The whole proposition of a massive hunk of brain-flesh that is capable of introspective reflection, inside a body, inside a culture, doing the washing up, while shouting at the kids, is ludicrous. But there it is. So, why do we have such big heads?
You have a big head
Have a squiz at a picture of a monkey or a chimp. Then look at your cat or dog or goldfish. Then look in a mirror. You should be very self-conscious. Like all of our species, you have a big head, which houses an inordinately large brain. But why? It is obvious that we need to be able to recognise food, danger, and find a mate, but all other living mammals seem to accomplish this with a peanut for a seat of consciousness. So why do we have such an overly large noggin?
Proponents of both actual and social Darwinism often point to the big brain as being associated with culture. They tell a story about building shelter and hunting big game, plus a complex social life, as factors promoting the development of an ever-bigger thinking apparatus. With a feedback loop prompting ever more complex societies and cultures, and bigger and bigger brains to operate them.
However, this approach does seem to leave out terror in the night, random brutality, unthinking bigotry, nightmares, and daytime television. It also skips the bit about lying awake at three a.m., staring through the ceiling at mortality and utter impotence. Which prompts one to ask: why do we need a brain that is so huge, unrestrained, and unrestrainable, that it will cause its owner anguish and pain? For no evident practical gain?
Yes, we are damn good at chipping away at the rocks, it helps fill-in long afternoons, wage war, and exterminate stray megafauna, but why the nightmares? Why the incessant worry? Why do we buy shit we don’t need? And why are all these horrific experiences part of the firmware package that comes with the standard model?
Evolutionary biologists generally suggest that we have a big brain so we can process all of the information we need to keep ourselves safe and tell other neighbouring primates that we are safe. They observe that we are pattern-seeking animals that have developed an overly large head, right atop a tallish body, so as to better remember a lot of places and paths, work out who is an enemy and a friend, and spot the pattern of a leopard moving alongside the path. I think this is bullshit, but do not mistake my scepticism as support for any wild theory.
Survival of the fattest
We are indeed pattern seeking animals and this is certainly tied to our collective ability to survive. Our large brains are quite obviously an adaptive feature. My quibble is not with evolutionary biology but rather it’s misapplication. Survival of the fittest is a good explanation for bugs in a beaker. But our ancestors invented a sophisticated material culture, and ever since then the most successful breeders amongst us have been those who are best at navigating their way through the contemporary linguistic and material culture, not the environment. As soon as we began gathering into small bands of highly organised and well-armed thugs, the dangerous megafauna very soon turned into an opportunity for a banquet or a nice fur stole.
The human species is different, but not because of any divine being, nice-garden, or almighty bad flood. In evolutionary terms we are different. We have big brains that have been honed so as to better navigate language and culture, not to assist in battling mammoths. Our culture took care of the mammoths, and the cave-lions, and the giant ground sloth, and the short-faced bear, the giant kangaroo, sabre-toothed cat, most of the large flightless birds, and most of the elephants. Well-fed, well-clothed, well-armed groups of well-organised people killed off most of the megafauna. Culture – not bigger claws and fangs
Thus, for many millions of years now the evolutionary pressure to develop ever larger and more sophisticated brains has been driven by the needs of material culture, not the environment per se. Not the need to fend off cave-lions and sabre tooth tigers, but rather in pursuit of sex, drugs, and the accumulation of ‘stuff’. Moreover, this ball got rolling way back before we became homo anything. Our ability to organise ourselves into small, nimble, and pathologically murderous groups of well-armed ‘hunting parties’ is a trait that we inherited from our forebears. Moreover, the emergence of this corporate ability correlates exactly with an immense increase in the size of our heads.
Our close cousins the chimpanzees have a brain mass of about 275 to 500 cm³. But homo erectus, our immediate ancestral predecessor, had a brain averaging from 600 to 1250 cm³. Double and a bit the size of your average chimpanzee. Then modern human populations have brains that are bigger again, averaging roughly 1300–1400 cm³.
Which all tracks quite well with the emergence and the further development of a sophisticated material and ideational culture. Or, in simpler terms, a bigger brain and a complex language, stone tools, and a corporate memory all arose at about the same time, a few millions of years ago. Which thereafter prompted a complete alteration in the factors that are consequential in enhancing ones chances of reproducing. Instead of environmental and physical characteristics being privileged, those who had the gift of the gab, or were best organised and armed, were having all the babies.
So the evolutionary pressure was thence entirely transferred from the environment to culture. After we had begun to gather together into highly organised and well-armed packs, there was simply not much left in the everyday environment that was threatening anymore, apart from other packs of humans. So rather than battling nature, the evidence seems to indicate precisely the opposite was the trend. We collectively began massacring pretty much everything, and everyone, in sight.
So yes, there is definitely a feedback look between culture and the human brain, and our brains have been getting bigger and bigger, but it has nothing to do with adapting to the environment. For a culturally organised hive-organism such as humanity, the old rules of Darwinism no longer apply. The survival of the fittest has been utterly supplanted with the survival of the most culturally adept.
