Larry Moran wrote:
On 21 Dec 2004 John Wilkins <johnSPAM@wilkins.id.au> wrote:
Larry Moran <lamoran@bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca> wrote:
On Tue, 21 Dec 2004 John Wilkins <johnSPAM@wilkins.id.au> wrote:
Larry Moran <lamoran@bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca> wrote:
[snip]
Four of his main targets have been Wilson, Maynard-Smith, Dawkins, and
Dennett. He took occasional potshots at Mayr but that hardly
counts since
everyone does it.
URLs for Wilson, Maynard-Smith, Dawkins, Dennett, and Mayr
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=dford3-36l297F52q8rcU1%40individual.net
Three of those were/are indeed panadaptationists. JMS I am not so sure
about.
Really? You're not sure if Maynard Smith is an adaptionist? Are you
awake
or asleep?
Asleep currently, but I recall he made some play with choosing ones'
grounds and cases. Peter Godfrey-Smith said this:
<bq>Maynard Smith, for example, has sometimes claimed that his
commitment to adaptationist methods is specific to the investigation of
some types of phenomena and not others, and that a biologist can tell
with reasonable accuracy where adaptationist methods belong and where
they do not. For example: "In general, the structural and behavioral
traits chosen for functional analysis are of a kind that rules out
neutrality
Calder in
Grene on Schindewolf; Margulis; Calder; Gould on hogwash in evolutionary
theory
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=Pine.SGI.3.95.970721233453.16211D-100000%40umbc9.umbc.edu
as a plausible explanation" (Maynard Smith 1978 pp. 96-7).
Then the application of adaptationist methods to a specific field such
as foraging theory might be based on a claim of empirical adaptationism
that is also specific to that area, or on an inductive argument from
past success in that area.<eq>
Godfrey-Smith, Peter. 2001. Three Kinds of Adaptationism. In
Adaptationism and Optimality, edited by S. H. Orzack and E. Sober.
Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press.
That's a telling comment. Note that Maynard Smith makes the common ad hoc
pronouncement of the typical adaptionist. He says that "the structural
and behavioral traits chosen for functional analysis are of a kind that
rules out neutrality as a plausible explanation." In other words, it has
to be adaptive because I can't think of any other kind of explanation.
[LM]"In other words, it has to be adaptive because I [Maynard Smith]
can't think of any other kind of explanation."
1929 D. M. S. Watson: "The extreme difficulty
of obtaining the necessary data for any quantitative estimation
of the efficiency of natural selection makes it seem probable
that this theory will be re-established, if it be so, by the
collapse of alternative explanations which are more easily
attacked by observation and experiment. If so, it will present a
parallel to the theory of evolution itself, a theory universally
accepted not because it can be proved by logically coherent
evidence to be true but because the only alternative, special
creation, is clearly incredible."
Cite in
how has the theory of NS survived?:
Grasse, C. P. Martin, Berlinski, 1929 D. M. S. Watson
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=Pine.SGI.3.96.980608234718.51C-100000%40umbc8.umbc.edu
1893 August Weismann:
What is it then that nevertheless makes us believe in this
progress as actual, and leads us to ascribe such extraordinary
importance to it? Nothing but the power of logic; we must assume
natural selection to be the principle of explanation of the
metamorphoses, because all other apparent principles of
explanation fail us, and it is inconceivable that there could be
yet another capable of explaining the adaptations of organisms,
_without assuming the help of a principle of design_. In other
words, _it is the only conceivable natural explanation of
organisms regarded as adaptations to conditions_.
Cite in
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=Pine.LNX.4.10A.B3.9911282317410.13320-100000%40jabba.gl.umbc.edu
[LM]"has to be adaptive"
1962 Ehrlich and Holm:
Few nonevolutionists realize that the term
_adaptation_ is one of the least understood
and most misused in population biology.
Cite in
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=Pine.SGI.3.96A.990112233000.17813A-100000%40umbc9.umbc.edu
quoting
Maynard Smith, John. 1978. Optimization theory in evolution. Annual
Review of Ecology and Systematics 9:31-56.
JMS also states in that paper (p33):
"What then is the status of the concept of adaptation? In the strong
form -- that all organs are perfectly adapted -- it is clearly false;
the vermiform appendix is sufficient to refute it. For Darwin,
adaptation was an obvious fact that required explanation; this still
seems a sensible point of view. Adaptation can also be seen as a
necessary consequence of natural selection. The latter I regard as a
refutable scientific theory...; but it must be refuted, if at all, by
genetic experiment and not by observation of complex behavior."
