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• W1542600166 abstract "Evolutionary biology has long been a fertile area for philosophers and sociologists of science, because it straddles historical enquiry and ‘hard’ science, and also because it has strong political and social ramifications. These two books both try to understand disputes between evolutionary biologists by delving into the background of the scientists involved. Many of the same people and disputes are dissected, the same articles are discussed and even the same passages quoted. Yet the books are very different in style, have different foci and reach rather different conclusions. Ruse is a philosopher of science, and his volume is the more scholarly. He attempts to address whether scientific enquiry is subjective, reflecting the cultural biases of scientists and society, or objective, converging inexorably on some external reality. To do this he examines the life and science of 10 prominent evolutionary biologists: Erasmus Darwin, Charles Darwin, Julian Huxley, Theodosius Dobzhansky, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Gould, Richard Lewontin, Edward Wilson, Geoffrey Parker and Jack Sepkoski. He concludes that through time, evolutionary biology ‘matured’ so that the work of scientists has been progressively less influenced by their cultural values and more by rigorous epistemic considerations. Cultural values still play a major part in the generation of ideas, as it always has done – but these ideas are now more readily rejected if empirical support is lacking. Ideas sprout from the individual, and thus their genesis is likely to be strongly influenced by a particular cultural bias. However, the hypothesis will be subsequently tested by a range of scientists with widely differing viewpoints – and to survive the hypothesis must do more than pander to a particular social value. It might be added that the increasing globalization of science would contribute to this trend. Ruse’s biographical analyses are very clear, and many of the links he draws are quite cogent. For instance, it is not surprising that Richard Lewontin, of Jewish descent and horrified by the abuses of science in Nazi Germany, sets very rigorous standards before accepting any scientific hypotheses, especially those with human implications. In contrast, it makes equal sense that Ed Wilson, with his military education, values intellectual bravado and is willing to trumpet sweeping theories even before they gain strong empirical support. All the scientists in the book are given the same treatment, and Ruse elegantly shows how even apparently very objective workers, such as Geoffrey Parker, cannot avoid subtle cultural biases, however hard they try and push them away. However, Ruse’s conclusion that evolutionary biology shows a trend towards greater epistemic rigour must be tempered by substantial caveats. First, he has focused on a small and biased group of scientists. All are white males, and all have spent their professional life in advanced, democratic and technocratic Western societies that (generally) encourage free enquiry. As Ruse acknowledges, such external nonscientific values nevertheless facilitate greater epistemic rigour. One wonders what conclusion he would have reached had he also included, for instance, medical researchers in Nazi Germany or geneticists in Stalinist Russia. Granted, these are extreme counterexamples – but then, it might be argued that Ruse has chosen an equally unrepresentative sample. Also, while the connections Ruse draws between culture and science are always plausible, some are inadequately documented. The thinness of citations in the book is acknowledged, but legitimized as a concession towards readability. However, it also makes many of the statements come across as assertions rather than rigorously established conclusions. For instance, he concludes (pp. 114–115) that Dobzhansky and friends indulged in ‘writing strong reviews of one another’s [grant] applications, being as negative as possible about the opposition … schemed to get co-workers and sympathizers and then students elected as members of the National Academy of Science … did all of the time-honoured things that lead to professional success’. This is part of the argument that Dobzhansky’s work was driven by the nonepistemic goal of professional advance, which he achieved through good science as well as opportunism. However, no source for any of these strong statements is cited, either in this book or the earlier work ( Ruse, 1996) to which readers are directed for more rigorous referencing. He then later (p. 256) pleas to other academics: ‘do not simply throw at us disgusting stories about the personal lives of the great men of science or of the vile or outlandish values they embraced’. One just has to assume Ruse indeed examined the primary evidence (e.g. grant reviews, personal correspondence, interviews) before reaching the conclusion that Dobzhansky was both a biased reviewer and a nepotistic patriarch. Hull (1988) did precisely this before he was prepared to state that reviews of papers in Systematic Zoology were, in general, unbiased. In the end, Ruse argues that the standards of science (or at least, Western evolutionary biology) have gradually become more rigorous, ensuring that accumulating knowledge does converge on ‘perceptions of reality’. But he explicitly refuses to speculate on whether such ‘perceptions of reality’ themselves can truly reflect a single objective knowledge. At first I found this a rather limp denouement after ploughing through nearly 300 pages, but on reflection am in complete agreement. Is there a single discernible reality, or are there multiple and equally valid ways to see the world? The latter scenario means that even the most objective, epistemically rigorous science will not necessarily converge on a single answer. In other words, reality might be like a Necker cube, or an ambiguous figure ( Boring, 1930). As a scientist, I find such relativism rather depressing, since it implies that science might never converge on a single true explanation. But it would be naive to deny this possibility. The quantum and wave theories of light appear incompatible, yet both are apparently correct. Many of the debates in evolutionary