolutionary progress to gene flow as opposed to natural selection. He saw changes in the genetic material of species as caused by the limited diversity resulting from the gene pool sampling error occurring in small, isolated populations that live primarily in secluded mountain ranges.

His actions could be interpreted as a difference in interest or the promotion of a new view. Indeed, it was some of both. But the emotional impetus obviously poured forth out of some other motive. I attributed it to his discontent with natural selection, and I am sure I was not alone in this view. How much a professional can criticize natural selection nowadays depends on several factors. One is what type of academic department you find yourself in or alongside. Are you in biology, genetics, or is it a department of paleontology/anthropology? Different professionals and departments view the adequacy of natural selection variously as they have varied degrees of daily necessity and prior committment invested in the concept. Anthropology I found to be more open to criticism of the concept; genetics seemed almost closed to any criticism of it. Other factors are important to consider before offering a critique, too: Is there a famous, tenured professor in your department who is vocal about natural selection and tolerates no dissent in the discussion? No one in the department will criticize the term then, at least if he or she desires to obtain and maintain tenure. Is your chosen department known for defending traditional Darwinism? You should find out. If not, you could be free to openly suggest additional and alternative forms of selection in explanations.

The answers to these questions will determine how much you are allowed to criticize natural selection openly before your friends and peers in the university. I found out the hard way. I did not criticize biological evolution per se, but the inelegant, stepwise mimic of it, cultural evolution. It is a stage/levels-based, structuralistic copy of biological evolution using integrated levels of cultural development to describe cultural process. Like most social evolution models, it is a crudely stated derivative taken from an overgeneralized view of what Darwinian evolution is all about. The structuralists (British and U. of Chicago school of social anthropologists) support the use of a cultural evolution model strongly while the cultural diffusionists (U. of CA.-Berkeley cultural anthropologists, followers of Franz Boas, the originator of American anthropology) take issue with it. If you are a natural selection critic seeking to enter any such department, you should first find out how much you will be allowed to question particular features of evolution of interest to you-such as natural selection. However, you will not be able to find any openess for questioning the subject of evolution itself in departments encompassing origin studies. Once more, be careful: evolutionists might at a later date mark criticism of natural selection as a social indicator to categorically identify and discriminate against ID proponents. And in origin studies, categorically often means dogmatically when dealing with people and viewpoints.

Challenging natural selection at the conceptual level is a professionally acceptable act, though this is not true in the view of all evolutionists. There are some obvious problems commonly known and discussed about the relevance and usefulness of natural selection as a term, but most evolutionists do not admit this fact publicly. They are reluctant to imply any question that sort exists in evolution studies because of the harshness of evolution's critics. Any such admissions of doubt provide critics with fuel for stoaking fires of protest against evolution, which are often based on grounds that are religious in nature and not scientific. Admitting a fault would be a sign of poor judgment like an admission of fault at the scene of a traffic accident. It would also reflect poor public relations management for evolution in the public sphere. Indeed, any evolutionist I have met is capable of turning quickly and vehemently against methodological considerations when a criticism or doubt is brought against the evolution model in general, i.e., whenever someone appears to put down evolution as a whole. Such criticism sounds hollow to them-like bigotry and religious zealotry. Cross-institutional arguments are then brought into play. The critic also gets turned into an outsider. For many evolutionists, the discussion turns into a class conflict at that point. Professional politics takes over control in the verbal exchange. This is one reason why there is so much 'heat' generated in the debate. The terse process of spiteful labelling often takes place at the outset of discussions, due partly to a quick rejection of opponents' legitimacy, and gets followed up with a turn to uncomplicated terms used in simple-minded fashion. The only good response I have found to this is to establish one's legitimacy first; only then can one critique freely.

