Rosa Lichtenstein
10th November 2009, 11:51
Comrades might be interested in this, which was post at the Kasama discussion board recemtly:
Science 6 November 2009:
Vol. 326. no. 5954, pp. 800 - 801
DOI: 10.1126/science.1179955
BOOKS - EVOLUTION:
Darwin Is Dead—Long Live Evolution
Stephen Jay Gould and the Politics of Evolution by David F. Prindle.
Prometheus, Amherst, NY, 2009. 249 pp. $26.98, £22.50. ISBN 9781591027188.
[reviewed by] Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis
The reviewer is at at the Department of Biology and the Department of History, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA.
Stephen Jay Gould and the Politics of Evolution arrives just in time. Just when it looked like the "ultra-Darwinists" were winning the "year of Darwin" with their interminable love-fests, triumphalist narratives, and self-serving revisionist histories; when we were starting to think that Darwin was the only evolutionist to have lived in the past 150 years; and when we might conclude that nearly the entire evolutionary community had drunk the Kool-Aid of antiquarian Darwinism, David Prindle's book appears to give us pause. It reminds us of the late paleontologist, the heady days of late 20th-century evolutionary science, and all the political underpinnings of evolutionary biology that Gould was so fond of revealing. No fan of simplistic, reductionistic, ahistorical, or apolitical views of scientific knowledge, Gould offered a distinctly self-critical view of science, one that would likely challenge much of the ultra-orthodoxy passing as reflective history and science written expressly for the year of Darwin.
Gould viewed science from the perspective of a practitioner, while using critical methods from history, philosophy, and social theory to expose the complex scaffolding that had given rise to it. His work frequently revealed the biases and prejudices that were concealed by the kind of historical rewriting that eliminated precisely those very human frailties as well as the sociopolitical forces that often overrode even the most rational of methods. At heart, Gould understood that science was itself a political process—not just in the superficial sense of the "politics of science" (where the politics gets in the way of science) but more that there always is a "knowledge-power" relation. For Gould, history, philosophy, social, and political theories were not just linked with science but were in fact constitutive of science. Such a view did not always sit comfortably with his colleagues (and even Gould himself bore some notable contradictory elements in his simultaneous embrace of science and ideology). That is one reason he drew the ire of so many of his contemporaries who viewed him as inappropriately political for a scientist. This was ironic, indeed, because many of his opponents themselves had equally strong political views (usually in the opposite direction), although those were usually masked by what appeared to be an objective, apolitical view of science (sociobiology, anyone?)
The book begins to explore some of these themes in the works of Gould. The author, a professor of government at the University of Texas, argues that Gould's mind worked simultaneously in two "parallel tracks," one scientific, the other political. Interpreting these in terms of a "consistent whole," Prindle presents his analysis as a history of ideas. He organizes the book thematically around Gould's writing style, his philosophy of science, his use of historical inquiry, and his views on the nature-nurture controversy and on science and religion. Prindle concludes with an assessment of Gould's original contributions to modern evolutionary theory.
Not much in Prindle's treatment is surprising. The author characterizes Gould as a leftist but refutes the mythology that he was a Marxist. Prindle tells us that Gould developed a "charming style" of writing, which made him both an effective popularizer and a skilled rhetorician, and that he was likely the most "enthusiastic creator of metaphors in the history of science." Prindle's analysis does, however, miss the tragedy of Gould's magnum opus, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (1), a vainglorious attempt to synthesize all of his thoughts on the subject that ended up as a nearly unreadable 1433-page behemoth. Prindle describes Gould's use of contingency in evolution and history, how it played out in the fossil record in instances like the celebrated Burgess Shale, and how it could also introduce chance and avoid determinism in evolutionary processes. The author discusses Gould and his "ideological consociate" Richard C. Lewontin's celebrated critique of the adaptationist program in their "Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm" paper (2) and the critical responses it provoked. There is much on Gould's critique of intelligence testing and on his battles with bugaboos like Richard Herrnstein, Charles Murray, and their notorious book The Bell Curve (3), in which they argued that social and economic differences between blacks and whites in the United States were not due to racial discrimination but to differences in intelligence between the two groups. There is also, of course, much on Richard Dawkins, along with discussions of their fundamental differences over selectionism, reductionism, determinism, and what have you. As Prindle correctly explains, Gould's self-critical perspective on evolution provided fodder for creationists and lacked the consistency of Dawkins's atheistic position. Gould's more nuanced, irenic views, however, avoided what he saw as "the polemics of ill-conceived battle between science and religion."
