From: "Dimitris Papadopoulos" <papado-AT-zedat.fu-berlin.de>
Subject: BHA: RE: Re: <fwd> S.J. Gould on new genome findings 
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 09:04:12 +0100


Where has been published the Gould-text?



> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> [mailto:owner-bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu]On Behalf Of 
> catweasle
> Sent: Tuesday, February 20, 2001 6:41 PM
> To: heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu;
> bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> Cc: heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> Subject: BHA: Re: <fwd> S.J. Gould on new genome findings 
> 
> 
>  Gould's Shameful Schadenfreude. - A Rant.
> 
> Catweasle:
> There is something amusing and sad about the reaction of 
> people like Gould
> who begins the Darwin's Birthday address by telling his 
> students that they
> are sharing a great day in the history of science and of 
> human understanding
> in general, and yet obviously can't wait to gleefully pass on the
> information that the genome count was not as high as had been 
> expected.  For
> it seems his barely concealed schadenfreude over the 
> so-called 'hubris' of
> the scientific community obviously outweighs the benefits for 
> the rapid
> easement of human suffering that a simple reductionist 
> outcome would have
> provided.  By the tone of his piece one cannot escape the 
> conclusion that he
> is GLAD that the number was so low, and that it is 'one in 
> the eye' for the
> white-coated ones, and to hell with cancer cures and an end 
> to alcoholism.
> Like sly circling hyenas or silently circling yellow-eyed 
> vultures these
> spiritualist scavengers at the table of progress swoop down 
> at the slightest
> sign of weakness ready to gorge themselves in a feeding frenzy of
> transcendentalist hyperbole and psychic barf.
> This serio-comic response to temporary scientific 
> postponements is typical
> of the mystics and obfuscationists throughout the ages, and 
> similar smug
> overreaction to apparent setbacks in medical science are 
> typical of the
> introduction of many new methods or treatments - such as vaccination,
> immunisation, chloroform, etc - in fact any advance by which 
> human suffering
> is expeditiously eliminated which precludes the afflicted 
> from grovelling
> piteously at the feet of smelly priests begging them to 
> intercede with God
> to assuage their affliction.
> 
> OK, maybe I am overstating my case, for I'm sure even Gould 
> would not be the
> first to rejoice if the painkilling drugs used in dentistry 
> or child-birth
> or cancer or any other of the benisons of reductionism were suddenly
> pronounced to be harmful to the body and banned, or the 
> religious opponents
> of the cow-pox serum had been listened to and his child had 
> died for the
> want of that particular treatment. What price a Gouldian 
> snigger at the
> imagined 'hubris' of his benefactors?
> 
> Gould:
> The implications of this finding cascade across several realms. The
> commercial effects will be obvious, as so much biotechnology, 
> including the
> rush to patent genes, has assumed the old view that "fixing" 
> an aberrant
> gene would cure a specific human ailment. The social meaning 
> may finally
> liberate us from the simplistic and harmful idea, false for many other
> reasons as well, that each aspect of our being, either physical or
> behavioral, may be ascribed to the action of a particular 
> gene "for" the
> trait in question.
> 
> Catweasle:
>  But why does he obviously revel in his premature conclusion? 
> Why is it a
> good thing to be 'liberated' from the simplistic idea that 
> each aspect of
> our existence, either physical or behavioural, may be 
> ascribed to the action
> of a particular gene "for" the trait in question? And why was/is it a
> harmful idea, false for many other reasons as well? What are 
> these reasons,
> and why if the main thrust of the project is to alleviate 
> human suffering
> and prolong the lives of our loved ones - why is it harmful?  
> We don't need
> a crystal ball to see that any harm in a rapid breakthrough that the
> 'reductionist' outcome would have delivered, would be to Gould's own
> preconceived ideas and outdated mindset - in other words - to Gould's
> hubris - the very hubris that he identifies in the scientific 
> community.
> 
> Gould:
> But the deepest ramifications will be scientific or 
> philosophical in the
> largest sense. From its late 17th century inception in modern 
> form, science
> has strongly privileged the reductionist mode of thought that 
> breaks overt
> complexity into constituent parts and then tries to explain 
> the totality by
> the properties of these parts and simple interactions fully 
> predictable from
> the parts. ("Analysis" literally means to dissolve into basic 
> parts). The
> reductionist method works triumphantly for simple systems predicting
> eclipses or the motion of planets (but not the histories of 
> their complex
> surfaces), for example.
> 
> Catweasle:
> Gould ignores the fact that these systems were not always 
> seen as 'simple.'
> Before the reductionist astronomers of the 17th century, (leaving poor
> gagged Galileo aside,) humanity was brainwashed with a 
> puerile astrological
> mystical mishmash of 'the music of the spheres' and of an irritable
> greybeard at the centre of a concentricity of rings - and 
> crap about the
> stars influencing the course of a person's life. But for the 
> analysis and
> reductionism of the scientists who Gould so vilifies, we'd 
> still be using
> priests to sprinkle water on us to ease the sprouting buboes of our
> plague-ridden bodies, rather than have an efficient nurse in 
> a white coat
> inject our arm with a life-saving serum.
