> Think of this analogously to how you wouldn't look to
>physics or chemistry to explain the positive content of biological
>phenomena (for that you'd look to dynamics of natural selection, etc. i.e.,
>dynamics at higher levels of complexity). In the same way that chemical
>and physical dynamics are necessary but insufficient conditions for what
>happens on the biological level,
Well to explain bias or asymmetry in, say, why certain twining plants tend to have right handed helices or why most snail or sea shells have right handed spirals, Enrico Coen suggests that we may have to go all the way back to an early stage of evolution in which, say, a left form of an amino acid became predominantly used by organisms and essentially all amino acids involved in protein synthesis ended up being this type. Now why interactions between molecules during evolution may have ensured that only one type of amino acid, say a left handed one, eventually came to predominate may have been biased due to some properties of subatomic principles. This suggests to me that we *may* have to look to physics to understand the 'positive content of biological phenomena', viz. asymmetry. But I'm way out of my league.
>The theory is actually a mutation from natural selection theories about
>_differential_ reproduction of _populations_ (based on _chance_ genetic and
>environmental shifts), to an individualist and maximizing model of
>selection resembling nothing so much as the competitive bourgeouis
>market-place in which its metaphors were spawned.
This is misleading, Maureen. The gene centered view of evolution tends to explore *intragenomic* conflict within organisms which are thus not treated as *individualistic* and maximizing bourgeois agents.
>...which goes back to my wondering why this particular manifestation of the
>market-theory of nature--this one with its nubile women home nurturing
>their precious eggs while the y-chromosomed are out spreading their
>seed--why does this one garner respect from people who'd presumably see
>through market-logics-cum-nature models quickly enough in other contexts?
>Zizekian disavowal? plain sexism? or maybe just less general exposure to
>the perils of selfish-gene theory than I'd presumed? If the latter, then
>herewith some elucidations.
At the same time, a gene centered perspective is not ipso facto an apology for sexism. Such a perspective may illuminate for example aspects of maternal-fetal conflict. A serious risk to the mother during pregnancy is pre-eclampsia, a rise in blood pressure that may damage the kidneys. In typical pregnancies, the fetus is more likely to survive if there is a moderate rise in blood pressure. Fetal cells (or more precisely cells in the placenta that are of fetal origin) ensure an increased blood supply to the placenta in two ways: by destroying nerves and muscles in the walls of the blood vessels supplying the placenta, and by causing a restriction of maternal arteries supplying other organs. The latter change, in particular, can lead to a rise in maternal blood pressure. In normal pregnancies, this benefits the fetus without damaging the mother, but in exceptional cases in can threaten the mother's life. I just can't see how the illumination of such conflict is motivated by bourgeois ideology, though its easy to see how sexism would suppress such understanding of the conflicts of pregancy.
>Thus you have unilineal descent systems (loads of them) where children are
>"strangers" kinwise, to either the mother or the father; or residency
>prescriptions whereby parent's parent's sibling's children's children
>(reproductive coefficient 1/32) are designated much closer kin than one's
>own siblings (reproductive coefficient 1/2); or, certain bilateral-descent
>Polynesian groups, where parents perform infanticide on their genetic
>children in high numbers, then later adopt non-genetically related kin,
>raised as their own children, in even higher numbers; and on ad infinitum.
Excellent. The light of acutal empirical, cross cultural knowledge to cast doubt on a highly formalistic theory. How lucky we are to have Maureen on the list.
>In short, people are always, by definition, doing kin-inspired things that
>make absolutely no sense from the perspective of selfish gene theory. But
>they're things that do make sense within the society's meaningful schemes.
>And in light of this facct that kinship is manifestly not ordered by or for
>individual biological reproductive success, sociobiology has precious
>little left to stand on.
Ah, Maureen, you have taken a caricature (and why no serious consideration of sociobiological explanations of that foundation of kinship--the incest taboo; what do you make of Godelier's explanation in Transformations of Kinship, ed Godelier, Thomas Trautmann?)
It's important that we don't treat only the most stupid manifestations of sociobiology. Instead of arguing that group or kin identity can only be explained by 'rational' selfish gene behavior, the smarter sociobiologists, like John Maynard Smith, argue that sociobiology can illuminate why group identity, and hence behavior, is often influenced by myth and ritual *EVEN TO THE EXCLUSION OF RATIONAL SELF INTEREST.*
He begins by suggesting that it is possible to offer an evolutionary explanation for a universal human characteristic--the ability to be socialized by myth. The basic idea here may be no less convincing: that those human groups that could instill group loyalty into their members would be more sucessful and hence individuals in the group would transmit more of the genes that made group loyalty possible. More specifically, if cooperation is induced by myth and ritual, not by reason or selfish gene algebra, the innate capacity to be influenced by ritual may have evolved by natural selection. This leads John Maynard Smith to argue for the creation of myths that extend loyalty to the human species as a whole. Highly speculative indeed, but not necessarily bourgeois apologetics and transposed vulgar economics.
>And still, after all that, turns out even on its own multiply dippy terms
>the theory doesn't hold up: those who've suspended disbelief and engaged in
>the fantasy have pointed out that even if we could imagine this Hobbesian
>scenario of limited male parenting investment, scarce female resources
>(because parenting and post-natal investment has fallen on her) and
>correspondingly intense male competition, then what you'd get is war of
>he-man against he-man, wherein the mortality chances of those
>seed-spreading he-men would actually increase.
But if those traits that may life span may also increase reproductive fitness...
Yours, Rakesh