12:53 PM
Admin
Here's a five year old video where Richard Dawkins points to molecular phylogenies as powerful evidence of evolution. He wonders how any creationist could deny the evidence of evolution and suggest that "a mind like that is a disgrace to the human species."
He must have been thinking about Cornelius Hunter because Hunter has resurrected the video in order to show why Dawkins is wrong [Richard Dawkins: How Could Anyone "Possibly Doubt the Fact of Evolution"]. Watch the video and then read what Cornelius Hunter says. You'll recognize some elements of truth in his criticism but you'll also recognize a common creationist fallacy; namely, an inability to see the forest because you've been staring too long at the bark on trees.
What is amazing is the evolutionist’s high confidence and self-assuredness in such a blatant misrepresentation of science. It would be difficult to imagine a bigger falsehood. Phylogenetic incongruence is rampant in evolutionary studies. Conflicts exist at all levels of the evolutionary tree and throughout both morphological and molecular traits. This paper reports on incongruent gene trees in bats. That is one example of many. These incongruences are caused by just about every kind of contradiction possible. Molecular sequences in one or a few species may be out of place amongst similar species. Or sequences in distant species may be strangely similar. As one paper admitted, there is “no known mechanism or function that would account for this level of conservation at the observed evolutionary distances.” Or as another evolutionist admitted, the many examples of nearly identical molecular sequences of totally unrelated animals are “astonishing.”
An even more severe problem is that in many cases no comparison is even possible. The molecular sequence is found in one species but not its neighbors. When this problem first became apparent evolutionists thought it would be resolved as the genomes of more species were decoded. No such luck—the problem just became worse. Not surprisingly evolutionists carefully prefilter their data. As one paper explained, “data are routinely filtered in order to satisfy stringent criteria so as to eliminate the possibility of incongruence.”
Short genes that produce what are known as microRNA also contradict Dawkins’ high claim. In fact one evolutionist, who has studied thousands of microRNA genes, explained that he has not found “a single example that would support the traditional tree.” It is, another evolutionist admitted, “a very serious incongruence.”
Another paper admits that “the more molecular data is analysed, the more difficult it is to interpret straightforwardly the evolutionary histories of those molecules.”
And yet in public presentations of their theory, evolutionists present a very different story. As Dawkins explained, gene comparisons “fall in a perfect hierarchy, a perfect family tree.” This statement is so false it isn’t even wrong—it is absurd. And then Dawkins chastises anyone who “could possibly doubt the fact of evolution.” Unfortunately this sentiment is typical. Evolutionists have no credibility.
12:52 PM
Admin
A meeting on macroevolution was held at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago in October 1980. Normally these meetings would not attract much attention from the press but in this case there was an article published in Discover a month before the meeting took place that suggested something revolutionary was in the wind. Stephen Jay Gould discusses the episode in The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (pp. 981-986).
The article in Discover referred to "growing dissent from the prevailing view of Darwinism" and mentioned that there would be a meeting in Chicago. As a result of this article, a bunch of journalists turned up at the Chicago Macroevolution meeting expecting fireworks.
There was a lot of talk about punctuated equilibria at the Chicago meeting and how the ideas of Eldredge and Gould conflicted with the gradualism that was part of traditional Darwinian evolution. This is complicated stuff so it's no wonder that many journalists misinterpreted the discussion as support for the idea that evolution was being challenged as the creationists claimed.
Read more »
8:00 AM
Admin
An old high school friend of Ms Sandwalk sent me the link to this video by Dirk Murray "Baba" Brinkman, Jr. He is the son of my friend's local MP, Joyce Murray (Liberal, British Columbia).
I hesitated to post in on Darwin Day but now that other blogs have linked to it, I want to use this opportunity to raise two important questions.
- The video promotes "Darwinism" as the only solution to evolution. This is wrong, but is there value in lying about this for a greater cause? Is it possible to make an effective video like this without distorting the science?
- I'm very uneasy about promoting Darwin worship, partly for the reason that there's more to evolution than what Darwin wrote in 1859 and partly for the reason that it smacks of religion. What do you think? Should we be pushing "Darwin Day"?
M=
12:34 PM
Admin
Michael Egnor is a brain surgeon who doesn't like evolution. Egnor isn't a scientist so why does it matter so much to him?
