Johnson on a recent tape predicted that Darwinism will collapse in a
few years, just like communism did when those who ran the system lost
their faith.
A highly significant thing is starting to happen - leading Darwinist
are starting to air their dirty linen in public. Darwinist
high-priests Dawkins and Dennett have been criticising Gould in
public for being a non-adaptationist `heretic', but has recently
started to fight back.
Point your web browser to the New York Review of Books home page
http://www.nybooks.com/. There Stephen Jay Gould has a two-part
article titled "Darwinian Fundamentalism" (June 12, 1997) &
"Evolution: The Pleasures of Pluralism" (June 26, 1997).
Here are some excerpts. First from "Darwinian Fundamentalism":
Gould calls Maynard Smith, Dawkins and Dennett exponents of
"Darwinian fundamentalism":
"I am amused by an irony that has recently ensnared evolutionary
theory. A movement of strict constructionism, a self-styled form of
Darwinian fundamentalism, has risen to some prominence in a variety
of fields, from the English biological heartland of John Maynard
Smith to the uncompromising ideology (albeit in graceful prose) of
his compatriot Richard Dawkins, to the equally narrow and more
ponderous writing of the American philosopher Daniel Dennett (who
entitled his latest book Darwin's Dangerous Idea).
Dawkins gene-centred adaptationism is "foolish":
"Only one causal force produces evolutionary change in Darwin's
world: the unconscious struggle among individual organisms to
promote their own personal reproductive success...Richard Dawkins
would narrow the focus of explanation even one step further--to genes
struggling for reproductive success within passive bodies (organisms)
under the control of genes--a hyper-Darwinian idea that I regard as a
logically flawed and basically foolish caricature of Darwin's
genuinely radical intent."
Gould sounds almost like a creationist in admitting "an astonishing
`conservation'" of basic pathways of development among phyla:
"In the most stunning evolutionary discoveries of our decade,
developmental biologists have documented an astonishing
"conservation," or close similarity, of basic pathways of development
among phyla that have been evolving independently for at least 500
million years, and that seem so different in basic anatomy (insects
and vertebrates, for example). The famous homeotic genes of fruit
flies--responsible for odd mutations that disturb the order of parts
along the main body axis, placing legs, for example, where antennae
or mouth parts should be--are also present (and repeated four times
on four separate chromosomes) in vertebrates, where they function in
effectively the same way. The major developmental pathway for eyes
is conserved and mediated by the same gene in squids, flies, and
vertebrates, though the end products differ substantially (our
single-lens eye vs. the multiple facets of insects). The same genes
regulate the formation of top and bottom surfaces in insects and
vertebrates, though with inverted order--as our back, with the spinal
cord running above the gut, is anatomically equivalent to an insect's
belly, where the main nerve cords run along the bottom surface, with
the gut above. One could argue, I suppose, that these instances of
conservation only record adaptation, unchanged through all of life's
vicissitudes because their optimality can't be improved. But most
biologists feel that such stability acts primarily as a constraint
upon the range and potentiality of adaptation, for if organisms of
such different function and ecology must build bodies along the same
basic pathways, then limitation of possibilities rather than adaptive
honing to perfection becomes a dominant theme in evolution. At a
minimum, in explaining evolutionary pathways through time, the
constraints imposed by history rise to equal prominence with the
immediate advantages of adaptation."
Dennett really cops it from Gould, who calls him "Dawkins's lapdog.":
"Daniel Dennett's 1995 book, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, presents itself
as the ultras' philosophical manifesto of pure adaptationism.
Dennett explains the strict adaptationist view well enough, but he
defends a miserly and blinkered picture of evolution in assuming that
all important phenomena can be explained thereby. His limited and
superficial book reads like a caricature of a caricature--for if
Richard Dawkins has trivialized Darwin's richness by adhering to the
strictest form of adaptationist argument in a maximally reductionist
mode, then Dennett, as Dawkins's publicist, manages to convert an
already vitiated and improbable account into an even more simplistic
and uncompromising doctrine. If history, as often noted, replays
grandeurs as farces, and if T.H. Huxley truly acted as "Darwin's
bulldog," then it is hard to resist thinking of Dennett, in this
book, as "Dawkins's lapdog." "
John Maynard Smith wrote in an earlier New York Review (November 30,
1995), that Gould was "so confused as to be hardly worth bothering
with" but he "should not be publicly criticized because he is at
least on our side against the creationists", which really hurt Gould
who in retaliation described Smith as "pompous":
"if I may beg the editor's indulgence for one emotional outburst, may
I say, at least, that I resent Maynard Smith's pompous offer of
grudging acceptance for my utility in fighting creationism."