biology discussed by Ruse fall into the same category, and it is not surprising he is sympathetic to such pluralist views. There might be two equally coherent ways to try and understand selection – from the gene’s perspective, and from the organism’s. Selection acts either on the genes, or on the organism, depending on how you look at things. Similarly, is natural selection or historical constraint ultimately responsible for a trait? A selectionist would say everything is selection – even developmental constraints are the result of past selection, and an organism’s body and genes are part of the selective environment for any given trait anyway. So all traits are ultimately created by selection. The constraintist would counter that an organism’s current features determine precisely what ‘selective’ forces are relevant – and current features, of course, are the result of history. Thus, even selection is largely created by historical constraint. Selectionists stress how selection has converged on a local optimum, constraintists stress how such solutions are totally dependent on the starting point. In a sense, then, any trait can be viewed equally validly as either the result of selection, or constraint. Finally, of course, evolutionary biology is inherently historical: it is possible that even if there was a single correct explanation for some past event (corresponding to what actually happened), the incomplete preserved evidence might be equally consistent with several explanations. However, none of the foregoing justifies the extreme relativist position that every perspective (scientific or otherwise) is equally valid – rather, it merely suggests that more than one might be permissible. If multiple valid viewpoints exist, elimination of cultural influences and increasing epistemic rigour will still not guarantee that investigators converge on a single ‘true’ explanation. People working in different paradigms might converge on totally different explanations which nevertheless fit their alternative viewpoints equally well. This might explain why debates over such things as whether selection acts on the gene or the organism, and whether adaptation or constraint is more important, might never be settled empirically. There might be no single way to understand nature, any more than there is a correct way to interpret Beckett. Ruse has been criticised for hedging his bets in this way ( Shanahan, 1999), but he is prudent to do so. Brown’s book focuses on several recent debates in evolution: genic vs. organismic selection, punctuated equilibria, memes, and the biological bases of altruism, morality and spirituality. It deals not only with many of the same ideas as Ruse’s, but also with many of the same personalities: in particular, Dawkins, Wilson, Gould and Lewontin. As the rather sensationalist title suggests, the book is aimed much more at the popular market. Accordingly, the book dwells as much on the vitriol between the protagonists as on their science – much to the annoyance of at least one of them, Daniel Dennett. His disparaging remarks about the book (reproduced gleefully on its dust jacket) ironically serve to emphasize Brown’s point that much of the debate is unnecessarily acrimonious. Brown is a journalist, not an academic, and the book is consequently more lively written but less scholarly than Ruse’s. Many assertions are not referenced, or are oddly referenced – for instance, in discussing the original meaning of the term ‘sociobiology’ (p. 46), he cites as his authority an e-mail from Mark Ridley rather than a primary source which should have been quite easy to trace. Brown makes similar observations to Ruse on how cultural values can impinge on science, again stressing (for instance) Lewontin’s Marxism and Jewishness and Wilson’s rural background and military education. Some of his insights on the social context of science are perceptive. He observes that Dawkins tries to sell his theories by showing how they are inevitable products of an existing paradigm (i.e. everyone believed them all along), whereas Gould tries to sell his theories as new paradigms (i.e. we stand to gain totally new outlooks by adopting them). He also does well to explain some tricky concepts to nonscientists: for instance, heterozygote superiority in sickle-cell anaemia, and the problem with drawing the line between organism and environment. However, there are some gross errors of fact. Marsupials are said to be directly ancestral to placental mammals and to have been driven to extinction everywhere in the world except Australia. Having larger, more developed and thus fewer young is said to always confer survival advantages. The book is also sprinkled liberally with typographical errors, including a howler on p. 43 where a quote from Dawkins is missing a critical pronoun: ‘DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to music’. The author takes his own advice that religion is a topic guaranteed to sell popular science books: the chapter on spirituality is the longest in the book. It is here, however, that he perhaps goes awry. He argues that ‘most religions attain rationality’. However, by this he merely means internal consistency. Most people, however, take rationality to mean both internal consistency and external consilience ( Lee & Doughty, 1997; Wilson, 1998). Evolutionary biology is rational because laws in this area gel not only with other, but with inferences from other fields as well. Religious beliefs, however internally consistent, have no such external consilience. The story about Jesus walking on water then feeding five thousand people on five loaves and two fishes might be internally consistent with his other miracles, but is incompatible with our understanding of boundary layer physics or digestive physiology. Religous beliefs are acknowledged to be untestable in the sense that believers are told by authorities to accept them on faith. However, it is also then argued that science is no different – most people who believe evolution, for instance, will never be able to test the idea for themselves, instead relying on the opinions of scientists who proclaim it as established truth. Both religion and science, it is argued, must use self-proclaimed authority for their justification. This rather