Happy new year to you, Robert. You alluded to Mark Twain in a previous post. With regard to your position and mine in this and other discussions, I'd have to say that never the twain shall meet. We have such different ideas of the boundaries that should be set between the findings of experimental or theoretical science and the social sciences. To me, you seem to think that metaphorical similarities reveal an identity between science and culture or history. I reject that method of working and can only admire, but not sign on to, the fertility of your thinking, which reminds me of a jazz composition. Looking at the prospect of directing social change, this seems too reminiscent of the gleam in the eye of intellectuals of the modern age. We're past all such theories, and I think that is a very good thing, really. I'm not saying that we shouldn't extend our efforts to describe or understand what happens; that seems a worthwhile and helpful goal. This will give science a role to fulfill but won't be theoretical in any real sense.

No, this is a fair attack. Dawkins builds a philosophy and a theology upon his biological observations. By denigrating the role of religion in forming group cohesiveness and identity, Dawkins casts doubt on one of the major drivers of cultural change. As well, while he says that the selfish gene does not mean that selfish organisms succeed, there is a strong subtext of the economic model of the rational individual with all its assumptions about human behaviour. His argument that religion is not needed is supremely elitist and based on his unusual life circumstances as a successful scientist. His suggestion for the abolition of religion removes a main plank of human group identity. Science alone does not offer a path for workable social values, which need to emerge from the twisted timbers of humanity.

Again I would cite boundaries, in a related sense. If Dawkins makes the claims that you refer to in the two books under discussion--or anywhere else--we have something to evaluate. But since to my knowledge he doesn't make the claim that his science validates his views on religion, what he has spoken out about has no bearing at present. You also seem to be saying that Dawkins' views are an inevitable corollary of his science. Even if this correspondence was binding, which I doubt (does no one who accepts his theory have a different view of the faith question?), what would you have him do, suppress his theory? In one of his Selfish Gene prefaces, he laments that readers accuse him of spoiling their day with ideas that make them less proud of their creatureliness. He's just calling things as he sees them, I believe, and you have said you think he's on-target.

Bill, you are saying here that reality is intrinsically opaque and incomprehensible. You may regard scholarship as a graveyard, I would rather view it as an inheritance, or at least a junkyard.

If I sounded anti-intellectual, I didn't mean to. Scholarship is fine, and the best will rise to the top. I was singling out theories that apply reductionism inappropriately. An example of that would be to equate human psychology with memetic makeup.

The debate here is about cultural evolution, not just cultural transmission. Your comment ‘we don’t have a gap’ implies the modern world has a satisfactory understanding of cultural evolution. I would beg to strongly differ. If we understand the science of social change then we have greater power to influence its direction and speed. Dawkins’ hostility to group selection seems to me to be a major brake on informed dialogue about social change.

We can't and should not try to control cultural evolution. That is an outstandingly bad idea, anyway. Dawkins' reasoned, science-based objections to group-selectionism (he of course might not be right) have no relation whatsoever to impeding social change. Dawkins never said or implied that group dynmamics aren't important in culture.

You are mixing species selection with group selection. A pride of lions behaves in ways to expand the power of the pride. They are not concerned about the species as a whole, and indeed lions will kill the cubs of other lions. The phenotype of the group exercises selective pressure on the individuals, so that those which instinctively behave in ways that are good for the group prosper. A group with such lions will outcompete a rival group which fails to respond to pressures at the group level. We see this group selection operating all the time in human life, with cohesive empires defeating smaller scattered groups. Human groups gain goals and identity through shared narrative, formerly known as myth or religion. The content of group narrative is a main driver of memetic evolution of human culture.

Interesting, perhaps true, but needing confirmation. Is there competition among prides of lions that selects groups for survival? Possibly, but I have doubts that natural selection could be operating when it is not usually the case that an entire group is killed or dies of starvation. When we come to human groups, we find that survival of groups isn't meaningful in terms of evolution. What does it mean when we say a group doesn't survive? Frequently, individuals merely opt out or are absorbed by another group. Their survival usually is not entailed. Even their belonging to one group or another is often just something we say about them, but not a reality for them in their lives. The "group" might not survive, but since mortality might not be involved for individuals as a result of group dissolution, what we are seeing perish is rather abstract.

DWill wrote:Happy new year to you, Robert. You alluded to Mark Twain in a previous post. With regard to your position and mine in this and other discussions, I'd have to say that never the twain shall meet. We have such different ideas of the boundaries that should be set between the findings of experimental or theoretical science and the social sciences. To me, you seem to think that metaphorical similarities reveal an identity between science and culture or history. I reject that method of working and can only admire, but not sign on to, the fertility of your thinking, which reminds me of a jazz composition. Looking at the prospect of directing social change, this seems too reminiscent of the gleam in the eye of intellectuals of the modern age. We're past all such theories, and I think that is a very good thing, really. I'm not saying that we shouldn't extend our efforts to describe or understand what happens; that seems a worthwhile and helpful goal. This will give science a role to fulfill but won't be theoretical in any real sense.

Hi Bill, and likewise wishing you a fulfilling 2010.

