Evolutionary science is as much about the posturing, salesmanship, stonewalling and bullying that goes on as it is about actual scientific theory. It is a social discourse involving hypotheses of staggering complexity with scientists, recipients of the biggest grants of any intellectuals, assuming the power of politicians while engaged in Animal House pie-throwing and name-calling: "ham-fisted", "looney Marxist hangover", "secular creationist", "philosopher" (a scientist who can’t get grants anymore), "quack", "crackpot". . .
In short, it’s a modern day quest for the holy grail, but with few knights. At a time that calls for scientific vision, scientific inquiry’s been hijacked by an industry of greed, with evolution books hyped like snake oil at a carnival.
Perhaps the most egregious display of commercial dishonesty is next year’s celebration of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species – the so-called theory of evolution by natural selection, i.e., survival of the fittest, that was foisted on us almost 150 years ago.
Scientists agree that natural selection can occur. But the scientific community has known for some time that natural selection has nothing to do with evolution. ...
I broke the story about the Altenberg affair last March with the assistance of Alastair Thompson and the team at Scoop Media, the independent news agency based in New Zealand. ... But will the A-16 deliver? Will they help rid us of the natural selection "survival of the fittest" mentality that has plagued civilization for a century and a half, and on which Darwinism and neo-Darwinism are based, now that the cat is out of the bag that selection is politics not science? That selection cannot be measured exactly. That it is not the mechanism of evolution. That it is an abstract rusty tool left over from 19th century British imperial exploits.
Or will the A-16 tip-toe around the issue, appease the Darwin industry and protect foundation grants?
-Suzan Mazur
Eeeyikes! Just think what she would have wrote if the topic were creationists!
All kidding aside, there does seem to be, at the very least, a degree of frustration with the role natural selection plays in evolution. Suzan reports that cytogeneticist, Antonio Lima-de-Faria, author of "Evolution Without Selection", "sees any continuance of the natural selection concept as 'compromise'." She also accuses science blogs of "stonewalling" new ideas such as self-organisation:
...one of the stars of the symposium, New York Medical College cell biologist Stuart Newman, hypothesizes that all 35 animal phyla self-organized at the time of the Cambrian explosion (a half billion years ago) without a genetic recipe or selection (hardwiring supposedly followed). Emphasis mine
Allow me to address two items. First, I can see why the science blogs* are bristling at either setting aside or demoting natural selection. Take away NS and all you are left with is one big game of Yahtzee. IOW, evolution without the contingency of NS becomes a framework of chance. If this is true, then I think it's obvious that the new synthesis will be weaker than the one it replaces. What would you prefer: pure chance or chance coupled with contingency?
Second, this could very well be a case of a reporter "glamorising" a simple symposium to sell her article and get her name out there. Take the words of Massimo Pigliucci (HT to Todd Berkebile @ TT):
So, what are the Altenberg 16 going to do in Altenberg next week? ... The agenda is to discuss the current status of evolutionary theory, with a particular emphasis on developments -- some of them under intense debate -- that have occurred since the last version of it has been in put in place back in the 1930s and ‘40s. ...
In the 1930s and ‘40s it became clear that one had to integrate the original Darwinism with the new disciplines of Mendelian and statistical genetics. Such integration occurred through a series of meetings where scientists discussed the status of evolutionary theory, and through the publication of a number of books by people like Theodosius Dobzhansky, Ernst Mayr, George Gaylor Simpson, George Ledyard Stebbins and others. The result was an updated theoretical framework known as the Modern Synthesis (MS). But of course evolutionary biology has further progressed during the last eight decades (unlike, one cannot help but notice, creationism). So for a few years now several evolutionary biologists have suggested that it may be time for another update, call it evolutionary theory 3.0 or, as many of us have begun to refer to it, the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES)**.
A number of authors, including Stephen Gould, Mary Jane West-Eberhard, Eva Jablonka, Stuart Kauffman, Stuart Newman, the above mentioned Gerd Müller, and myself, have published papers and books recently attempting to articulate what an EES might look like, and which elements of the MS will need to be retained, modified or discarded (just like the MS had retained, modified or discarded individual components of the original Darwinism). The goal of the Altenberg workshop is to get some of these people around the same table for three days and trade ideas about these sorts of questions.
So is this a case of tip-toeing to "appease the Darwin industry and protect foundation grants", or is Suzan Mazur exaggerating the outcome of the summit?
The asylum is now open for comments.
HT to Grandma O'Leary @ Post-Darwinist
*I am sure that not all of the science blogs are "stonewalling". This is likely a generalisation on Suzan Mazur's part that isprobably accurate for the majority of the science blogs out there.
**I would encourage everyone to read this pdf file describing the framework for the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (myself included). After all, this is the potential new synthesis many anticipate will come from meetings like Altenberg. Time will tell whether the EES survives or not.
Well, you've swallowed a lot of snake oil there.
ReplyDeleteAt the end of the day, science works by fits and starts. Ideas get generated, get questioned, sometimes reign for a while, sometimes flame out. But the heart of the enterprise is the predictive hypothesis and the controlled experiment to collect new data. This is how science progresses, and I certainly hope you are not arguing that we haven't seen scientific progress in recent decades. Science will continue to do that, and journalists like Mazur and O'Dreary, who prefer to misunderstand it, will continue to get it wrong.
