Ch. 1: Finding Your Inner Fish

DWill · Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 9:02 pm Post subject:

For me, the primo guy for taking technical topics and making them not just accessible but nearly always fascinating was John McPhee. I haven't heard much about him lately, though. I'm glad, too, that Shubin doesn't get into an argument about creationism. This tells us that creationism is beneath him and the readers he wants to reach. It would be utterly pointless to go over that ground again.

When I was much younger, I wanted to be an archeologist because I'd read about Heinrich Schliemann's excavation of Troy and I liked to dig up old bottles and artifacts everywhere I went. Shubin communicates to us some of this boyish joy in his vocation. It's good to see portrayed not just the science but the feeling for doing science.
DWill

President Camacho · Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 9:51 pm Post subject:

You're absolutely right. I get the same feeling.

The depth of science that Shubin immerses his readers in gets deeper and deeper throughout the book. It begins by, as you mention, bypassing creationism and then bursts right through evolution to in your face "slice and dice" type experiments on animal embryos of different species.

This book shows how human knowledge about our/the past (not our own subjective history, but rather knowledge based on empirical research) is realized. Some eggs are literally broken in the name of science. I think that is great! No one can figure out an engine by looking at the cases.

Personally, not having done any scientific experiments and having been constantly bombarded with animal rights activist stories, PC this and that, and yada yada yada... I'm glad to see that serious research like this is allowed to be published and is accepted by a great many people.

I now have some great ammo for those who want to stop this kind of research. The benefits far outweigh the very unfortunate costs.

Robert Tulip · Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 10:37 pm Post subject:

Biomachine · Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 2:04 am Post subject:

Robert Tulip · Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 3:15 pm Post subject:

The interesting thing to me is how this scientific material helps us to improve philosophy. Seeing how fish evolved into tetrapods gives us an exciting example of the overall mechanism of cumulative adaptation. The point, contra transcendentalist magical religion, is that evidence gives us a sufficient basis to prepare a narrative explanation of life. This work emerges strongly from the foundations laid by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene, where zoology is presented as the foundation of philosophy.

The chapter from The Selfish Gene where Dawkins invented the concept of the meme can be read at http://www.rubinghscience.org/memetics/dawkinsmemes.html I think this is a key text informing Schubin's perspective for which a key insight is that paleontology provides data to understand the dynamic mechanism of evolution on our planet. Implications today for this perspective include that human cultural evolution can be understood on the model of the slow change of DNA over time. Perhaps we are evolving 'fish hands' which will form a structure that can enable a next stage of planetary evolution. I discussed related issues in a review of The Matrix at http://www.ascm.org.au/jgOnline/2004Summer/jg2004Summer.htm#Part8

Robert Tulip · Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 5:40 pm Post subject:

Dawkins says in the just mentioned chapter of The Selfish Gene http://www.rubinghscience.org/memetics/dawkinsmemes.html that "...one fundamental principle...is the law that all life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities. The gene, the DNA molecule, happens to be the replicating entity that prevails on our planet. There may be others. If there are, provided certain other conditions are met, they will almost inevitably tend to become the basis for an evolutionary process."

This sets up a biological law of equal status to Newton's laws of physical motion. Dawkins says "The laws of physics are supposed to be true all over the accessible universe"and asks "Are there any principles of biology that are likely to have similar universal validity ?" In answer, he gives three general qualities of successful replicators: longevity, fecundity, and copying-fidelity.

Hands on fish met these qualities and were successful.

Saffron · Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 1:29 pm Post subject:

Robert,
I have not yet read the chapter from The Selfish Gene, so I won't comment on that part of your post. I will say that not everyone agrees with this concept. In fact, the other non-fiction book, Our Inner Ape begins with de Waal saying he believes this is a mistaken concept.

Darwinian evolution applied to cultural change.

Darwinian concepts:
1. An adaptation made by an organism enhances it's ability to survive long enough to reproduce and or increases the success rate of reproduction.
2. Adaptations come about through pre-adaptations, which are traits that already exist and become increasing useful due to environmental conditions.
Therefore, adaptations are selected because they increase survival and reproduction.