Prindle is at his best in the chapter "The contours of history." Here, the author addresses Gould's deep understanding of the philosophy of history and considers its influence on both his historical writing and his evolutionary science. Prindle's discussion of what he terms Gould's "historical empathy" is stunningly insightful, although I wish more had been done with Gould's historicism. Gould was a radical historicist and sensitive to a number of movements in the humanities that stressed the view that science is a historically rooted and culturally embedded practice. I also appreciated the chapter on human nature, in which Prindle brings to bear his understanding of political theory. One's politics do, after all, hinge on the fundamental question of human nature. As expected, Prindle discusses Gould and Niles Eldredge's celebrated critique or amendment—depending on one's point of view—known as punctuated equilibrium. But, sadly, there is next to nothing on Gould's insights into development or what is really his finest historical work, Ontogeny and Phylogeny (4). Those topics would have been especially timely in the current excitement over the synthesis between evolution and development.
The book suffers from several shortcomings. To begin with, Prindle's account is too brief for a complex figure like Gould. There is also a lack of depth in terms of the technical explication of the science. The style of the writing is overly casual. And Prindle's account demonstrates his unfamiliarity with the history of science. He seems unaware of the vast literature that has explored not only politics and science but also the interplay of science, worldview, and ideology [for example, (5, 6)]—exactly the kind of intellectual history Prindle attempts. His account could have been greatly strengthened had he drawn on such work. It is also weakened by Prindle having largely restricted himself to a selection of Gould's published works (no archives), not all of which he systematically examines.
I am not convinced of Prindle's conclusion that future historians will see Gould's legacy only in terms of the spandrel and the related concept of exaptation—elements of his criticisms of the adaptationist program. Those seem to be only some of his scientific contributions. Also, as a historian of science, I don't share Prindle's problem with the incomplete nature of Gould's evolutionary (or political) theory. Who in the history of science (or politics) has left behind a fully formed theory? Not Darwin: It took a small army of workers, including geneticists and mathematicians, simply to get to the synthetic theory of evolution. And that was before 1953, when the structure of DNA was determined. Science, like politics, is rarely about completion.
Whatever its drawbacks, Stephen Jay Gould and the Politics of Evolution is a welcome addition to our understanding of late 20th-century evolutionary science, of which we know too little, and a provocative introduction to a major figure. The book is especially well-timed to challenge the many ultra-orthodox, ultra-Darwinists who seem to have taken center stage for 2009. It reminds us that evolution is represented by a plurality of voices. The book's final chapter does much to honor the lively spirit of Gould's special blending of politics and science. The opening section of the chapter rolls together 19th-century Darwinism, conservative politics, and references to the egregious misuse of history by the likes of filmmaker Ben Stein (Expelled), conservative pundit Ann Coulter, and others who link Darwin to Hitler. Here, Prindle finally gets into the nitty-gritty unpleasantness of the politics of evolution as manifested in some current populist anti-evolutionist movements. Reading this section reminded me that were Gould still alive (he would have been only 68 this year), he would likely be leading a chorus of people in the fight against the rising tide of such populist critics. Historicizing Darwin and Darwinism, making them truly things of the past, and decoupling Darwinism from modern evolution, he would be helping us move forward into 21st-century evolutionary science. As we enter the home stretch of 2009, let us remember Gould and honor his legacy with the following thought: Darwin is dead. Long live evolution.
References
1. S. J. Gould, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, MA, 2002); reviewed in (7).
2. S. J. Gould, R. C. Lewontin, Proc. R. Soc. London Ser. B 205, 581 (1979).[Abstract/Free Full Text]
3. R. Herrnstein, C. Murray, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (Free Press, New York, 1994).
4. S. J. Gould, Ontogeny and Phylogeny (Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, MA, 1977).
5. J. C. Greene, Science, Ideology, and World View: Essays in the History of Ideas (Univ. California Press, Berkeley, 1981).
6. V. B. Smocovitis, Unifying Biology: The Evolutionary Synthesis and Evolutionary Biology (Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton, NJ, 1996.
