Posted on 06/02/2003 1:46:54 PM PDT by Heartlander
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Blinded by Science |
| Nature via Nurture: Genes, Experience, & What Makes Us Human, by Matt Ridley HarperCollins, 336 pp., $25.95) This is a very strange book, and I am not quite sure what the author is attempting to achieve. At the very least it appears that he wants to shore up genetic determinism as the key factor in understanding human nature and individual behavior. Genetic determinism is rational materialism's substitute for the religious notion of predestination; taking the place of God as puppet master are the genes, whose actions and interactions control who we are, what we think, and how we act. This reductionist view received a body blow recently when the mappers of the human genome found that we have only about 30,000 genes. Because of their understanding of human complexity, the scientists were expecting at least 100,000 -- and that means there are probably too few genes for strict genetic determinism to be true. Ridley, a science writer and former U.S. editor of The Economist, tries to ride to the rescue. In doing so, he adds a twist that he hopes will overcome our apparent genetic paucity: Yes, he says, our genes decide who we are, what we do and think, and even with whom we fall in love. But, he posits, our molecular masters are not rigidly preset when we are born. Rather, they change continually in reaction to our biological and emotional experiences. Hence, 30,000 are more than enough for a soft genetic determinism to be true -- which means that the battle between those who believe we are the product of our biology (nature) versus those who believe we are the result of our environment (nurture) can now end in a truce in which both sides win. We are indeed controlled by our genes, but they in turn are influenced by our experiences. Ridley says that the mapping of the genome "has indeed changed everything, not by closing the argument or winning the [nature versus nurture] battle for one side or the other, but by enriching it from both ends till they meet in the middle." To Ridley, the core of our true selves isn't soul, mind, or even body in the macro sense; we are, in essence, merely the expression of our genes at any given moment. If this is true, then my perception of Nature via Nurture as so much nonsense was the only reaction I could have had, given my original genetic programming, as later modified by my every experience and emotion from my conception, through the womb, childhood, high school, college, practicing law, the death of my father, indeed up to and including the reading of this book. If that is so – if I was forced by my gene expression of the moment to perceive this book as I have -- what have we really learned that can be of any benefit to humankind? We are all slaves to chemistry and there is no escape. Even aside from such broader issues, Ridley does not make a persuasive case. Maybe it is my legal training, but I found his evidence very thin. He doesn't present proofs so much as resort to wild leaps of logic predicated on questionably relevant social science and facile analogies based on a few animal studies. These are simply not strong enough to be the sturdy weight-supporting pillars that his thesis requires to be credible. Let's look at just one example. He cites studies of monogamous prairie voles to suggest that humans only think they fall in love, when, in reality, what we call love is merely the expression of genes resulting in the release of the chemicals oxytocin and vasopressin. Claiming that he is not going to "start extrapolating anthropomorphically from pair-bonding in voles to love in people," he proceeds to do just that. Citing the vole studies and Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream -- in which a love potion makes Titania fall in love with a man with a donkey's head – Ridley writes: Who would now wager against me that I could not do something like this to a modern Titania? Admittedly, a drop on the eyelids would not suffice. I would have to give her a general anesthetic while I cannulated her medial amygdala and injected oxytocin into it. I doubt even then that I could make her love a donkey. But I might stand a fair chance of making her feel attracted to the first man she sees upon waking. Would you bet against me? But shouldn't it take far more than measuring the physical effects of oxytocin on prairie voles to prove that something as complex, maddening, unpredictable, and wonderfully and uniquely human as romantic love can, in reality, be reduced to the mere expression of genes leading to chemical secretions? Not, apparently, to Ridley. "Blindly, automatically, and untaught, we bond with whoever is standing nearest when oxytocin receptors in the medial amygdala get tingled." Gee, if he'd known that, Bill Clinton could have purchased fewer copies of Leaves of Grass. The most fascinating thing about this book is that Ridley inadvertently makes a splendid argument for intelligent design. At this point, I am sure Ridley's "I am utterly appalled" genes are expressing wildly. He is, after all, a scientific materialist in good standing. Yet, throughout the book, in order to make his arguments understandable, he resorts explicitly to the imagery of the guiding hand. He even gives it a name: the "Genome Organizing Device," or "G.O.D." Ridley claims that the G.O.D is "a skillful chef, whose job is to build a souffle," consisting of the various parts of us and all other life on the planet. Note the language of intentionality in his description of the evolution of the human brain: To build a brain with instinctive abilities, the Genome Organizing Device lays down separate circuits with suitable internal patterns that allow them to carry out suitable computations, then links them with