Steven Pinker, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Jerry Coyne, Stewart Brand. These are just a few of the intellectual heavy-hitters you will find in one of the best conversations I have ever witnessed on the web. While most blog comment threads quickly degenerate into ad hominem mudslinging and and worthless tangential banter, the comment thread I speak of is a well curated invite-only debate about one of the most perplexing ideas in natural philosophy - the evolution of altruism.
Here are some rousing excerpts from the conversation - In which philosopher Dan Dennett proposes using intellectual judo against intelligent design proponents by co-opting the very word "design" to explain the intricate molecular machines produced by natural selection.
I recently overheard a conversation among some young people in a bar about the marvels of the nano-machinery discovered inside all cells. "When you see all those fantastic little robots working away, how can you possibly believe in evolution!" one exclaimed, and another nodded wisely. Somehow these folks had gotten the impression that evolutionary biologists thought that the intricacies and ingenuities of life's processes weren't all that wonderful. These evolution-doubters were not rednecks; they were Harvard Medical students! They hugely underestimated the power of natural selection because they had been told by evolutionary biologists, again and again, that there is no actual design in nature, only the appearance of design. This episode strongly suggested to me that one of the themes that has been gaining ground in "common knowledge" is that evolutionary biologists are reluctant to "admit" or "acknowledge" the manifest design in nature. I recommend instead the expository policy of calling nature's marvels design, as real as any design in the universe, but just not the products of an intelligent designer. There could be a good use for "designoid," to refer to the truly only apparent design manifest, for example, in all the complicated chemical apparatus that cartoonists draw when they need to illustrate a laboratory—it looks impressive to the naïve eye, but is just a nonsensical hodgepodge of tubes, bunsen burners, retorts and the like. That is apparent design; the design in nature, in contrast, is typically as good as, or even much better than, the designs we "intelligent" artificers have yet devised. They work really well, which is as good a criterion of design as any, in my opinion.
And in prophetic sweep Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, predicts horizontal gene transfer will be found to have broader influence on evolution than previously thought. If you are unfamiliar with the concept of horizontal gene transfer just think of updating your iPhone apps but on a genetic level.
My prediction is that new research in microbial ecology and evolution will change everything in how we think about genes and evolution. Because of the prevalence of "horizontal" gene transfer (by six different ways) in micro-organisms, they don't have Darwinian species, and their evolution looks Lamarckian—traits are acquired on the fly and passed on to offspring. "Multi-level selection" is likely to extend downward below Darwinian species as well as upward into groups. Like everything in biology it will be messy and squishy. Simplistic Darwinian selection-by-mutation got pummeled by sexual recombination, chromosome doubling and tripling, kin selection, extended phenotype, endo-symbiosis (Margulis), regulatory genes, mitochondrial genomes, transgenic gene flow, and doubtless more to come. The longer and closer you look, the gnarlier it gets, so far.
You can read the entire thread at The Edge where Steven Pinker started this particular conversation. I have written about this debate here on Tom Paine's Ghost and for the World Science Festival.
One of the best summaries of the debate was written by my colleague Eric Michael Johnson for the Scientific American Blog Network. It is titled The Good Fight. Read it here.
I have decided to focus my "homework" leading up to the World Science Festival on E.O. Wilson and his recent change of mind regarding a
long-held tenet of evolutionary biology - inclusive fitness. The theory
of inclusive fitness provides a logical and mathematical framework to
rationalize kin-selection. Kin-selection explains why behavioral traits
such as self-sacrifice come to be in certain species. Although it
appears an organism is sacrificing their life for the "greater-good"
they are really just behaving that way so that their genes can be passed
on through their relatives who they are trying to help survive. Wilson
has abandoned the idea that altruistic behavior emerges out of the
struggle for existence as previously explained by a simple equation
championed by none other that HIMSELF at an earlier stage in his life.
The equation is rB>C. In which r is a relatedness factor B is the fitness Benefit to the altruistic organism and C is the Cost of
genetic fitness to the organism for carrying out the act of altruism.
This equation was put forth and formalized by the British evolutionary
biologist W.D. Hamilton in the 1960's.
So why has Wilson changed his mind about inclusive fitness? In a 2010 paper in the prestigious scientific journal Nature Wilson,
along with colleagues Martin Nowak and Corina Tarnita claim there is
not enough evidence in the real world of organisms who display altruistic
behavior that follow the rule rB>C. They go further to say that the
factors in the equation, B and C are too difficult to quantify. Wilson admits
the equation is simple, elegant, and alluring however he maintains that
it is too simple and needs revision.
Wilson's
flip-flop (btw, I am not using flip-flop in a negative way here as I
think in science changing one's mind is a virtue not a vice) has caused
an uproar in the scientific community drawing heavy criticism from some
of the most vocal evolutionary biologists including Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins.
Wilson's critics have said he is using his authority to make
assumptions without backing up his claims with real-world data (though Wilson does cite termite and ambrosia beetle societies). Wilson
fires back at them with the same criticism, saying they have a lack of
data on their side (though they do cite sawfly, wasp and bee societies). This makes for the juiciest kind of intellectual
debate, one that sends scientists out in the field in search for
more evidence.
Meanwhile, Wilson's apparent embrace of
"group-selection" has opened the flood-gates for scholars from the
humanities to jump on board the cooperation-train and use
"group-selection" to explain social phenomenon like the persistence of
religion in human society and the rapid growth of social networks. Among
these are psychologist Jonathan Haidt and social commentator David Brooks. The worry here is that the scientific debate over evidence will be overlooked by the hungry mobs of humanitarians so eager to extract rationale for morals out of biology.
I am excited to go into this debate and try as I might to filter out the wheat from the chaff when it comes to sound-science. It gets particularly noisy when morals get involved. I have seen this before at the World Science Festival as I covered the last "Faith and Science" discussion panel in 2010. My big worry is that the conversation will devolve into a silly argument about the participants underlying motives as the festival is in large part funded by a controversial organization called the John Templeton Foundation. Compounding this fear of mine is that Matin Nowak (the Austrian born, Harvard mathematician, and co-author of E.O.Wilson's) has received many millions of dollars form the Templeton foundation for his research. Indeed, many of the intellectuals in the Wilson camp are notorious in the scientific community for receiving money from Templeton (Jonathan Haidt winning the Templeton prize in 2001.) My hope is that the conversation can stick to the science and not get railroaded by money and politics.
This post has been entered into the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center's travel award contest. Winner's will receive money to help pay for the travel expenses for attending the Science Online conference to be held at the end of January 2013 in Raleigh, North Carolina. Apply for the travel award here!