Listen to this podcast where Casey Luskin interviews Michael Egnor: Dr. Michael Egnor on Debating Intelligent Design. You may want to turn off your irony meter.
Egnor is afraid of evolution for exactly the right reasons. It's because evolution (and science) threaten his worldview. Science tells us that we don't have free will—at least not the kind of free will that Christians demand. Science tells us that there's no such thing as moral absolutes that are dictated by god(s). Science is materialistic and it may be the only valid way of knowing.
No wonder he's scared. Michael Egnor is a Roman Catholic and he knows that evolution threatens his religion.
You'll probably enjoy hearing Egnor and Luskin talk about atheist blogs and about the high quality of science writing on Evolution News & Views. Casey Luskin (lawyer) and Michael Engor (physician) are responsible for some of that high quality science writing.
David Klinghoffer really likes the podcasts. Here's his review at: Listening to Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor on the Brain and Intelligent Design, Rubik's Cube and Jerry Coyne's Blog.
I've exchanged many emails with brain surgeon and ENV contributor Dr. Michael Egnor, but I had never actually heard his voice till now. It's a good voice, which is vital for a physician, mellow yet authoritative, with the correct pitch and timbre. Egnor's stellar academic and medical background aside, I've often thought that, if you had no other information about a healthcare provider, what you don't want is a doctor with the wrong kind of voice.
Now you can hear Egnor as I just did in this fascinating new series of podcasts in which he is interviewed by Casey Luskin. Their themes include evidence of intelligent design in the complexity of the brain, but no less so in the simplest creature, a bacterium. Dr. Egnor compares that design to the solution of a Rubik's Cube. It doesn't happen by chance.
Egnor also talks about the unusual window that Jerry Coyne provides into the mind of a materialist, which is why his name comes up here often. Coyne, unlike many Darwin apologists, doesn't self-censor. You don't have to wonder: What does he really think about, for example, personal responsibility. Because he tells you! Whatever else Coyne may be, he's no weasel. For that, Egnor expresses his gratitude and -- yes, appropriately.
I'm disappointed that Egnor said nothing about me even though he posts quite a few comments on Sandwalk. Guess I don't get much respect.
I wonder why David Klinghoffer didn't mention Casey Luskin's voice?
12:01 PM
Admin
Jason Rosenhouse also read the accommodationist article by Phil Plait [The Creation of Debate] and he also sees the problem.
I argued that, contrary to what Phil Plait believes, evolution is a threat to all superstitious beliefs, including those of theistic evolution creatinists (see my post at: The real war is between rationalism and superstition).
Read Jason Rosenhouse's post at: It’s Not Just Fundamentalist Religion That Has A Problem With Evolution. Here's the important part ....
So, after all, that, let us return to Plait’s argument. He tells us that the problem is too many people perceiving evolution as a threat to their religious beliefs. Indeed, but why do they perceive it that way? Is it a failure of messaging on the part of scientists? Is it because Richard Dawkins or P. Z. Myers make snide remarks about religion? No, those are not the reasons.
It is because these people have noticed all the same problems the scholars of Darwin’s time were writing about. It is because evolution really does conflict with their religious beliefs, but not because of an overly idiosyncratic interpretation of one part of the Bible. It is because the version of evolution that so worried the religious scholars of Darwin’s time, that of a savage, non-teleological process that produced humanity only as an afterthought, is precisely the version that has triumphed among modern scientists. And it is because the objections raised to that version of evolution in the nineteenth century have not lost any of their force today.
So I think the issue is just a tad more complex than Plait suggests. It manifestly is not the case that only the most narrow of fundamentalists has a problem with evolution. Evolution challenges the Bible, refutes the argument from design, exacerbates the problem of evil, and strongly challenges any notion that humanity plays a central role in creation. These are not small points, and Plait needs to acknowledge them.
I hope Phil Plait is listening.
I hope Ken Miller, Francis Collins, and Simon Conway-Morris are listening. They are not on my side in this war.
11:44 AM
Admin
You're probably wondering why I would ask a question like, "Does an understanding of evolution help scientists understand the secrets of biology?" It's not my question. It's a paraphrase of a question asked by someone who goes by the pseudonym "PaV" on Uncommon Descent. Here's the full context from her post: Does Evolutionary Theory Really Help Scientists?
