Date: Tue, 21 May 1996 10:11:41 -0600
Subject: Re: TREE - reply to Terry's of 4-19, part 1 -Reply




>>> Terrence Mc Donough <TERRENCE.MCDONOUGH-AT-ucg.ie>  5/20/96, 09:13am
The Origin of Species: "Two canine animals in a time of dearth, may 
be truly said to struggle with each other which shall get food and 
live.  But a plant on the edge of a desert is said to struggle for 
life against the drought."

Lisa:  This is hardly an argument against the notion of competition. 
You seem to assume that I am using a narrow definition of the term,
but I'm not.  Competition can take a variety of forms.  The plant
which succeeds in struggling against drought better than its
neighbors will have more descendents within that population in the
future, no?  And if its neighbors are close enough, their roots may
actually intertwine and very directly compete to take up the same
limited supply of water in the soil.  I could give you a regular
taxonomy of various kinds of "competition", but they all have
something in common, in terms of outcome.  Look at it in terms of
differential reproduction itself, not hand-to-hand or root-to-root
combat per se!

> Your basic point is, you think EE is using an inappropriate
> ?metaphor?.  [snip] 
> If this is your view, please clarify.  Is it because you think that
I> don?t really understand how biology/evolution actually works?  So
the> economic-like language badly misrepresents reality, and is
therefore> a ?bad model? in some hard science sense?

Terry: My contention is not that such a misunderstanding is peculiar
to your personal formulation of the matter, but that there are better
ways to understand the_ dynamics_ of natural selection in
evolutionary history.

Lisa:  I know it's not personal, partly because I didn't invent this
stuff myself.  I'm really interested in hearing about your "better
way."  Please include some discussion of the criteria for "better". 
And why emphasize "dynamics" ?

Cheers,
Lisa


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