7. D. J. Futuyma, Science 296, 661 (2002).[Abstract/Free Full Text]
http://z11.invisionfree.com/Kasama_Threads/index.php?showtopic=972
Science 6 November 2009:
Vol. 326. no. 5954, pp. 800 - 801
DOI: 10.1126/science.1179955
BOOKS - EVOLUTION:
Darwin Is Dead—Long Live Evolution
Stephen Jay Gould and the Politics of Evolution by David F. Prindle.
Prometheus, Amherst, NY, 2009. 249 pp. $26.98, £22.50. ISBN 9781591027188.
[reviewed by] Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis
The reviewer is at at the Department of Biology and the Department of History, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA.
Stephen Jay Gould and the Politics of Evolution arrives just in time. Just when it looked like the "ultra-Darwinists" were winning the "year of Darwin" with their interminable love-fests, triumphalist narratives, and self-serving revisionist histories; when we were starting to think that Darwin was the only evolutionist to have lived in the past 150 years; and when we might conclude that nearly the entire evolutionary community had drunk the Kool-Aid of antiquarian Darwinism, David Prindle's book appears to give us pause. It reminds us of the late paleontologist, the heady days of late 20th-century evolutionary science, and all the political underpinnings of evolutionary biology that Gould was so fond of revealing. No fan of simplistic, reductionistic, ahistorical, or apolitical views of scientific knowledge, Gould offered a distinctly self-critical view of science, one that would likely challenge much of the ultra-orthodoxy passing as reflective history and science written expressly for the year of Darwin.
Gould viewed science from the perspective of a practitioner, while using critical methods from history, philosophy, and social theory to expose the complex scaffolding that had given rise to it. His work frequently revealed the biases and prejudices that were concealed by the kind of historical rewriting that eliminated precisely those very human frailties as well as the sociopolitical forces that often overrode even the most rational of methods. At heart, Gould understood that science was itself a political process—not just in the superficial sense of the "politics of science" (where the politics gets in the way of science) but more that there always is a "knowledge-power" relation. For Gould, history, philosophy, social, and political theories were not just linked with science but were in fact constitutive of science. Such a view did not always sit comfortably with his colleagues (and even Gould himself bore some notable contradictory elements in his simultaneous embrace of science and ideology). That is one reason he drew the ire of so many of his contemporaries who viewed him as inappropriately political for a scientist. This was ironic, indeed, because many of his opponents themselves had equally strong political views (usually in the opposite direction), although those were usually masked by what appeared to be an objective, apolitical view of science (sociobiology, anyone?)
The book begins to explore some of these themes in the works of Gould. The author, a professor of government at the University of Texas, argues that Gould's mind worked simultaneously in two "parallel tracks," one scientific, the other political. Interpreting these in terms of a "consistent whole," Prindle presents his analysis as a history of ideas. He organizes the book thematically around Gould's writing style, his philosophy of science, his use of historical inquiry, and his views on the nature-nurture controversy and on science and religion. Prindle concludes with an assessment of Gould's original contributions to modern evolutionary theory.
Not much in Prindle's treatment is surprising. The author characterizes Gould as a leftist but refutes the mythology that he was a Marxist. Prindle tells us that Gould developed a "charming style" of writing, which made him both an effective popularizer and a skilled rhetorician, and that he was likely the most "enthusiastic creator of metaphors in the history of science." Prindle's analysis does, however, miss the tragedy of Gould's magnum opus, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (1), a vainglorious attempt to synthesize all of his thoughts on the subject that ended up as a nearly unreadable 1433-page behemoth. Prindle describes Gould's use of contingency in evolution and history, how it played out in the fossil record in instances like the celebrated Burgess Shale, and how it could also introduce chance and avoid determinism in evolutionary processes. The author discusses Gould and his "ideological consociate" Richard C. Lewontin's celebrated critique of the adaptationist program in their "Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm" paper (2) and the critical responses it provoked. There is much on Gould's critique of intelligence testing and on his battles with bugaboos like Richard Herrnstein, Charles Murray, and their notorious book The Bell Curve (3), in which they argued that social and economic differences between blacks and whites in the United States were not due to racial discrimination but to differences in intelligence between the two groups. There is also, of course, much on Richard Dawkins, along with discussions of their fundamental differences over selectionism, reductionism, determinism, and what have you. As Prindle correctly explains, Gould's self-critical perspective on evolution provided fodder for creationists and lacked the consistency of Dawkins's atheistic position. Gould's more nuanced, irenic views, however, avoided what he saw as "the polemics of ill-conceived battle between science and religion."