My reference to Mark Twain was to his comment that reports of his death were much exaggerated. Your suggestion that Lamarck’s theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics is dead and buried seems similarly to be an over-confident diagnosis.

Sure, it is easy to laugh at Lamarck regarding his idea that giraffes necks have become longer by the inheritance of the behaviour of stretching to reach leaves. Incidentally, Dawkins provides a beautiful discussion in his latest book, The Greatest Show On Earth, of the actual evolution of the long neck of the giraffe, especially how one of its face nerves loops from the brain around the heart because that path was efficient in fish and the disruption in shifting to a direct path is more than the genes can handle.

However, when we come to analyse the evolution of culture and group behaviour, it is another story entirely. Institutions operate primarily by the inheritance of acquired characteristics. People learn about the culture, and copy existing behaviour to be successful. The question of memetics is whether such cultural behaviour applies the same laws as are observed in genetics. Dawkins says yes it does, in terms of copy-fidelity, fecundity and longevity. Of course culture evolves much faster than nature, but the point here is that memes follow the same laws as genes because these laws are accurate descriptions of any evolution of a complex natural system. The similarity is not just metaphorical, as you suggest, but rather provides a powerful analytical tool to study the nature of culture.

Your scepticism about ‘directing social change’ reminds me of Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, and his deep conservative suspicion about the power of reason, and of Karl Popper’s attack on Plato as a totalitarian. While I respect Burke and Popper, their attitude condemns us to a stagnant repetition of the past, with no prospect to identify how reason can shape society.

My comments here are against the context of the potential for catastrophic climate change, and the need for humanity to evolve into a new group identity to implement measures to prevent global warming. My beef with Dawkins is that his theory of the selfish gene excludes precisely the form of global evolution most needed to manage the climate, by retaining an individualist conception of human identity which downplays the important role of memetic identity in the evolution of groups.

If Dawkins makes the claims that you refer to in the two books under discussion--or anywhere else--we have something to evaluate. But since to my knowledge he doesn't make the claim that his science validates his views on religion, what he has spoken out about has no bearing at present. You also seem to be saying that Dawkins' views are an inevitable corollary of his science. Even if this correspondence was binding, which I doubt (does no one who accepts his theory have a different view of the faith question?), what would you have him do, suppress his theory? In one of his Selfish Gene prefaces, he laments that readers accuse him of spoiling their day with ideas that make them less proud of their creatureliness. He's just calling things as he sees them, I believe, and you have said you think he's on-target.

Of course Dawkins says his science validates his views on religion. His most famous idea is that science requires atheism and excludes religion as an obsolete form of false consciousness. I see this claim as an essential empirical stepping stone towards a revaluation of religious values, not as the final word. By excluding group selection in his dogma of the selfish gene, Dawkins taps into the British mytheme of individual liberty, a mytheme that I greatly admire, but one of which I am also quite critical. I agree with Dawkins’ lament that people see themselves as creatures rather than organisms, as these two forms of human self-identity conceal whole memeplexes of assumptions. ‘Creatureliness’ involves a belief in a supernatural God which Dawkins suggests lacks logical rigour. However, the contrasting atheist view, that we are essentially organisms, can cut us off from the group identity provided through mythology and religion.

If I sounded anti-intellectual, I didn't mean to. Scholarship is fine, and the best will rise to the top. I was singling out theories that apply reductionism inappropriately. An example of that would be to equate human psychology with memetic makeup.

What is wrong with linking psychology and memetics? This seems to me the most obvious application for the memetic theory that cultural transmission follows an evolutionary path. Our psyches are the product of our culture, built on the junkyard of all the ideas that have ever influenced us. What do you see as the non-memetic factors in psychology?

We can't and should not try to control cultural evolution. That is an outstandingly bad idea, anyway. Dawkins' reasoned, science-based objections to group-selectionism (he of course might not be right) have no relation whatsoever to impeding social change. Dawkins never said or implied that group dynamics aren't important in culture.

More Burke and Popper. You are a real Tory Bill! Of course we should try to control cultural evolution, for example towards ideals such as freedom, justice and peace. The problem here is whether Dawkins extends his science of genetic determinism into the cultural realm. He argues that cultural evolution should promote atheism to move the planet towards more rational management. I agree to the extent that atheism is evidence-based, but the problem is that atheism excludes the depth of human identity found in religion. Reform of religion is likely to be a more effective path to achieve social goods than is the opposition to religion that Dawkins advocates.

Is there competition among prides of lions that selects groups for survival? Possibly, but I have doubts that natural selection could be operating when it is not usually the case that an entire group is killed or dies of starvation. When we come to human groups, we find that survival of groups isn't meaningful in terms of evolution. What does it mean when we say a group doesn't survive? Frequently, individuals merely opt out or are absorbed by another group. Their survival usually is not entailed. Even their belonging to one group or another is often just something we say about them, but not a reality for them in their lives. The "group" might not survive, but since mortality might not be involved for individuals as a result of group dissolution, what we are seeing perish is rather abstract.