Thus, we all have big heads that seem to be getting ever bigger. But this has been in the service of becoming ever better cultural animals, not more adept at swinging through the jungley thickets and strangling large carnivores with our bare hands. Which means that instead of looking at our brain as being adapted to fighting for survival, it is probably best to consider more mundane and familiar factors.
Which prompts the asking of some dangerously pertinent questions. If our massively big crania results from cultural and not environmental factors, then what are these cultural factors that have been driving both our social and actual evolution?
The orgasm
Human beings procreate differently to all the other apes. The female of the species is always receptive, however, unlike the chimpanzee, when a human female is most fertile her labia does not swell up and turn pink. As a consequence, packs of horny humans are always mingling together and breeding whenever the opportunity might present. Just in case.
While a constant procreative obsession might seem to be perfectly normal to anyone who owns and operates a standard issue human brain, when you look around the scrubland, it soon becomes obvious that we are almost the only ones who are constantly fucking. Moreover, those who do the most fucking tend to manufacture the most babies, so our odd sexual habits and methodologies are obviously an important built-in part of our brain that needs to be examined in at least a somewhat dispassionate fashion.
Because we can all harvest a free gift of pure pleasure by just manipulating a few nerve endings, it keeps our species eternally occupied. A bit of private manipulation is expected, then we get together and jointly manipulate for hours at a time. But it is notable that this is a lot of effort that could otherwise be devoted to digging pits and clubbing big game to death. So, if anything, in evolutionary terms it is all entirely unhelpful.
Human beings are built to find certain shapes and movements incredibly horny, and to crave a good orgasm, which means that a great many afternoons, evenings, and late nights, are wasted in just striving to look good and gyrate correctly. Then fuck.
Of course organised religion has always believed that gyrating and humping is a massive waste of time and resources, so there have been anti-orgasm protestors all over the bedroom for all of recorded history. The religiously inclined segment of humanity quite rightfully understands that, in the bigger scheme of things, shuddering in orgasmic pleasure is simply difficult to justify. Thus (they reason), having an orgasm is undoubtedly a prelude to the pits of hell opening and sucking your ungodly heathenish soul into hellfire eternal. To be fair, the rest of us just listen, sort of nod, and then quietly get on with our manipulating.
On the need to be stoned out of your gourd
Another weird aspect of our strangely wired brain that has been driving our ‘cultural’ development for millennia is the need to get stoned. Ever since we were just knee high to a neanderthal the younger and racier elements of our clan have been gathering at the bottom of the mango tree to share a few over-ripe ones with all the other good-looking druggies.
But alcohol is the least of it. Our big brain is nothing if not extremely committed to getting whacked out its ever-lovin’ gourd as often as possible. Accordingly, our collective search for an exotic mind space has been most rigorous. Every nook and cranny across the whole of the earth has been explored, and if it can be dried and smoked, we’ve dried it and smoked it. If it can be refined and injected, or treated and fermented, we’ve given it a go. Usually with catastrophic effects.
It is all pretty weird. It seems we have been provided a seat of consciousness that is drug ready and drug friendly. Which is obviously not a terrific thing for the species as a whole, but from an owners perspective it is absolutely brilliant. Just toss in the tiniest bit of some nifty noxious substance – and whacko: instant nirvana.
Consequently, in much the same way as lemmings are attracted to cliffs, our big brains just crave a good drugging. So while most other species look askance at a purple mushroom, instantly considering it best avoided, we can’t help but take a quick nibble on the off-chance it will make the whole world turn pastel. In many cases the individual concerned turns blue and falls-over. It does indicate that we are a colourful bunch, but is it an evolutionary positive? Perhaps not. But it is a cultural one, which is far more important. If you can drug well then you are likely to have more babies. If you are bad at drugging then you will turn blue, and then fall-over, and your genes will not be passed on.
Of course the same people who are largely anti-orgasm also tend to look down their nose at any form of free nirvana. Perhaps it is too close to something for nothing? But confoundingly, there is wide variation in what are considered ‘good’ drugs and ‘bad’ drugs, depending on where you might happen to reside. A big brain is often necessary just to be able to get whacked and survive.
For example, if you are of native American Indian heritage and living in the bush, then coco-leaves may be a part of everyday life. Whereas, if you are living in a city, it could have all sorts of legal side effects. Also, using many of the same justifications, alcohol is banned in one half of the globe and cannabis in the other. Which means that if you get blind drunk in some parts, it is cool. You are respected for walking the three blocks back to your bungalow before throwing up in a flower bed and passing out on the couch. However, if you flare up a blunt you might end up in court, or even gaol.
But then again, if you get blind drunk in other parts you could end up in gaol, or even have a hand chopped off. So it is generally advisable to stick to choof, or maybe just a few hard drugs, or strive to own your own police force. Which are all common cultural drivers.
Mind you, the various arguments in favour of gaoling and chopping people’s hands off are convincing. They include: it will kill you; it leads to crime; it destroys the moral fibre; it has unknown genetic side effects; you will go to hell; it sent the budgie mad; it shrivels your genitals; it makes you gay; my dad never used it, etcetera. All good and sound arguments. So it is understandable that debate rages on.