For a number of years, many of us at UD have made the argument that evolutionary theory, in practice, is of almost no help whatsoever in getting at the secrets of biology. I’ve taken the position personally that it actually hurts, and that it is not a matter of indifference to the study of biology whether evolution is employed or not. ID is the way to go.
Now, besides the fact that she is an IDiot, you may be asking why anyone would write such a thing.
Here's the scoop. Someone was looking at unknown RNAs in zebra fish and discovered that one of them encoded a protein that hadn't previously been characterized. This sort of thing happens all the time in various species so why is PaV so excited?
Here's the answer ...
They’ve studied this embryonic stage for 20 years, and couldn’t figure out the decisive signals for initiation of the gastrula. They had to look to “non-coding” RNA, i.e., “junk DNA,” in order to solve their new found secret.
And why didn’t they study “junk DNA” before? Well, evolutionary theory posits that it is “junk” (their word, not ours), so why investigate.
See? Evolutionary theory actually impedes scientific progress. And you wonder why we call them ....
11:20 AM
Admin
Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy watched the debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham. He decided that both of them are wrong because the debate was framed as a war between evolution and religion. Like a long list of accommodationists before him, Phil Plait thinks he has the answer in his post: The Creation of Debate.
I can’t stress this enough. The conflict over the teaching of evolution is based on the false assumption that evolution is antagonistic to religion. This is why, I think, evolution is so vehemently opposed by so many in the United States. The attacks on the specifics of evolution—the claims about irreducibility of the eye, for example, or other such incorrect statements—are a symptom, not a cause. I can talk about how we know the Universe is old until the Universe is substantially older and not convince someone whose heels are dug in. But if we can show them that the idea of evolution is not contrary to their faith, then we will make far, far more progress.
That’s not to say I’ll stop talking about the science itself. That still needs to be discussed! But simply saying science is right and faith is wrong will never, ever fix the problem.
And this won’t be easy. As long as this discussion is framed as “science versus religion” there will never be a resolution. A religious person who doesn’t necessarily think the Bible is literal, but who is a very faithful Christian, will more likely be sympathetic to the Ken Hams than the Bill Nyes, as long as science is cast as an atheistic dogma. For example, on the Catholic Online website, the argument is made that both Ham and Nye are wrong, and casts science as an atheistic venture.
That must change for progress to be made.
This is the classic accommodationist position. Problem is, it's been tried and it doesn't work in the United States. And the reason it doesn't work is that Americans aren't that stupid. They realize that these debates really are about science vs. religion. They know that evolution is, in fact, antagonistic to religion.
Jerry Coyne points this out rather forcibly in his response to Phil Plait. Read Coyne's article: Debate postmortem II: Phil Plait goes all accommodationist. I'll get back to Jerry Coyne in a minute but first let me quote Phill Plait's "solution."
And who should do this? The answer to me is clear: Religious people who understand the reality of science. They have a huge advantage over someone who is not a believer. Because atheism is so reviled in America, someone with faith will have a much more sympathetic soapbox from which to speak to those who are more rigid in their beliefs.
It's possible that "religious people who understand the reality of science" is a very small group and it's even more possible that they will be opposed to science and evolution precisely because they DO understand the reality of science. Plait is probably thinking about Ken Miller and Francis Collins but it's not clear to me that they truly understand what science is telling us. Science is telling us that there's no need for god(s) in order to understand the world around us. Evolution tells us that life has no purpose.
What Phil Plait is saying is that the best people to defend evolution are those who think that there really is a creator god but he/she/it mostly used evolution as a method of creation. In other words, we atheists should rely on theistic evolution creationists to convince other creationists to adopt a somewhat different view of creationism! That probably means we should keep quiet unless we are willing to make the case for one version of supernaturalism. Why would we do that?
That may be acceptable to some people but it misses the point of the conflict as far as many atheists are concerned. Jerry Coyne said it best in response to the accommodationist views of Micheal Ruse some years ago. Coyne's letter, which appeared in Playboy after Ruse's article was published, said ...
[Ruse] fails to grasp the real nature of the conflict. It's not just about evolution versus creationism. To scientists like Dawkins and Wilson, the real war is between rationalism and superstition. [my emphasis, LAM] Science is but one form of rationalism, while religion is the most common form of superstition. Creationism is just a symptom of what they see as the greater enemy: religion. While religion can exist without creationism, creationism cannot exist without religion.
