Talk:Natural selection

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Natural selection has been listed as a level-3 vital article in Science. If you can improve it, please do. This article has been rated as GA-Class by WikiProject Vital Articles.

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Date	Process	Result
June 6, 2006	Good article nominee	Listed
November 24, 2006	Featured article candidate	Not promoted
March 18, 2007	Peer review	Reviewed
July 30, 2007	Featured article candidate	Not promoted
June 6, 2009	Good article reassessment	Delisted
November 28, 2016	Good article nominee	Listed
A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on December 31, 2016. The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that Darwin introduced the theory of evolution by natural selection, but was not the first to use the term "survival of the fittest"?
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Summaries of this article appear in death and evolution.

Historical development[edit]

During the sixteenth-century, the jesuit scientist José de Acosta studied natural history issues in South America. In his work: The naturall and moral historie of the East and West Indies he already studied that animal and human species can indeed adapt to the environment by natural accidents, and not only due to divine causes. This work is thought to somehow have influenced the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt as he could have studied scholars from the School of Salamanca. 150.214.205.85 (talk) 13:41, 9 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Interesting. How? Is there evidence for such influence? And then we'd need to cite evidence that Humboldt influenced Darwin, something that surely is worth mentioning. Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:01, 9 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The underlying force driving Natural selection is in mathematics.[edit]

“Pressure” is a key word when we talk about evolution. And it took me a long time to figure out what natural law is meant by "pressure".

   “Probability” should have a prominent role in the “Natural Selection” article.

I propose to start the article as follows:

Natural selection is the probabilistically pressured selection of individual survival and reproduction due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the heritable traits characteristic of a population over generations. Charles Darwin popularised the term "natural selection", contrasting it with artificial selection, which in his view is intentional, whereas natural selection is not. Formatcells (talk) 00:53, 15 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thank you for your ideas. However, the lead section is just a summary of the article. It is not a place to introduce 'new' ideas. Actually, Wikipedia is not a place for new ideas either. That is called "original research" and it is forbidden here. The ideas in the article are cited to reliable sources, and the lead then summarizes the resulting description, i.e. the order is sources - main text - lead. Best we leave it alone. Chiswick Chap (talk) 04:22, 15 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I'm not sure this is WP:OR. The article does use the phrase probability of surviving to adulthood. @Formatcells: Do any sources say probabilistic in their definitions? Invasive Spices (talk) 21:21, 19 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Um, well it sure looks like it. Proposing to rewrite the lead of a mature and formally-reviewed article without having first contributed new sources is certainly an odd thing to do, and looks very much like putting the OR-cart before the RS-horse. The lead has been developed over many years by multiple editors, based on the cited text in the body of the article, which is in turn based on a wealth of evidence. As such it is probably best left alone unless there is pressing reason, supported by new sources, or an obvious mistake in summarising the article body. Chiswick Chap (talk) 22:12, 19 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]