Sci Am\'s Complexity with Darwinism (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, January 20, 2012, 15:04 (4692 days ago) @ David Turell

I asked if we were heading towards a neo-neo-Darwinism, and David replied: “That is what the Altenberg conference was all about.”

I didn’t know it had already taken place, so I googled it and came across an interesting report. I’m reproducing the section that particularly took my eye:

darwinianconservatism.blogspot.com/2011/01/woodstock-of-evolution-extended.html
(For some reason, this doesn't connect. Sorry.)

"Pigliucci and Muller sketch a conceptual framework for the Extended Synthesis as embracing three steps in "the continuous expansion of evolutionary theory."

The first step is Darwinism, which includes the ideas of variation, inheritance, and natural selection.

The second step is the Modern Synthesis, which includes the ideas of Darwinism but also the ideas of gene mutation, Mendelian inheritance, population genetics, contingency, and speciation.

The third step includes the ideas of Darwinism and the Modern Synthesis but also the new ideas of evo-devo theory (evolutionary developmental biology), plasticity and accommodation, niche construction, epigenetic inheritance, replicator theory, evolvability, multilevel selection (including group selection), and genomic evolution.

By thus presenting their Extended Theory as an expansion of evolutionary theory that includes Darwinism and the Modern Synthesis, Pigliucci and Muller make it clear that Mazur and the intelligent-design creationists were wrong to depict the Altenberg conference as overthrowing the Darwinian and Neo-Darwinian views of evolution. Even the most radical of the "Altenberg 16"--such as Stuart Newman--do not deny the fact of evolution or the importance of natural selection or the importance of genes. Rather, they embrace all of this, even as they argue that genetic mutation and natural selection are not the only factors governing evolution. So, for example, Stuart Kauffman and Stuart Newman argue that we need to see the evolutionary importance of the form-giving processes of self-assembly and self-organization as governed by the laws of physics and chemistry."

It seems to me that the argument about “overthrowing” Darwinism and Neo-Darwinism is pointless. People who talk in such terms are as blinkered as those who pretend that natural selection is synonymous with evolution, and therefore any opposition is a sign of ignorance. Some elements (gradualism and the importance of random mutations) seem to be on their way out, and new elements (epigenetics, self-organization) are on their way in. But no-one apparently opposes the basic theory of evolution itself (our David doesn’t either), and the discussion centres on the mechanisms that allow it to take place. This extended theory sounds like genuine progress to me.

“Self-assembly and self-organization” are precisely what I was thinking of in my posts about the “intelligent cell”. (It’s OK, I’m not asking for any prizes!) But why, oh why, this constant battle between evolutionists and ID-ers? I can understand the hostility between evolutionists and Creationists who think God created each species separately, but for all the grandiose terminology there is nothing, absolutely nothing that can help with the huge problem of origins. How did all these processes come into being? Apart from natural selection, which is clearly an automatic procedure (what is not fit to survive won’t survive), the rest serve only to emphasize the extraordinary complexity of the reproductive, adaptive and innovative mechanisms that make evolution possible. If people are happy to believe that chance could assemble them, so be it. But “governed by the laws of physics and chemistry” doesn’t tell us anything about their origin. As usual, we come back to faith, either in the creativity of chance, or in the creativity of some unknown, intelligent form of energy. Science doesn’t enter into it.