Ant Metropolis: superorganism manifest?

Frans de Waal and Jeff Schloss: a Conversation about Science and God

Social Creatures

The individual vs. group-selection debate is a "can of worms" as Frans de Waal recently put it.

Do I think there is a genetic component to cooperation? Yes, probably. Is there a special set of genes in ants, ambrosia beetles and human beings that make us uniquely social creatures? I don't know.

When I first read Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene I took away much inspiration. The clarity with which he writes leads the reader to a sense of certitude on how genes proliferate and persist. In an era of rampant disparity in global science literacy it is good to have sure-footed thinkers at the forefront of science communication. As my friend John Romano said recently "Evolution is a theory like gravity is a theory." It is a good thing to have people shouting this from the rooftops.

But, as Jacob Bronowski echos in my mind "science is a tribute to what we can know, although we are fallible" I can not help but think that giving people certainty instead of training them in the ability to think critically for themselves may be more harmful to the spread of science in the long run. The kind of in-fighting that happens about the details gets interpreted by the public at large as - there is no scientific consensus on evolution. When it comes to "paradigm-shifts" in evolutionary biology you often see the tribal side of scientists come out. Camps are formed, lines drawn, fires lit.

E.O. Wilson makes a valid criticism of Dawkins - he has not practiced research science in decades, nor has he had a peer-reviewed paper published in quite some time.

The counter-criticism of Wilson is that his recent switch to embracing a form of "group-selection"  the as-yet-to-be defined "Multi-level selection" may be unwittingly urged by dollar signs in the form of Templeton Foundation money funneled toward his in silico collaborator Martin Nowak. Not to mention the potential to bump up book sales when a book is branded "controversial." (Read more about the Templeton Foundation here.)

Whenever we try to put words on top of natural phenomena there are certain aspects of the concept that get lost in translation as words are by their very nature metaphors. I think this is what is happening to concepts like "inclusive fitness" and "group selection." They are fuzzy all-encompassing terms for broader processes evolutionary biologists are trying to reconcile through observation. This phenomenon of chasing catch-phrases is harmful to science in my opinion. It predisposes researchers to pursue sexy but poorly defined buzz-words rather than novel questions.

If you want to read more about the academic brawl surrounding E.O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins and "group selection" fellow Blogger Eric Michael Johnson has a wonderfully comprehensive piece on his Scientific American blog.   I have also attempted to cover this before.

The gang's all here: a killer thread

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. 

EO Wilson responds in NYTimes

In an opinion piece published online EO Wilson responds directly to his critics regarding his recent rethink of a long held tenet of evolutionary biology.  Wilson officially abandoned his long-held belief that cooperative and altruistic behavior among some organisms can be simply explained as a veiled selfishness (kin selection) in 2010. This came after a lifetime promoting the opposing view. In a controversial peer-reviewed Nature paper titled "the evolution of eusociality" Wilson explains why he thinks kin selection theory is insufficient to explain altruistic behavior and ought to be replaced with multi-level selection theory. With the publication of this paper Wilson and coauthors ignited a massive debate that has recently unfurled in popular media. Wilson explains.

A strong reaction from supporters of kin selection not surprisingly ensued, and soon afterward more than 130 of them famously signed on to protest our replacement of kin selection by multilevel selection, and most emphatically the key role given to group selection. But at no time have our mathematical and empirical arguments been refuted or even seriously challenged. Since that protest, the number of supporters of the multilevel selection approach has grown, to the extent that a similarly long list of signatories could be obtained. But such exercises are futile: science is not advanced by polling. If it were, we would still be releasing phlogiston to burn logs and navigating the sky with geocentric maps.

Though I may not accept multi-level selection theory currently I do like Wilson's point that "science is not advanced by polling."  As a citizen of a post-enlightenment democracy my hope is that all politics will eventually die at the hand of science. Politics is subject to rhetoric. Science in an idealized sense is immune to rhetoric. Science can be spun in all kinds of directions but at its core really is not subject to opinion. The existence of seasonal Antarctic ice layers measurable for nearly 740,000 years is indisputable. The existence of fossilized trilobites in Cambrian geologic formation is indisputable, the fact that you and I have nearly identical genetic code for hemoglobin molecules is indisputable. And so I am undaunted by this new debate in evolutionary theory. In the new version of the group selection vs. kin selection debate no one person's opinion will affect the validity of one over the other. 