The subordination of some human groups by others through war, colonisation and imposition of new social arrangements and narratives is a main theme of history. You are saying that just because members of a conquered group survive as a fragmented underclass that their former group was ‘rather abstract’. Were the religious identities of indigenous peoples of the Americas and Australia mere ‘abstractions’ which do not matter because the descendents of their believers remain alive at the margins of the dominant group? Group identity is a key to human identity. Belittling the group identity of others is a strategy much used by dominant groups, through suppression of language, culture and land rights. In mythology, we often see the conquered group return in a subordinate position. Members of a dominant group have an unfair advantage over those who have been conquered, and part of this advantage is their implicit acceptance of memes that validate the cultural beliefs of the dominant group. Identifying and analysing the memes that provide identity for dominant groups seems to me a central task for social evolution.

Robert Tulip wrote:My reference to Mark Twain was to his comment that reports of his death were much exaggerated. Your suggestion that Lamarck’s theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics is dead and buried seems similarly to be an over-confident diagnosis.

I did get the point of your Twain reference and was just knocking another chip off the Twain block. What is called Lamarckian theory is as irrelevant to a discussion of culture as it is to biology, IMHO. It seems a poor authority to seek. Why not just say that cultural traits are passed on and leave it at that? That much was known well before the pre-Darwinian scientists.

Incidentally, Dawkins provides a beautiful discussion in his latest book, The Greatest Show On Earth, of the actual evolution of the long neck of the giraffe, especially how one of its face nerves loops from the brain around the heart because that path was efficient in fish and the disruption in shifting to a direct path is more than the genes can handle.

Thanks for the recommendation. I was handling the book the other day and would like to get a chance to read it.

Institutions operate primarily by the inheritance of acquired characteristics. People learn about the culture, and copy existing behaviour to be successful. The question of memetics is whether such cultural behaviour applies the same laws as are observed in genetics. Dawkins says yes it does, in terms of copy-fidelity, fecundity and longevity. Of course culture evolves much faster than nature, but the point here is that memes follow the same laws as genes because these laws are accurate descriptions of any evolution of a complex natural system. The similarity is not just metaphorical, as you suggest, but rather provides a powerful analytical tool to study the nature of culture.

Of course, I more than "suggest" the similarity is metaphorical. Apples and oranges sums up my view of the comparability of natural selection and culture change. I do believe there is one, broad and important similarity, which is that each partakes of a creativity that is partly beyond the explanation of natural law. This similarity doesn't depend on what I think is an indefensible position that genes and memes are alike in substance, process, or function.

Your scepticism about ‘directing social change’ reminds me of Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, and his deep conservative suspicion about the power of reason, and of Karl Popper’s attack on Plato as a totalitarian. While I respect Burke and Popper, their attitude condemns us to a stagnant repetition of the past, with no prospect to identify how reason can shape society.

Didn't I say directing 'cultural evolution'? I would never deny that it was good for the U.S. government to pass laws barring racial discrimination, for example. Understanding how culture changes in order to be able to direct it seems not promising and a bit ominous. On Burke's supposed deep suspicion of reason, well how did that French Revolution thing go? Don't you think that it's really rationales, not reason, that Burke distrusts? There is a necessary tension between conservatism and liberalism, a healthy dynamic in a society. When one pole is eliminated, trouble appears.

I'm still curious, Robert, about these tools for understanding culture change that we supposedly don't have and which memetics will provide. What have historians and anthropologists been doing all this time if not tracing cultural change and development? If they have not come up with laws, have not made the field into a science, the reason is the nature of the subject itself.

My beef with Dawkins is that his theory of the selfish gene excludes precisely the form of global evolution most needed to manage the climate, by retaining an individualist conception of human identity which downplays the important role of memetic identity in the evolution of groups.

This is opinion about Dawkins, of course. You don't believe him when he says that selfish genes describe the motive force of natural selection but do not equate to any determinism in societies. If selfish genes were in fact determinants of behavior, then yes, we would would be in the bind you allege. But this isn't the case that D. makes.

Of course Dawkins says his science validates his views on religion.

I must ask you to show me these statements. Otherwise I can only think you're saying he 'acts as if' he makes this leap.

The subordination of some human groups by others through war, colonisation and imposition of new social arrangements and narratives is a main theme of history. You are saying that just because members of a conquered group survive as a fragmented underclass that their former group was ‘rather abstract’. Were the religious identities of indigenous peoples of the Americas and Australia mere ‘abstractions’ which do not matter because the descendents of their believers remain alive at the margins of the dominant group? Group identity is a key to human identity. Belittling the group identity of others is a strategy much used by dominant groups, through suppression of language, culture and land rights. In mythology, we often see the conquered group return in a subordinate position. Members of a dominant group have an unfair advantage over those who have been conquered, and part of this advantage is their implicit acceptance of memes that validate the cultural beliefs of the dominant group. Identifying and analysing the memes that provide identity for dominant groups seems to me a central task for social evolution.

Here you take my remark entirely out of context. There is no argument I am making, none at all, that groups don't conflict and that nations and ethnic groups haven't used the force of their collectives to crush other peoples. That certainly isn't trivial. But let's stay with the program, which I thought was to evaluate the strength of the group selection argument as the driver of natural selection.