Neo-Darwinism On being Populations Commentary

Ronald Fisher, John Burdon Sanderson Haldane, Sewall Wright, Theodosius Dobzhansky evolution

Neo-Darwinism

• Darwin’s natural selection
• was a difficult pill to swallow.
• The reasons it works
• weren’t discovered until later.
• Mendelian genetics, genetic
• mutation, survivability, sexual
• preference, and geographic isolation
• can give reproductive advantages
• to help a population of creatures
• compete and adapt
• and help explain
• the origin of species.

On being

• On being near enough to others.
• On being able to help your own.
• On being a little different.
• On being selective.
• On being helped.
• On being lucky.
• On being numerous.
• On being sexually active.
• On being of the same species.
• On being sensible enough to fit in.

Populations

• As an individual with a bad long-term memory,
• I find it difficult to imagine evolution of populations.
• But evolution works for only populations,
• isolated ones, over reaches of time too vast for me.
• Doesn’t one theory of capitalism claim
• self-interest benefits everyone in the long run?
• Cutthroats and pickpockets, robber barons and other
• monopolists, embezzlers, pyramid schemers,
• pimps and drug dealers, lying salesmen,
• factory farmers who feed antibiotics to their hogs,
• and companies that add toxins to baby formulas
• have taught us that self-interest is often not enlightened.
• What did Whitman mean in his Song of Myself
• “every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you”?