Read EO Wilson's entire opinion piece here. See my previous coverage of this topic here and here. So far IMHO Steven Pinker has given the most complete analysis of the debate particularly the short comings of group selection theory.

Collaborative Genes

By Kristopher Hite

The trait I admire most in a fellow thinker is the ability to entertain an idea without necessarily swallowing it whole. With that in mind, I eagerly listened to E.O. Wilson's On the Shoulders of Giants address at the World Science Festival in New York City last week.

I recently wrote about Wilson and his controversial rethink of altruism. Long story short, Wilson has created a ruckus by abandoning his long-held belief that cooperative and altruistic behavior among organisms can be simply explained as a veiled selfishness. When an organism appears to behave altruistically by sacrificing themselves or putting themselves in danger it is actually just the individual genes jockeying to survive by keeping identical copies of themselves alive in their relatives. This theory is known as inclusive fitness.

 In place of inclusive fitness E.O. Wilson now seems to embrace the controversial concept of “group selection.” This is the idea that genes for altruism persist by benefiting the entire group. The altruistic trait persists by helping groups themselves multiply; grow into larger and larger networks with more and more biomass. In group selection theory this all happens despite the fact that the altruistic trait is detrimental to the individual. Altruistic genes that band together and cooperate out compete groups of genes that act selfishly.

To me, both models seem like they could apply to different genes.

After the address, I had the rare opportunity to ask Wilson directly about his recent change of heart. I asked,

"If the gene is the basic unit of selection—the physical thing that makes it though the sieve of natural selection—then why do we need a 'group selection' model? And if a gene is not the basic unit of selection, then what is?" 

The question struck a chord. Wilson replied that he had been anticipating it, in fact, and quickly acknowledged that that his recent move away from the theory of inclusive fitness had rankled many people, including the famed evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins who has popularized the selfish-gene view of evolution and has been a vocal critic of group selection. But Wilson stuck to his guns, saying,

"Yes, the gene is the basic unit of selection, but the phenotype is the target. It is as simple as that." 

Wilson flashed a smile, and for a moment I was starstruck, caught up in the glow of Wilson's legendary charm. The spell broke when I began to really chew on his answer. I was still extremely confused about how the concept of "phenotype as target" was supposed to justify group-selection theory. As I rode the elevator downstairs, I felt a pang of guilt for not pressing harder. I imagined a tiny Richard Dawkins sitting on my shoulder, eyebrows in a scowl, chiding me, "Kristopher, don't you remember how beautifully I explained all this to you in my book, The Selfish Gene?? How could you turn on me? Hamilton had it right, the gene is the one ring to rule them all everything else is myth!"

On the other shoulder (the "giant shoulder," one might say), I pictured a miniature E.O. Wilson, still charming in his diminutive tweed blazer, reassuring me, "Kristopher, everything is going to be alright as long as we work together in this big happy peer-reviewing group of ours."

I was, and still am, torn. As I stepped out of the elevator, I serendipitously met Nobel Laureate Harold Varmus, former head of the NIH, and I took the opportunity to ask him what he thought E.O. Wilson meant when he said "phenotype is the target of selection." Dr. Varmus clarified—somewhat. Phenotype, he explained, is the vehicle genes ride inside the physical manifestation of the genes. Selective environmental pressure, like changing atmospheric oxygen levels, or changing local climates are not capable of acting directly on any single isolated gene.

After I directed Dr. Varmus and his wife to the Christopher Street subway station, I continued to replay his answer in my head. If natural selection happens at the level of the physical manifestation of the genes – the phenotype, and there is no organism in existence with only one gene inside, then all genes must be collaborative in a sense.

And this is where I am in my thought process. If you have any corrections or criticisms I welcome them. They will only add to my understanding.