> 
> Gould:
> But once again and when will we ever learn? We fell victim to 
> hubris, as we
> imagined that, in discovering how to unlock some systems, we 
> had found the
> key for the conquest of all natural phenomena.
> 
> Catweasle:
> Will we ever learn? I hope like hell that we never learn to think like
> Gould - for that would mean we simply sat back on our 
> haunches and watched
> our buboes spurt their foul liquor over others and infect 
> them too as we
> fell backwards in death. No, we must never stop trying to 
> improve our lot
> and the lot of others, and if it is human hubris that is the 
> engine of this
> drive to improve medicine and find out how things work - then 
> so be it - it
> is a small price to pay, and it is a tab that most of us are only too
> willing to pick up.
> 
> Gould:
> Will Parsifal ever learn that only humility (and a plurality 
> of strategies
> for explanation) can locate the Holy Grail?
> 
> Catweasle:
> Stuff the Holy Grail! Humility my ass! Humility equals 
> Christian bonfires
> and Nazi ovens and guys having their legs sawn off without chloroform.
> Plurality of strategies for explanation? Rubbish! A physical 
> law operates
> with known mechanisms that can be predicted. There is only 
> room for one
> 'explanation' of this phenomenon and that is a concept whose 
> truth can be
> proved by scientific verification. In the 1920s religious 
> nuts influenced 20
> state legislatures to debate antievolution laws, and four 
> states--Arkansas,
> Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Tennessee-to their everlasting 
> shame prohibited
> the teaching of evolution in their public schools. A spokesman for the
> antievolutionists was William Jennings Bryan; three times the 
> unsuccessful
> Democratic candidate for the presidency, which said in 1922, 
> "We will drive
> Darwinism from our schools. "
> 
> Gould:
> The collapse of the doctrine of one gene for one protein, and 
> one direction
> of causal flow from basic codes to elaborate totality, marks 
> the failure of
> reductionism for the complex system that we call biology and 
> for two major
> reasons.
> 
> Catweasle:
> But it was never a 'doctrine' - a 'belief' (or system of 
> beliefs) accepted
> as authoritative by some group or school - it was no more than a
> 'supposition' hyped by the media and based on the perfectly 
> understandable
> extrapolation that the more complex the organism the greater 
> the number of
> genes required to run the reproductive programme.
> Darwin gathered much evidence in support of natural section, but the
> evidence has accumulated continuously ever since, derived from all
> biological disciplines and arrived at analytically through the painful
> scrutiny and reduction of facts.  Whilst Heidegger and 
> company sat on their
> asses mooning on about Falsein and other transcendentalist 
> fictions the
> authenticity of the evolutionary origin of organisms was 
> being established -
> a scientific conclusion grounded with the kind of certainty 
> attributable to
> such scientific concepts as the roundness of the Earth, the 
> motions of the
> planets, and the molecular composition of matter.
> 
>  This degree of certainty beyond reasonable doubt is what is 
> implied when
> biologists say that evolution is a "fact"; virtually every 
> biologist accepts
> the evolutionary origin of organisms.  But the theory of 
> evolution goes much
> beyond this first issue, the general affirmation that 
> organisms evolve. The
> second and third issues involve seeking to ascertain the evolutionary
> relationships between particular organisms and the events of 
> evolutionary
> history, as well as to explain how and why evolution takes 
> place. That the
> scientists in the case of the genome project allegedly 
> underestimated the
> gene count in humans was in one way forgivable but on the other hand
> strange, for surely they must have considered the fact that 
> nature is a
> great economiser - a miser where energy is concerned and an 
> enthusiast for
> symmetry.  If a job can be carried out in the simplest way 
> using the minimum
> amount of materials and energy Mr Nature is your man.  These 
> modifications
> of scale are not only things which happen in the long-term 
> development of
> physiological systems either, for in my own case, because I 
> am a life-long
> vegetarian and completely clear of cholesterol grunge my arterial and
> vascular systems allow unrestricted flow for my bloodstream - 
> result?  My
> heart has slowed down to less than the average meat-eaters 
> rate, for the
> cardiac muscle does not need to pump so hard to move the venous blood
> through unpolluted plumbing passageways.  Is it not obvious 
> that a similar
> rationalisation of process will have taken place in the tiny 
> 'message in a
> bottle' of the DNA spiral?  Is it not obvious that in the 
> course of a couple
> of million years or so the organism will have discovered by 
> trial and error
> more expeditious ways of packaging and simplifying the unpacking of
> information codes? I must admit although I am a life long and 
> enthusiastic
> reductionist that I was surprised that the white coat brigade 
> hadn't latched
> on to this and anticipated a more combinatorial outcome with 
> more mutual or
> reciprocal interactions; with combinings and affiliatings 
> engendered by
> fewer units of code.
> Jealous snide attacks and jibes like Gould's  (mainly from 
> the religiously
> motivated,) started during Darwin's lifetime.
