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Author
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Topic: Darwinism as an Idol of the Theatre
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fish
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Member # 213
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posted 19. June 2002 05:34
James,
I do not believe that they are alluding to natural selection at all.
All they are alluding to is that many biological traits appear to have benefits for fitness. That is to say that if you took the trait away, the organism would have less offspring on average.
You dont need to be a Darwinist to believe this statement is true for a large majority of biologically observed traits.
Nor do I agree that their statement is in any way redundant.
In order to understand a trait in terms of the ecology of the organism, one wishes to know what is its effect on fitness. Their stament is that it benefits fitness through foraging efficiency.
This is not obvious but a reasonable argument to make.
[ 19 June 2002, 12:04: Message edited by: fish ]
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Erik
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posted 19. June 2002 16:03
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James Barham (in the first post): One of the chief complaints against Darwinism that many of us here at Brainstorms have is that it functions more as an ideology than as a true scientific theory. Specifically, it is often invoked in scientific papers and popular science accounts in a way that has nothing to do with the actual evidence being presented, but rather as a way to reassure the reader that the author subscribes to the faith (in spite of the seemingly miraculous biological events being described), and that everything is okay.
James Barham: I realize that the vast majority of work in biology makes no reference to Darwinism at all---for the very good reason that it is largely irrelevant. What matters for understanding living systems is understanding how the physical and chemical processes of the cell are organized according to functional logic.
My complaint is that, to the minor extent that Darwinism is invoked at all, it is mainly as window dressing. But this scientifically minor and operationally useless doctrine then becomes blown up into a grand metaphysics or worldview in the popular press that supposedly has the authority of science behind it. This is what I mean by its being an "Idol of the Theater."
You began your slander by claiming that "Darwinism" is often invoked when it is irrelevant. Now you claim that "Darwinism" is seldom invoked. A contradiction.
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James Barham: Also, I might add that I think it is a little disingenuous for Darwinian scientists to disavow the image of their work that has so seized the popular imagination. If you really disagree so strongly with popular presentations of your ideas, you might consider writing a letter to the editor, or even a popular book to set things straight. I would certainly be the first to congratulate you, if you did.
I should point out, for the record, that I am not a biologist.
I have not stated whether I disagree or agree with how science is presented to general public. Some simplifications must be done. In this particular case, I agree that what the current mainstream view of the origin of spider silk is irrelevent in an article about transgenic goats (unless, of course, the genes transferred were spider genes coding for silk, in which case it is perfectly fine to mention what how the vast majority of all biologists think it originated provided that there is a consensus view). I would have preferred a more accurate description of the process, though.
As for disavowing the image of their work, I dare say that it is not only evolutionary biology that is often misunderstood in the media and popular literature. For instance, most dinosaur paleontologists are probably not happy with the fact that pretty much any big, extinct animal may be referred to as "dinosaur" in the media. Most people doing genetic engineering are probably also unhappy with media image. Most physicists are probably unhappy with the mysticism in some popular presentations of quantum mechanics. Etc., etc..
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James Barham: [unnecessary rhetoric removed to save bandwidth]
I will do some investigating to try to come up with a good example of the ritual invocation of Darwinism in a scientific article (I have often noted this phenomenon in passing, but have not kept records).
Please do, and don't forget to count how many articles you had to look at before you found what you were looking for.
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James Barham: Could I challenge you as well---to come up with a discussion of natural selection that has some empirical content, and is not just invoking the mantra? And remember, I am not just talking about speculation about evolutionary scenarios, I am talking about explanations of putative evolutionary scenarios in terms of the RM/NS mechanism, that give a convincing mechanistic explanation without surreptitiously relying upon teleological factors.
Sure, but first I'll finish this discussion. I don't want to distract you from supporting your slanderous claims.
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James Barham: [text removed]
Now, in their conclusion, Nakagaki et al. write as follows:
"To maximize its foraging efficiency, and therefore its chances of survival, the plasmodium changes its shape in the maze to form one thick tube covering the shortest distance between the food sources."
I submit that the clause, "and therefore its chances of survival," serves no valid scientific purpose in this passage, but is in fact a mere ritual incantation to keep at bay the uncomfortable implications of their finding.
