HOPE!

• The Adaptive Gap and the Future of Civilization by Mike Hall, 7/3/98
  • Flexibility and Adaptive Gaps by John Fentress, 9/23/98
    • R C Lewontin: Grounds for Hope? Or delusion? by Brian Robinson, 9/27/98
      
      

Richard Lewontin spent some time at our university last year, and I think I understand the broad theme of his mission. In simple terms, reductionism in the absence of appreciation for context is wrong-headed. This point is echoed, for example, is his insistance that there is a continuing dialogue (dialectic) between both phenotypes and genotypes, and between phenotypes and their external environments.

Reductionism that ignores context is one-sided. Components, however we define them, exist in context. Components plus their contexts at one level of organization provide the novel components at the next level, and so on.

In some sense, everyone knows that extreme reductionism does not work. Otherwise I could simply point to a carbon atom and say: "Eureka! I have found the chemical basis of Life!!" So we go from Carbon to biological molecules, and so on up the ladder. A molecule is not a random assortment of atoms, but a highly constrained one. At the molecular level it is often tempting to think of these constraints as being somehow "intrinsic" to the atoms, molecules, etc. This blocks the idea of context. But even here context is important, such as in the heat of the petri dish. When we get to more complex biological systems, and certainly behavior, the interplay between inside and outside worlds is so subtle that no one can pretend to understand it.

Of course there may be many "interplays", thus making our task that much more difficult.

I see Lewontin as trying to provide such cautions. He gets agitated, for good reason in my mind, with those who refuse to see the continually shifting dance of inside and outside worlds. That is, in brief, just DUMB reductionism.

Is this hope or delusion? I would say HOPE! Why? Because it offers a view of living organisms that can celebrate the great advances of reductionism while also looking directly at their limitations. The failure to see contexts as equal participants in living systems is one of those limitations. If we can do that better, then indeed there is HOPE that we shall achieve a deeper and more satisfying picture of life - on its own terms.

Maybe I am an optimist. But its better than the alternative!

John

• Dawkins & Gould: London Observer by Brian Robinson, 9/29/98
• D&G Controversy by John Fentress, 9/30/98
  • Turf Battles by Mike Hall, 10/1/98
    • Check by John Fentress, 10/4/98
      • The check is in the mail by Mike Hall, 10/9/98