Abstract
For approximately two decades now, the Darwinian interpretation of evolution has now been challenged in many ways. Modern criticisms make it difficult, even for the staunchest Darwinians, not to take a distance from Darwin’s bold phrases on the “power” of natural selection. Let me remind you of some famous declarations of Darwin on the subject:
“It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life”.1
“What limit can be put to this power, acting during long ages and rigidly scrutinising the whole constitution, structure and habits of each creature,—favouring the good and rejecting the bad? I can see no limit to this power, in slowly and beautifully adapting each form to the most complex relations of life. The theory of natural selection, even if we looked no further than this, seems to me to be in itself probable”.2
“The long-continued accumulation of beneficial variations will infallibly have led to structures as diversified, as beautifully adapted for various purposes and as excellently co-ordinated, as we see in the animals and plants around us. Hence I have spoken of selection as the paramount power, whether applied by man to the formation of domestic breeds, or by nature to the production of species”.3
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Reference
Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, London: Murray, 1859, (Facsimile: Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964 ), p. 84.
Charles Darwin, The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication,2nd ed., 1875, quoted in The Works of Charles Darwin,New York, AMS Press, vol. 8, p. 426; see also p. 236.
In a similar sense, Jonathan Hodge speaks of the “responsibility” of the principle of natural selection (“Natural Selection as a Causal, Empirical, and Probabilistic Theory”, in The Probabilistic Revolution, 1987, L. Krüger, G. Gigerenzer, M.S. Morgan, Eds., Vol. 2., Cambridge, M.I.T. Press, pp. 233–270 ).
Stuart A. Kauffman,The Origins of Order: Self-Organisation and Selection, New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1993, p. 6.
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© 1997 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Gayon, J. (1997). The “Paramount Power of Selection”: From Darwin to Kauffman. In: Chiara, M.L.D., Doets, K., Mundici, D., Van Benthem, J. (eds) Structures and Norms in Science. Synthese Library, vol 260. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0538-7_16
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