File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1996/96-11-06.190, message 65


From: Paul Gallagher <pcg-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: M-I: Re: Should we let up on the pomos?
Date: Tue, 5 Nov 1996 11:10:52 -0500 (EST)


> Certainly memetics as Dawkins has admitted  bears a resemblance to Popper's evolutionary epistemology.  Since you feel no great urge to learn
> memetics you might
> instead want to look at Alan Carling's article "Analytical Marxism and
> Historical  Materialism: The Debate on Social Evolution" in Science &
> Society (Spring 1993). 

I'll take a look at this.
>  
> You charge him with being deceptive in his account of the
> evolution of the eye but is he
> deliberately distorting the facts or is he indulging in the kinds of
> oversimplifications that even the best science popularizers  engage in
> for the sake of communicating
> complex ideas to non-specialists?

That's a good question. My impression is that he when he gives his public
lectures, he is presenting the matter as solved.  This is based on press 
accounts of his lecture tours, and also comments made on Usenet by his 
admirers.
However, I shouldn't have said deceptive without real evidence.
For a critique, look at:
http://info.itp.berkeley.edu/IB160/VDG/Fall94/Wells/Wells.html
Also, "On the evolution of eyes." Science 265: 742-743.

By the way, while I'm giving out web info, Robert Maxwell Young,
who posts on the Marx-Psych lists sometimes, has put his articles online:
http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/N-Q/psysc/staff/rmyoung/papers/index.html

Several of them deal with human nature and evolutionary biology.


Paul


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