david ford <dford3@gl.umbc.edu> wrote:

I'm looking at Popper's 1978 article, page 346.
Does anybody here agree with this 1978 Popper paragraph?:
The theory of natural selection may be so
formulated that it is far from tautological.

OK

In this
case it is not only testable, but it turns out to be not
strictly universally true.

No idea if this is what Popper would have had in mind,
but it is certainly true in the sense
that 'survival of the fittest' can hold
in a statistical sense only.
And given that the numbers involved are relatively small
it is quite possible (and even inevitable)
that it isn't always the fittest who survive.

It is the survivers who survive (tautological)
and it is the survivers who have had a slightly better chance
of doing so (highly non-trivial)

There seem to be
exceptions, as with so many biological theories; and
considering the random character of the variations
on which natural selection operates, the occurrence
of exceptions is not surprising. Thus not all
phenomena of evolution are explained by natural
selection alone.

Popper seems a bit confused here.
The non-occurence (by chance) of a 'necessary' mutation
can't be a counterargument to natural selection.

Yet in every particular case it is a
challenging research programme to show how far
natural selection can possibly be held responsible
for the evolution of a particular organ or behavioural
programme.

Lo and behold: Popper as a comfirmed evolutionary biologist.
Too bad it was too late for him to start on a new carreer.