Re: [Fis] brief question

At 01:59 PM 2003/04/30, Pedro wrote:
>Dear FISers,
>
>We will start the session on music pretty soon. In the interim, i have a
>very brief question arisen during a bioinformation class:
>
>For better establishing the fitness relationship should we properly
>consider GENOTYPE, PHENOTYPE plus the "ECOTYPE"? (and in the human case
>one could think on the SOCIOTYPE, or even the IDEOTYPE).

Fitness is the propensity for successful reproduction weighted by the
likely genetic component per generation of descendents. In selection
theory, objects are selected because of their fitness. Only phenotypes are
selected (with some important but not numerous exceptions), so you can
ignore the rest and still get all of the theory. However, if you want to
explain fitness as the property of something that is selected that leads it
to be selected (getting into all sorts of messy complications), then the
genotype and environment, including cultural, linguistic and artefactual
environment combine to produce a phenotype, which is selected, but
technically, this irrelevant to selection theory, which is a bit like
behaviorism in this respect.

John

----------
I've found the link between apes and civilised men - it's us.
                         -- Konrad Lorenz
John Collier collierj@nu.ac.za
Philosophy, University of Natal, Durban 4041 South Africa
T: +27 (31) 260 3248 / 260 2292 F: +27 (31) 260 3031
http://www.kli.ac.at/research.html?personal/collier
http://www.nu.ac.za/department/members/members.asp?dept=philundund&id=3248

_______________________________________________
fis mailing list
fis@listas.unizar.es
http://webmail.unizar.es/mailman/listinfo/fis
Received on Wed Apr 30 14:30:38 2003