Variation is a prerequisite for natural selection to work

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A note for Lesson no. 6, "Brains Make More Than One Kind of Mind," in Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett.
Some context from page 101‌ is:

One of Charles Darwin’s greatest insights was that variation is a prerequisite for natural selection to work.

The appendix adds:

Darwin’s idea about variation, known as population thinking, is one of his greatest innovations, according to the evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr.

What is this?

See these references.[1][2]

Additionally, degeneracy (lesson no. 1) provides a hidden reservoir of variation for natural selection to act on and contributes to the evolvability of our species.

More on population thinking

This lecture, which I presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, explains the basics of population thinking and its application to scientific research.

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Degeneracy

References

  1. ↑ Mayr, Ernst. 2007. What Makes Biology Unique? Considerations on the Autonomy of a Scientific Discipline. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
  2. ↑ Mayr, Ernst. 1988. Towards a New Philosophy of Biology: Observations of an Evolutionist. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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