Re: Book recommendation

From: Larry Moran (lamoran_at_bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca)
Date: 03/03/05 

Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2005 13:07:21 -0500 (EST)

On Wed, 2 Mar 2005 23:01:19 -0500 (EST),
name_and_address_supplied@hotmail.com
<name_and_address_supplied@hotmail.com> wrote:

[snip]

> Yes, Gould opposed evolutionary psychology. I'm not a fan myself. Yes,
> Cosmides and Tooby are evolutionary psychologists. Yes, this is almost
> certainly what motivated this review. But, still, their discussion of
> Gould's place in evolutionary biology is, in my experience,
> representative of the consensus view of the field. Cosmides and Tooby
> quote Maynard Smith on Gould, and even if you ignore the remainder of
> the essay on the basis that it comes from crack-pot evolutionary
> psychologists, you still have JMS's remarks, which are unequivocal:
>
> "Because of the excellence of his essays, he has come to be seen by
> non-biologists as the preeminent evolutionary theorist. In contrast,
> the evolutionary biologists with whom I have discussed his work tend to
> see him as a man whose ideas are so confused as to be hardly worth
> bothering with, but as one who should not be publicly criticized
> because he is at least on our side against the creationists."
>
> and
>
> "[Gould] is giving non-biologists a largely false picture of the state
> of evolutionary theory"
>
> and the late Ernst Mayr, on Gould and his cronies:
>
> "[they] quite conspicuously misrepresent the views of [biology's]
> leading spokesmen."
>
> I've lifted these straight from the essay. It is definitely worth a
> read.

There are two separate issues here.

  1. Is Gould mostly correct when it comes to evolutionary theory?
  2. Do the majority of evolutionary biologists appreciate the
     contributions that Gould made?

As far as I'm concerned the answer to the first question is "yes."

The second question is more difficult. It's clear that John Maynard Smith
never understood the points that Gould was making and neither does his
friend Richard Dawkins. It's no suprise that these Ultra-Darwinians mostly
talk to people who agree with them. It's no suprise that those other
evolutionary biologists also have difficulty understanding Gould's ideas.
(As a group the Ultra-Darwinians consistently misrepresent and distort Gould.
Daniel Dennett has been completely bamboozled by them.)

However, I note that any discussion of modern evolutionary theory now
includes a debate about adaptionism, the pros and cons of punctuated
equilibria, the relevance of hierarchical theory, the importance of
contingency, the role of ontogeny and development, and the illusion of
progress. That's not a bad legacy for someone whose "ideas are so confused as
to be hardly worth bothering with."

Are there any objective measures? Perhaps. I looked at the list of
references in the back of Futuyma's textbook. There are 16 with Gould as
first author, 19 for Maynard Smith, and 17 for Mayr. (Dawkins has 3.) Why
would there be 16 references to Gould if he's really giving everyone a false
image of the state of evolutionary theory?

Gould received many awards from his peers, including other evolutionary
biologists. Why would they give him a scientific award if they thought his
ideas were silly?

Larry Moran

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