Notwithstanding, at the same time evolutionists themselves may be questioning the validity of natural selection in particular cases and consoling each other during their show of solidarity. It is not considered in evolutionary circles to be a show of hypocrisy, but rather a matter of good impressions management and saving face. Like the structuralists say, the public sphere is a stage that all players come to perform on. Things would be simpler if people weren't so human and groups of people were nobler as a rule. Alas, it seems that day-to-day practical, institutional concerns take precedence in matters before the public eye even at the highest levels of evolutionary science nowadays. Good science can quickly turn very political in character.

Let's take a look at natural selection as cause, process, and result. Darwin saw it as the premier mechanism in nature to guide variation to greater survivability. He would never have published The Origin of Species without hypothesizing something like it. As a vital component, he presented it as a real world process affecting population survivability where relative advantageous outcomes, but no particular causes, matter. I have seen the term handled with considerable methodological imprecision in most evolution discussions. Most evolutionists do not differentiate in its use between cause, mechanism, or result. It is often hard to know which one they are referring to when they mention natural selection. Some think that when talking about a process, it does not matter.

Natural selection does not appear to be predictive of cause. It also fails to pass the null hypothesis test: Individuals predicted to comprise the fittest individuals in a population do not survive longer or produce more offspring than average, more typical, individuals. The dead die as phenotype-indiscriminate martyrs. Death before procreative age is indiscriminant-much more accidental and random than that of some vague or indeterminate cause from the environment acting on individual differences. The fittest only appear to survive and produce more offspring than more typical individuals when the research enterprise subjects itself to the ad hoc effects of interpretational tautology. This is defined as research through the use of historical hindsight, observing and labelling prodigious individuals as fittest after the fact by first determining at some point in time those who are the most productive individuals, labelling them as the fittest, and then checking in on any prospective causes in retrospect. Natural selection is not predictive of traits that are reproductively advantageous.

New causes of survivability have not been predictable for the concept of natural selection. Causes identified with the benefit of hindsight typically get applied as an anecdote and done in superficial fashion. Take for instance the notion of adaptation. It gets mentioned in a particular case every time, yet it does not get explained in measurable form as a process. Is this the practice of letting concern over naturalistic cause slide by and go unnoticed for the sake of preserving speculation as theory? Should natural selection always include untested, armchair conjecture as a vital link in its chain of explanations? Would this make natural selection an exercise in empirical science or philosophy? Is it a real world understanding at all or just an exercise in theoretical rubric? This is the big question, and one not easy to answer for evolutionists. It is a very good question to ask, however.

I suppose that one reason why discussions of the term of natural selection get encumbered is that natural selection is usually talked about as a cause or independent variable for purposes of the evolutionary discussion, but seems only ascertainable or empirically detectable in the real world once it becomes an effect or result. But this makes natural selection abdicate any scientific right to supply legitimate explanations of how or why change took place. Most of the findings about natural selection appear in the form of examples or anecdotes about nature, cited after-the-fact in forms resembling rationalizations about the results. They are not hypothesized as causes beforehand to be updated through further testing or refinement. As a result of this lack of recursiveness and feedback for the model, explanations of necessity make use of anecdotes and reflection. This is not good methodologically speaking. It can muddle the meaning of terms, floating them in what I call some theoretically stagnant waters where only data mining/fishing for findings can occur. Natural selection fails the methodological test as a reliable, empirically defined independent variable of anything effecting change in the physical world. It doesn't provide any terms measurable for identifying particular real world processes at work. This is because reproductive advantage and survival fitness appear as unrigorous terms. I will offer support of these points later, but for consistency of argument let me follow this line of thought for awhile. Natural selection is used out of necessity: It supplies an intriguing naturalistic argument at a high level of explanatory abstraction that must somehow be true if speciation naturally occurred. But justifying the use of the term based on rational necessity means it is the 'how' that typically gets rationalized, i.e., the process retains a degree of imprecision. The details get imagined away, rather than discovered by empirically operationalizing them and checking them out.