ID/Creationism hasn't gotten out of the starting blocks on any of that hypothesis/experiment/new data activity, in case you hadn't noticed. It doesn't seem like much of a problem to figure out which side is worth supporting.
dave, exactly how did I "swallow a lot of snake oil"? Granted, I was previously interested in the A-16 summit and may have placed too much expectations from it. My bad. However, based on Mazur's latest piece, that has changed. I think it is obvious from Mazur's writing that her tone is harsh and (perhaps) overly critical of the existing synthesis and she seems to be using the A-16 to promote this. As I commented elsewhere, if her e-book does not properly reflect the views of these sixteen scientists, they need to publicly distance themselves from her, the sooner the better.
ReplyDeleteI also made sure to present the other side by posting Massimo Pigliucci's views. I note that in that post he did not distance himself from Suzan Mazur.
I presented a balanced view which allowed for the possiblity that Mazur was sensationalising, I put forward two legitimate points, and I did not mention ID once. Based on this post alone, where did I "swallow a lot of snake oil"?
Nice little jab at ID. I see you couldn't resist, eh?
Also, please get rid of the name calling (it's O'Leary or Grandma if you will); it doesn't become you. I respect your views and points because you generally don't revert to name calling. I like to think of myself as blessed to have yourself and rbh as commenters from "the other side".
Snake oil dose #1 - you wrote First, I can see why the science blogs* are bristling at either setting aside or demoting natural selection. Take away NS and all you are left with is one big game of Yahtzee.
ReplyDeleteWhere's the bristling, other than at Mazur's cluelessness about science? Nobody (except Mazur and you and other creationists) says that NS is being "taken away". Read further down the page in that Massimo Pigliucci post (written by someone who will actually be at the Altenberg meeting). The basic idea is that there have been some interesting empirical discoveries, as well as the articulation of some new concepts, subsequently to the Modern Synthesis, that one needs to explicitly integrate with the standard ideas about natural selection, common descent, population genetics and statistical genetics (nowadays known as evolutionary quantitative genetics).
"Integrate" does not mean eliminate...
Snake oil dose #2 - you wrote "So is this a case of tip-toeing to "appease the Darwin industry and protect foundation grants". Even though you followed it with a question mark, and hinted that Mazur might be exaggerating, this sort of conspiracy theory mentality doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the absence of evidence. Do you have evidence of a "Darwin industry"? Do you have evidence that scientists stonewall or ignore evidence to protect their "foundation grants"? If so, let's hear it. If not, please stop the insinuations that this might be the case. I'm a biological scientist, and I find this suggestion to be frankly insulting.
As for Pigliucci's views re Mazur's sensationalizing, read this summary of a recent article in Science, particularly this paragraph:
That hyperbole has reverberated throughout the evolutionary biology community, putting Pigliucci and the 15 other participants at the forefront of a debate over whether ideas about evolution need updating. The mere mention of the "Altenberg 16," as Mazur dubbed the group, causes some evolutionary biologists to roll their eyes. It's a joke, says Jerry Coyne of the University of Chicago in Illinois. "I don't think there's anything that needs fixing." Mazur's attention, Pigliucci admits, "frankly caused me embarrassment."
And yes, I did get in a jab at ID, and certain journalists, because those journalists promote ID and yet don't seem to understand that ID is not science. According to its founder, Phillip Johnson, it's not yet a theory that has any experimental underpinning. This is in contrast to evolutionary theory, which is a vibrant, bubbling, and exciting explanatory framework for understanding life's diversity. So when such a journalist or two decides, based on demonstrable MISunderstanding of science, to paint a vibrant and exciting time in the history of that science as possibly the start of its demise, it helps to contrast that with the already-dead state of ID.
Suzan Mazur wrote:
ReplyDeleteBut the scientific community has known for some time that natural selection has nothing to do with evolution.
That's absurd. It's outright crankery. Surely you see that.
In case it wasn't obvious, my last comment was directed at JJS.
ReplyDeleteMazur's comment is equivalent to someone saying that the engineering community has known for some time that fatigue has nothing to do with structural failures.
It would have helped your post had you bothered to look at Massimo's own blog, where he has been posting notes from the conference daily. It's here.
ReplyDeleteMazur is merely posturing, making noise, and judging what I've read of her stuff online, by and large she doesn't know what she's talking about. When she writes stuff like
But the scientific community has known for some time that natural selection has nothing to do with evolution. ...
and
That selection cannot be measured exactly. That it is not the mechanism of evolution. That it is an abstract rusty tool left over from 19th century British imperial exploits.
she's blowing pure smoke. I know a bunch of evolutionary biologists, I teach evolutionary modeling in a biology department, and no professional that I know thinks that. She's clearly a "journalist" of the Denyse O'Leary school of breathless hype.
For more evidence (as if it was needed) that Denyse is generally clueless in regards to science and how it is done, you might want to take a peek at this comment thread at Telic Thoughts. Denyse is, of course, immediately corrected by an actual practicing scientist, David Heddle.
ReplyDelete"Take away NS and all you are left with is one big game of Yahtzee. IOW, evolution without the contingency of NS becomes a framework of chance. If this is true, then I think it's obvious that the new synthesis will be weaker than the one it replaces. What would you prefer: pure chance or chance coupled with contingency?
ReplyDeleteI am totally lost, dazed, and confused now. Evolution without an environmental filter....there are actually people who believe that?
Thanks for the tips...I have to look into this more...but my head is spinning.