Did I mention advertising?
Instead of subduing continents and raising ten children, our big brain is now devoted to choosing between a thousand flavours of fizzy water and sex. We have collectively become so wrapped up in such dense layering’s of sophisticated patterns that we can no longer even see the planet that we live on. Which is a pity in an existential sort of way. Taking part in the environment is not an optional pastime.
Consequently, let’s not just simply assume that having ‘a big brain’ is all a positive story, or that possessing one necessarily means that an owner will operate in a rational fashion. Or that they can operate in a rational fashion. Or that people are ever actually motivated by the desire to be rational. Or logical.
I am not suggesting that a rational and ordered approach should not be adopted by those inquiring into these matters, just that it is important to separate talking about human behaviour from human behaviour itself. While we all like to believe that we are rational and think logically, that is simply incorrect. It is to mistake reading and communicating with rational analysis.
Human beings like simple answers to complex questions. They like elegant ideas that serve to meld seamlessly with their many other sophisticated and lofty ideas. Because this is the case, data often does not get a look-in. For millions of years we have been developing a sophisticated communications hub that sits atop our shoulders and serves to filter out and reformulate any incoming information stream which may be discomforting. As a result, in our modern age there is not a significant existential threat on the horizon that has prompted any sort of rational response.
In the last fifty years thousands of glaciers have simply melted away. The thermometer is rising. There are bigger storms doing more damage. So we have sprung into action to create a massive misinformation industry which is devoted to proposing that climate change is not actually occurring. Or if it does exist, it is manageable. Or perhaps a rise in ocean levels might be a good thing? How can we know? Etc. Our pattern-seeking brains just lap this stuff up.
Even as they are being rescued from atop flooded houses, many citizens continue to protest that the idea of climate change is a scam. Just look at Noah! He did it tough as well! And rebuilding on a flood plain is good for an economy. Oh, and thank you for saving us from certain death.
Our huge and ungainly brains have been evolving in a feedback loop with our culture. Thus ever better enabling us all to generate our own eternal pleasure garden, so we can drink, drug and fuck, 24/7. Yet it also assists us in generating descriptions of the world and the events that are occurring that are entirely disconnected with the actual environment within which we live. Thus, for the last few million years we have been building a seat of consciousness that enables us all to imagine and construct a huge complex culture that is capable of destroying the planet we live on, whilst at the same time convincing us all that it is perfectly normal to be up to our earlobes in flood waters.
So the final piece of clinching evidence that demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt that our brains have now become far too large for our individual or collective benefit, is advertising. In any rational world, advertising should not work. Yet by leveraging our two addon-extras, it is like shooting fish in a barrel. Sex will sell most things, but when additionally addled by a good drugging anything is possible, up to and including not noticing the impending destruction of our entire civilisation.
Therefore, I respectfully suggest that we have simply gone too far and that we need to stop this evolution shit immediately. Without a hugely over inflated brain much of this would simply not happen. Instead of talking about how well adapted we are for roaming the plains of the Pleistocene, our scientists might even be inquiring into why we are all up to our necks in garbage on an overheated planet.
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So many questions, James, and so few answers, which is perfectly sensible considering the complexity of the ape known as Homo sapiens. Just enjoy the ride, don’t get hung up on dogma, maintain curiosity, be kind to yourselves and those you interact with, take deep dives into the big questions if that’s your thing but don’t lacerate yourself for misunderstandings or simply not knowing. We’re only here for a very short time, make the most of it if you can.
Thanks for an extremely entertaining read, and assuaging my conscience after 80 years of sin.Pass that joint, gimme a stubbie, and is anyone up for a bit of horizontal folk dancing?
Elsewhere we’re fucked, but it hasn’t been a total waste of time…or has it?
Bloody ‘ell Dr Jim, what have you given us here?!
A truckload of good stuff interspersed with a shirtload of “what the…”
EG, “Evolutionary biologists generally suggest that … I think this is bullshit, but do not mistake my scepticism as support for any wild theory.”
Spot on, evolutionary biology is not even a science, it’s been taken over by idiots.
But then the downside, as just one example, “Thus, for many millions of years now the evolutionary pressure to develop ever larger and more sophisticated brains has been driven by the needs of material culture, not the environment per se.”
Not so. Material culture has only been a major factor since the adoption of agriculture.
As Jared Diamond points out.
A few thousand years, not millions.
And as the article makes clear, it’s features such as advertising that are changing our culture.
What’s the driver of advertising?
Capitalism.
The creation of wants rather than the provision of needs.
And what was the final sentence?
Instead of talking about how well adapted we are for roaming the plains of the Pleistocene, our scientists might even be inquiring into why we are all up to our necks in garbage on an overheated planet.
Sorry Jim, we do not need scientists to give us an answer to that.
You supplied the answer in your article.
Or to be really blunt — why does everyone dance around the problem???
Canguro & Mr Lime: There is a big picture story and a personal one. The big picture story is largely imaginary and difficult to quantify. But at the personal level every second of every day is precious for precisely the same reasons.
I have no answers. Nor do I pretend to be a purveyor of answers. But whenever a reader smiles or let’s out a small chuckle – then I win.