misses the point – in principle, anybody can test the claims of science, and there are always people doing so. This is not true of religion – its claims are often untestable, or if testable, are frequently found to be false. However, this conclusion, which Brown tries to avoid, does not deny the value of religion. Rather, it simply acknowledges that science and religion apply to different spheres. Only science can hope to reveal the facts of the world, but it remains silent on how to conduct our lives. Even if, as some evolutionists argue, sexual selection might have predisposed males to inseminate multiple partners, this does not justify cuckoldry in modern human society. Conversely, while many biblical stories were based on real events, all have been so distorted and exaggerated over the ages that they are now only fables. The pontiff has taken the unusual and commendable step of issuing a explicit statement, published in a leading scientific journal ( John Paul II, 1997), on how the creation myth should not be taken literally, and it is a pity that many creationists have chosen to ignore him. However, if bibilical allegories can inspire people to lead more fulfilling and meaningful lives, they can hardly be dismissed as worthless. If one wishes to discard religion on the basis of scientific inaccuracy alone, one would also have to reject such childhood delights as fairy tales and Santa Claus. Lately, Dawkins (1998) leans toward this extreme position, but I’m glad my parents gave me Christmas stockings instead of lectures about the impossibility of reindeer flight. Brown also reiterates Wilson’s (1998) claim that spirituality must be useful to humans, otherwise it would not have spread. If certain genes predisposed people to be religious, and such behaviour conferred survival advantages, these genes and their effects would increase in the population. This explanation is plausible: Brown (as did Wilson) suggests that religion generates cohesion and mutual support within groups. However, there is another obvious and important possibility that neither worker emphasized. Traits which can only be transmitted genetically, such as most bodily features, usually exist because they confer survival benefits to their bearers. This is because genetically determined traits can usually only spread if they predispose their bearers to have more offspring or greater inclusive fitness. However, as Wilson acknowledged, ‘virtually all human behaviour is transmitted by culture’, not genes (p. 126). Dawkins noted long ago that behaviourally transmitted traits, unlike genetic traits, can spread through a population regardless of whether or not they increase reproductive output ( Dawkins, 1976). Because such memes can be transmitted by learning, their spread is not necessarily dependent on the health or reproductive success of those bearing them. A religion that commands each believer to ‘sterilize oneself, but convert 10 new followers’ can rapidly increase in prevalence until everyone is a believer and humans go extinct. Unlike a genetic trait, a behavioural trait can spread (at the expense of an alternative behavioural trait) simply because it is more adept at appropriating human minds. If so, its effects if any on the bearer’s fitness are irrelevant. Accordingly, religion might spread at the expense of atheism because religious people tend to be more active at coercing new followers, while most atheists are quite apathetic when it comes to ‘un-converting’ people. Most creationists, for example, are quite zealous when it comes to imposing their beliefs upon others, while – with some notable exceptions – most evolutionists are far less overbearing. Thus, creationism spreads at the expense of evolutionism even though it does not confer greater survival value. The same might apply to a host of other common human behaviours, from rhyming slang to reversed baseball caps: they have spread, not by increasing vertical transmission (i.e. improving reproductive success of their bearers), but by increasing horizontal transmission (i.e. predisposing their bearers to convert others). One could concoct adaptationist explanations for these successful memes (such as social cohesion or sexual selection) – similar to Brown and Wilson’s interpretations of religion – but few would take such attempted explanations very seriously. In attempting to interpret religion as ultimately adaptive, Brown (like Wilson, 1998) misses the other possibility. Once spiritual behaviour arose in particular individuals, perhaps as a by-product of the gross elaboration of the human brain, it might have spread simply because the behaviour was better at appropriating human minds than atheism. In order to understand the spread of religion, they suggest we ask ‘how does this behaviour improve an individual’s chances of survival and reproduction?’. An equally valid, Dawkinsian question might be ‘why is this behaviour better at appropriating human minds than are alternative behaviours?’. Brown, unlike Ruse, concludes that scientific knowledge should improve with time and converge on some single objective reality. Indeed, his resolution of the selfish gene debate is a compromise view where both genes and organisms are integral. However, as discussed above, this interpretation might be overly optimistic. Brown employs Hull’s (1988) evolutionary approach to knowledge to justify this conclusion: over time, hypotheses with a poorer fit to reality will be replaced by those with a better fit (a literal case of survival of the fittest). However, one of the most important features of biological evolution is that it is starting-point dependent, with each population climbing its nearest adaptive peak. The same therefore might be true of evolving scientific knowledge. Scientists starting their investigations within different paradigms might scale different epistemic heights, and end up with different (yet equally panoramic) views of their world." @default.
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• W1542600166 title "Waiting for post-postmodernism. Mystery of Mysteries: Is Evolution a Social Construction? By Michael Ruse. Harvard University Press. 1999. xiii + 296 pp. ISBN 0-674-46706-X (hardback)." @default.
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