Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 12:22:02 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: Re: TREE - reply to Terry's of 4-19, part 2 -Reply -Reply


Rahul writes,

> I will jump in with both feet as soon as I get a chance, but I have to say
> at the moment that your characterization of Dawkins's views is in direct
> contradiction to what he says in The Blind Watchmaker, where he explicitly
> states that extreme adaptationist views, which would include the idea that
> pigs could develop wings, are absurd. He also claims that no sensible
> evolutionary scientist would hold such views, which of course means that
> there are many scientists in those fields who he doesn't consider sensible.
> Perhaps if you gave us a quote from him?
>

I have only my memory to go on, though the passage in question MAY 
have appeared in the London Times Higher Education Supplement.  I do 
remember it quite vividly though as the image was striking and well 
chosen, something for which Dawkins is justly renowned.

This disjunction in stated positions by Dawkins illustrates a general 
problem, one which is also raised by the question as to whether Gould 
and Lewontin are exaggerating the Ultra position.  I have observed 
(mostly in a social science context) that under attack or criticism 
someone's position often becomes extremely subtle, nuanced and hedged 
around with qualifications.  Extremes are fervently disavowed.
  Once the questions recede, however, all the nuances are dropped and 
the formerly "extreme position which nobody seriously advocates" 
mysteriously reappears.

Which is the real position?  A case could be made for the nuanced one 
as it is the one expressed when under professional scrutiny.   I 
confess however that I strongly believe that the real position is the 
one which appears in the less guarded moments (like journalistic 
interviews).  To criticize the strong version of an argument is not 
illegitimate, rather it more often gets to the real heart of the 
matter.

It is not surprising that these criticisms of standard evolutionary 
theory eminate from scientists who have also studied Marxism (this is 
a more specific observation about Gould and Lewontion than pink 
politics).  Not 
because Marx or Marxism has much directly to say about these 
questions (Engels is best passed over in silence), but because the 
study of history (remember Marxism is the science of history) 
illuminates historical processes.  The history of life is a 
quintessentially historical process and a productive cross 
fertilization can be expected.  

The argument that falls out of Gould's writings is that history is 
both a deterministic and contingent process.  If one looks only to 
the deterministic forces (natural selection in the case of biology, 
class struggle in the case of human history) one inevitably gets a 
teleological account in which forces converge on a preordained result 
(optimal adaptation, communism).  It is the introduction of 
contingent forces (like those mentioned in Gallagher's and Dr. 
Blood's posts) in interaction with the deterministic process which 
constitutes a truly historical explanation.  Dawkins and co. do not 
really concede the importance of these contingent forces and this 
leads to reductionist (everything is the consequence of selfish 
genes) and  teleological (observed phenomenal are the optimal result of an 
optimizing process) explanations. 

Note that this is not a debate about whether natural selection is 
central to the Darwinian account.  It is a debate about the specific 
character of the dynamic influence of natural selection in real 
historical time.

Terry McDonough


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