The Critical Rationalist Vol. 01 No. 04 ISSN: 1393-3809 31-Dec-1996
4.3 Selection
4.1 Reproduction
(24) Reproduction exhibits recurring patterns of similarity (heritability) between parents and offspring. Certain (sub-)lineages can thus be distinguished by reference to characteristics which are preserved or propagated by inheritance within these (sub-)lineages.
(25) Perhaps the best way of describing this notion of a lineage distinguished by inheritance is as an example of a self-producing system: it is an instantiation of a set of components collectively having just the property that they can regenerate that same set.
(26) I shall refer to these special, inheritance-based, self-producing, lineages as similarity-lineages or S-lineages.
(27) Note that, in general, lineages can, of course, be delimited in ways other than by reference to inherited characteristics--but only the latter particular kind of lineage, namely S-lineages, will be in question here. Note also that any given offspring of a parent organism may or may not inherit any specified characteristics, and thus may or may not belong to specific S-lineage(s) which the parent belongs to.
4.3 Selection
4.1 Reproduction
The Critical Rationalist Vol. 01 No. 04 ISSN: 1393-3809 31-Dec-1996
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TCR Issue Timestamp: Tue Dec 31 17:37:08 GMT 1996