I think JMS was concerned to allow adaptationist arguments and
hypotheses, but clever enough to avoid doing so in every case. Of
course, *you* will say that he is paying lipservice and only ever offers
adaptationist arguments (is that really so in his 1989 _Evolutionary
Genetics_? I've not read it), but *he* would say that he is interested
in adaptation rather than other explanations and so of course he
provides such cases.
Yep, lip-service.
Perhaps Milton thinks that [Milton on 277]"many people, including some
scientists, pay lip service to this idea [the "Western scientific method
of enquiry"] while thinking and acting like intellectual Stalinists"
because of attempts, including attempts by Dawkins, to prevent his
writings from getting published, and from non-substantive, ad hominem
responses to what he was able to publish.
Copied from
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=Pine.LNX.4.44L.01.0311160022220.23666-100000%40linux1.gl.umbc.edu
I challenge you to find any paper or book by Maynard Smith
that gives serious consideration to any non-adaptive mode of evolution.
My favorite Maynard Smith quote (aside from the embarrassing anti-Gould
diatribe that he probably regreted) is from Connie Barlow's anthology
"From
Gaia
Margulis in
Grene on Schindewolf; Margulis; Calder; Gould on hogwash in evolutionary
theory
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=Pine.SGI.3.95.970721233453.16211D-100000%40umbc9.umbc.edu
to Selfish Genes"
Dawkins, Richard. 1989. _The Selfish Gene_ (Oxford: Oxford
University Press), 352pp., 195:
Much of what Darwin said is, in detail, wrong.
surrounding material in
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=u2k2i0dlm2htnq42avhemsueaqi7pje2mh%404ax.com
(1991). Some of the contributers were asked to write
a short comment on the book after the selections were decided. Here's
what
Maynard Smith had to say ... (remember that this a book that
summarizes many
different ideas in evolutionary biology, especially those that have
nothing
to do with adaptation).
"This book leaves the reader with unanswered questions. How should
biologists think about the relationship between wholes and parts
- that is between ecosystems and the species that compose them,
between organisms and cells, or between cells and genes? Any attempt
to explain biological complexity has to start with Darwin's theory
of evolution by natural selection, because that is the only coherant
biological theory we have." p. 238
Then your religion of materialism is in deep trouble with reality.
Synthetic Euphoria URLs
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=dford3-35qfcuF4rpudvU1%40individual.net
Klinghoffer's "Worshipers At The Secular Altar"
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=dford3-b1c67abe.0410120549.37264dde%40posting.google.com
Does that sound like a pluralist? Here's how Maynard Smith continues ...
"The way forward, I think, is to attempt a theory of the coevolution
of many interacting species, and of the evolutionary origin of more
complex organisms from simpler ones ... that is fully consistent
with Darwinism.... I do not agree with the theories proposed by
Lovelock, Margulis, and Gould,
Gould's 1980 "Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging?"
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=b1c67abe.0406040941.7de39c48%40posting.google.com
Margulis; Gould on paedomorphosis
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=Pine.SGI.3.95.970805010133.12918J-100000%40umbc10.umbc.edu
but I am fascinated by the phenomena
they discuss. What we need to do is to think about those phenomena
with the hard-nosed reductionism
2001 Gerald Schroeder, 1999 Paul Davies, 1992 Hubert Yockey, & 1968
Michael Polanyi: [Davies]"life cannot be 'written into' the laws of
physics" presently known
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=dford3-33b2blF3tdum0U1%40individual.net
von Bertalanffy
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=Pine.SGI.4.10A.B3.9912252143380.602910-100000%40umbc9.umbc.edu
"Evolutionary biologists have failed to recognize that they work with
two more or less incommensurable domains: that of information and that
of matter.... These two domains can never be brought together in any
kind of the sense usually implied by the term 'reductionism.'... The
gene is a package of information, not an object. The pattern of base
pairs in a DNA molecule specifies the gene. But the DNA molecule is the
medium, it's not the message. Maintaining this distinction between the
medium and the message is absolutely indispensable to clarity of thought
about evolution."[George C. Williams in 1992, 1994, or 1995. Cited in
Phillip E. Johnson, _Defeating Darwinism By Opening Minds_ (1997), 70.