First, it should be mentioned that the article was published Nature, not Science. As for the actual comment, it does not suffice. All others things equal, it is obvious that being better at finding food will increase the chances of survival. How can you object to such an obvious trail of thought? If I told you that to maximize his chances of survival, the US president usually have bodygoards near by, would you necessarily think that I was making an evolutionary observation?
Go back to the journals I listed and search for genuine example of just so story. You have asserted that they are common, so you should have no trouble finding one.
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James Barham: Note that I do not wish to seem harsh with regard to Nakagaki et al. themselves. I think their paper is a beautiful and important piece of work. They are just bending to the protocols of their profession, in which these obeisances have to be made.
What do you think would have happed to the authors if they had not made this "obeisance"? Would they have been castrated, tortured to death, buried alive, ...? Why were they not allowed to write one of those articles that makes no reference to "Darwinism" at all? You did claim that "the vast majority of work in biology makes no reference to Darwinism at all".
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James Barham: But isn't it obvious that the offending clause is perfectly useless from a scientific point of view? Surely, it is the rational efficiency of the plasmodium that explains its survival, not the other way around. So why put that in at all?
Surely they included the words to describe a line of thought. It is of course obvious that being good at finding food increases the chances of survival, but it is reasonable to include the obvious parts of a line of thought for completeness.
In summary, Mr. Barham, you made some slanderous accusations against scientists, but you obviously find it difficult to back up your comments. Your two responses to me, which presumably were intended to support your claims, contained much more new slander than support of the original claims. Do you think that your rhetoric will (a) impress scientists and convince them that ID is not cloaked politics, or (b) alienate the ID movement even further in the eyes of working scientists?
Erik
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James A. Barham
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posted 19. June 2002 19:13
First, let me apologize for writing "Science" when I meant "Nature." I was holding a copy of the article in my hand, copying down the info., and still managed to screw it up. I am sorry.
Looking back over all of this exchange, which has certainly generated far more heat than light, and for which I accept responsibility, I think that I ought to have (a) toned down the rhetoric, and (b) made the following distinction clear.
(1) My claim (and that of many others) that the theory of natural selection does not in fact accomplish what it purports to accomplish. Namely, it does not get rid of the need for teleology in biology, because it ASSUMES the functional success of the individual organism in its logical structure. Changes in individuals drive population changes, not the other way around. Thus, natural selection begs the question of the teleology, or intelligent agency, of life. No theory should pretend to explain what it already assumes.
and
(2) My claim that natural selection is often invoked in scientific papers in a way that has little or no bearing on the empirical content of the papers.
Obviously, the second claim depends for most of its force on acceptance of (1). Since Darwinians by definition reject (1), I ought to have made clear that my claim that Darwinism is functioning as an Idol of the Theatre is only clear-cut from the point of view of accepting (1).
After all, that is Bacon's, and my, main point---an "Idol of the Theater" is any doctrine that imposes itself on the mind in a way that is not immediately justified by the evidence, and so clouds the judgment. But, one can only see that one has been in thrall to such an idol in retrospect. So, I should have been much clearer about what I was claiming, to avoid the implication of bad faith. I do not doubt that Darwinians believe what they say. I merely believe that their scientific judgment is severely clouded by what amounts to an ideological commitment.
I apologize for the overheated rhetorical tone of my initial post, which was a lapse in collegiality which I regret. However, I do not retract the substance. I believe that natural selection is a phenomenological description of the evolutionary process, not a scientific explanation of the teleology, or intelligent agency, of life. I also believe that de facto (if not in intent) it is often functioning as a kind of ideological faith, in the sense that, when it is mentioned at all in scientific papers, it adds nothing of empirical substance. And, finally, the very first biology paper (and I have scores of them lying about) that I picked up that mentioned natural selection at all (it's certainly true that most don't, although all of them could, to equal purpose), provided an excellent illustration of my claim. If this is still slander, then so be it.