appropriate inputs from the senses. . . . In the case of the human mind, almost all such instinctive modules are designed to be modified by experience. Some adapt continuously throughout life, some change rapidly with experience then set like cement. A few just develop to their own timetable. But according to my lay understanding, this violates the theory and philosophy of evolution. The hypothesis of natural selection holds that species origination and change are promoted by genetic mutations. Those mutations that change the organism to make it more likely than its unchanged peers to survive long enough to reproduce are likely to be passed down the generations. Eventually, these genetic alterations spread among the entire species and become universal within its genome. It is through this dynamic evolutionary process of modification, the theory holds, that life fills all available niches in nature. It is also the process, although the details are not known, by which the primates now known as homo sapiens became conscious. The philosophy of Darwinism posits that this evolutionary process is aimless, unintentional, purposeless, and without rhyme or reason. This means it has no biological goal: It just is. Hence, G.O.D. would not want to "build a brain," develop nature via nurture in species, or do any other thing. Yet, throughout the book, Ridley seems able only to describe what he thinks is going on using the language of intention. Could this be because Ridley's theories would require interactions that are so complex and unlikely that they would seem laughable if described as having come together haphazardly, by mere chance? So what are we to learn from his insights? In terms of how we live our lives, not much beyond what common sense already tells us: Parents matter and should engage with their children; human teenagers enjoy doing what they are good at, and dislike doing what they are bad at; and so on. That much is harmless; but Ridley's deeper point is subversive of human freedom and individual accountability. He denies the existence of free will: Our actions are not causes but effects, "prespecified by, and run by, genes." Indeed, he claims unequivocally, "There is no 'me' inside my brain, there is only an ever-changing set of brain states, a distillation of history, emotion, instinct, experience, and the influence of other people -- not to mention chance." Ridley asserts this as if it would be a good thing to learn that the complexity and richness of human experience could accurately be reduced to merely the acts of so many slaves obeying the lash of chemical overseers acting under the direction of our experience-influenced gene owners. "Nature versus nurture is dead," Ridley concludes triumphantly. "Long live nature via nurture." Sorry. Maybe it's my genes, but I just don't buy it. |
Hi, bb!
The answer to your question, why folks avoid the discussion about the origins of the universe, and of life itself, is a bit lengthy but fairly obvious, IMO.
So far as I know (and no one has ever offered a third alternative) there are only two options for the beginning of our universe.
Those are the only available options for the beginning of our universe. Obviously, each leads to a worldview quite opposed to the other. Each has it's problems, of course. Those who believe in a Creator have no widely accepted empirical evidence to support their view. On the other hand, those who believe in the alternative beginning of the universe have the impossible task of trying to show how all that we now know about that universe, and ourselves, came into being through a chain of accidental events. That is, how does purpose spring forth from purposelessness?
If anyone has a third alternative beginning, I would be quite interested in hearing about it.
That's not much of a problem if there is no purpose ;)
;^)
What was it that Wolfram suggested? I read his book and other than the pictures, there wasn't much content. The mathematics community didn't give Wolfram very good reviews either. (I don't remember any reviews by biologists.)
- Oscar Wilde
~C.S. Lewis
Evolution rests on the same foundation of proof that the rest of biology has. " Perhaps you need to develop a new "theory""
Right, just what I need, another project! LOL!
The driving force for evolution has no purpose, only a reason. That reason is, because the DNA that holds the code for some protein(s) changes. What happens is actually an error in the reproductive process. Usually(almost always) errors cause the death of the offspring. If the offspring survives, then the new DNA enters the gene pool. After a cumulation of changes, with some changes more radical than others, a new species arrises. That's because it is significantly different than it's great ancestors from long ago. "the theory of adaptation"
No organism can purposely change the nature of itself regardless of how much it desires to do so. The environment does not effect the change. The change occurs as above. Since change is a long process, there is no way to adapt to a sudden change in environment if the organism isn't already capable of doing that.
" If we evolved from ape, than why are their still apes?"
Well the dems need constituents too. LOL! If the environment supports both the parents and the offspring with the new DNA. They will both survive. Eventually they can become sufficiently different regarding DNA, or embryo protein content(structure), that they can no longer mate. "It has become a "religion" any more."
It has become a "religion" any more.
Some people just let their minds wander, others have a dark purpose for corrupting the truth with obfuscation. Ridley's motivations are dark. The others are just led. Evolution is just a mechanical process. That's why the statement, "evolution as the end all be all answer for being here", can never be made.
