RE: Fw: Edward O. Wilson's "bombshell" on the reality of group
- From: "John Edser" <edser@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2006 01:10:40 -0400 (EDT)
"Robert Karl Stonjek" rstonjek@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:-
The idea that group selection (or multilevel selection) could have any
validity is sometimes dismissed in rather derogatory terms on this list.
It
may therefore come as a surprise that one of the main "fathers" of ev
psych,
Edward O. Wilson, now theorizes that kin selection is NOT the why of the
evolution of eusocial insects, as widely accepted, but rather group
selection -- and the same seems to hold true for humans.
JE:-
For well over three years now I have consistently provided mathematically
detailed arguments which can demonstrate why W. D. Hamilton's popular
inclusive fitness concept has always been organism group centric (group
selective). To my knowledge not a single sbe poster, including the
professionals who post here, have accepted these arguments. It can easily be
shown that Hamilton was only providing yet another classically group
selective argument and NOT an organism centric, gene centric or
revolutionary poly-centric argument for the evolution of "altruism"
(organism fitness altruism) within nature. It should be noted in light of
Wilson's about face that Hamilton's rule was originally but incorrectly
argued to have replaced discredited group selection allowing for the
evolution of "altruism" in nature via organism selection. Today, Hamilton's
argument is argued to be gene centric. This supposed gene level of
selection, which entirely dominates evolutionary theory today, was and
remains, a misused model of mono-centric Darwinian fertile organism fitness
within which the TOTAL fitness of Hamilton's single proactive actor was
deleted as a massive modeling oversimplification.
The error Hamilton et al keep on making is to allow Hamilton's model to
contest and finally replace its own parent theory (the theory the model was
oversimplified from): fertile organism centric Darwinism. Deleting the total
fitness of Hamilton's actor within Hamilton's Model has allowed Hamilton's
Rule to remain 100% relative to just nothing stated by anybody. To my
knowledge not a single sbe poster disagrees that Hamilton's rule was and
remains, a simplified/oversimplified model. I have requested for over 3
years now for anybody here to define what Hamilton's Rule was
simplified/oversimplified from. Nobody will provide answer. Thus Hamilton's
error has become a proven act of evasion which in turn, is a question of
integrity.
Hamilton's rule was easily able to reverse cause and effect within
evolutionary biology allowing Hamilton's argument for the evolution of
"altruism" within nature only because Hamilton's Rule became 100% relative
after it oversimplified Darwinian fertile organism centric theory.
Hamilton's rule is valid mathematics but NOT valid science simply because it
remains irrefutable. This is because it has no constant term. The rule can
only become testable science when the total fitness of Hamilton's actor
becomes included within the rule as an algebraic constant. After this basic
correction is completed it can be demonstrated that organism fitness
altruism cannot evolve via Hamilton's Rule.
What in fact has been occurring for over 50 years is that Hamilton et al
have consistently confounded altruism with mutualism allowing just about any
social cost to be written off as an altruistic donation, even after it makes
a total fitness _increase_ for Hamilton's actor. If total actor fitness
increases and does not decrease it remains absurd to ague that Hamilton's
actor was making an altruistic donation and not mutualistic investment. I am
happy to recap any/all of my arguments which remain _empirically refutable_.
Regards,
John Edser
Independent Researcher
edser@xxxxxxxxxx
In an interview in the June 2006 Discover Mag (pp. 58-61), Wilson says
that
one reason he now rejects the "standard theory" he helped develop is that
there's very little evidence that ants and termites in the early stages of
evolution could determine who's a brother, sister, cousin, etc. He says:
"They're not acting to favor collateral kin. The new view that I'm
proposing is that it was group selection all along, an idea first roughly
formulated by Darwin."
The key to Wilson's new theory is the relatively recent recognition that
genes can be plastic in their expression, in response to different
environmental conditions. "So consider a gene that has plasticity such
that
in one setting an individual carrying that gene becomes reproductive.
Maybe
this individual was the ant or wasp that arrived first, maybe it was the
biggest one, or maybe it was the one to just by accident start laying eggs
first. The important thing is that the reproductive role can shift from
one
colony to next and from one generation to the next. The group forms, and
some individuals by circumstance become workers. Their cooperative
behavior
and the division of labour confer superiority on that group, with that
particular gene, over other groups. It could be as simple as that."
Wilson explains that altruism is normally discouraged due to the fitness
advantages of individual survival and reproduction, but it could pay for
individuals to subvert their own interests to those of a group if the
group
is able to defend and exploit a very valuable resource (such as a hollow
stem that could be a nest site). And once ants and termites became "fully
social" they went on to dominate the world.
As for humans, Wilson agrees with Darwin that our evolution was largely a
matter of "tribe against tribe" -- which might explain the endemic warfare
AND
altruism in which humans have engaged since prehistory. "The genes that
favour this type of group cohesion would also favor an innate sense of
morality and group loyalty. It would explain how so often group or tribe
loyalty overrides even family loyalty." Seems like there's already a ton
of
proposals along those lines....Wilson is presumably working on clarifying
why group selection, and not kin selection, is the more significant
mechanism (but at the end of the interview he says his theorizing is still
a
work in progress and formal presentation on humans might take a couple of
years).
The full interview can be viewed (but subscription required) at:
http://www.discover.com/issues/jun-06/features/e-o-wilson/
Note: The "bombshell" in the title of this post is how Discover Mag
refers
to the contents of the interview
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=
David Leake, PhD, MPH
Director of Research and Evaluation
Center on Disability Studies
University of Hawaii at Manoa
1776 University Ave. UA4-6
Honolulu, HI 96822
tel 808-247-4737 fax 808-956-7878
.
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