muchas gracias, frances -----Original Message----- From: Sam Pawlett <epawlett at uniserve.com> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Thursday, March 18, 1999 10:28 AM Subject: Re: Bolton review
>
>
>>
>>
>> There are unexpected pleasures in seeing the success of otherwise junk
>> capitalist economic theories in the explanation of natural phenomena.
>
>But don't you think that these explanations of natural phenomena become
imbued
>with bourgeois ideology simply by the use of capitalist methodology i.e.
>explaining wholes in terms of the parts? That also seems to be a point
Marxist
>biologists are making. Is society not a natural phenomenon?
>
>> At
>> any rate, Maynard Smith is not applying "game theory to the social
>> relations in which people are embedded" but to bacterial plasmid,
parasitic
>> hymenoptera (wasps and ichneumonids), lions, hamadryas baboon, etc, It
is
>> also surely not correct that Maynard Smith believes that "poverty is a
>> matter of where you end up on the genetic roulette wheel"--see his
careful
>> deflationary critiques of recent attempts in sociobiology in his Did
Darwin
>> Get It Right which is also a defense of the gene centered view of
>> evolution.
>
>Yes, but as I mentioned on this list, Dawkins wrote the intro to the Canto
edition
>of Maynard Smith 's classic "Theory of Evolution" where he said Maynard
Smith's
>theory is a bulwark against the "political correctness" invading the
discipline
>even though MS wrote this book when he was a Marxist. MS, from his review
of
>Levins and Lewontin in "Games, Sex and Evolution" seems to be agnostic with
>regards to dialectics. Smith is also an adaptationist, who typically
believe that
>only the fittest survive. I dunno, I'm still trying to put the pieces
together
>here.
>
>>
>>
>> By the way, Rose argues that Haldane would not have been amused by
>> Hamilton's development of his off handed comment about about kin
selection
>> As for Haldane's tortuous political path, marked by violent involvement
in
>> WWI, see Gary Werksey's Invisible College ( a book about Britain's
>> Communist scientists--Levy, Hogben, Haldane, Bernal). It is true that
>> Haldane thought the mean intelligence of Britain was declining due to the
>> overproduction of the working class (another kind of overproduction
>> crisis); his background was elite beyond elite, yet the actual policy
>> recommendations he made were radically egalitarian. His political twists
>> and turns seem quite complex.
>
>Haldane was a columnist for the Daily Worker and a CP member until the late
40's
>or early 50's when he broke over Lysenkoism. Haldane thought some of
Lysenko's
>ideas sound, he just didn't like the submitting of science to politics as
occured
>under Stalin. J.B.S. until his death was an admirer of Stalin. J.B.S. did
think
>that people should face the truth no matte how politically and socially
>unpalatable. He also worked for British Naval Intelligence during WW2,
because he
>thought his work might help save the lives of working class soldiers, which
it
>probably did.
>
>Also, I thought cell biology had been incorporated into chemistry.
>
>Sam
>
>
>>
>> The always thought provoking and eloquent Mr Grimes concluded: "the
biology of
>> the cell is richer in relationships than any assembly of ideologies or
>> theoretical designs. That's the problem." This is exactly Rose's argument
>> for rejecting an assembly of reductionist theoretical designs which he
>> thinks are retained for ideological reasons only despite the great
>> obstances they present to the explanation of complexity in the biological
>> world. Maynard Smith also notes: "The history of my own science of
>> genetics has persuaded me that people who decide issues on the basis
>> philosophical views are likely to get it wrong. Consider Karl Pearson,
>> whose positivist philosophy led him to deny the existence of genes, and
>> T.D. Lysenko, who Marxism led him to espouse the inheritance of acquired
>> characters." This seems to me a good warning against the invocation of
>> dialectical materialism to settle any issue.
>>
>> Yours, Rakesh
>>
>> >Listers might be interested in the excellent paper by Phil Gasper on
>> >Marxism and
>> >Science
at:http://www.littleprints.free-online.co.uk/pubs/isj79/bookwatc.htm
>> >
>> > Sam Pawlett