According to Johnson on 68, Williams is "one of the world's most
respected and influential evolutionary biologists," even though "not as
well known to the public as Richard Dawkins or Stephen Jay Gould."]
DNA and the information it records are two entirely different things.
E.g., a biologist can sequence a genome, and put that sequence on paper.
The information, which was originally recorded on DNA, is now recorded
on paper. When one person said "There are already known processes which can
account for DNA," I wondered whether "There are already known processes that
can account for the existence of nucleotides" was meant, or "There are
already known processes that can account for the existence of the
information recorded via nucleotides."
Speaking of information,
1985 A.G. Cairns-Smith; How did recorded-in-DNA/ genetic information
originate?
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=dford3-32gv43F3jsrelU1%40individual.net
of Axelrod, Hamilton, and Dawkins."
p. 239
What do you think of that? Sounds to me like he was an adaptionist.
Do you
think he converted to pluralism before he died?
I'm also fond of this quotation from Michael Ruse in his book "The
Evolution
Wars." I think it captures the essence of the priggish nature of Maynard
Smith's attack on Gould.
"It is this, as much as anything that accounts for the bitter note
in John Maynard Smith's criticism quoted at the beginning of this
chapter. The trouble is that people are starting to take Gould
seriously, and that rankles. It rankles also that Gould does not
fight his battles just in the professional journals, where only
professional scientists would take notice. He gets into the public
arena, with his monthly column in Natural History, and then in
collections and monographs, as well as in many other places,
notably the influential New York Review of Books. For Maynard Smith,
geneticist and sociobiologist, this is all the wrong way around.
Gould should be judged agaist the standards set by Maynard Smith
and his fellows and should not try to get around difficult points
with philosophy and rhetoric. He should be more respectful of and
appreciative toward the ideas that have been developed and
inherited.
And he should not remind the world of the shaky status of
evolutionary theorizing
Gasp! Gould did what??!
for so long. It is not just that Gould's
ideas are wrong. It is that they are presented as positions of
reason and tolerance and common sense, and the outside world
believes him. That really irritates." p. 248
Maybe you don't trust Michael Ruse? After all he is a philosopher.
I think we can agree on one thing. Daniel Dennett (another philospher) is
an adaptionist (pan-adaptionist). If Maynard Smith agreed with Daniel
Dennett
then we can safely assume that Maynard Smith is also an adaptionist.
Right?
The childish attack on Gould comes from a review of "Darwin's
Dangeous Idea"
written by Maynard Smith for the New York Review on Nov. 30, 1995.
Here's
what Maynard Smith says about Dennett's adaptionist ideas ...
"Dennett's view of evolution, then, is one of cranes building
cranes, each new crane arising by an essentially mindless process
of selection. I fully agree with this view." p. 46
Are you ready to concede that Maynard Smith was an adaptionist? If
you still
have doubts then I urge you to re-read Maynard Smith's condescending
"high
table" note in Nature.
Maynard Smith, J. (1984) Palaeontology at the high table.
"Punctuated equilibria began showing up in creationist tracts as
evidence that some scientists openly doubt evolution.... Naturally we
jumped into the fray, as did many of our opposite numbers at the High
Table. Closing ranks to face a common enemy is a natural
reaction."[Eldredge,_Reinventing Darwin: The Great Debate at the High
Table of Evolutionary Theory_ (1995), 104.]
Gould, Stephen Jay. January 1987. "Darwinism Defined:
The Difference Between Fact and Theory" _Discover_,
64-70. On 69:
I don't want to sound like a shrill dogmatist shouting
"rally round the flag boys," but biologists have
reached a consensus based on these kinds of data,
about the fact of evolution. When honest critics like
Irving Kristol misinterpret this agreement, they're
either confusing our fruitful consonance about the
fact of evolution with our vibrant dissonance about
mechanisms of change, or they've misinterpreted part
of our admittedly arcane technical literature.
Nature 309:401-402.
I also have a quotation from a philopher who gave a talk to the
Australian
Association for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science in
July 1998. That philosopher linked the ideas of Maynard Smith to those of
Dawkins and E.O. Wilson.
Wilson; have Humphrey, Dwyer, Dennett, and Dawkins gone around
[LM]"behaving like idiots"?
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=dford3-36ptr0F53hkerU1%40individual.net
(The philosopher was an anti-Gould adaptionist but
may have evolved since then.) Would you like to see the quotation? :-)
I would.
.