Steve: Jared is a wonderful story teller but he is primarily focused on patterns and contrasts in the development of late stage complex material cultures. Whereas, this rant is looking waaay back to the birth of the facility for humans to generate a complex material culture in the first place, and the implications of supplanting environmental pressures with cultural ones for how we should think about both evolution and our big brains.
But Jared’s writings and mine differ in one really important respect – I am asking questions in a half-arsed and tongue in cheek fashion in an effort to spark some smiles – so I am not necessarily attempting to provide a cogent argument for anything.
cool
more coffee needed
oh god!
I want to touch the face of god
and then I’ll shake his hand
and then I’ll take him out to tea
it’ll be positively grand!
If I cannot touch the face of god
I might settle for a knee,
or maybe closer to the groin?
Good Lord come close to me!
An interesting NSW Far North Coast rant …..
I sort of dig it.
Our brains, having sorted the immediate existential problems by learning belting a Mastodon or two over the head and then eating it, we have been overtaken by things that not only can bring relief through nature, but identify and seek after the cognitive signifiers OF Mastodon steak.
So we dont belt Mastodons any more, but seek out things like sex, drugs and grog, at our leidsure to mimic the joys of survival at the expense of survival itself?
The brain is evolving but not necessarily in the “right” direction?
Hence we can return to a cognitive jungle more to our own understanding.
Like the ME.
An interesting read, James. Some ideas that swirl around inside our head with relative ease put up a fight when you try to put them to paper. The distance from the brain to the writing hand is a short one, but some ideas simply refuse to make the journey.
You’ve done it with ease.
Roswell – I am not good at handling praise. But (gulp) Thank you.
Especially as it is all a cheap trick. Nothing ever comes easy – (like all other writers) I edit and edit and edit and edit, then bury it in peat for six months, then edit. All so as to pretend that it flows seamlessly.
The distance from the brain to the writing hand is a short one, but some ideas simply refuse to make the journey.
Roswell, my experience is not the opposite, but a little different.
I find that if I think I have something worth saying, if it does not present too well in written form, jotting down the main points then leaving it for a while does wonders.
If writing a lengthy serious piece, carrying a notepad and pencil is handy, because when you’re walking the dog or mowing the lawn a great turn of phrase will spring to mind, and if you don’t jot it down it might be days before it re-surfaces.
Steve,
Spot on, evolutionary biology is not even a science …
To quote she who should almost never be quoted, please explain. Be blunt. Don’t hedge around the issue. Just what do you mean by that remark?
Peculiar…so, evolutionary biology is not even a science. I’m no scientist, but I’ll contact my grand daughter, who has just completed a Ph D in medical science, specialising in monotreme genetics…just for clarity and perspective. Perhaps it is a disputed area, or term. Even as a historian, I was inspired, when young, by Darwin and Descent of Man.
Steve suggests that “evolutionary biology is not even a science, it’s been taken over by idiots.” Perhaps he’d like to debate that proposition with Richard Dawkins, or if not, provide a considered perspective on Dawkins’ contributions to that field of enquiry, perhaps toss in something similar on Stephen Jay Gould’s work, Jared Diamond also fits within that frame, and, gosh, there’s actually quite a long list of respectable scientists active in this field of enquiry: Hopi Hoekstra (Harvard University), Jonathan Losos (Washington University in St. Louis, formerly Harvard), Richard Lenski (Michigan State University), Eva Jablonka (Tel Aviv University), Dmitri Petrov (Stanford University), and more… the list is not exclusive. I’m certain all of these people would be quite surprised to learn that they’ve been categorised by an Australian with no particular skills in or knowledge of this discipline as ‘idiots.’
I’m reminded of a similar experience I had when driving in the southern region of NSW with an acquaintance who may have been on a slow trajectory towards becoming a friend; we were chatting as I drove, and the subject of cosmic phenomena arose, and to my utter surprise this person, who I’d know for a few years, suddenly launched into a rave about the people who studied the universe, the astrophysicists & astronomers, cosmologists, astrobiologists & astrochemists & astrogeologists, fools all, charlatans, and yes, to quote Steve again, idiots who just made stuff up, people who had no idea what they were talking about. To say I was astounded at the utter stupidity of this individual doesn’t come close. We parted ways very soon after that, never to meet again. I realise that it’s sometime necessary to suffer fools, if not gladly, but there are definite limits to one’s tolerance.
leefe and Kanga — “evolutionary biology is not even a science, it’s been taken over by idiots”.
I’ve thrown variations of that one in a few times now in the last year or two, how come it’s taken you so long to bite? 🙂
Just to clarify for Kanga, who is correct, there are some reputable figures in the field, but there is a heap of grifters making a living out of exploiting the Dawkinsian idiocy of “selfish genes.”
Selfish genes are a conceptual impossibility.
Selfishness is a quality of living entities.
Genes are not alive.
A gene is a tiny portion of the DNA molecule, which itself cannot be seen as being alive.
But the gene-centric school of evolutionary biology which has largely taken control of the field, pushes the line that genes are the driver of evolution because they are in control. It’s infantile and idiotic.