Natural selection also fails the methodological validity test as a group of physical parameters or even a set of standard factors or variables that might be found manifesting itself physically around and in the natural environment. For instance, no derivative or logically associated variables tend even to get named except for survival, survivability and fitness. Can you find any other ones? Please try! Why might this lack be the case? Survival and fittness, like natural selection, are esoteric and heterogenous concepts. It appears they are unable to show researchers what to look for beforehand (in the research design-before data collection takes place). Such after-the-fact applications of terms do not help make arguments more precise and refined. They justify whatever results one does happen to find, freed from the null hypothesis, a research standard and necessary safeguard. Such practices also obfuscate terms and desensitizes researchers to the highly pragmatized practice of accepting crude methodologies and lowered standards for evidence. When considering natural selection as term and argument, Darwin did not have the benefit of the fields of study of heredity or statistics.

Of course, in the ideal world of science, natural selection or its derivative should be getting treated as an operationalized variable or variable set if it is worthy of being tested empirically. But this is not the purpose of tests in evolutionary science. That is, establishing the validity of natural selection as a parameter is not a concern in data collection for evolutionists. To many of them, there is no other explanatory recourse other than the grand construct of natural selection to influence the selection of benefitial genetic traits.

That's one reason why there is no need to test the validity of evolution in the evolutionist's estimate of the matter. Apparently, it has already been tested for all time in the academic marketplace, and the matter is sufficiently resolved (albeit in incomplete form, empirically speaking). This is because evolution was being severely attacked from outside the purview of the university at the time, and strong positions had to be taken in response. Loyalty and legal issues historically settled the matter in a climate of sensationalism. In less volatile times in science, theoretical decisions have been traditionally resolved by the familiar theory-data-test interactivity feature in science. Indeed, in the view of the universities of the time, there was sufficient data to rule on the matter: natural selection was a valid explanation in their view. However, there is no doubt in my mind that the matter was settled a little too abruptly. Nowadays it is obvious that the jewel of naturalism got set out to pasture out due to the extenuating circumstances of the time, especially the criticism of the universities by the churches and religious people of that era.

This is historically why natural selection fails to get conceived of in particular or measurable terms. It is because such is seen as unneeded. Instead, the mechanism is now used as an abstraction and an explanatory construct. You may ask: For the purposes of theory testing, is that legitimate? Again, there is no need for the practice of testing evolutionary theory in evolutionary science. Explain that state of affairs adequately and you will solve the enigma of several other high level issues found lingering around evolutionary discussions.

Instead of treating natural selection as a measurable, testable feature, it is conceived of more as a general principle of nature. Why is it not operationally clarified or measured? It is not operationally defined because it is too abstract a concept and has no distinctive physical parameters (causes or forces rooted in a law/principle of nature) that it can be associated with. Only reproductive survability comes to mind, which is seen more as an end result than a means of effect. For one, natural selection is too high up the scale of abstraction and generalization in the explanatory scheme of things to be identified as a specific cause or cluster of causes. Still, if Popper was right, natural selection should generate testable, subsidiary forces of cause and powerful ones at that-if it is to be useful to any tests of a theory! In my estimate, it can only be used to identify exceedingly weak causes-if any! Evolutionists will sometimes so much as admit such a weakness when they echo the following sentiments: evolution is an eons long, drawn-out, gradualistic, agonizingly slow process.

Its level of abstraction is one thing that makes natural selection too hard to measurably define. But that makes it only useful as an explanatory (rhetorical) device, not a theoretical (scientific)one. Trying to instantialize a brute force of nature in the form of natural selection would be like attempting to circumscribe and measure the intensity of a storm or explain measures for high-end socio-psychological constructs like anomie or social stability. Instead of being instantiated or operationalized, natural selection usually gets treated much like a virtual or theoretical reality, and is visualized as a literal composite stew of intertwined, cascading environmental factors, none of which get operationalized. It is more like a general principle and philosophical construct than it is a set of definable parameters.

I have not read of any cluster of integrated features or related factors in the environment that can be used to characterize natural selection empirically. It seems it must be assumed axiomatically-taken as a circumscribing or integrating factor in explanations-for it most often appears as a black box in evolution publications! That's why I call it a proxy for empirical testing.