[ 19 June 2002, 19:21: Message edited by: James A. Barham ]
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Frances
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posted 19. June 2002 19:42
Barham
quote:
(1) My claim (and that of many others) that the theory of natural selection does not in fact accomplish what it purports to accomplish. Namely, it does not get rid of the need for teleology in biology, because it ASSUMES the functional success of the individual organism in its logical structure. Changes in individuals drive population changes, not the other way around. Thus, natural selection begs the question of the teleology, or intelligent agency, of life. No theory should pretend to explain what it already assumes.
This argument seems very similar to the claim that natural selection is tautological. While it certainly is true that it can be formulated as such, Endler provides us with a definition in "Natural selection in the Wild" which does not suffer from this problem:
Natural selection can be defined as a process in which
If a population has
1. variation among individuals in some trait or attribute
2. a consistent relationship between that trait and mating ability, fertilizing ability, fertility, fecundity and or survivorship (fitness)
3. a consistent relationship for that trait between parents and their offspring which is at least partially independent of common environmental effects (inheritance)
then
1. the trait frequency distribution will differ among age classes
2. if the population is not at equilibrium then the trait distribution of all offspring in the population will be predictably different from that of all parents beyond that expected from conditions a and c alone.
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James A. Barham
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posted 19. June 2002 19:57
Frances:
My point is that the existence of the functionally successful trait responsible for reproductive advantage is already assumed in Endler's premise (2). So, at most, natural selection might be said to explain why the trait proliferates through the population in succeeding generations. It obvioulsy does not explain where the trait came from to begin with.
My claim is not that transitions between different functional states do not occur---I believe that they do (that is, I am an evolutionist). My claim is that natural selection (that is, change due to differential reproductive success) is a superficial description of what is going on, not a real explanation. It gives the appearance of explanatory power only because we are simply presupposing the functional integrity of the organism at every step. It is the hidden teleology assumed in Endler's premise (2) that is doing all the explanatory work.
BTW, it is commonly acknowledged that there are two meanings of "fitness"---one that is calculated ex post facto by measuring reproductive outcomes, and one that may be ascribed prospectively to organisms based on their likely funtional performance. The former is the one that is strictly speaking tautological. The latter is not tautological, but it is superficial for the reasons I already stated---namely, because it begs the question of the teleological integrity of the organism.
[ 19 June 2002, 19:58: Message edited by: James A. Barham ]
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Frances
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posted 19. June 2002 21:11
James wrote:
quote:
My point is that the existence of the functionally successful trait responsible for reproductive advantage is already assumed in Endler's premise (2). So, at most, natural selection might be said to explain why the trait proliferates through the population in succeeding generations. It obvioulsy does not explain where the trait came from to begin with.
Indeed, that is what natural selection is all about. It does not explain the origin of novelty 'merely' what happens with it. Natural selection is the prediction what will happen given premises 1 tthrough 3.
quote:
My claim is not that transitions between different functional states do not occur---I believe that they do (that is, I am an evolutionist). My claim is that natural selection (that is, change due to differential reproductive success) is a superficial description of what is going on, not a real explanation. It gives the appearance of explanatory power only because we are simply presupposing the functional integrity of the organism at every step. It is the hidden teleology assumed in Endler's premise (2) that is doing all the explanatory work.
I do not believe that natural selection is meant to be seen as an explanatory power of what is all happening within the organism, it merely predicts what happens to the population.
quote:
BTW, it is commonly acknowledged that there are two meanings of "fitness"---one that is calculated ex post facto by measuring reproductive outcomes, and one that may be ascribed prospectively to organisms based on their likely funtional performance. The former is the one that is strictly speaking tautological. The latter is not tautological, but it is superficial for the reasons I already stated---namely, because it begs the question of the teleological integrity of the organism.
I fail to understand the meaning of the term 'teleological integrity' could you please expand on this? Btw Endler identifies at least 5 different meanings of fitness
[ 19 June 2002, 21:12: Message edited by: Frances ]
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James A. Barham
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posted 20. June 2002 09:54
Frances:
By "teleological integrity" I merely mean the fact that every cell that has ever existed was a functionally integrated whole. "Teleological" just means "purposive" or "goal-seeking" (telos = end, in the sense of goal).
In my view, teleology (in this immanent or natural sense) consists of two aspects: a striving or "conative" aspect (the "end"), and an intelligent or "cognitive" aspect (the means). That is, every cell is actively striving to go on existing, and has a repertoire of means at its disposal (the individual mechanistic interactions it deploys) to enable it to do so.
