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Summary What has been presented in considerable detail is a structure, a structure of adaptation. Four simple but decisive principles are first put forward, and empirical examples of each are provided. But what gives structure to nature, what is the structure? There is a simple answer: nature is logically valid. Logical validity is not a game, a superficial overlay that might conceivably be put onto nature. Logical validity is seen here as a basic structure of nature; it is in nature. Thus logical validity is in the structure of adaptation. Yet the structure achieved thus far is meager. Greater structure is gotten by espousing the precept of philosophical realism, the precept that there are universals – properties, characteristics, traits, attributes. The two-thousand-year-old debate about the existence of properties (universals) has been won (in the author’s opinion, of course) by Jackson’s 1977 article, quoted in Appendix III. Still, all this is not enough; there is still too much vagueness. Set theory’s elaborations seem eminently sensible. They are just right, the perfect helping hand for the enterprise here. What is crucial in these elaborations is the numericalization, the itemization of observations. Thus it is that the times open at five specified temperatures clearly delineate specific instances of adaptedness of mussels, that the pumping rates at four specified temperatures clearly are specific instances of the unadaptedness and the adaptedness of oysters. It is the naming of each element of the set of four defense structures of the rocky shore snails in temperate regions, then again in the tropics – it is this naming that portrays clearly and well how these structures are narrowed to two elements in the set of adaptednesses, the element of adaptedness to slight predation and the element of unadaptedness to marked predation. Then functions are handled element by element: a1, is aligned with b1, a2 is aligned with b2, a3 with b3, etc.; or f(a1) = b1, f(a2) = b2, f(a3) = b3; or f(a1) = f(a2) = f(a3) = b1 but a1  a2a3.
Sets here have each member, each element, fully accounted for; there
is no vagueness at all. And this is the summary of an effort to compress together a little biology, a bit of logic, a bit of philosophy, and some set theory. Discussion In the section, a brief review of adaptation, there are several factual determinations of adaptation, such as webbed feet of ducks, strong talons of owls, opposable toes of warblers, hibernation of woodchucks, clutch size in great tits, and reconstruction of reptiles to become birds. This wide range in coverage of nature is continued in the section on the analysis of structural adaptation. Thus year-round adaptation of the mussel, lack of year-round adaptation in the oyster, adaptation to predation by northern snails but lack of such adaptation by southern snails, reciprocal adaptation of plants and their areas, adaptation of plants to winter and summer, and adaptation of breeding birds to breeding areas – all these cases contribute to a wide coverage of nature. But in spite of differences in the method of coverage, in the delineation of coverage between the first and second section, there is great similarity between the adaptation of the first section and that of the second. One would wish paramountly for an assimilation of the current evolutionism of the first section and a new, delineated, diversified evolutionism of the second section. One would wish not to ring out the old and ring in the new; one would wish above all to ring in the assimilation of the current and the new delineation.
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