BioConcepts

self-selectionSelbstselektion (ger.)

• 1) The mechanism of natural selection.
  category selection

  1867

  This thorough self-selection is called ›Natural Selection‹

  Kirk (1867). [Rev. Lubbock, J. (1865). Pre-historic Times, as Illustrated by Ancient Remains, and the Manners and Customs of Modern Savages]. The Day Star 2, 246-252: 247; cf. id. (1868). [Rev.]. Forward. A Monthly Magazine of Liberal Evangelical Theology and Practical Christianity 1, 126-132: 127: cf. reviewed original: 473ff.

  1973

  natural selection is really self-selection, nothing is doing the selecting; given the nature of X, Z, and the environment, X will automatically be selected

  Wright, L. (1973). Functions. Philos. Rev. 82, 139-168: 164.

• 2) Self-control over the character combination in hereditary transmission. (HWB 2011)
  category heredity

  1885

  the organized structure of each individual should be viewed as the fulfilment of only one out of an indefinite number of mutually exclusive possibilities. It is the development of a single sample drawn out of a group of elements. The conditions under which each element in the sample became selected are, of course, unknown: but it is reasonable to expect they would fall under one or other of the following agencies: first, self-selection, where each element selects its most suitable neighbor, as in the theory of pangenesis; secondly, general co-ordination, or the influence exerted on each element by many or all of the remaining ones, whether in its immediate neighborhood or not; finally, a group of diverse agencies, alike only in the fact that they are not uniformly helpful or harmful, that they influence with no constant purpose: in philosophical language, that they are not teleological; in popular language, that they are accidents or chances.

  Galton, F. (1885). Opening address. Nature 32, 507-510: 510; id. (1885). Types and their inheritance. Science 6, 268-274: 273.