Marx "admired" Darwin

Phil Gasper ptrg at sirius.com
Tue Aug 18 14:57:18 PDT 1998



>The dialectical is me looking at what Gould
>is saying and analyzing it. I have never
>heard Gould use the term to describe it.
>However, Engels says somewhere that
>most good scientists then ( and now we might add)
>proceed dialectically but without knowing
>it. I will look for the statements from
>Engels and maybe Haldane, if you like.
>
>The principle in question is the interpenetration
>of quality and quantity. Darwin describes
>evolution as continuous (gradual). The punctuations
>would make it continuous with rare discontinuities.
>
>What say you ?
>
>Charles Brown
> Detroit

Writing about punctuated equilibrium in *The Panda's Thumb* Gould writes:

"If gradualism is more a product of Western thought than a fact of nature, then we should consider alternate philosophies of change to enlarge our realm of constraining prejudices. In the Soviet Union, for example, scientists are trained with a very different philosophy of change-the so-called dialectical laws, reformulated by Engels from Hegel's philosophy. The dialectical laws are explicitly punctuational.... Eldredge and I were fascinated to learn that many Russian paleontologists support a model similar to our punctuated equlibria." (pp.184-5)

In a review of Lewontin et al., *Not In Our Genes* reprinted in *An Urchin in the Storm* Gould writes:

"...we cannot factor a complex social situation into so much biology on one side, and so much culture on the other. We must seek to understand the emergent and irreducible properties arising from an inextricable interpenetration of genes and environments. In short, we must use what so many great thinkers call, but American fashion dismisses as political rhetoric from the other side, a dialectical approach.

"Dialectical thinking should be taken more seriously by Western scholars, not discarded becasue some nations of the second world have constructed a cardboard version as an official political doctrine. The issues that it raises are, in another form, the crucial questions of reductionism versus holism, now so much under discussion throughout biology....

"When presented as guidelines for a philosophy of change, not as dogmatic precepts true by fiat, the three classical laws of dialectics embody a holistic vision that views change as interaction among components of complete systems, and sees the components themselves not as a priori entities, but as both products of and inputs to the system" (pp.153-4)

See also his comments on Engels in *Ever Since Darwin* (pp.210-11) and *Urchin* (pp.111-12). Gould is not one of those scientists who thinks dialectically without knowing it.

I never thought of myself as a Gould scholar, but I seem to be turning into one on this list.

Phil Gasper ptrg at sirius.com 415-522-1895



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