To cut a very very long story short, in the gene-centric universe evolution is seen incorrectly as a process of continuous struggle and competition from which the development of selfishness and individuality are allegedly inevitable, and more importantly, dominant.
The very existence of altruism was and is a challenge to that view.
To get around the problem of altruism, (it’s referred to as a problem in all the literature because it just won’t go away) they dreamed up a cunning counter.
Altruism, they argue, is just a form of selfishness!!
How cool is that?!
Problem solved.
If you’re an eight year old.
Kanga, you seem to be disturbed that “an Australian with no particular skills in or knowledge of this discipline” could be so critical of an entire field of science.
When I began disputing this nonsense about fifteen years ago, I did not even know what a gene was or how it functioned.
I didn’t have to know. The lack of logic behind selfish genery is so blatant, so obvious, that I was able to argue my points successfully by applying logic.
I’m more than happy to discuss this further if anyone has questions.
Prior to civilisation, when people started to settle down in permanent places, materialism was limited by how much could be carried. Possessions were limited lest they become a burden. With the coming of civilisation the ability to amass stuff became possible and lead to huge cultural changes including property ownership of land, people and animals, and social structures necessary to regulate, protect and determine who owned what. Not all these changes were good but they were widely accepted as a small price to pay for being civilised and able to accumulate wealth.
There were however always some people who preferred to live a more natural life shunning the artificiality of civilisation and the temptations of materialism.
In Ancient Greece they were called cynics because their non materialistic lifestyles in which they sought to possess as little as possible were considered by the rest of their society as being no better than the life of a dog. Cynic is derived from the ancient Greek word for dog. Remember that next time you are tempted to refer to the cynical behaviour of the wealthiest most materialistic people in our society.
Steve said “Selfish genes are a conceptual impossibility. Selfishness is a quality of living entities. Genes are not alive.”
So far, so good.
Dawkins is on record as saying that he might have preferred the title The Immortal Gene, as “selfish” has led to decades of misinterpretation by critics who think it implies genes are truly emotional or solely competitive. He has never recanted his “selfish gene” hypothesis. In fact, he has consistently defended the core concept in the decades since the book’s publication in 1976, often updating it to clarify that it is a perspective on evolution rather than a claim that genes have feelings or emotions.
He maintains that the gene-centered view of evolution is valid, holding that the gene is the fundamental unit of selection. In later works, particularly The Extended Phenotype (1982), he clarified the theory by making a distinction between “replicators” (genes) and “vehicles” (individuals, or somas).
Steve is, of course, entitled to his opinions, irrespective of their accuracy. Disappointing to see such a smart man resort to pejorative language though, using words such as infantile and idiotic as descriptors of the behaviour of people whom one would suspect are at the cutting edge of current inquiry in the fascinating role of genetics, DNA, natural selection, epigenetic influences etc., and who take to their research in a sober and professional manner.
Addendum: Who says genes are not alive? That’s a very wild claim. Are you suggesting that the DNA which exists in every cell in our bodies, estimated to be in the order of 30 to 40 trillion cells, is dead? That’s an extraordinary proposition, which I have no doubt you cannot substantiate. At the level of cellular division, whether mitosis or meiosis, what is occurring is an act of extraordinary complexity defined by unimaginable intelligence. Are you seriously suggesting this is simply mechanics, clod-basic gear changing? I think you need a reset in the arena of your opinions as to what’s going on in our bodies along with that of all living organisms.
Kanga, did you really have to go down this path?
Now I have to trawl through all my old files to find examples of Dawkinsian idiocy because you cannot accept the one I’ve provided.
Here’s an extract from an article I wrote years ago.
It gives the flavour and the methodology of the con-man.
When key concepts of evolutionary biology, that is, natural selection, kin selection, group selection and genes, are defined so narrowly that certain conclusions are impossible to avoid, then we are no longer dealing with science but with propaganda. Dawkins himself in a rare moment admitted that “What I have now done is to define the gene in such a way that I cannot really help being right!”
Need I say more?
Probably not, but as a whole generation of biologists has been indoctrinated to believe that selfish-gene theory is serious science, we should put the Dawkins-as-intellectual scenario to rest forever.
He’s asserted more than once that because he uses the term selfish in its biological or technical sense, (i.e. self-preserving) people should not read too much into it as he’s not using it in the normal way. Then comes this pious rubbish; “Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have a chance to upset their designs. We have the power to defy the selfish genes of our birth…We can even discuss ways of deliberately cultivating and nurturing pure, disinterested altruism, something that has no place in nature, something that has never existed before in the whole history of the world.”
All obviously false, but by opposing “selfish” to “generosity and altruism” Dawkins clearly uses the word in its normal emotive sense rather than the technical sense so his disclaimer is dishonest, particularly as there’s an endless shifting back and forth in meaning throughout his works.
Worse still, the entire passage is based on an abysmal knowledge of the natural world in which examples of disinterested altruism not only abound, but have been documented for centuries and have even been cited by Darwin.
Dawkins is aware of that documentation so his failure to deal with it is not just disingenuous; it destroys forever his claim to be a searcher for truth.