Underlying assumptions when darwinian evolutions is applied to culture:

1. cultural change = progress. I think anyone would be hard pressed to label many cultural changes as progress.
2. cultural change is in some way an adaptive response to an outside influence. Adaptive implies that a positive change has been made to enhance survival. There are so many examples of cultural changes that are not adaptive. Look at Native American (or if you prefer American Indian) culture and how it has changed. The changes did not come as adaptive responses to environmental forces. The changes came because of the self interest of the environmental forces (white people with power, taking the children of American Indians away and putting them in boarding schools 100's of miles away from families to enculturate them. The changes that resulted in native culture was in no way adaptive in the sense of increasing survival. It is more in the way of the psychological response to trauma. Another example is how Europe responded culturally after the Black Plague. Hedonism became very popular and faith in a god wained. It was very disruptive. Prior to the Black Plague it was believed that your worldly success was an indication of your favor with God and an indication that you were going to heaven. Of course the plague struck rich and poor indiscriminately. This fact did not go unnoticed. The resulting changes in religious beliefs were not necessarily adaptive, just changed as a result of experience.

Robert Tulip · Posted: Sat May 17, 2008 10:38 pm Post subject:

Hi Saffron

I hope it is okay here to try to unpack some of the baggage surrounding the application of evolutionary theory to cultural analysis, as this is where I see the most interesting message coming from Shubin and Dawkins. 'Fish hands' are a metaphor for all the pieces of genetic and cultural evolution which subsequently provide a stepladder for a wider transformation.

Your examples of the plague and the invasion of the Americas are worth exploring further. On another thread I raised the relation of nihilism (the view that nothing matters) to atheism. Catastrophic external forces inevitably produce a short term nihilistic response, as people find their dreams shattered and all their work destroyed. Speaking of short term evolution in such a context is irrelevant, except the evolution of the successful invader, whether botulism or white people. Evolution of the victim can only happen once the shock of destruction has stabilised. The vanquished in an assymetrical battle have no initial choice but to reel in dismay at the unfolding events, as they do not have time to evolve a competitive response. This highlights that an organism needs stability and time in order to evolve. Not necessarily peace, as antelopes evolve to escape lions in a continuing arms race, but stability.

Australian aborigines show a similar nihilistic reaction to modern racist white society as native Americans - with alcohol, drugs, violence, unemployment, crime, prison and despair the common themes. However, aboriginal people have a resilient cultural identity which provides them with resources to engage with modernity, partly through assimiliation, partly through defiance. It has been very hard for aborigines to articulate their pride in their identity when their languages have been banned, they have been treated as sub-human, their land and children have been stolen and they have been subject to overt and covert wars of cultural and physical genocide. However, this articulation of pride is an adaptive response, and can be analysed as a strategy of cultural evolution in a hostile environment.

Part of the issue here is that evolution is slow, and you cannot expect to see cultural evolution happen quickly in response to massive external shocks like the plague. There is bound to be a disfunctional adjustment. This can produce either a spiral to extinction or be turned around into an evolutionary response.

One of my favourite examples, just from my own observation, is an Australian native bird called the peewee, also known as the magpie lark. When I was a boy growing up in Sydney in the 1960s and 1970s, peewees were common, but were then decimated by cars, cats and Indian mynas, three invaders for which peewees initially had no answer. The interesting thing was to see them adapt to the new urban environment. They learnt to fight off the mynas and cats, and then, interestingly, started playing chicken with cars, sitting on the road and seeing how late they could fly away without being hit. This game had clear obvious adaptive benefit, and may have been as much cultural as genetic on the part of the peewees.

These are provocative and controversial themes, in that the fascist overtones of 'survival of the fittest' - eg Hans Eysenck, Herbert Spencer, Murray's The Bell Curve, etc -are present in any attempt to apply evolution to modern cultural and political contexts. The example of fascism shows how difficult it is to apply evolutionary theory to culture in a way that will be informative and productive. Hitler thought he had an adaptive strategy for cultural evolution, but was catastrophically wrong. My own view is that fascism is a mad and non-functional strategy for human cultural evolution, and that the Christian themes of compassion, justice and love will prove the most adaptive long term path. However, evolution towards an ethic of love faces all sorts of obstacles in human interests and pathologies. Some of the related questions I am interested in include what we should view as the 'entelechy' (Aristotle's word for end or purpose) of human life, and how we can assist our world to evolve towards such a telos.

LanDroid · Posted: Sun May 18, 2008 11:13 am Post subject:

The first I heard of Neil Shubin and this book was, of all places, on the Steven Colbert Report. Informative and wacky interview:

http://www.comedycentral.com/colbertreport/videos.jhtml?videoId=147281

I'm embarrassed to admit, the first I heard of Frans De Waal and the other book we're discussing was also The Stephen Colbert Report! Laughing

I guess it's a better source for science news than one would expect. Razz

Please enjoy another informative yet bizarre interview:

http://www.comedycentral.com/colbertreport/videos.jhtml?videoId=148996

DWill · Posted: Sun May 18, 2008 11:08 pm Post subject:


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