Blute Blog

The third thing (beyond density-dependence and mating markets) that I have expanded on since I wrote the book on Darwinian Sociocultural Evolution a decade ago is the proposed new definition of evolution by natural selection.

The definition there was:
“Microevolution by natural selection is any change in the inductive control of development (whether morphological, physiological or behavioural) by ecology and/or in the construction of the latter by the former which alters the relative frequencies of (genetic or other) hereditary elements in a population beyond those expected of randomly chosen variants.” In my haste to include the ecologically inductive and developmentally constructive pathways, I omitted the traditional hereditary (e.g. genetic mutation or recombination route)! In Blute (2017) I explained how all of these are possible but did not include a definition. So in Blute (2019) I offered a new, new definition, most concisely:

“microevolution by natural selection is any change initiated by inheritance, ecology, or development that alters the relative frequency of (genetic or other) hereditary elements in a population beyond those expected or randomly chose variants.”

Blute, Marion. 2017. “Three Modes of Evolution by Natural Selection and Drift: A New or Extended Evolutionary Synthesis.” Biological Theory 12(2): 67-71.
Blute, Marion. 2019. “A New, New Definition of Evolution by Natural Selection.” Biological Theory 14(4): 280-81.