An example of an evolutionary change is the disease sickle cell anemia. The DNA of the folks that have it produces a different hemoglobin, the protein that carries oxygen in the blood. Those folks have red blood cells that are thin and sickle shaped. It was a mutation that occured in Africa. The mutation was propagated throughout the region there and the Mediteranian, because the folks that have it were able to live even after being infected with the plasmodium bug of malaria.
Most folks die after being infected, because the plasmodium that lives in the blood cells causes such an increase in size and decrease in plasticity that they plug up the cappilaries. Folks with sickle cell don't, because even after infection, the thin sickle shaped blood cells fit through the capillaries and the person survives the disease. The sickle cell anemia eventually kills them, but they live much longer than the normal folks, because of the environmental presence of malaria.
ah, I never said it was a "quick" adaptation, now did I???? Besides, if you don't think you can adapt to your environment in some form....take me, a southern california girl, transplant her in Chicago and after a few years, the cold no longer bothers you. Yes, it's cold, but it doesn't seem as severe as the first year here. Or the fact that after a HOT chicago summer 45 degrees in the Autumn seems cold and everyone bundles up, but in the Spring the converse is true, suddenly 48 seems warm and everyone is wearing shorts. You'd be surprised how your body "adapts" quickly to environmental changes.
This case can also be made for us "lowlanders" moving to the Rocky Mountains....the first week in a place like Breckenridge, CO many people are sick, short of breath, etc., but after a month or two their body begins to "adapt" and the blood carries more oxygen to the body because it NEEDS to for the body to survive.
Certainly this is a much less grand scale than the adaptation of a species, but that is an illustration on how things "adapt" rather than "evolve"
Mutation is much different than evolution ;o) Mutation causes things like elephantitis (spelling?) and "lions" disease (think "Mask" with Cher)....are those TRULY new species???? No, they are "mutated" (by disease) humans.
As far as for it being "proven", now if that were true, you would be able to scream it from a mountain top and EVERYONE would have to buy it like the existance of the planets & stars. HOWEVER, you have little pieces of circumstancial "proof" that you twist into supporting your theory. It's as many holes as OJ's defense, and you've swayed about as many people to believe it as an absolute.
Evolution is the makings of a sci-fi movie, at best. Entertaining to think about, but no more real than The Matrix.
Yes, I know. It was just wishful thinking. "There is no pure science that can be equated with isness. If you do, you collapse the distinction between mind and body, you make them coeval. Raising phenomena to the status of law may be useful, but it is an abuse of reason to equate that law with isness. For science is partial. It cannot be equated with an "is what it is." Sometimes scientific theories mate happily with the things it studies, sometimes not. But they are not one and the same, otherwise the mind loses its object. It's quite possible to come close to objectivity by getting rid of the objects."
Science always deals with representations rather than what really is. I can't think of anything in science involves a congruence between representations and reality, rather than what really is. A law in science always refers to something simple and very well defined and that definition always contains representations, not what really is. There's always a congruence between what's held in the mind and the phenominon itself. I don't think there's any loss in objectivity with the use of accurate representations.
As far as the body being an extension of mind. The self is an individual's mind and all that is held in it. Again, I must use representations. All those physical things, such as eyes, legs, noses, ect...are just it's connection to this world. Whether it's for locomotion, or sensory input, or to communicate, they can all be considered as extensions of the mind. The brain is the physical object that operates as the machinery of the mind. If the brain malfunctions, the mind does also. The body is just the connection of the mind to this world. That's just the way I think of it, anything else would be conjecture, but I do think that if one dies the mind also dies, unless it is resurrected and given new machinery(conjecture).
No, it's the driving force for it. The examples you gave are single incident happenings that have bad effect. There are mutations that have no, or inconsequential effect and those that have beneficial effect also.
The ability to adaptat as far as evolution goes is always measured as a comparison between the parents and their offspring. It's the offspring that contains the new code, not the parents.
Once man evolved the mind allowed him to flourish regardless of the conditions in the environment. If man didn't have a mind as developed as it is, he wouldn't know how to make fur coats and buckskins. Then where would he be if it got cold?
Great question, tpaine. For one thing, socialism deals with man only "in the mass" -- justified in this principle by Darwinist theory, which deals with him only at the species level. That is, it has zero regard for individuals (or of individual outcomes or "fates") other than as members of a class. Which effectively means: the individual is of concern to neither, for all practical purposes.
Darwinist theory feeds socialist theory its core principles in many others ways, just like momma bird feeding her chick. For instance, its "survival of the fittest" has been bastardized into "the class struggle" (as in Marx) or "race purification" (as in Hitler). Its "natural selection" puts blind chance (crudely put, luck) in charge of outcomes, not rational choice or personal morality. It justifies force, conflict, struggle as proper ways for man to ensure his survival, rather than negotiation and rational compromise. Man is never let free of his supposed status as a wild beast, who must "kill or be killed." In fact, neither "Darwinian" materialism or socialism has any room or rationale for human freedom at all.