This passage has been widely quoted and I wholeheartedly agree with Coyne's view.1
For many of us the real war is between rationalism and superstition and the battle over evolution is just a minor skirmish in that war. What this means is that New Atheists are not inclined to recruit people who believe in superstition in order to fight a war against superstition.
That may be acceptable to people like Phil Plait because they're not interested in fighting a war against all forms of superstition, including religion. Instead, they seem content to promote some forms of superstition over others. The accommodationists should not expect all atheists to agree with them and they should acknowledge the fact that many of us think science and religion are incompatible.2
1. There's some doubt about whether Coyne actually said this in his letter. I'm quoting a second-hand source: Dawkins in The God Delusion.
2. I'm not saying we are correct. I'm just saying that after all these years it's disappointing to see so many accommodationists who just don't get it.
1:44 PM
Admin
John Brockman is a famous literary agent. Over the years he has assembled a group of intellectuals, and people who aspire to be intellectuals. Every year they publish short articles on the question of the year at the Edge. Here's this year's question: annual question.
Science advances by discovering new things and developing new ideas. Few truly new ideas are developed without abandoning old ones first. As theoretical physicist Max Planck (1858-1947) noted, "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." In other words, science advances by a series of funerals. Why wait that long?
WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT?
Ideas change, and the times we live in change. Perhaps the biggest change today is the rate of change. What established scientific idea is ready to be moved aside so that science can advance?
There was a time—about a decade ago—when reading the answers to the question was exciting and stimulating.
Jerry Coyne picks two answers that deal with evolution: The Edge question: two bad answers about evolution. Roger Highfield's answer to the question of what idea should be retired is "Evolution is true." Kevin Kelly thinks that the idea of "Fully random mutations" should be tossed in the scrap heap of history.
Jerry shows us why these guys are not intellectuals. Read his blog post.
Lest you think that Jerry found the only bad examples, let me point out another one. Athena Vouloumanos is a psychologist at New York University. The idea that she wants to retire is "Natural Selection is the Only Engine of Evolution." Excellent, I thought, at last somebody has a good answer. Alas, here's what she says ...
Epigenetic control of gene expression contributes to cells in a single organism (which share the same DNA sequence) developing differently into e.g. heart cells or neurons. But the last decade has shown actual evidence–and possible mechanisms–for how the environment and the organism's behavior in it might cause heritable changes in gene expression (with no change in the DNA sequence) that are passed onto offspring. In recent years, we have seen evidence of epigenetic inheritance across a wide range of morphological, metabolic, and even behavioral traits.
The intergenerational transmission of acquired traits is making a comeback as a potential mechanism of evolution. It also opens up the interesting possibility that better diet, exercise, and education which we thought couldn't affect the next generation–except with luck through good example–actually could.
If I had to give a reason why natural selection is not the only engine of evolution I would have picked something very different—something that's been around, and proven, for decades. Epigenetics requires DNA sequences and proteins and if epigenetic modification of a specific DNA site provides a selective advantage under some circumstances then that's natural selection in action.
11:55 AM
Admin
I've been teaching my students about random genetic drift, phylogenetic trees, and the molecular clock. It's hard for undergraduates to understand that trees based on sequences are reflections of the fixation of nearly neutral alleles by random genetic drift. That's because they, like almost everyone else, think of evolution in terms of natural selection and adaptation.
It's even harder to grasp the idea of a molecular clock even though it's been around for fifty years. It was back in the 1960s that scientists like Emanual Margoliash noted that the rate of substitution of amino acids in every lineage was remarkably similar [The Modern Molecular Clock]. We now know that this is because the alleles are fixed by random genetic drift and that the rate of fixation by drift depends only on the mutation rate. It looks like the mutation rate is relatively constant in all lineages (bacteria, protozoa, plants, animals, etc.). This isn't a big shock since the vast majority of mutations are due to errors in DNA replication and the fundamental biochemistry of DNA replication and repair are similar in all species.
Read more »
1:03 PM
Admin
Richard Lenski's long-term evolution experiment (LTEE) has yielded a number of interesting results over the past two decades. Back in 1988, he set up twelve flasks of E. coli B growing in minimal medium. The cultures were diluted 1/100 every day. There were 6.64 generations per day or almost 2,500 per year. By now, the cultures have evolved for 60,000 generations.