Gould acknowledges that if Darwinists fight each other they will
lose the main battle against the creationists:
"...We will not win this most important of all battles if we descend
to the same tactics of backbiting and anathematization that
characterize our true opponents."
But in part 2 "Evolution: The Pleasures of Pluralism", he indulges in
his own "backbiting and anathematization". He continues his attack
on Dennett (who will no doubt respond in kind), describing him as
"influential but misguided":
"The first part of this article outlined the general fallacies of
ultra-Darwinian fundamentalism, especially in the light of new
theories and discoveries in the core disciplines of developmental
biology, paleontology, and population genetics.1 In this second and
concluding part, I shall analyze a prominent philosopher's
influential but misguided ultra-Darwinian manifesto--Darwin's
Dangerous Idea, by Daniel Dennett."
Gould counterattacks against Dennett's "slurs and sneers" against
Gould in Darwin's Dangerous Idea:
"Daniel Dennett devotes the longest chapter in Darwin's Dangerous
Idea to an excoriating caricature of my ideas, all in order to
bolster his defense of Darwinian fundamentalism. If an argued case
can be discerned at all amid the slurs and sneers, it would have to
be described as an effort to claim that I have, thanks to some
literary skill, tried to raise a few piddling, insignificant, and
basically conventional ideas to "revolutionary" status, challenging
what he takes to be the true Darwinian scripture."
Gould condescendingly refers to philosopher Dennett's
"nonprofessional's grasp of scientific material" by pointing out his
"frequency of factual errors":
"...A fair test can be made for a nonprofessional's grasp of
scientific material by noting the frequency of factual errors in his
descriptions of technical work. I do not claim that any of these
minor mistakes produces great distortion, but Dennett's high density
of errors, on easy points that only require accurate reading or
copying, indicates an apparent indifference to the vital details that
build the history of life. Dennett's account of my book Wonderful
Life includes the following errors in only four pages. He misstates
the date of the Cambrian explosion by 70 million years--"a time
around six hundred million years ago when the multicellular organisms
really took off." The actual date is 530 million years ago. He then
states (a serious error this time) that C.D. Walcott based his
original Burgess Shale work on "literal dissection of some of the
fossils"--when I emphasize in my book (as a major theme of my
narrative) that Walcott failed precisely because he did not dissect
the specimens, which he incorrectly interpreted as squashed
absolutely flat. Dennett then says twice that most of the Burgess
Shale species perished as rapidly as they arose--"most of them
vanished just as suddenly"--when I clearly state that we know nothing
at all about the manner of their dying, because they left no fossil
record after the Burgess beds. Finally, Dennett lists eight of the
wonderful Burgess creatures in a single sentence--and he spells three
of their names wrong. I don't wish to harp on trivialities but
Dennett could legitimately accuse me of disrespectful inattention if
I listed Denet, Dawkuns, and Maynid Smith as the apostles of
ultra-Darwinism."
Dennett (following Dawkins) imperialist reduction of culture to
Darwinian processes via "memes" is clobbered:
"The fallacy of Dennett's argument also undermines his other
imperialist hope--that the universal acid of natural selection might
reduce human cultural change to the Darwinian algorithm as well.
Dennett, following Dawkins once again, tries to identify human
thoughts and actions as "memes," thus viewing them as units that are
subject to a form of selection analagous to natural selection of
genes. Cultural change, working by memetic selection, then becomes
as algorithmic as biological change operating by natural selection on
genes--thus uniting the evolution of organisms and thoughts under a
single ultra-Darwinian rubric...But, as Dennett himself correctly and
repeatedly emphasizes, the generality of an algorithm depends upon
"substrate neutrality." That is, the various materials (substrates)
subject to the mechanism (natural selection in this case) must all
permit the mechanism to work in the same effective manner. If one
kind of substrate tweaks the mechanism to operate differently (or,
even worse, not to work at all), then the algorithm fails...Natural
selection does not enjoy this necessary substrate neutrality...
natural selection requires Mendelian inheritance to be effective.