As for his contention that organisms are no more than vehicles used by genes to perpetuate themselves, we can judge the value of that by considering an extract from his 1989 article titled Universal Parasitism and the Co-evolution of Extended Phenotypes. Sounds very scientific, doesn’t it?
Prepare to be disappointed.
Dawkins here tries to present parasitism as a general rule of nature, a universal law, in order presumably to establish selfishness as a universal law. Parasitism, in order to be universal, requires a leap into that fantasy world inhabited by Dawkins in which even genes are parasitic, are cooperative only in order to get themselves into the next generation. Dawkins: “…so all the genes of a body can be regarded as gentle parasites of that body.”
That can only be the case when the organism they inhabit is redefined to suit the theory, redefined as a vehicle for genes. Dawkins as we’ve seen, has made redefinition an art form.
But the part of the article most telling was a description of the life cycle of a liver fluke that uses a snail as host before finally lodging in a sheep, from which Dawkins concluded; “A snail is just a fluke’s way of getting into a sheep, and hence of getting its genes into the future.”
Now that’s obviously simplistic nonsense, another instance of Dawkins trying desperately to appear clever, but the twisted, almost insane logic behind the statement is the same as for his claim that an organism is a gene’s way of getting itself into the future.
I’ll post a concise summary tomorrow.
By the way Kanga, Stephen Jay Gould who you mentioned also regarded Dawkins as an idiot, but was far too polite to use that exact word.
Nuance, Steve, nuance. Gould didn’t regard Dawkins as an idiot. They disagreed, for sure. Gould thought of Dawkins as a zealot, he disagreed with his interpretation of how evolution works, he saw him as a smart proponent of a narrow, “incorrect” scientific philosophy, but he didn’t term him as an idiot. That’s just way too crude. They were, in many ways, professionally friendly and respected each other’s work.
Kanga, I’ll deal quickly with your addendum.
The science community has been unable to arrive at an accepted definition of life.
There is general acceptance of the principal characteristics or functions of life — homeostasis reproduction and metabolism.
Even there, opinions vary a little as some believe there are one or two more functions.
But the point is that genes do not carry out those functions.
The Dawkins crowd refer to genes as replicators, implying independent reproduction.
That is false.
Genes are reproduced by the cell.
Gene reproduction is a cell function.
“but he didn’t term him as an idiot.”
That’s what I said.
Steve, whilst the organism is alive, by definition the cells are alive. That cannot be disputed, and it follows that the cellular components, the organelles, are alive. To assert otherwise seems incomprehensible. It’s an act of hubris to assert that we have the complete picture mapped out, that we have ‘got it,’ vis-à-vis a comprehensive understanding of the reality of life at the cellular level. It’s like Einstein’s reluctance in matters pertaining to the random nature of quantum mechanics, when he said that “God does not play dice.” Or more mundanely, Rumsfeld’s reference to known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. Or to reference Richard Feynman, who said anyone who thinks they know what quantum mechanics is about is kidding themselves, or words to that effect. It’s highly likely that a majority of the processes taking place within our bodies at the cellular and subcellular levels are of a quantum nature. Even the best and brightest within the physics community admit they don’t understand what’s going on at that deeply sub-molecular level.
The question of what is life seems, at one level, quite simple… it’s the opposite of what is not life. The devil, as always, is in the detail. We’re a teeming empire of trillions of cells, along with billions of passenger cells, unicellular and oftentimes multicellular inhabitants, gut flora, skin flora, bacteria, viruses latent and active and more; I’d suggest it’s a brave (or foolish) man who pokes a stick in the sand and declares dogmatically, this is what it is.
Sorry to be rude, but case fucking closed. I’m not AC, and thus not inclined to engage in interminable discussions over points of differentiation. Feel free to have the last word.
This from an earlier piece of mine is related both to Dawkins and the article topic.
It’s interesting that Dawkins has been labelled by admirers as “Darwin’s Rottweiler”, or the modern version of “Darwin’s Bulldog” Thomas Huxley. But those who came up with this little play on words are closer to the mark than they intended.
Just as Huxley betrayed Darwin by directing the public away from Darwin’s belief in the importance of sociality in evolution, so also has Dawkins.
Huxley’s use of Darwinism perpetuated falsehoods regarding class, a single-handed contribution to global discord that might be without parallel.
Dawkins appears at first glance to display no such fault, and perhaps because of an admitted political naivety there seems to be no obvious agenda behind his theorising. It’s not that he can’t see sociality and co-operation; his works are full of examples that constantly contradict his description of genes and their function.
But the pull of natural selection, that overwhelming fascination with individualism, survival and competition that’s had an unbreakable hold on a section of the British intelligentsia for centuries, has put Dawkins squarely in the camp of the fundamentalists of science, and ultimately the fundamentalists of economics, for the two are closely linked.
How can that be?
Consider this. Dawkins’ view of co-operation is ideological, illogical, and identical to that of the economic fundamentalists, for he can quite happily accept co-operation as an evolutionary factor as long as that co-operation is among genes, among cells, among organisms that are closely related, but not under any circumstances among organisms at large.
