May 30, 2012
The descent of Edward Wilson
Richard Dawkins in Prospect Magazine:
When he received the manuscript of The Origin of Species, John Murray, the publisher, sent it to a referee who suggested that Darwin should jettison all that evolution stuff and concentrate on pigeons. It’s funny in the same way as the spoof review of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which praised its interesting “passages on pheasant raising, the apprehending of poachers, ways of controlling vermin, and other chores and duties of the professional gamekeeper” but added: “Unfortunately one is obliged to wade through many pages of extraneous material in order to discover and savour these sidelights on the management of a Midland shooting estate, and in this reviewer’s opinion this book can not take the place of JR Miller’s Practical Gamekeeping.”
I am not being funny when I say of Edward Wilson’s latest book that there are interesting and informative chapters on human evolution, and on the ways of social insects (which he knows better than any man alive), and it was a good idea to write a book comparing these two pinnacles of social evolution, but unfortunately one is obliged to wade through many pages of erroneous and downright perverse misunderstandings of evolutionary theory. In particular, Wilson now rejects “kin selection” (I shall explain this below) and replaces it with a revival of “group selection”—the poorly defined and incoherent view that evolution is driven by the differential survival of whole groups of organisms.
More here.
Posted by Azra Raza at 06:14 AM | Permalink
Comments
A postmortem of a death foretold, done with erudition and elegance.
Posted by: Félix E. F. Larocca, MD | May 30, 2012 7:46:45 AM
File this away, young biologist. Then read Nowak et al. (Nature 466:1057, 2010) carefully, and see if you can dismiss it so readily. Maybe you don't actually understand. Hell, if Richard Dawkins thinks it's nonsense...but keep that shred of skepticism.
Posted by: Ken Pidcock | May 30, 2012 7:51:51 AM
The "catastrophe gene" is the most selfish gene?
The K-T Extinction 65 m. years ago was caused by "the asteroid gene?"
(It destroyed ~90% of land species, and ~50% of ocean species?)
The greater extinction prior to that, about 250 m. years ago, was caused by the "Russian Steppe volcano" gene? (It destroyed more species than the K-T extinction asteroid did.)
The ultimate catastrophic selfish gene is "the Sun gene?"
It will eradicate all species on Earth when it enters its expansive phase, and expands out about to the orbit of Mars.
If genes are not selfish enough, they will generate extinction to species because of inferior adaptability?
It would seem that group cooperation is a good evolutionary angle to replace narrow, selfish group think, because evolution requires a whole group of ideas and realities, if it is to be successful.
There may be a selfish gene group calling a lot of shots, but it will be vaporized along with its group members if it does not morph via altruism into having a cosmic viewpoint.
Planetary selfishness, no matter how widespread on any planet, must flee the selfish Sun gene or utterly perish.
That requires cooperation within a concern for others, not selfishness.
Posted by: Dredd | May 30, 2012 11:05:43 AM
When evolutionists do battle:
Stephen Jay Gould struck out at Richard Dawkins in 1980, saying the latter had raised my hackles”. [Gould 1980: 86] He further finds “a fatal flaw in Dawkins’s attack from below.” [Gould 1980: 90]
Gould summarizes Dawkins’ views on evolution by saying, “For Dawkins, evolution is a battle among genes, each seeking to make more copies of itself. Bodies are merely the places where genes aggregate for a time. Bodies are temporary receptacles, survival machines manipulated by genes and tossed away on the geological scrap heap once genes have replicated and slaked their insatiable thirst for more copies of themselves in bodies of the next generation.” [Gould 1980: 89]
Gould rejects this, stressing, “Selection simply cannot see genes and pick among them directly. It must use bodies as an intermediary. A gene is a bit of DNA hidden within a cell. Selection views bodies. It favors some bodies because they are stronger, better insulated, earlier in their sexual maturation, fiercer in combat, or more beautiful to behold.” [Gould 1980: 90]
Furthermore, “The image of individual genes, plotting the course of their own survival, bears little relationship to developmental genetics as we understand it. Dawkins will need another metaphor: genes caucusing, forming alliances, showing deference for a chance to join a pact, gauging probable environments. But when you amalgamate so many genes and tie them together in hierarchical chains of action mediated by environments, we call the resultant object a body.” [Gould 1980: 91]
In summation, “If most genes do not present themselves for review, then they cannot be the unit of selection.” [Gould 1980: 91]
From: Gould, Stephen Jay. The Panda’s Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History W. W. Norton and Company, 1980.
There seems to be more than one denomination within the study of the Earth's evolutionary biology.
Diversity has evolved.
Posted by: Dredd | May 30, 2012 12:37:53 PM
What's noticeable about this review is how little it engages with Wilson's core thesis. There is a lot of ad hominem criticism, a lot of argument from authority, and a lot of time spent defending (very ably) the theory of kin selection, but very little engagement with Wilson's theory of group selection. The theory is dismissed in a few lines as a confusion between the idea that organisms benefit from being in groups,which is obviously true, and the idea that groups are the unit of selection, which is dodgy on any literal reading of the claim. I would bet my house that Wilson's idea is way more sophisticated than that, and that Dawkins has not done it justice.
Dawkins is a fine scientist and a great polemicist. This review would be better with more science and fewer polemics.
Posted by: nickm | May 30, 2012 5:55:24 PM
Thanks for posting this, Aps. I very much enjoyed Richard's forceful take-down of group-selectionist confusions.
Posted by: Abbas Raza | May 31, 2012 11:35:08 AM
I am reminded of the religious take on this phenomenon: What I mean is this:
(I Cor 1:12-15).The scientific version is:
Posted by: Dredd | May 31, 2012 1:51:30 PM
A paper published in Science recently, indicates genetic social networks going back 450,000,000 years in vertebrates.
Posted by: Dredd | Jun 1, 2012 8:40:00 AM
Wilson threw down the gauntlet a month or so ago on the Charlie Rose show, calling Dawkins "confused" on this issue based on some comments he had made. He further drew a distinction between scientists who publish peer reviewed work in academic journals, and science writers like Dawkins, who do not.
Dawkins was unlikely to let that go, but as usual, the polemics trump the facts.
Posted by: Carlos | Jun 1, 2012 8:56:50 AM
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