10.30.09
Lewontin’s perpetual baulk
Lewontin at Chicago Darwin Day
Lewontin and Gould both were snide critics of Darwinism, indirectly, yet give/gave their support to the reigning paradigm, thus perpetuating the whole game.
Why can’t Lewontin just come out and denoucne Darwinian selectinism as an ideology?
Lewontin, who has turned down every invitation this year to speak at Darwin celebratory events, accepted the University of Chicago invitation, he said, “because Jerry Coyne [Lewontin’s former doctoral student at Harvard] is the best arm-twister around. But I didn’t know I’d be speaking in a church,” Lewontin continued, “and we should recognize the religiosity of this occasion. There is a certain worship of a great saint, Darwin, and his apostles, who provide the texts for the day.” He then cited contrasting chapter and verse from Sir Ronald Fisher and Sewall Wright, and explained that battles between their respective positions – the primacy of natural selection, versus the primacy of random events – had occupied evolutionary theory for decades. “I really wish I could have spoken from there,” Lewontin ended his introduction, wistfully pointing to the spectacular high pulpit on the opposite side of the chancel.
“I want to challenge the New and Old Testaments of evolution,” Lewontin noted. “The New Testament holds that genes make organisms. The Old Testament says that organisms adapt to their environments. Neither of these testaments is true. It is not true that genes make organisms. Genes don’t make anything.” Nor do organisms adapt to their environments, he argued, as if they were adjusting – ad-apting, in its original eytmology – to pre-established niches. The outcome of genetic (internal) responses to environmental (external) challenges “cannot be predicted – there is no predictability to how organisms will respond,” because that depends in a complex fashion on a range of factors, many unique. Lewontin then illustrated his theme with several examples, from the unpredictability of Drosophila bristle patterns to variations in human fingerprints. One cannot move smoothly from genes to phenotypes: “I made the point,” he concluded, “and I’m dogmatic about it.”
Lewontin then criticized the Old Testament of adaptation. Organisms don’t “fit” into their niches, he said, as if the world could be divided into cubbyholes awaiting organisms to occupy them. There is an infinitude of ways of putting together the world; what actually happens is that organisms construct their niches, taking what is available from their environments to make their living. Lewontin ended with a cautionary critique about the shortcomings of the theory of natural selection, which he said was “in trouble.”
All in all, vintage Lewontin. Plainspoken, funny, independent. (And youthful! – Lewontin looks almost exactly as he did when he was a U of C professor in the early 1970s.)