You are mis-stating and misusing Gould. His theries posit an alternative to gradualism, not a substitute for gradualism. Gould acknowledges freely that gradualism does exist and tends to select out traits that negatively effect reproduction. His work only points out that gradualism is probably not adequate to explain evolution and other mechanisms are at work.
No evolutionary biologist would argue that traits which may tend to reduce population fecundity are evolutionarily neutral.
boddi
On 12/1/05, Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu> wrote:
>
>
> On Thu, 1 Dec 2005, Arash wrote:
>
> > Wrong, I'm not assuming every trait must benefit reproductive fitness, they
> > very well could be neutral to it, I am assuming that a trait that has a net
> > NEGATIVE EFFECT on reproductive fitness should fade out of the population
> > over time.
>
> Then you don't understand the theory of evolution or basic genetics.
> A good place to start if you're interesting in getting a handle on
> this stuff: Gould, Structure of evolutionary theory. You'll see
> why your common sense argument is baseless.
>
> Miles
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