Margaret Thatcher was paraphrasing not only Hayek but also Dawkins when she declared “There is no society, there’s only individuals and families.”
The class warriors of the bourgeoisie saw as far back as Thomas Hobbes that the revolution in scientific progress that was then in its infancy, could be guided and managed to assist them to shape the world to their narrow design.
That project has been possibly the greatest success story of modern history, with players such as Dawkins being unwitting pawns, unaware of their role in the grand scheme of things.
But is Dawkins as innocent as he appears? His breathtakingly misleading treatment of group selection in The God Delusion gives rise to serious doubt.
Dawkins: “Those of us that belittle group selection admit that in principle it can happen. The question is whether it amounts to a significant force in evolution.”
He then mounted an insignificant attack on group selection, but felt compelled to concede at the end that his ultimate authority, Darwin, “…came as close as he ever came to group selection in his discussion of human tribes:…”
A single paragraph quote from Darwin’s The Descent of Man followed; “When two tribes of primeval man, living in the same country, came into competition, if (other circumstances being equal) the one tribe included a great number of courageous, sympathetic and faithful members, who were always ready to warn each other of danger, to aid and defend each other, this tribe would succeed better and conquer the other… Selfish and contentious people will not cohere, and without coherence nothing can be effected. A tribe rich in the above qualities would spread and be victorious over other tribes: but in the course of time it would, judging from all past history, be in its turn overcome by some other tribe still more highly endowed.”
Darwin was clearly talking there of the survival and reproductive potential of a group, but not according to Dawkins;
“I should add that Darwin’s idea was not strictly group selection, in the true sense of successful groups spawning daughter groups…”
The unwary reader might conclude from this that Dawkins had given a faithful account of Darwin’s treatment of the matter and dealt with it satisfactorily.
Not so.
Darwin devoted two full chapters to the importance of sociality in evolution, and conducted his analysis of the theoretical tribe for a total of nine paragraphs before concluding that a tribe displaying unselfish co-operation and common purpose “would be victorious over most other tribes; and this would be natural selection.”
And this would be natural selection!
It can’t be any plainer.
And it can’t be any plainer that Dawkins has misled his readers and is defining group selection in such a narrow sense as to render it irrelevant. It’s Dawkins narrow interpretation of reproductive outcomes that’s the problem here.
Because natural selection was first defined around the foremost reproductive unit, the individual, in Dawkins’ blinkered world the group must reproduce other groups in order to fit neatly into the definition. In other words, the group must emulate the individual in order to earn legitimacy, must emulate the individual or be excluded from the debate!
This is not science, but evidence of a prior agenda.
An argument can be mounted that the entire body of evolutionary biology emanating from Britain (until recent times when biologists such as Professor Gabriel Dover began great work in molecular biology) has been channeled into an elaborate justification for economic individualism.
Take the case of W.D. Hamilton for example, who by formalizing in the 1960s the theory of kin selection that had existed for some time in British scientific circles, paved the way for the selfish gene view of evolution.
Here’s an extract from an on-line lecture series on biology; “Hamilton’s kin selection theory is based on the fact that relatives share genes. By co-operating with relatives, survival of these shared genes is encouraged. Hamilton worked out the conditions under which altruism pays off.”
He did indeed, by working out a mathematical formula to fit the conditions under which an act of altruism resulted in a benefit to the “actor.” The “actor”?! This is the language they use! Can you believe this? And so what? If we had the time to waste we could do that for every human activity, and that’s the whole point.
It’s a feature of those who push the line of economic individualism that for them everything is reducible to economic terms.
Just as the quote above indicates; “altruism pays off” and it’s all about economics.
Reducing unselfishness to a mathematical formula is clearly an attempt to frame it in neutral, colorless, dispassionate and ultimately worthless terms. To devalue it; to squeeze the life out of it.
But the advent of molecular biology has been a disaster not yet acknowledged by the selfish gene theorists, as kin selection, the bedrock of their belief system is now the rock on which they founder, for it turns out that we do not share genes with close relatives only; we share genes with all humanity and with all life.
Kanga, I’m only interested in having the last word if it’s a truthful word.
I stated that Dawkins pushed a false view of evolution, so I’ll put together a concise summary.
Then let me know if I’ve been truthful.
I’m still at a loss to work out how any of this means that the entire field of evolutionary biology is “not even a science”.
Evolutionary biology is about all the mechanisms of natural selection. Disagreeing with certain aspects of the work, and the terminology used in some studies, does not invalidate the entire field.
As far as I can follow, your objections are not even about the scientific aspect of these studies, but about semantics and what could almost be considered the philosophy of some of the relevant participants. Again, that does not invalidate all the work of everyone involved in the field.
ps: Truth doesn’t come into it. This is opinion and interpretation. YOUR truth is not necessarily fact.
Kanga, the items under discussion are too complex for shorthand versions, so hopefully two or three brief examples will show where I’m coming from.
