Prime Time Replay:
Stephen Jay Gould
on Full House, Darwinism and Evolution
MsgId: *infinities(11)
Date: Sun Sep 29 22:28:36 EDT 1996
From: Allen_Salzberg At: 206.80.182.183
Welcome to Infinities. I'm Allen Salzberg, tonight's moderator. And our special guest is Stephen Jay Gould. Mr. Gould is the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and Professor of Geology at Harvard University and the curator for Invetebrate Paleontology in the Univesity's Museum of Comparative Zoology. But he is probably best known for the 200 plus monthly essays that he has written for Natural History Magazine, essays which have earned him the unofficial title of the "most popular popularizer of science" today.For years. Mr. Gould's main interest has been evolution. His new book "Full House," which we are here to discuss, is perhaps his final word on evolution and Darwinism. Welcome, Professor Gould! ga
MsgId: *infinities(16)
Date: Sun Sep 29 22:35:05 EDT 1996
From: Stephen_Jay_Gould At: 206.80.167.69
Hello! I'm glad to be here!
MsgId: *infinities(18)
Date: Sun Sep 29 22:36:48 EDT 1996
From: Allen_Salzberg At: 206.80.182.183
If you don't mind, let's go right into "Full House." And to do that I'd like to ask a few questions about some concepts that I think need explaining to understand the book's main theme. To begin with, tell us what you believe to be the popular misconception about evolution.
MsgId: *infinities(20)
Date: Sun Sep 29 22:38:57 EDT 1996
From: Stephen_Jay_Gould At: 206.80.167.69
There are so many, but the main one as treated in this book is the mis-equation of evolution with the concept of predictable and progressive increase in complexity.
MsgId: *infinities(21)
Date: Sun Sep 29 22:41:22 EDT 1996
From: Allen_Salzberg At: 206.80.182.183
Or, as you state, the belief that evolution equals progress. Which you believe is false.
MsgId: *infinities(22)
Date: Sun Sep 29 22:44:08 EDT 1996
From: Stephen_Jay_Gould At: 206.80.167.69
The basic statement of natural selection in Darwin's own formulation holds that life adapts to changing local environments. There is no principle of progress -- only immediate adaptation to surrounding conditions. Adaptation can as often be achieved by decrease in complexity as by increase. For example, nearly all parasites are orthologically simplified with respect to free-living ancestors. And this simplification makes them as well adapted to their environments as our increase in mental complexity because our increase in mental complexity adapts us to our world.
MsgId: *infinities(23)
Date: Sun Sep 29 22:46:40 EDT 1996
From: Allen_Salzberg At: 206.80.182.183
Now in your book you use the concepts of the left wall and right wall to explain why this is so. Can you breifly describe these ideas?
MsgId: *infinities(24)
Date: Sun Sep 29 22:52:21 EDT 1996
From: Stephen_Jay_Gould At: 206.80.167.69
The walls are just a convenience term for limits to the spread of variation imposed by the physics and chemistry of objects. For example, given the nature of organic chemistry, and the physics of self-organizing systems, life had to begin pretty much at the lower limits of its conceivable complexity -- at least in terms of anything that could be preserved in the fossil records. I call this lower limit a "left wall."The supposed trend to increase in complexity -- that the most complex living things were bacteria at first, and now are people and maple trees -- really occurs only because life had to begin at the left wall and then had no direction to expand but towards greater complexity. But the vast majority of species have always remained simple. In fact, the bacterial mode of life has remained absolutely stable for 3.6 billion years -- that is, for life's entire history, including today. We now live, as we always have, in the Age of Bacteria, not in the age of mammals as we, in our hubris, want to believe. There are only four thousand species of mammals, more than a million of insects, and vastly more bacteria than everything else combined.
MsgId: *infinities(27)
Date: Sun Sep 29 22:55:03 EDT 1996
From: Allen_Salzberg At: 206.80.182.183
Physics and chemistry as with baseball players. What would be a right wall and a left wall for a major league hitter -- oneof your main examples in the book.
