Steve Wilson, er, Sailer on names and Indians
- From: Bret Ludwig <bretldwig@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2007 02:57:46 -0000
" "Steve Wilson" would be a good name for a writer on evolution
Just as "Steve" is a notoriously common first name among people who
write about evolution and genetics, "Wilson" is big in the human
sciences.
For decades, David Sloan Wilson has been fighting against the "selfish
gene" orthodoxy in the "levels of selection" debate in evolutionary
theory, arguing that "group selection" also frequently occurs. That
never struck me as outlandish -- after all, if you look at modern
Tasmania, for example, one group (Europeans) appears to have been
selected for and another group (Tasmanians, who now exist only in a
limited number off mixed race individuals) got themselves rather
decisively selected against. Same with the Maoris and the late Chatham
Islanders.
The English, for instance, cooperated with each other much better than
did the American Indians. (Most of your famous Indian chiefs were
politicians or religious leaders or both who were exceptions to this
rule: they could temporarily overcome the notorious fractiousness of
the Indians. Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, by way of example, won
undying fame by getting 1,500 braves to show up at the same place at
the same time.) And that's a big reason why there are so many more
people of English descent in North America than people of American
Indian descent. Or to put it in selfish gene terms, that's why there
are so many more English gene variants than American Indian alleles
around these days.
William D. Hamilton didn't seem to object much to group selection, but
his famous expositor Richard Dawkins has, perhaps because it raises
the R-word.
But now Edward O. Wilson, the grand old man of evolutionary theory,
has teamed up with the other Wilson to write an article in the
Quarterly Review of Biology summarized in New Scientist propounding
multi-level (e.g., group) selection:
RETHINKING THE THEORETICAL FOUNDATION OF SOCIOBIOLOGY
EO Wilson & DS Wilson
Abstract:
Current sociobiology is in theoretical disarray, with a diversity
of frameworks that are poorly related to each other. Part of the
problem is a reluctance to revisit the pivotal events that took place
during the 1960s, including the rejection of group selection and the
development of alternative theoretical frameworks to explain the
evolution of cooperative and altruistic behaviors. In this article, we
take a "back to basics" approach, explaining what group selection is,
why its rejection was regarded as so important, and how it has been
revived based on a more careful formulation and subsequent research.
Multilevel selection theory (including group selection) provides an
elegant theoretical foundation for sociobiology in the future, once
its turbulent past is appropriately understood.:
They say:
"The old arguments against group selection have all failed. It is
theoretically plausible, it happens in reality, and the so-called
alternatives actually include the logic of multilevel selection. Had
this been known in the 1960s, sociobiology would have taken a very
different direction. It is this branch point that must be revisited to
put sociobiology back on a firm theoretical foundation. Accepting
multilevel selection has profound implications. It means we can no
longer regard the individual as a privileged level of the biological
hierarchy..."
In that noted science journal, the Huffington Post, Dan Agin offers
some rather overheated commentary on the purported liberal political
implications:
The selfish-gene mantra of conservative psychologists and
columnists is now more or less dead. Will we see the public media
focus on this new development? There will be die-hards. There are
people who don't like the idea that society is as important as genes
in determining behavior. They don't like the idea that nature can
select societies as well as individuals.
Okay, but the idea that "nature can select societies as well as
individuals" isn't necessarily terribly "progressive." It was a
favorite notion of, among many others, Mr. A. Hitler.
The good news is that conquering land really doesn't pay these days,
so peace has become, from a group-selectionist point of view, more
rational than in the past. The bad news is that if we don't need to
team up to go conquer the other group's land before they conquer ours,
then large-scale cooperativeness might be outdated, and the level of
most effective selection drops down to smaller groups. For example,
Crazy Eddie's clan is doing very well in Darwinian terms in Brooklyn
these days. (Remarkably, in Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's classic
1973 sci-fi novel, "Crazy Eddie" is the exact opposite of Crazy Eddie
the fraudulent hi-fi huckster -- "Crazy Eddie" is a legendary idealist
character who counsels the ultra-Malthusian aliens in the book to
institute controls on their population for the good of all!)
Somebody should find out what James Q. Wilson thinks of all this."<<
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2007/11/steve-wilson-would-be-good-name-for.html
.
- Prev by Date: White Goods Alternative
- Next by Date: Re: Ron Paul Versus the Gatekeepers
- Previous by thread: White Goods Alternative
- Next by thread: More on Venezuelan Y.O./encouraging signs?
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