The central problem of biology, then, is to understand how the individual mechanistic interactions that support life become COORDINATED in order to make teleological or goal-directed coherent action possible. I claim that natural selection cannot explain natural teleology in this sense because it tacitly presupposes it at each step of the evolutionary process. I believe that recent development in condensed-matter physics point us in the right direction, but of course that is highly debatable.
As an additional claim, I am saying that progress toward the solution of what I see as the central problem would be more rapid if so many of us were not convinced that natural selection had already explained everything. We have to perceive a problem as a problem before we can hope to solve it. I agree totally with what you say about the limitations of natural selection. But there are a lot of people out there who are not so modest about the explanatory powers of natural selection as you are (e.g., Daniel Dennett, who views nat. sel. as a "universal acid" that cuts through every problem in the world).
I mostly read these Darwinian philosophers, who I guess are less modest than working scientists. If I lost my cool in my initial posting, it was because I get sick and tired of seeing Darwinism promoted in the popular press as the proof that we are all just "vehicles for our genes," perhaps infected my a few "memes" for good measure. But that is not a good excuse, and I should have held my tongue. I guess it was a mistake to initiate this sociologically oriented thread at all, because this is perhaps not the right forum for such a discussion.
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nobody
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Member # 145
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posted 28. June 2002 15:19
James,
Would this article be something like what you had in mind? The writer assumes that ants learned how to become farmers. I'll post the first three paragraphs to give you the flavor of the article.
http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues02/may02/ants.html
Small Matters
Millions of years ago, leafcutter ants learned to grow fungi. But how? And why? And what do they have to teach us?
Somewhere in what is now South America, 50 million years ago, certain ant species began cultivating and eating fungus. Of all animals on earth, only these particular ants, several kinds of beetles and termites, and, of course, human beings grow their own food. Somehow, this new tribe of ants, the attines, went—in anthropomorphic terms—from being hunter-gatherers to farmers. How and why they did so remains a tantalizing mystery in biological science.
Writer Douglas Foster traveled to Brazil with two leading ant experts—Ted Schultz, a research entomologist from the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, and Ulrich Mueller, a behavioral ecologist from the University of Texas at Austin—who are interested in figuring out how the first ant, the mother of all gardener ants, began growing her colony's food. What did she look like? How did she behave? And how on earth did she manage such a momentous transformation?
Both scientists believe that the leafcutters' ability to grow and harvest fungi is akin to human agriculture. Using techniques in molecular biology, they and a team of researchers discovered that the most sophisticated leafcutters had propagated one fungus lineage for at least 23 million years.
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Frances
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posted 29. June 2002 00:15
With respect to the ants, there are some very interesting papers on the web
Including a phylogeny of the fungus itself.
A fascinating example of symbiosis including anti-biotics
There is a very interesting paper in
Nature on this topic where a third symbiont shows up
quote:
The well-studied, ancient and highly evolved mutualism between fungus-growing ants and their fungi has become a model system in the study of symbiosis1±5. Although it is thought at present to
involve only two symbionts, associated with each other in near isolation from other organisms1±5, the fungal gardens of attine ants are in fact host to a specialized and virulent parasitic fungus
of the genus Escovopsis (Ascomycotina)6. Because the ants and their fungi are mutually dependent, the maintenance of stable fungal monocultures in the presence of weeds or parasites is critical to the survival of both organisms. Here we describe a new, third mutualist in this symbiosis, a Filamentous bacterium (actinomycete) of the genus Streptomyces that produces antibiotics specifically targeted to suppress the growth of the specialized
garden-parasite Escovopsis. This third mutualist is associated with all species of fungus-growing ants studied, is carried upon regions of the ants' cuticle that are genus specific, is transmitted vertically (from parent to offspring colonies), and has the capacity to promote the growth of the fungal mutualist, indicating that the association of Streptomyces with attine ants is both highly evolved and of ancient origin.
