Dawkins Vs Gould: Survival of the Fittest (Revolutions of Science) [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

With a title DAWKINS vs GOULD the focus is naturally on these two combatants and because both are brilliant thinkers and prolific writers it makes for some stimulating and very interesting reading. The only problem with this book is that by narrowly limiting the discussion to these two men, some readers may remain unaware that they are merely representative of a much larger debate involving most of the scientific community. A debate that covers topics such as human morphology and intelligence, human origins, intelligent design vs creationism. The field of enquiry involved is much wider than evolution and includes genetics, sociobiology, primatology and paleontology to name a few.

As it relates to the two specific positions of DAWKINS vs GOULD though this litte book offers a concise and fairly complete encapsulation of the subject. Dawkins' position is sometimes called reductionist or minimalist in that he sees the gene (a selfish one) as the principal explanatory agent. From it, all we see around us are adaptations. Gould has a more catholic or broader approach and sees exceptions to the rule. Chance and his pet subject of "punctuated equilibrium" are seen as interrupting the smooth progression of linear adaptive evolution. Gould believes that there is a limit to scientific explanations but Dawkins is of the view that testable and provable hypotheses exist as explanations for all seemingly random events. This view is called "Ultra-Darwinism".

Although Gould may have a catholic view in the normative sense of the word with an expansive view, don't for a minute think that this extends in any way to be accomodating towards creationism. Just about the only area where Gould and Dawkins don't knock heads is in their dissmissive view of creationism's equally dismissive view of the reality of evolution.

Despite the bitterness of the debate, most of the issues Dawkins and Gould disagree on are either unscientific (e.g., militant atheism vs. tolerance for religion and other non-scientific forms of knowing) or matters of interpretive preference (e.g., the role of chance vs. selection in evolution, the extent to which evolution involves increasing complexity, the importance of population genetics vs. the study of large-scale patterns in the history of life, or the view of evolution as a conflict of genes vs. an organic conflict among species-level and higher biological forms). Other issues that separate them relate to the schools of thought to which they belong---Dawkins' friends being the sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists (G. Williams, W. Hamilton, E. O. Wilson, et al.) and Gould's being the left-wing critics of sociobiology (R. Lewontin, L. Kamin, et al.). By limiting the debate to Dawkins and Gould alone, the book does not flesh out this larger, and quite interesting intellectual opposition.

Sterelny neither takes sides nor tries to adjudicate the differences between these writers, though he does say that their differences appear to be narrowing over time. Being less unpresuming, I assess the situation as follows. Dawkins' gene-centered view makes for good journalism, but is fatally flawed for one simple reason: the heart of evolution is mutation and selection, not replication, which is simply an uncreative prerequisite for evolution. A mutation can spread only if it is more fit that existing alleles, and fitness is a frequency dependent, highly nonlinear phenomenon, best described by game theory on the level of phenotypes. Gould's mass extinctions and punctuated equilibria make perfect sense from evolutionary game theory, and involve nothing beyond mutation, selection, and replication. On the other hand, Gould's dismissal of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology are ideologically based and quite without merit.

Sterelny describes a debate that is more a reflection of the expansive egos of two great popularizers, and their inability to understand, or their reluctance to publicize, the work of younger generations of evolutionary biologists, rather than some real scientific clash of paradigms. But if it gets young people interested in evolutionary biology, I'm all for it, and Sterelny does a good job of dramatizing the debate.

I was particularly grateful by the Gould section. Dawkins has stated his views on evolution and Gould quite extensively, but I have been less exposed to Gould's original writings on punctuated equilibrium (probably because, as Sterelny noted, Gould has written about the subject mostly in essays and scientific papers). The Gould section in this book was a great clarification of punctuated equilibrium and other Gould theories.

I have not heard the opinions of the title subjects on this book, although I would very much like to. But for the moment, I found 'Dawkins vs. Gould' to be an objective, impartial and fair description of this well-known scientific clash.