INTEGRAL WORLD MAILING LIST http://www.integralworld.net Newsletter Nr. 703 Amsterdam, March 2nd, 2018 WHEN MACHINES BECOME MASTERS - Foreword - DAVID CHRISTOPHER LANE Intellectually speaking Samuel Butler (1835-1902) was quite an unusual thinker. Even though he accepted the theory of evolution and deeply admired Charles Darwin's work on the subject, he vehemently disagreed with him over his (and Wallace's) use of the term natural selection. Butler saw Darwin's usage as confused and muddled, since it implies “that the external conditions which cause a variation are to be distinguished from the conditions which accumulate and perfect such variation, that is to say, he implies a radical difference between the process of variation and the process of selection. This I have already said does not seem to me acceptable; the selection I conceive to be simply the variation which has survived." Alfred Russel Wallace also later felt that natural selection implied too much (as if nature was consciously picking and choosing which organism should live or die) when, in fact, there is no such teleology. Thus, Wallace wrote to Darwin in July of 1866 suggesting that he instead co-opt Herbert Spencer's pithy phrase, “survival of the fittest.” Darwin responded warmly to the idea and eventually used it in the 5th edition of Orign of Species. Read more: http://www.integralworld.net/lane136.html