Is the origin of this symbiosis unique or did it arise several times
PNAS has a very good paper on The agricultural pathology of ant fungus gardens
[ 29 June 2002, 00:18: Message edited by: Frances ]
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James A. Barham
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posted 30. June 2002 21:59
Nobody:
I wasn't able to access the full text of the article you mention via the link, so all I know of it is the summary available on the web site, which you also cite in your post.
I have no quarrel with anything written there. I am curious to know whether or not they throw in any cursory reference to natural selection later on in the article, though. If I get a chance in the next few days, I'll try to find it in the library.
Since I am saying that all living things are teleological to the core, obviously I see nothing wrong with engineering-style analyses aimed at discovering the way that particular functional systems work---although admittedly such speculations may be hard to constrain and formulate in a testable way.
My only point in opening this thread was that the air of mystery surrounding phenomena like these is not dissipated by invoking natural selection, because it is the relative functional success of biological traits that explains differential reproduction, not the other way around. Therefore, it seems to me that very often, when it is mentioned at all, natural selection tends to be invoked in a way that contributes nothing of substance to the scientific investigation in question, but rather functions as a sort of ritual reassurance to everyone that there is no problem here.
But there is a problem (or so I believe). The problem is that physical science has no place at all for purpose, whereas biological science merely presupposes it. Natural selection is often invoked in a way that purports to explain teleology away, but this is a mistake. The problem remains, and it is a very important one. The theory of natural selection is objectively functioning as a kind of mental anaesthetic to prevent us from feeling the psychological discomfort that contemplation of teleology causes. But psychological discomfort is not a bad thing. It is a good thing, because it is what drives discovery. We will never solve the problems we refuse to recognize as such.
[ 30 June 2002, 22:00: Message edited by: James A. Barham ]
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Frances
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posted 30. June 2002 22:45
James,
I am not at all convinced that the physical sciences have no place for purpose as it seems to be used by you. Mutations and variation allow for variability to arise and natural selection will 'amplify' those which are the 'fittests'. That this can lead to systems which seem to fit a purpose does not mean that such a purpose was forward looking but it's rather a backwards looking purpose. We see 'purpose' since it performs a function.
It might be helpful if we can first define the meaning of the word purpose as you are using it. You seem to be uncomfortable with the idea that
You are using teleology as 'goal seeking', can I assume that reaching this goal is what you consider to be the purpose?
I do not believe that evolution presupposes a goal thus the idea of teleology in biology seems to be misplaced.
Natural Selection does not explain where the trait came from and is thus limited by what variation provides it with. But do we need a forward looking goal to understand evolution of life or is it sufficient to understand how life adapted?
I do not think that purpose in the sense as 'goal seeking' is an accurate usage of the 'purpose' found in life.
Let's for instance take the example of the ants. What was the purpose as you see it? A symbiotic relationship? Or was this merely an outcome of the history of events?
As far as biological science, it merely presupposes relative fitness differences but nothing about purpose of the systems that arise.
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James A. Barham
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posted 01. July 2002 09:46
Frances:
Thank you for a very articulate and constructive post. I see now that I have been remiss in not explaining myself well enough.(I guess I have a tendency to presuppose everything that has already transpired on Brainstorms, in the ongoing discussion.) So, let me back up and lay out exactly what I mean when I say that "purpose" does not exist for physical science and is presupposed by biological purpose.
I do not deny that organisms are "just" physical systems, but I do deny that are "just like" other physical systems. It seems to me to be a simple empirical fact that even the simplest life form---the bacterium (excluding the virus from consideration for now)---is organized in such a way that it spontaneously strives to maintain itself in existence. It manages to do this by acting on "information," which is not a concept that is reducible to physics or chemistry.
Now, nonequilibrium thermodynamics, nonlinear dynamics, and quantum mechanics all show us physical mechanisms by means of which coherence and coordination can arise naturally. But none of them---at least as they have been developed so far---can fully account for the special kind of intelligent reactivity we see in the bacterial cell.
