Perspectives on Evolution

[bennyboy]

It's any collection of DNA being considered, at whatever resolution you choose to consider it.  It could be the gene pool of our species.  It could be the gene pool of a distinct subgroup in our species..or it could be the gene pool of all extant species.

Is it, though? Or is it a narrative about a hypothetical collection of genes?

I have to ask, do you also have these objections to the term "car pool" ?

I don't object to the term gene pool-- it's a useful term; however, I think it gets used as a "thing" word rather than as what I think it is-- part of the narrative of the idea of genetic contribution-- i.e., a placeholder word to represent something like "sum of all DNA of a collection of individual organisms, whatever that happens to be."

In the end, if I ask "what evolves," I'm looking for a thing which may actually undergo the process. I suspect that evolution is more of a label for changes in samples than a process which anything can be said to be undergoing.