All twelve cultures are under strong selection for rapid growth and all twelve cultures have evolved. One, and only one, of the cultures evolved to utilize citrate as a carbon source (normal E. coli cultures cannot use citrate but it's in the medium as a chelating agent). You can read about the mutations that gave rise to this phenotype in: Lenski's long-term evolution experiment: the evolution of bacteria that can use citrate as a carbon source.
Read more »
2:11 PM
Admin
This month's Carnival of Evolution is hosted by a group of "foreigners"1 at The Geneological World of Phylogenetic Networks. David Morrison at Uppsala, Sweden wrote the post. Read it at Carnival of Evolution, No. 67 — Wallace centenary edition.
Charles Darwin's Tree of Life metaphor (from 1859) has become world-famous. However, Alfred Russel Wallace, who independently developed the idea of evolution by means of natural selection, had already used a very similar image in 1855, when he noted: "the analogy of a branching tree [is] the best mode of representing the natural arrangement of species ... a complicated branching of the lines of affinity, as intricate as the twigs of a gnarled oak ... we have only fragments of this vast system, the stem and main branches being represented by extinct species of which we have no knowledge, while a vast mass of limbs and boughs and minute twigs and scattered leaves is what we have to place in order, and determine the true position each originally occupied with regard to the others".
This past year has been one in which many people commemorated the death of Wallace (1823-1913), and so it seems appropriate to join them for the final summary of 2013's posts at the Carnival of Evolution.
The next Carnival of Evolution will be at Byte Size Biology. Nobody has volunteered to host the February edition.
If you want to host a Carnival of Evolution please contact Bjørn Østman. Bjørn is always looking for someone to host the Carnival of Evolution. He would prefer someone who has not hosted before but repeat hosts are more than welcome right now! Bjørn is threatening to name YOU as host even if you don't volunteer! Contact him at the Carnival of Evolution blog. You can send articles directly to him or you can submit your articles at Carnival of Evolution although you now have to register to post a submission. Please alert Bjørn or the upcoming host if you see an article that should be included in next month's. You don't have to be the author to nominate a post.
CoE on Facebook
CoE on Twitter
1. That's anyone who isn't Canadian. It's a very large group.
12:14 PM
Admin
The Princeton Guide to Evolution is a collection of 107 articles on various aspect of evolution. The editors felt they should address the obvious conflict between evolution/science and religion. There are at least five different approaches they could have taken.
- An atheist perspective on the incompatibility of evolution/science and religion. Richard Dawkins or Jerry Coyne would be good choices.
- An atheist perspective on the compatibility of science and religion (the accommodationist view). Michael Ruse or Nick Matzke are obvious choices.
- A theist view of the incompatibility of evolution and religion. Phillip Johnson could have explained this view but so could a number of other creationists.
- A theist explanation of the compatibility of evolution/science as long as they stick to their proper magisteria. Francis Collins, Ken Miller, and several other religious scientists could present their case.
- The editors could have published four articles representing the main viewpoints or commissioned a single article that would have covered all the angles.
The big advantage of an atheist perspective is that it fairly represents the views of a majority of evolutionary biologists. Having a theist write the article would not be as fair. I think we can all agree that option #5 is by far the best choice.
Before reading any further, take a minute to decide what you would do if you were the editors of The Princeton Guide to Evolution.
Read more »
1:38 PM
Admin
A few days ago, I asked the following questions, Is the "Modern Synthesis" effectively dead?, and What do they mean when they say they want to extend the Modern Synthesis?. The point I was trying to make was that there are many different views on evolutionary theory and it's often difficult to figure out which version of evolutionary theory someone is defending.
For example, which version of evolutionary theory is compatible with the "selfish gene" as a metaphor for evolution? Or for adaptation? Which version of the "Modern Synthesis" is being attacked in the book edited by Massimo Pigliucci and Gerd Müller? Is it the version defended by Ernst Mayr? Does it incorporate Neutral Theory and random genetic drift?
Read more »
1:08 PM
Admin
The "Modern Synthesis," or modern evolutionary synthesis, refers to a framework of evolutionary theory developed and promoted by prominent biologists in the 1940s. The term comes from the subtitle of a 1942 book by Julian Huxley. The central theme was the integration of "classic" evolution with population genetics.
Although the original version was fairly broad, the later versions of the "Modern Synthesis" were much less so. The so-called "hardening" of the Modern Synthesis has been documented by many historians; notably, Stephen Jay Gould. By the time of the Darwin Centennial (1959) most biologists thought of the "Modern Synthesis" as a form of Darwinism + population genetics where natural selection was pretty much the only game in town.