> Until Pope Pius XII in his encyclical Humani Generis (1950; 
> "Of the Human
> Race") acknowledged that biological evolution was compatible with the
> Christian faith, the theory of evolution was seen as incompatible with
> religious beliefs, particularly those of Christianity. The 
> first chapters of
> the book of Genesis describe God's creation of the world, the 
> plants, the
> animals, and man. A literal interpretation of Genesis seems 
> incompatible
> with the gradual evolution of humans and other organisms by natural
> processes.  The Christian believes in the immortality of the 
> soul and in man
> as "created in the image of God" so presumably God has genes 
> as well - the
> same number as me - from whom did he/she inherit these genes?
> Pope John Paul II stated in an address to the Pontifical Academy of
> Sciences:  "The Bible itself speaks to us of the origin of 
> the universe and
> its make-up, not in order to provide us with a scientific 
> treatise, but in
> order to state the correct relationships of man with God and with the
> universe. Sacred scripture wishes simply to declare that God 
> created the
> world, and in order to teach this truth it expresses itself 
> in the terms of
> the cosmology in use at the time of the writer. Any other 
> teaching about the
> origin and make-up of the universe is alien to the intentions 
> of the Bible,
> which does not wish to teach how the heavens were made but 
> how one goes to
> heaven."
> 
> His argument was clearly directed against Christian 
> Fundamentalists who see
> in Genesis a literal description of how the world was created by God.
> Biblical Fundamentalists make up a minority of Christians, 
> but they have
> periodically gained considerable public and political influence in the
> United States and the evil bacillus has recently crossed the 
> Atlantic and
> infected Britain.
> 
> Gould:
> First, the key to complexity is not more genes, but more 
> combinations and
> interactions generated by fewer units of code and many of 
> these interactions
> (as emergent properties, to use the technical jargon) must be 
> explained at
> the level of their appearance, for they cannot be predicted from the
> separate underlying parts alone.
> 
> Catweasle:
> Utter rubbish!  The modus operandi of a reductionist scientist is to
> analysis the chemical soup of the combinations and to 
> separate them out into
> their constituent parts.  This shouldn't take long - and it 
> won't be to long
> either before Gould is eating Hubris/Humble Pie.
> 
>  Gould:
> So organisms must be explained as organisms, and not as a summation of
> genes.
> 
> Catweasle:
> Organisms come into existence because the codes written into their DNA
> deemed it that way - they also carry within them the 
> information necessary
> to have themselves cloned or reproduced in concert with another donor.
> 
> Gould:
>  Second, the unique contingencies of history, not the laws of 
> physics, set
> many properties of complex biological systems.
> 
> Catweasle:
> But what are Gould's " unique contingencies of history?" 
> other than results
> the laws of physics?
> An earthquake that wipes out an emergent species?  A 
> meteorite that wipes
> out the dinosaurs?
> 
> Gould:
> Our 30, 000 genes make up only 1 percent or so of our total 
> genome. The rest
> including bacterial immigrants and other pieces that can 
> replicate and move
> originate more as accidents of history than as predictable 
> necessities of
> physical laws.  Moreover, these noncoding regions, 
> disrespectfully called
> "junk DNA, " also build a pool of potential for future use 
> that, more than
> any other factor, may establish any lineage's capacity for further
> evolutionary increase in complexity.
> 
> Catweasle:
> This merging of matter, the symbionetic, mutually 
> advantageous reciprocally
> beneficial interdependence has been going on in the micro and 
> macro-world
> since time began - man uses bacteria - bacteria uses man - 
> man uses dog -
> dog uses man - parasites live on a host - the host gets 
> protection from the
> parasite - sharks have fish that clean their teeth - the fish 
> get a free
> ride and free food and so on. There is nothing mysterious in 
> this for we all
> have bacteria living in our gut, which help us digest our 
> food whilst they
> enjoy a free meal ticket.
> 
> Gould:
> The deflation of hubris is blessedly positive, not cynically 
> disabling. The
> failure of reductionism doesn't mark the failure of science, 
> but only the
> replacement of an ultimately unworkable set of assumptions by more
> appropriate styles of explanation that study complexity at 
> its own level and
> respect the influences of unique histories. Yes, the task will be much
> harder than reductionistic science imagined. But our 30, 000 
> genes in the
> glorious ramifications of their irreducible interactions have made us
> sufficiently complex and at least potentially adequate for 
> the task ahead.
> 
> Catweasle:
> Here Gould lays down a conciliatory marker for the time when the
> reductionists finally crack the problem - this is no 'failure of
> reductionism' but a mere blip on the way to success.
> 
> Gould:
> We may best succeed in this effort if we can heed some memorable words
> spoken by that other great historical figure born on Feb. 12 
> on the very
> same day as Darwin, in 1809. Abraham Lincoln, in his first Inaugural
> Address, urged us to heal division and seek unity by 
> marshalling the "better
> angels of our nature" yet another irreducible and emergent 
> property of our
> historically unique mentality, but inherent and invokable all 
> the same, even
> though not resident within, say, gene 26 on chromosome number 12.
> 
> Catweasle:
> This invocation of Lincoln is reminiscent of the better days 
> of vaudeville -
> like the comedian ending on a serious note or with a 
> patriotic song. The
> illusion to Gould's performance in this remark is deliberate, and the
> article will not do his reputation much good at all - 
> especially in the long
> run.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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