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In article <1i3ctlINN91f@agate.berkeley.edu> philjohn@garnet.berkeley.edu () writes:
>Stephen Jay Gould's very negative review of Helena Cronin's book
>"The Ant and the Peacock" appeared in the New York Review of
>Books for Nov. 19, 1992.  Cronin is a follower of the "gene
>selection" theory of Richard Dawkins, and so Dawkins is the real
>target of Gould's ire.

[...] Here is the crucial passage from Gould's
>review:
>
>"...the replicator criterion is at best insufficient, and at
>worst entirely mistaken.  A simple appeal to vernacular usage
>tells us that a lower unit (a gene, for example) can't be an
>exclusive agent if all the action occurs at higher levels
>(organisms, for example) -- and the properties that generate this
>action are 'emergent' characters of the higher level -- that is,
>not a simple summation of features built by the lower units
>(genes).  Now, manifestly (and gene selectionists do not deny
>this) organisms are primary objects struggling for reproductive
>success in nature.  How, then, can "hidden" genes be the true
>agents if organisms are doing the fighting, cooperating,
>generating, and dying?  Gene selectionists respond that all the
>relevant properties of organisms can be described as results of
>the various genes involved in their construction.  Such
>properties, the argument continues, are therefore only the
>complex manifestation of genetic action.
>    But many, undoubtedly most, properties of organisms are not
>simple summations of contributions from several genes.  They are
>products of interactions among genes and therefore THEY CANNOT,
>IN PRINCIPLE, BE ADEQUATELY PREDICTED OR KNOWN AT THE LEVEL OF
>GENES.  Since selection acts on such emergent properties of
>organisms, genes cannot be exclusive units of selection."
>[Emphasis added]
>
>     Does this passage make sense?  According to neo-Darwinism,
>natural selection builds complexity by acting upon inheritable

I don't think this makes sense, at least for anyone who has read
Dawkins' book, The Extended Phenotype -- because Dawkins would be the
first to agree that it is not at all a matter of "simple summations".
He discusses how the effects of complex gene-interactions operate
inside cells, organs, organisms, combinations of organisms and
parasites, and in larger communities.  On the other hand, he also
explains many ways in which it is NOT only the organisms that are
"doing the fighting, cooperating, >generating, and dying;" such
struggles also happen within the nucleus, within the fertilized ovum,
etc., because there is plently of blocking (as well as mutual
enhancement) among groups of genes aas well as among groups of
organisms.  In Dawkins' view, which I find most reasonable, the
epidermal boundary that encloses a typical animal is not always the
most important functional boundary because there are too many
genetically influenced processes that go on inside and outside it.
Read his chapters about the evolution of fluke-infested snails, for
example, to see how a substantial part of evolution can involve the
conflict and cooperation between genes in different organisms that
share closely related problems of individual survival and differential
reproduction.  
  
   (Aside: when I hear the term 'emergent' I reach for my revolver.
Because emergence is not an actual phenomenon in the system being
studied.  On the contrary, emergents are artifacts that 'emerge' when
an observer does not understand how the system works. That is, an
emergent is something that a certain observer did not expect, because
of ignorance or inability to predict that outcome.)

In article <1993Jan2.065434.23370@news.media.mit.edu> minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky) writes:

>I don't think this makes sense, at least for anyone who has read
>Dawkins' book, The Extended Phenotype -- because Dawkins would be the
>first to agree that it is not at all a matter of "simple summations".

I would note that _The Extended Phenotype_ opens with a preface in
which Dawkins is at pains to deny/disclaim meaning what many readers
(both careful and careless, biologically educated and generalists)
have read _The Selfish Gene_ to mean (and which is the target of
Gould's animus in the review.)  Given the crude way in which one
sees Dawkins clever phrases used on the net, I am with Gould in my
animus, even though much of TEP (and indeed TSG, when rendered of
its rather high polemic content) has interesting and intelligent
things to say.  I think that Dawkins is either disingenuous or a
totally negligent author.
-- 
Michael L. Siemon	"We honour founders of these starving cities
mls@panix.com		 Whose honour is the image of our sorrow ...
			 They built by rivers and at night the water
			 Running past the windows comforted their sorrow."