Read more »
7:18 AM
Admin
The article by David Dobbs [Die, selfish gene, die] has stirred up a lot of biologists. Some of them (Coyne, Dawkins) pointed out why David Dobbs is wrong about this particular attack on Darwinian ordodoxy while others (PZ Myers) have defended Dobbs.
Razib Khan has weighed in [Evolutionary orthodoxy may be boring, but it is probably true]. I strongly disagree with his post but it's important to be clear about the disagreement. If "evolution orthodoxy" means evolution by natural selection then, yes, it is definitely true. That's not being disputed. The question isn't whether evolution orthodoxy is correct, it's whether it is sufficient.
I'm also not defending the specifics of Dobbs' article. Many of the most recent attempts to extend evolutionary theory are misguided and Dobbs happens to focus on one of these misguided attempts. However, the main point of Dobbs' article was that the "selfish gene" metaphor is an inappropriate metaphor for evolution and I agree strongly with this conclusion even though Dobbs' argument was faulty.
Read more »
5:32 AM
Admin
Jerry Coyne posted a couple of tweets (see below) from Steven Pinker (photo) at Dawkins responds to Dobbs.
We shouldn't be surprised at the first one since Pinker is an evolutionary psychologist with a strong tendency to adaptationism. I don't know exactly what he means by "neo-Darwinism" (does he?) but I strongly suspect that it's very much like Darwinism. I'd love to know whether he thinks Neutral Theory and random genetic drift have been successful challenges to neo-Darwinism. If not, then it must mean that neo-Darwinism has incorporated those views. In that case, neo-Darwinism must have begun in the 1970s and somebody picked a very bad name for this view of evolutionary theory.
I think it's more likely that Pinker is just not thinking about Neutral Theory and random genetic drift when he says that challenges to neo-Darwinism have all failed to hold water.
The second tweet means that molecular biologists never knew about tRNA genes or ribosomal RNA genes or the genes for other RNAs that have won Nobel Prizes. I find this very surprising. It's true that some biochemists and molecular biologists are a bit behind in their field but I don't think it's fair to say that "molecular biologists" (i.e. the knowledgeable experts in the field) re-defined the word "gene" in that way.
10:31 AM
Admin
"Die, selfish gene, die!" is the provocative title of an article by science writer David Dobbs [Die, selfish gene die!].
Dobbs begins with ....
The selfish gene is one of the most successful science metaphors ever invented. Unfortunately, it’s wrong.
The article attracted the attention of Jerry Coyne who effectively dismantles the strange ideas promoted by Dobbs. Read all about it at: David Dobbs mucks up evolution, part I and David Dobbs mucks up evolution, part II.
As it turns out, this is just another example of a science writer who has been mesmerized by the latest effort to overthrow modern evolutionary theory by some scientist promoting their own work. In this case it's Mary Jane West-Eberhard.
But there's a more serious issue here and I'm not sure that Jerry Coyne recognizes it. The selfish gene metaphor can be interpreted in several different ways. Here's how Richard Dawkins describes it in the preface to the 1989 edition of The Selfish Gene.
The selfish gene theory is Darwin's theory, expressed in a way that Darwin did not choose but whose aptness, I should like to think, he would instantly have recognized and delighted in. It is in fact a logical outgrowth of orthodox neo-Darwinism, but expressed as a novel image. Rather than focus on the individual organism, it takes a gene's-eye view of nature.
Lot's of people misunderstand the selfish gene metaphor. They think it means that organisms behave selfishly but that's not what Dawkins meant at all.
Jerry Coyne explains this in his book Why Evolution Is True (p. 226) ....
As Dawkins shows clearly, the "selfish" gene is a metaphor for how natural selection works. Genes act as if they're selfish molecules: those that produce better adaptations act as if they're elbowing out other genes in the battle for future existence. And, to be sure, selfish genes can produce selfish behaviors. But there is also a huge scientific literature on how evolution can favor genes that lead to cooperation, altruism, and even morality.
There are two main criticisms of the selfish gene metaphor and both of them are quite valid. It's the reason why Dawkin's view hasn't caught on the the evolutionary biology textbooks. It usually merits nothing more than a footnote.
