Darwin ... Paleo, Neo, and Future

• Darwinism v. Neo-Darwinism by Laljit Sidhu, MA, 3/18/98
  
  

I'm both rusty and rushed at this point; you will have to take this without citations.

First, Darwin evidently had a copy of Mendel's findings but failed to appreciate their significance. Charles was impressed more by continuity of the changes that he observed in traits, a "gradualist" perception derived perhaps as much from his contacts with animal breeders as from his trips abroad.

Mendel's findings were "rediscovered" in approximately 1900; their digital effects were felt inconsistent with a gradualist evolutionary model. There was substantial movement away from natural selection explanations for the next several decades because digital foundations appeared irreconcilable with analog shifts. This was also an era of substantial religious attack on Darwinian accounts. Thus, schisms appeared within and outside of the biological community.

RA Fisher, Sewall Wright, and JBS Haldane saved things for Darwinian models by combining systematic data with statistical description and showed how digital events can give the appearance of analog change. The rediscovery of genes also meant that we could move our notions of "action" away from bewildering phenotypes to a more idealized being, the gene. The stage was set then for Axelrod, Hamilton, Trivers, and Dawkins.

The EP derived by Santa Barbara could well stand independently of Darwinism, neo or paleo or archeo. My sense is that much good work will come from the notion of a "psychological adaptation" although none of us will ever define one satisfactorily. I cannot believe in any biological feature, at any level, that is "universal." Instead, many behavioral phenomena -- including our dependence on various alliances -- may well depend on crossover and recombination.

Finally, EP is apt a passing phase; sociobiology may yet be the more flexible expression (but I'm the nut who believes strongly in a "clinical sociobiology"). Psychologists are in a lemmings' rush (lately shown not to occur with lemmings) for ways to earn a living and EP waters will hold them for a little while.

However, any satisfactory model of living forms must include the contributions of Lynn Margulis; likewise, the findings of powerful thinkers such as Stu Kauffman, who has given us -- I think -- a numerical basis for varied altruisms as well as for psychiatric disorders and for behavior genetic phenomena. His models also have a beautiful and convincing niche for natural selection.

Steven J ... what a mind! Although not appreciated by many in EP, he does us much good and helps keep us scientifically honest. All of us make up "just so" stories about adaptations. (Nesse and Williams' neat text, "Why We Get Sick" has its share of them) My impression is that Gould endorses natural selection and is more convinced by stasis and saltatory changes, but he comes from a paleontological background, where many of continuously variable phenotypic traits have disappeared. (Incidentally, Gould also fits within Kauffman's numbers; not surprising given the type of numbers that Kauffman manipulates.)

Gould has also done us a service by reminders that the forms that exist are by no means the best adapted. Some creatures were in business for a very long time because of their efficiency in killing off the competition. The principles apply to business, to scientific belief, and to teeny little critters from long ago.

Welcome to the trade ... keep reading.

• Exhaustive Gould vs. Dawkins source by Dan Krashin <dnokrashin@HOTMAIL.COM>, 4/9/98
  • Darwinian Thinking and Politics by Mike Hall, 7/2/98