The real question to resolve is whether the composite construct of natural selection can suggest any derivative real world variables that can be measured realiably enough to lend any real empirical support to the theory of evolution at all. The most telling insight I can offer in this connection is that it appears to me that no such hypothesis spinoffs of natural selection are currently being designed or used in evolutionary methodology. Even the most famous, the sickle-cell anemia trait protecting some Africans against malaria, has no real parameter that can assigned to it as cause-other than perhaps the concept of increased local-area survivability. It adds nothing to the issue of increased complexity over time in evolution. In the sickle-cell anemia case it would appear that natural selection is merely a localized statistical bias, not a group of natural factors or forces at work.

The track record for natural selection in this theoretical-empirical test connection thus is not a good one. It is at least a crude concept. It certainly deserves no flattery or blind faith in the evolutionary connection.

Once again, natural selection has become a proxy for a missing operationally defined variable set in theoretical science and public explanations. Natural selection as a composite concept (treated as a general environmental principle shown through a complex of factors) is so vaguely construed as to be completely unobservable and immeasurable in the real world, much like race, democracy, and IQ apparently are. This state of affairs may even be intentional (at least subconsciously) in that it maintains natural selection's legitimacy. That is, it keeps the concept of natural selection protected in an untested/unverified state as a filler, a miscellaneous appeal, or rationalization used for bridging arguments in evolutionary explanations. It operates very well as this regard, too, although it remains a very weak link in the empirical world where there are often physical forces and complex, interacting factors at work. Regretfully, as Popper intimated, this may lower the status of evolution to the category of a thesis rather than provide building blocks for it and refinement as theory.

In the end, testing hypotheses about natural selection chiefly appear in the form of sizing up the credentials and value of the journal a publication propositions about it are found in. In other words, it is not really used in research designs that include recognized and respected research methodology such as sampling methods and tests of the null hypothesis. It is more a background rationale to describe the general trends of evolution. It is also used more as a general tendency in nature, serving to orient and outline the broader aspects of and higher-level integrations found in the evolutionary model.

This is a very regretful state of affairs in evolutionary studies. It is probably one reason why evolutionists and their lobbying bodies fight so hard to discredit and silence the critics of evolution. The real problem lies not in those critics who are professional in their conduct, but with a model that is hiding or denying a pitfall: the fact that at least one of their mechanisms as has been defined and promoted is a philosophical and theoretical term, and not anywhere near becoming an empirical, scientific one. And this same methodological state of affairs has existed for a long time. Evolutionists don't seem able to realize or to face up to questions of reasonable doubt generated from the American public about this observation. The lack of methodological rigor may be making evolutionary science an exception, a science of a different sort, similar to what the social sciences and history are. They are known as the soft sciences, not the hard sciences. And, for some even highly educated people in America, basing our origins on abstract and poorly defined terms is a pill too big and bitter to swallow.

Three Ostriches Debating Origins

Three ostriches stood side by side outdoors behind a huge table. They were waiting to start a debate on origins. A placard had been placed in front of each of them on the table in order to identify the viewpoints they supported. The sign in front of the ostrich on the right had “evolution” printed on it, the middle one's said “intelligent design", and the one on the left was marked with the word “creation”.

The ostrich behind the evolution sign had its head buried in Charles Darwin's book, The Origin of Species. The ostrich labeled creation had its head in the Holy Bible. The head of the ostrich in the middle, however, was looking at no book. It was looking up. It was glancing upwards at the sky.

Overhead, there was something saucer-shaped moving at high altitude. Having noticed it, the intelligent design ostrich excitedly beat its wings and started running around in circles. He was trying to get the attention of the other two ostriches.

Hey guys, Hey guys!" he said, "I really think you should take a look at this. It could mean something.”

The other two ostriches, however, could not turn away from their books and take a look. They were too worried about giving only authoritative views in the debate. They did not look up until it was too late. By then the object had passed completely out of their field of view.