MsgId: *infinities(28)
Date: Sun Sep 29 22:57:10 EDT 1996
From: Stephen_Jay_Gould At: 206.80.167.69
I define a "right wall" in this case as human biomechanical limits, given our height, musculature, etc. The very best players have always stood next to the right wall -- Cobb in 1910, Gwynn today. In the past, the general level of skill was much lower than today in all aspects of play -- including hitting and pitching. The average batting average has never varied much from 0.260. But the average level of play is greatly improved. That is, both hitting and pitching get better at about the same rate, so the average batting average remains stable as everyone improves.Gwynn is as good as Cobb, if not better. But the average quality of play has improved so greatly that Gwynn cannot rise so far above the mean -- hence he cannot achieve a 0.400 batting average. Thus, the extinction of 0.400 batting is actually a result of the general improvement of play, and does not signify -- as the existing literature has always assumed -- that hitting has gotten worse through time.
MsgId: *infinities(31)
Date: Sun Sep 29 23:05:04 EDT 1996
From: Allen_Salzberg At: 206.80.182.183
But what about the "blips" in average, say the time of Gibson, and even today when there's talk of a "tighter ball." And home run records are being set every day. Are these exceptions to the rule, or what?
MsgId: *infinities(32)
Date: Sun Sep 29 23:08:20 EDT 1996
From: Stephen_Jay_Gould At: 206.80.167.69
1968, when Gibson posted his incredible earned run average of 1.12, was a very strange year in baseball - the culmination of several downward years in batting averages. That's the year that Yaz led the American League with the all-time low championship average of 0.301. So they just changed the rules the following season. They lowered the pitching mound and decreased the strike zone. Averages in 1969 went right back up to the usual 0.260 level where they have remained ever since. This year, for reasons much debated but unknown, average batting averages are higher than usual -- but no one is even close to 0.400 -- thus validating my claim that 0.400 averages have disappeared because the variation has declined.
MsgId: *infinities(34)
Date: Sun Sep 29 23:15:08 EDT 1996
From: Allen_Salzberg At: 206.80.182.183
To continue with the concept of variation vs progress. You talk a lot in the book about the ladder concept of evolution, and how this bias, like the bias of things don't imporve, the "good old days myth." Or should I say "Golden Age of Baseball" which wasn't so golden, or different. How does this apply to humans and our concept of our place in history/evolution?
MsgId: *infinities(35)
Date: Sun Sep 29 23:20:59 EDT 1996
From: Stephen_Jay_Gould At: 206.80.167.69
Humans are just one improbable species -- and we would probably never evolve again if the tree of life were replanted from seed and grown again. Nonetheless, of course, I don't deny that our brain is a remarkable evolutionary invention, responsible for more havoc on this planet, and in shorter a time, than any other innovation in the history of evolution. This brain has unleashed a new style of change on this planet -- cultural evolution -- which has a different mode of inheritance than Darwinian systems. This different, and basicly Lamarckian style of inheritance -- for, unlike Darwinian biology, our acquired characters can be inherited -- permits cultural change to be progressive and directional. That is, whatever we invent in one generation, we pass directly to the next generation.
MsgId: *infinities(36)
Date: Sun Sep 29 23:25:48 EDT 1996
From: Allen_Salzberg At: 206.80.182.183
And this is why, I assume, in your last chapter you explain that Darwinism as used in say social darwinism is wrong? That the change we have experienced in the past 10,000 years is not a result of a physical evolution, but cultural. If this is so is their a limit to cultural evolution, will we evolve past our physical, or mental limits? And what would be the result?
MsgId: *infinities(37)
Date: Sun Sep 29 23:29:46 EDT 1996
From: Stephen_Jay_Gould At: 206.80.167.69
Human anatomy and brain size have been stable for a 100,000 years -- so, yes, all the incredible history of the human culture and civilization has been achieved by a creature with stable biology. Since I don't believe that the future can be predicted, I wouldn't even venture to speculate about the limits that must exist -- either for purely physical reasons of Nature's laws, or for evolved historical limits based on the nature of the human brain -- but, whatever those limits might be, I don't think that we have even begun to probe anywhere near the "right wall." Goodbye, everybody!
MsgId: *infinities(38)
Date: Sun Sep 29 23:33:16 EDT 1996
From: Allen_Salzberg At: 206.80.182.183
And on that note. Hope to be back on line-next month, date to be announced with a suprise guest having something to do, very directly, with the upcoming elections and the environment. Till then, Good night.
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