Upstream is a right-wing list. MPu
------- Start of forwarded message ------- From: Premise Checker <checker at mail.sheergeniussoftware.com> To: debsian at pacbell.net Subject: Fwd: [Upstream] Letter about Stephen Jay Gould Date: 6/9/02 8:26:50 AM
>From another list:
It isn't particularly surprising that Professor Gould is being criticized as deliberately distorting data, or lying. What's surprising is that anyone ever expected anything else from him. Gould's dishonesty was so transparent it amounted to a weird kind of integrity.
Take his best known scientific work, the theory of "punctuated equilibrium" in evolution. He and Niles Eldredge offered the theory as a way of calling attention to the fact that the fossil record is singularly barren of the transitional forms all forms of Darwinian theory would seem to predict, and offering an explanation for this. "Punctuated equilibrium" says that evolution can be expected to take place mostly in small groups, geographically and reproductively isolated. This will allegedly produce new species in a time frame that is "biologically long" (and thus Darwinian), but "geographically short" (so the transition forms almost certainly won't be fossilized). Fitness enhancing mutations would quickly spread through the small population, causing rapid evolution. Meanwhile, large populations will not evolve to any discernible extent. The sheer size of the population will dilute the effects of the fitness enhancing mutations, because of the time it takes for them to spread through the population. However, the remains of said large populations will constitute essentially the entire fossil record. In sum, small populations will evolve quickly but invisibly, large ones so slowly they are to all intents not evolving at all.
OK, very interesting, let's see the model and work through the equations then we can test it against the data ... Uhm, there appears to be no model. For all practical purposes, the _ASSERTIONS_ listed above are it.
I found this void so striking I tried to model punctuated equilibrium myself. My conclusion was that population size would have absolutely no effect on neo-Darwinian evolution: since random mutation is the starting point, the rate of evolution must be a function of the number of conserved, fitness enhancing mutations. The number of such mutations would be the overall mutation rate per reproducing organism, times the number of reproducing organisms, times the fraction enhancing fitness. The large population would have more fitness enhancing mutations, and this would exactly counterbalance the greater time it takes to spread them through a population.
The only other relevant information I've ever found was in a _Scientific American_ article by population geneticist Motoo Kimura. While expounding his "neutral theory of molecular evolution" (Scientific American V. 241, No. 5, 1979, pp. 98-126), he says that smaller populations should experience a slightly slower rate of Darwinian evolution than large ones.
Or consider the first two collections of Gould's essays from _Natural History_ magazine. In the very first essay of "Ever Since Darwin," Gould responds to an increasingly popular criticism of neo-Darwinian theory: that it is without content. The theory says the "fittest" survive, but then allegedly defines fitness as survival, reducing to the survival of the survivors, a tautology.
Gould answers that, were this true, it would indeed be a devastating criticism of evolutionary theory, but it is in fact false. "Fitness," in the Darwinian sense, is really good design as an engineer would judge it. This is what he says neo-Darwinism predicts. For a specific example, he refers you to his essay on the "Irish Elk" in the same volume.
Turn to the "Elk" essay. Gould asks if the huge size of its antlers might have rendered it unfit to survive, and says not. As evidence, he offers ... nothing at all. Not a sentence in the essay directly address whether smaller antlers might have been a better design from the engineering standpoint. (Indirectly, however, he argues the other side of the question, by saying that the Irish Elk's antlers probably had such a high moment of inertia that when an Elk turned its head rapidly, it risked serious physical injury!). Instead, the essay discusses all kinds of things that have nothing to do with the subject he claimed it addresses.
So if the Irish Elk's huge size generally, and huge antlers specifically weren't factors rendering it unfit, why did it become extinct? Because it 'failed to adapt' (quote approximate). This sort of circular reasoning is precisely what he says neo-Darwinism doesn't engage in! In the face of such open casuistry, how can one be indignant?
The cream of the jest, though, is in his next book, "The Panda's Thumb." There he argues that, contrary to what he said in "Ever Since Darwin," neo-Darwinian theory predicts _BAD_ design. The panda's 'thumb,' formed from an outgrowth of a wrist bone, is Gould's standard illustration of this phenomenon. And how did he happen upon this idea? Though he implies it came from observing a panda in a zoo, both the idea and the specific example are found in one of Arthur Koestler's books critiquing Darwinian theory -- books he several times goes out of his way to criticize as wrong.
I could go on, but why bother? I think Gould must have spent a lot of time privately amused that anyone took his ideas seriously. He sure didn't.
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