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Darwinian Evolution: Process or Pattern?

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Evolution and Transitions in Complexity

Abstract

Darwinian evolution is a central tenet in biology. Conventionally, the definition of Darwinian evolution is linked to a population-based process that can be measured by focusing on changes in DNA/allele frequencies. However, in some publications it has been suggested that selection represents a state, not a process. If this is true any definition of Darwinian evolution that includes selection no longer can represent a process, because the ontological kind of selection is that of a state. There are other publications that also suggest that the concept of evolution needs a rethink, for example to deal with epigenetics, niche construction and horizontal DNA transfer. As a basis for contributing to both demands for re-conceptualisation, we will explore in this chapter whether or not the definition of the concept of Darwinian evolution can be defined in a stringent individual/object-based way, in terms of individual parents and their individual offspring, instead of in terms of populations of parents and offspring. The reason why we focus on an individual/object-based approach is that this offers a basis for explicit descriptions of the objects involved and of the kinds of relationships between the objects, while a combination of these aspects offers a basis for decisions about which kind of over-all graph-pattern can be used for defining the concept of Darwinian evolution. Taking advantage of such possibilities, we suggest a graph-pattern for Darwinian evolution at the smallest scale. This smallest graph-pattern also offers a foundation for future scaling and extension. In the context of evolution, where everything seems prone to change, the pattern of Darwinian evolution at the smallest scale would also offer an unchanging core conceptualisation. We emphasise that the population viewpoint and the use of DNA/allele frequencies offer a solid and practical basis for calculations. In addition to this, we see theoretical reasons for the application of object-based graph-patterns as a means to solve ambiguities about how Darwinian evolution can be defined conceptually.

“The purpose … is to express Darwin’s theory of evolution as a deductive system in which a few fundamental principles of the theory are used as axioms from which the remainder of the principles of the theory can be deductively derived. The value of such a deductive system (or axiomatization) is that it provides a technique for discovering new phenomena which are too remote from observation or too unintuitive to ever be discovered with the unaided intuition…”(Williams 1970).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Wageningen University and Research, Environmental Research (Alterra), 47, 6700, AA, Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Gerard A. J. M. Jagers op Akkerhuis & Hendrik Pieter Spijkerboer

  2. Bayer Vegetable Seeds, Nunhems Netherlands BV, 4005, 6080, AA, Haelen, The Netherlands

    Hans-Peter Koelewijn

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  1. Gerard A. J. M. Jagers op Akkerhuis
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Correspondence to Gerard A. J. M. Jagers op Akkerhuis .

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  1. Wageningen University & Research, Environmental Research (Alterra), Wageningen, Gelderland, The Netherlands

    Gerard A.J.M Jagers op Akkerhuis

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Jagers op Akkerhuis, G.A.J.M., Spijkerboer, H.P., Koelewijn, HP. (2016). Darwinian Evolution: Process or Pattern?. In: Jagers op Akkerhuis, G. (eds) Evolution and Transitions in Complexity. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43802-3_4

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