Prindle is at his best in the chapter "The contours of history." Here, the author addresses Gould's deep understanding of the philosophy of history and considers its influence on both his historical writing and his evolutionary science. Prindle's discussion of what he terms Gould's "historical empathy" is stunningly insightful, although I wish more had been done with Gould's historicism. Gould was a radical historicist and sensitive to a number of movements in the humanities that stressed the view that science is a historically rooted and culturally embedded practice. I also appreciated the chapter on human nature, in which Prindle brings to bear his understanding of political theory. One's politics do, after all, hinge on the fundamental question of human nature. As expected, Prindle discusses Gould and Niles Eldredge's celebrated critique or amendment—depending on one's point of view—known as punctuated equilibrium. But, sadly, there is next to nothing on Gould's insights into development or what is really his finest historical work, Ontogeny and Phylogeny (4). Those topics would have been especially timely in the current excitement over the synthesis between evolution and development.
The book suffers from several shortcomings. To begin with, Prindle's account is too brief for a complex figure like Gould. There is also a lack of depth in terms of the technical explication of the science. The style of the writing is overly casual. And Prindle's account demonstrates his unfamiliarity with the history of science. He seems unaware of the vast literature that has explored not only politics and science but also the interplay of science, worldview, and ideology [for example, (5, 6)]—exactly the kind of intellectual history Prindle attempts. His account could have been greatly strengthened had he drawn on such work. It is also weakened by Prindle having largely restricted himself to a selection of Gould's published works (no archives), not all of which he systematically examines.
I am not convinced of Prindle's conclusion that future historians will see Gould's legacy only in terms of the spandrel and the related concept of exaptation—elements of his criticisms of the adaptationist program. Those seem to be only some of his scientific contributions. Also, as a historian of science, I don't share Prindle's problem with the incomplete nature of Gould's evolutionary (or political) theory. Who in the history of science (or politics) has left behind a fully formed theory? Not Darwin: It took a small army of workers, including geneticists and mathematicians, simply to get to the synthetic theory of evolution. And that was before 1953, when the structure of DNA was determined. Science, like politics, is rarely about completion.
Whatever its drawbacks, Stephen Jay Gould and the Politics of Evolution is a welcome addition to our understanding of late 20th-century evolutionary science, of which we know too little, and a provocative introduction to a major figure. The book is especially well-timed to challenge the many ultra-orthodox, ultra-Darwinists who seem to have taken center stage for 2009. It reminds us that evolution is represented by a plurality of voices. The book's final chapter does much to honor the lively spirit of Gould's special blending of politics and science. The opening section of the chapter rolls together 19th-century Darwinism, conservative politics, and references to the egregious misuse of history by the likes of filmmaker Ben Stein (Expelled), conservative pundit Ann Coulter, and others who link Darwin to Hitler. Here, Prindle finally gets into the nitty-gritty unpleasantness of the politics of evolution as manifested in some current populist anti-evolutionist movements. Reading this section reminded me that were Gould still alive (he would have been only 68 this year), he would likely be leading a chorus of people in the fight against the rising tide of such populist critics. Historicizing Darwin and Darwinism, making them truly things of the past, and decoupling Darwinism from modern evolution, he would be helping us move forward into 21st-century evolutionary science. As we enter the home stretch of 2009, let us remember Gould and honor his legacy with the following thought: Darwin is dead. Long live evolution.
References
1. S. J. Gould, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, MA, 2002); reviewed in (7).
2. S. J. Gould, R. C. Lewontin, Proc. R. Soc. London Ser. B 205, 581 (1979).[Abstract/Free Full Text]
3. R. Herrnstein, C. Murray, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (Free Press, New York, 1994).
4. S. J. Gould, Ontogeny and Phylogeny (Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, MA, 1977).
5. J. C. Greene, Science, Ideology, and World View: Essays in the History of Ideas (Univ. California Press, Berkeley, 1981).
6. V. B. Smocovitis, Unifying Biology: The Evolutionary Synthesis and Evolutionary Biology (Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton, NJ, 1996.
7. D. J. Futuyma, Science 296, 661 (2002).[Abstract/Free Full Text]
http://z11.invisionfree.com/Kasama_Threads/index.php?showtopic=972