Re: New Gould Collection Coming Out


"catshark" <catshark@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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On Mon, 29 May 2006 09:25:12 +1200, "observa" <observa@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


"catshark" <catshark101@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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observa wrote:
"catshark" <catshark@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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Maybe I'm just not paying attention but there is a new collection
of
Stephen Jay Gould's work compiled by Steven Rose and Paul McGarr
coming
out
that I was unaware of:

THE RICHNESS OF LIFE
by Stephen Jay Gould

<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,923-2197721,00.html>

Given the nasty stuff Rose directed at E.O.Wilson, Dawkins and Pinker

You mean worse than what Gould said about Wilson, Dawkins and Pinker?


Both I guess. Both of them, and Lewontin, were guilty of similar
misrepreseantation and quote mining the Cretinists are guilty of. A
while
ago I read several books that were either written, or edited, by Rose and
Lewontin. And since then I've read many of the originals they were
opposed
to. Very often they simply deliberatly misquote, or take things out of
context. They clearly have a political agenda and need the blank slate
to
continue justifying it.
I very
much doubt that any collection he selects will be worth a hell of a
lot.

Well, I would have thought that would hang more on what you think of
Gould than on what you think of Rose, but . . .

Well, as a historian before I was anything else, _what_ is selected
usually
is a result of the selector's biases. And the combined result of such
selection can be such as to support the selector's preferences.


Other than support his political agenda that is.

Having just finished reading Pinker's "The Blank Slate", I can't see
how Rose could be alone in that regard.

Hmm, well I've read The Blank Slate twice, and am currently reading How
the
Mind Works. I do note that Pinker's, and other evolutionary/cognitive
scientists appear to have opened doors for further research. And also
appear to base their findings on duplicable research. In other words
there
appears to be a cummulative research history. That does not appear to be
the case for research based on the the blank slate assumption.

As an ex-teacher I had to wade my way thru stuff on pedagogy based on the
blank slate assumption. None of it was any use in the classroom. Have
you
read Judith Rich Harris's The Nurture Assumption?

I'd be curious to know what your position is on the evolutionary
sociology
stuff.

I won't pretend to know enough to really judge it. Pinker's book was a
strange "defense" of it, however. You didn't have to take sides in the
controversy to see that Pinker's claims of having no political motives
rang
hollow. One doesn't spend most of the first third of the book settling
old
scores out of disinterested science. This fits with Ullica Segerstrale's
history of the debate, _Defenders of the Truth_ and her opinion that both
sides had motives not to resolve their differences, which weren't nearly
as
great as the parties made out. That desire to maximize differences with
the "received view" is a common tactic in scientific disputes as David
Hull
has shown. That's why I take Pinker's claims about his opponent's
positions with a healthy grain of salt. (And the kind of "blank slate"
that
might show up in school curricula doesn't necessarily have anything to do
with front line science.)

The blank slate stuff and the curricula were not related. The blank slate
stuff was about how to successfully teach kids and how they learn. None of
it was based on good research. If you looked at the research structures you
found such things as the time of day, weather, number of kids in room, age
and experience of teacher simply left out. The research was garbage. But
you weren't allowed to question it. To do so earned you failing grades.

I'll not argue with you about Pinker's approach to the opposition. I was
rather annoyed during the first 1/4 of the book. But, having read stuff by
Rose and Lewontin, as well as by Wilson, I'm inclined to think that R and L
are guilty of more mud throwing - or at least putting broken glass in the
mud. Wilson's book ( have you read it?) only deals with sociobiology in the
last (2nd last?) chapter. I do think he got a bit carried away. But his
political background was not that of a rightwing crazy. Which is what R and
L painted him as.

The problem with R, L and Gould (and I've read them all) is that they
automatically paint anyone who sounds even slightly like they support
evolutionary/cognitive studies as if they are Nazis. Forgetting, of course,
that the greatest blankslaters of all (the communists) were guilty of the
worst behaviour. It's as if they have no appreciation of history - just
their own positions.

The evidence Pinker produced in the first sections of the book was
extremely weak to this layperson's eyes but then, in the last third, he
did
a much better job. But some of the things he claimed were the result of
evolution seemed to me to require the kind of hyper-evolution that was one
of the acknowledged problems with Wilson's early work. Still, there seems
to be considerable value in at least looking to evolutionary accounts for
social interactions, though there is more than a hint of "just-so" about
them.

But don't forget, Pinker admits to that. He accepts that evolutionary
psychology has a long way to go. But that is, IMO, a plus. It has
potential for fruitful research. The blank slate assumption simply results
in study after study that establish nothing than to say "well, people are
people - fancy that". The blank slaters have been at it for over a hundred
years and have resulted in some of the silliest ideas out - Freud, Jung,
Skinner as examples. Oh, and currently "recovered memory". Sheesh.

While I'm sure there are extremists in the e/p camp I think their research
is more readily assessed for validity and I think it'll have more relevance
to understanding who we are and why we operate the way we do.

As to the allegations of "dirty pool", I sincerely doubt that either side
was inhabited only with angels in that regard.

See above.

Alan Jeffery

--
---------------
J. Pieret
---------------

In the name of the bee
And of the butterfly
And of the breeze, amen

- Emily Dickinson -

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