The most damning criticism comes from evolutionary biologists who point out that the primary unit of selection is the individual and not the gene. Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin are prominent opponents of what they see as an unnecessary reductionism in Dawkins' writing. Clearly, hierarchical theory (Gould) is inconsistent with the selfish gene metaphor because evolution can also operate at the level of groups and species (according to Gould and others). There are plenty of other evolutionary biologists who object to selfish genes for these reasons.
The second objection comes from the focus on natural selection and "Darwinism" (or neo-Darwinism). Many evolutionary biologists have a pluralistic view of modern evolutionary theory. That view includes random genetic drift where the appropriate metaphor might be "lucky gene" or "accidental gene." The problem with the Dawkins' metaphor, according to these critiques, is not that "selfish genes" don't exist, it's that the metaphor is not appropriate for evolution in general.
Let me add one thing, though. I’m constantly puzzled these days by how often people argue that the neo-Darwinian synthesis is wrong, and that we need a new paradigm. Genetic assimilation, epigenetics, horizontal gene transfer—all of these buzzwords are evoked as reasons to jettison our “conventional” view of evolution. But always, when you look at the data, the evidence that these phenomena will overturn neo-Darwinism is nonexistent.
I’ve already written a lot on the epigenetics hype, and have shown that there’s no evidence that a single adaptation in nature involves the fixation in the DNA of an epigenetic alteration of the genome that isn’t initially inherited. Yet people keep banging on about epigenetics.
I’m not sure why the hype continues, but perhaps it has to do with the fact that the main paradigm of evolution—the neo-Darwinian synthesis—is largely consolidated, and is correct. Sure, there are surprises to come, and interesting new phenomena, but there’s no “quantum mechanics” of evolution on the horizon. Some theories don’t need to be overthrown because they’re generally right. Perhaps people don’t like working in a field where there’s no new “paradigm” to forge, and Kuhn has ruined us all!
The "neo-Darwinism is dead" trend may have to do with ambition, or perhaps with boredom. I don’t know. What I do know is that the many recent challenges to neo-Darwinism have all failed to hold water, but people keep pouring liquid into that sieve.
The problem here is that Jerry doesn't really say what he means by "neo-Darwinism." Most of his writing suggests that he's talking about natural selection, albeit updated by a knowledge of genetics. He does mention, from time to time, random genetic drift and other aspects of modern evolutionary theory but I'm not sure if he appreciates the fact that some legitimate evolutionary biologists really do think that neo-Darwinism is dead.
Here's the Wikipedia description of neo-Darwinism. It illustrates the problem.
Neo-Darwinism is the 'modern synthesis' of Darwinian evolution through natural selection with Mendelian genetics, the latter being a set of primary tenets specifying that evolution involves the transmission of characteristics from parent to child through the mechanism of genetic transfer, rather than the 'blending process' of pre-Mendelian evolutionary science. Neo-Darwinism can also designate Darwin's ideas of natural selection separated from his hypothesis of Pangenesis as a Lamarckian source of variation involving blending inheritance.
I think we should refer to modern evolutionary theory as "modern evolutionary theory" in order to make sure we're not talking about "Darwinism," "neo-Darwinism," or the hardened version of the "Modern Synthesis." Modern evolutionary theory includes an important role for random genetic drift, Neutral Theory, and population genetics.
We could clarify a lot of discussion if we stopped talking about extending "Darwinism" or extending the Modern Synthesis or proclaiming once again that the selfish gene has died. In fact, the selfish gene has died, it died almost thirty years ago but most people don't know that. RIP.
12:03 PM
Admin
Richard Lenski set up twelve flasks of E. coli B back in 1988. They were allowed to grow overnight in minimal medium containing 139μM glucose and 1,700 μM citrate. The glucose was the only carbon source that the parent strain could use and it limited growth of the cultures. The citrate was present as a standard chelating agent. The bacteria could not take up citrate and use it as an additional carbon source.
Every day the culture was diluted by transferring one ml to 99 ml of fresh medium (1/100). There were 6.64 generations per day or 2,423 generations per year (slightly more in a leap year).
These cultures were under strong selective pressure. Individual bacteria that could grow faster would out-compete other bacteria in the culture and take over. Lenski expected that each culture would show a variety of different solutions to the selective pressure with many common mutations and many that could be unusual.
Read more »
.JPG)
.jpg)