Genetic evolution works upon such a substrate and can therefore be
Darwinian. Cultural (or memetic) change manifestly operates on the
radically different substrate of Lamarckian inheritance, or the
passage of acquired characters to subsequent generations. Whatever
we invent in our lifetimes, we can pass on to our children by our
writing and teaching. Evolutionists have long understood that
Darwinism cannot operate effectively in systems of Lamarckian
inheritance--for Lamarckian change has such a clear direction, and
permits evolution to proceed so rapidly, that the much slower process
of natural selection shrinks to insignificance before the Lamarckian
juggernaut".
Gould also takes a swipe at Evolutionary Psychology as propounded
in "such technical works as J. Barkow, L. Cosmides, and J. Tooby, The
Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture
(Oxford University Press, 1992); and D.M. Buss, The Evolution of
Desire (Basic Books, 1994); and, especially, for its impact by good
writing and egregiously simplistic argument, the popular book of R.
Wright, The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are: The New
Science of Evolutionary Psychology (Random House, 1994)."
He notes their "propensity for cultism and ultra-Darwinian fealty".
One bit I liked was Gould's description of them which could be a
self-portrait of the early Gould when he was trying to make a name
for himself:
"Evolutionary psychology, as a putative science of human behavior,
itself evolved by "descent with modification" from 1970s-style
sociobiology. But the new species, like many children striving for
independence, shuns its actual ancestry by taking a new name and
exaggerating some genuine differences while ignoring the much larger
amount of shared doctrine."
Continuing with the cultist them, Gould notes the religious element
in evolutionary psychology:
"Another Wright's closing sermon is more suitable to a Sunday pulpit
than a work of science:
`The theory of natural selection is so elegant and powerful as to
inspire a kind of faith in it--not blind faith, really.... But faith
nonetheless; there is a point after which one no longer entertains
the possibility of encountering some fact that would call the whole
theory into question. I must admit to having reached this point.
Natural selection has now been shown to plausibly account for so much
about life in general and the human mind in particular that I have
little doubt that it can account for the rest.'
Sounds like a good quote to describe some of our more enthusiastic
evolutionists on the Reflector!
Gould concludes with a call for pluralism:
"In summary, Darwin cut to the heart of nature by insisting so
forcefully that "natural selection has been the main, but not the
exclusive means of modification"--and that hard-line adaptationism
could only represent a simplistic caricature and distortion of his
theory. We live in a world of enormous complexity in organic design
and diversity--a world where some features of organisms evolved by an
algorithmic form of natural selection, some by an equally algorithmic
theory of unselected neutrality, some by the vagaries of history's
contingency, and some as byproducts of other processes. Why should
such a complex and various world yield to one narrowly construed
cause? Let us have a cast of cranes, some more important and
general, others for particular things--but all subject to scientific
understanding, and all working together in a comprehensible way."
Which only goes to confirm ReMine's point that "Evolutionary
theory is a smorgasbord":
"The central illusion of evolution lies in making a wide array of
contradictory mechanisms look like a seamless whole. There is no
single evolutionary mechanism-there are countless. Evolutionary
theory is a smorgasbord: a vast buffet of disjointed and conflicting
mechanisms waiting to be chosen by the theorist. For any given
question, the theorist invokes only those mechanisms that look most
satisfying. Yet, the next question elicits a different response,
with other mechanisms invoked and neglected. Evolutionary theory has
no coherent structure. It is amorphous. It is malleable and can
readily adjust to disparate patterns of data. Evolution accommodates
data like fog accommodates landscape. In fact evolutionary theory
fails to clearly predict anything about life that is actually
true....evolution is not science." (ReMine W.J., "The Biotic
Message", 1993, p24)
God bless.
Steve
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| Stephen E (Steve) Jones ,--_|\ sejones@ibm.net |
| 3 Hawker Avenue / Oz \ Steve.Jones@health.wa.gov.au |
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