This difference is expressed by Kauffman and others by saying that whereas a hurricane minimizes energy (under a special set of boundary conditions or constraints), the cell is doing WORK---i.e., it is directing energy in time and space in such a way as to preserve itself in existence. Of course, this does not violate physics, but neither is it something that physics (as currently constituted) can explain. As I like to say, the cell is resisting (not violating) the second law. To say that this is no problem, because no violation occurs, is like saying there was no problem with understanding how birds can fly. Birds do not violate the law of gravity, but they resist it, and there was a problem there. What we need in biology to explain the teleological striving of life is a theory analogous to the theory of aerodynamics which explained flight. We need a biological equivalent of "lift," if you will.
Now, the question is, Does natural selection provide the explanation that physics lacks? I don't think it does, for the reasons I have already mentioned several times. I have no quarrel with natural selection as a superficial or phenomenological, short-hand description of the evolutionary process. My gripe is with the nearly universal assumption that nat. sel. explains evolution in the sense of reducing this purposive or intelligent striving property of the cell, and all of life, to pure mechanism. I believe this is a fundamental error that is holding up scientific progress. The reason I believe this, as you already know, is that nat. sel. can only sift out organismal forms that already exist. And I don't believe that appealing to "chance" is meaningful in explaining where the variant forms themselves come from, because from a statistical-mechanical point of view, there is no way that a cell can arise "by chance."
Now, Darwinians are usually glad to hand off the origin of life problem to someone else, but the same problem arises at each step of phylogenetic change. Every time a new viable form comes into existence, it does so primarily by virtue of being integrated into a pre-existing purposive framework. It is simply not an adequate response to say that this happens "by chance."
I don't deny that point mutations may play a role, althought there is increasing evidence that it is not nearly as great as has been assumed in the past. But even a point mutation is not truly "random" in any meaningful sense. Rather, it arises within a severely structured space of possibilities. The real issue is how such spaces can exist. This remains a deep mystery from a physical point of view.
I don't say that the evolutionary process is being pulled forward by an external attractor (that is "transcendent teleology"). What I am saying is that evolution is analogous to a "groping" forward by trial and error. But trial and error is itself a purposive process ("immanent teleology"). It is only random in a severely restricted sense. There is a structured space of possibilities, and some of them are normatively preferred to others.
I like to draw an analogy between the "scala naturae" in biology and the periodic table in chemistry. We don't say that the periodic table is pulling hydrogen forward toward gold in stellar nucleosynthesis. But neither do we say that first helium, then lithium, etc. arise "by chance" and are "selected" until we arive at gold. Rather, we have discovered a deeper theory of the way matter works that enables us to understand the deeper underlying reason for the order of the periodic table. I am saying that we require an analogoous theory of the living state to understand the order evident in biology that has presumably arisen through the evolutionary process. It is simply not good enough to talk in terms of "chance" and "selection."
One way to understand the problem with invoking "chance"in order to get around all difficulties is to think of bacterial chemotaxis. It is true that the bacterium "tumbles" at random, in the sense that it does not know in advance which direction is best (life is intelligent, but not clairvoyant, as I like to say). But the tumbling is suppressed when the chemical gradient is favorable. There is a PREFERRED state that is not simply reducible to a minimum-energy state. It is the preference that really explains what is happening, not the random aspect of the process. This is the heart of the mystery.
Now, of course, we can simulate all of this using negative feedback, percolation theory, network thermodynamics, and other formalisms. But I believe the heart of the mystery lies in the actual "protoplasm" itself. The cell simply "wants" to go on existing. This sounds anthropomorphic, but it describes a perfectly objective fact about life. (I don't pass any judgment on the cell's possible subjective experience here; I am speaking purely behaviorally.)
And, besides, if we believe that WE are natural entities, then our own beliefs and desires (intelligence and striving, cognition and conation, whatever you wish to call it) must have roots in lower life forms. I say the roots go all the way down, and are part and parcel of life as such. I also believe there must be a physical explanation for this. A handful of people are already exploring this (Mae-Wan Ho, Giuseppe Vitiello, Robert Laughlin), but this point of view is anathema to the Darwinian mainstream.
To summarize, the bottom line is that it is the intelligent striving of the cell that causes differential reproduction, and so "natural selection," not the other way around. Therefore, that is the thing that most needs explaining. The mainstream emphasis on selection merely serves to distract attention from the real scientific problem we are facing.
[ 01 July 2002, 09:54: Message edited by: James A. Barham ]
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