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In the endnotes to Ch 6 of The Selfish Gene (2006) Richard Dawkins ridiculed Marshall Sahlins for his argument against kin selection that concluded with the following remark; “I shall not even comment on the even greater problem of how animals are supposed to figure out how r = 1/8” (Kin selection aka inclusive fitness promotes the lie that altruism is a product of kinship, with levels of altruism diminishing in line with more distant kinship links.)
This begs the question as to why Sahlins assumed that such calculations are involved in kin selection. The answer to that can be found in the same chapter endnotes. I must quote this or you just won’t believe me. Dawkins highlighted a line from the first edition that was written in error. It read; “We simply expect that second cousins should tend to receive 1/16 as much altruism as offspring or siblings.”
Well well, I hear you say, what a clanger, thank goodness he’s going to change that!
Don’t jump to conclusions, it gets worse, not better.
He explained why that sentence should be changed: “If an altruistic animal has a cake (?!) to give to relatives, there is no reason at all for it to give every relative a slice, the size of the slices being determined by the closeness of relatedness…if there is a close relative in the vicinity there is no reason to give a distant relative any cake at all…the whole cake should be given to the closest relative available. What of course I meant to say was ‘We simply expect that second cousins should be 1/16 as likely to receive altruism as offspring or siblings’, and this is what now stands.”
This is science as silliness.
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The following shows how dangerous science can be when research and theorising is dictated by a prior agenda.
Gene-centrism has it that the welfare of genes is the driver of evolution. If we accept that notion, then organisms should have and will have we are told, reproduction as their top priority to increase the number of their genes in the gene pool. But this leads to repulsive conjecture such as this, that asks in the case of adopted children; “…what the attitude of the real mother of the child is – it is, after all, to her advantage, that her child should be adopted,…” (Dawkins, The Selfish Gene p102)
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Is it any wonder that the world is descending into chaos when policy makers the world over are influenced, even unconsciously, by stupidity posing as science?
That is not an overstatement.
In a footnote to The God Delusion Richard Dawkins revealed “I was mortified to read in The Guardian that The Selfish Gene is the favourite book of Geoff Skilling, CEO of the infamous Enron Corporation, and that he derived inspiration of a Social Darwinist nature from it.”
That’s what happens when you abandon ethical principles in the pursuit of fame and fortune.
leefe, that’s a fair comment, I sort of addressed your concerns in my latest post.
The problem with evolutionary biology is that a faction has tried, with a good deal of success, to divert the direction of research and knowledge in the service of the cult of individualism.
Whether that was deliberate or not is up for debate.
Personally, I do not think Dawkins was aware of what his work was doing. He is apparently quite community minded.
It’s possible that none went down that path deliberately.
One of the early proponents of the mathematical approach to evolution, JBS Haldane, was a communist who would probably be appalled at the outcome today.
Speaking of the outcome today, the promotion of inclusive fitness and Hamiltonian thought in general has become an industry in itself, and a lucrative one.
Richard Dawkins was the first to cash in on this in a big way, but there are many now writing books on the matter, giving lectures, radio interviews and publishing peer-reviewed papers. It has become a movement, an ideology.
If that word ideology seems extreme, consider the outcry that occurred in 2010 when Nowak ,Tarnita, and Wilson published an article in Nature in which they declared that inclusive fitness was dead.
Too many careers were at stake to let that go unchallenged, so a rebuttal was published that was signed by over 130 evolutionary biologists!
Two of the prominent critics even stated that the Nowak paper should not have been published at all.
Not much of a commitment to truth and knowledge there!
When heresy is detected, ideology is in play.
As one of the authors Ed Wilson, stated at the time — if we were wrong, only one objector was needed.
“Well, well”, and indeed even greater “Well, well.”
A week or so ago physicists at CERN say they succeeded in transporting in a pantechnicon in an absolute zero fridge which contained a vacuum crucible housing 190 normally vibrating anti-protons (anti-matter), for several kilometers around the Cern campus. And lo, and behold, the anti-protons didn’t get agitated and instantaneously cease to exist, as is their want. The physicists were of course a-hootin’ and a-hollerin’.
Hmmmm, I thought. I just luv in my dreams to walk through yer typical walls. But doing it when awake, just leads to injury, maybe even a bloody nose, and more often than not, a yelp, so I have ceased the awake experiment, and even avoid it happening accidentally. For me even pursuing it philosophically, I have concluded, is a waste of my time (whatever that is).
I enjoyed the way in his article Dr Jim seemed to walk through walls. As for the subsequent commentary, I found it also enjoyable whilst it wrangled various stresses and strains.
But for the time being I’ll suffice with what I may see/feel via ‘I dream therefore I am’, and look forward to slumber to ponder the apparently inert, and also the fleeting entities that give rise to the world(s), the universe(s) and everything.
Kanga, you said at the start “Disappointing to see such a smart man resort to pejorative language though,”
We’ve known each other long enough now, for you to see that it’s not about me being smart, it’s about me being thorough.
And, being one who does not use pejorative language lightly.
All you had to do was have a Julius Sumner Miller moment and ask — Why is it so?
🙂
Cheers old mate.
Caution re main text and below-the-line commentary: HEMP-fuelled twaddle masquerading as serious thinking followed by brain-size comparisons may offend some readers.