>   (Aside: when I hear the term 'emergent' I reach for my revolver.
>Because emergence is not an actual phenomenon in the system being
>studied.  On the contrary, emergents are artifacts that 'emerge' when
>an observer does not understand how the system works. That is, an
>emergent is something that a certain observer did not expect, because
>of ignorance or inability to predict that outcome.)

Perhaps you are operating with the wrong defenition of emergent? The term
emergent is meant as a counterstrike to reductionism. It is merely the
recognition that understanding the properties of the building blocks of a 
system will not yield the properties of the system. Besides, when a property is
concidered emergent then the property is independent of the chemical
nature of the elements. Ex. the properties of neural networks will arise in
networks consisting of neurons just as much as they will arise in a network which
is simulated on a computer.


 

Onar.

This is a follow-up on Gould's review of Helena Cronin's book:

The New York Review of Books for January 14, 1993, has letters
critical of Gould from John Maynard Smith and Daniel Dennett. 
Maynard Smith says that he disagrees with many points in Gould's
"curiously ill-tempered review" of Helena Cronin's book.  He
comments on only one: Gould seemingly attacks the entire
"kinship selection" approach to the origin of altruism merely
because it is not adequate to explain altruism in humans, 
although it is widely accepted for animals.  Maynard Smith
remarks that:

"It turns out that the failure is no more than this; the gene-
centered argument cannot explain human altruism, which is often
directed to non-relatives.  Coming from anyone this argument
would be odd, but from Gould it is astonishing.  For years he has
been inveighing against those who regard evolution as an
inevitable progress culminating in man, and emphasizing the
marvelous diversity of life.  Now he tells us that a biological
argument fails if it cannot explain some feature peculiar to
humans."

Gould in response tries to clarify his point: he "allowed that
gene selection has resolved many cases of animal altruism" but
objected to Cronin's bringing in humans at the end of the
argument in "the longest chapter in her book."

Comment: Gould often argues that there is nothing very special
about humans, and yet any suggestion that natural selection has
any importance whatever in the area of human behavior and
capacities seems to send him into orbit.  This probably
represents the conflict between Gould the Darwinist and Gould the
left-wing political guru, who wants humanity to be writing on a
clean slate.  Berkeley anthropologist Vincent Sarich describes
Gould's stance as creationism (in the area of human behavior)
without the supernatural creator.

Daniel Dennett's long letter accuses Gould of outrightintellectual 
dishonesty in distorting an opponent's (i.e. Dawkins') position to
make it a "straw man," and then declaring what the opponent really 
said to be a grudging concession to the power of Gould's attack!
A clearly wounded Gould in reply attributes Dennett's angry 
denunciation to "the pungently rarified air of Cambridge,
Massachusetts," and thanks God (!) for "Fenway Park and my local
Bowl-a-drome, where these mental pirouettes can be temporarily
put aside and a semblance of populist normality attained."

Anyone for bowling?

mls@panix.com (Michael Siemon) writes:

>In article <1993Jan2.065434.23370@news.media.mit.edu> minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky) writes:

>>I don't think this makes sense, at least for anyone who has read
>>Dawkins' book, The Extended Phenotype -- because Dawkins would be the
>>first to agree that it is not at all a matter of "simple summations".

>I would note that _The Extended Phenotype_ opens with a preface in
>which Dawkins is at pains to deny/disclaim meaning what many readers
>(both careful and careless, biologically educated and generalists)
>have read _The Selfish Gene_ to mean (and which is the target of
>Gould's animus in the review.)  Given the crude way in which one
>sees Dawkins clever phrases used on the net, I am with Gould in my
>animus, even though much of TEP (and indeed TSG, when rendered of
>its rather high polemic content) has interesting and intelligent
>things to say.  I think that Dawkins is either disingenuous or a
>totally negligent author.

WOW! Is disingenuous good?  Wait 'til I tell Ma!

-Dave Dawkins "What the hell's a Phenotype, and who'd want to extend it
               anyway?"

-- 
djd@csg.cs.rdg.ac.uk
djd@csug.cs.rdg.ac.uk
davidd@integ.uucp