>I am conscious that even eminent Darwinists like Gould do not
>necessarily accept these continuous adaptive change stories:
>
Just a couple of comments:
Gould has been severely criticized for his criticisms of "just so
stories", most recently by Daniel Dennett (chpt 10 of <Darwin's
Dangerous Idea>). An excellent critique of this chapter of Dennett's
book recently (Dec. 8) appeared on sci.bio.evolution, written by
Jeremy C. Ahouse (Biology Department, Brandeis University). If
people are unable to get this newsgroup, and there is enough
interest, I could post the review to the reflector (it is long).
Secondly, Gould is not alone in this type of criticism. The
"complexity/self-organiztionalist/structuralist" crowd I've
often referred to also complains about these types of abuses
extensively. Here's an example I ran across this morning:
"Mechanism" is an overused term, and that it has become
such a ubiquitous buzzword in neo-Darwinian rhetoric points
to still more grounds for semantic housecleaning.
"Mechanism" is not coextensive with causation. Yet it does
have a certain _nonnegotiable_ meaning. In every other branch
of learning that claims the status of science "mechanism"
means a description of how, not why, a phenomenon occurs.
On this subject the evolutionary literature becomes so
embarrasingly muddled, with whys blurring into hows and
teleology blurring into mechanism, that it is a wonder
creationists have not gleefully translated it into poster
material. It is a problem that needs to be frankly faced in
expanding evolutionary epistemology. Insisting on the
mechanistic purity of evolutionary science while holding
to a rigid autonomy-of-biology posture serves only to
elevate adaptation to the status of final cause and
reduce mechanism to a slogan.
-- Jeffrey Wicken, "Thermodynamics, Evolution, and
Emergence: Ingredients for a New Synthesis," in
<Entropy, Information, and Evolution: New Perspectives
on Physical and Biological Evolution>, B.H. Weber et al,
eds., MIT Press, 1988, pp. 139-169.
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Brian Harper |
Associate Professor | "It is not certain that all is uncertain,
Applied Mechanics | to the glory of skepticism" -- Pascal
Ohio State University |
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