Now in an all fairness, Darwin probably had none of this in view when he was developing his theory. But an idea whose time has come (in terms of broad, popular receptivity) gathers momentum and takes on a life all its own. Especially if some of the greatest mental manipulators of all times are constantly nursing it along (to their own advantage, of course).
Well, them be my views, tpaine. FWTW.
Give me the isomorphism from cellular chemistry (I assume we both agree cells are alive) to fire or the citric acid cycle. Then I will agree that my posts imply that fire and the citric acid cycle are alive. If you cannot, you can drop the strawman.
How about: "100,000,000 people all the same isn't complex.
They aren't all the same, in fact they're all very different from each other, perform far more and different functions. So your statement is a large exaggeration.
I suspect that your inputs are at least as chemically complex as you are.
Hardly. The necessary nutrients are very simple. Water, oxygen, fats, sugars. I hope you'll grant me somewhat more complexity than that seeing as how I can compose this reply and they couldn't.
Here's the deal, spunky...I'm never going to buy into your theory unless you smack upside the head with some hard cold evidence that isn't riddled with holes. We could go back and forth all day and I could point out the holes in your arguments and supposed evidence, but, I, like unspun, have more knowledge to acquire. When you get some new hard cold facts, let me know.
Good grief, BB. I've been correcting these misconceptions for years now. This one's for you:
I've previously pointed out, in this very thread, that the theory of evolution says absolutely nothing about how men should live. You keep reading social policy into the theory, although Darwin never mentioned it, and it's not inherent in the theory at all. Your argument is with the "souless monster that is destroying the world," and that's fine, if you can truly identify such a thing. But it's not the theory of evolution. It's just a biological theory. It's not moraltiy, it's not theology, it's not all the horrible things you somehow think it is. You're fighting an imaginary phantom; and I'm defending the actual theory.
I know you don't like the theory, but you have to deal with it as it is, and not as you imagine it to be. If you want to blame the world's evils on evolution theory, you should at least find an evil political philosophy that is consistent with the theory -- really consistent, without the necessity of spinning it.
Communism promises "to each according to his needs." Absolutely nothing could be further from that than the Darwinian idea of "survival of the fittest." Indeed, free market capitalism is far more consistent with Darwin than any kind of socialism or communism. As for Hitler, I know you won't like this, but it's from his book:
For it was by the Will of God that men were made of a certain bodily shape, were given their natures and their faculties. Whoever destroys His work wages war against God's Creation and God's Will.Source: Book 2, Chapter 10, Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler.
-- Adolph Hitler, creationist
You said the structure was what matters - structurally, you're virtually identical to everyone else on the planet. If functional similarities are what you're interested in, then when fire oxidizes fuel to produce energy, it's similar to when cells use the citric acid cycle to oxidize fuel and produce energy. So which is it - structure, or function?
Hardly. The necessary nutrients are very simple. Water, oxygen, fats, sugars.
Plus proteins, enzymes, and so forth. And if I reduce you down to your constituent chemicals, what do you expect that I will find that you are composed of? Water, oxygen, fats, sugars, proteins... Your behaviors may be more complex, but structurally, there's very little difference between you and the steak you ate last night.
How can a theory that has been refuted by both fact and logic be a threat to me? And it is the Darwinists who behave as though threatened (name calling, jeering, Creationist-bashing etc.). I was in fact a naive believer (of sorts, I suppose) in Evolution for some 3 decades before looking into its claims. When I "woke up", I was quite angry at being lied to by "society". Beyond those who without much thought feel they must defend "the scientific mainstream", there is an Atheist agenda at work AND, as shown by the 20th Century, Nihilism and Atheism kill. I thus oppose the "theory".
Well Doc, that's not surprising, for two reasons. (1) In a certain way, the pictures carry the main freight of the book. They have a certain power to convey Wolfram's key message. But you have to spend a little time "communing" with them to notice it. (2) Wolfram keeps repeating his main insight (his suggestion) in many different guises throughout the book. The cite I have in mind is in regard to botany, on p. 404 (A New Kind of Science, 2002):
"The traditional intuition of biology would suggest that whenever one sees complexity -- say in the shape of a leaf -- it must have been generated for some particular purpose by some sophisticated process of natural selection [he then refers you to the pictures on the previous page]....
"No doubt some of the underlying properties of plants are indeed guided by natural selection. But what I strongly suspect is that in the vast majority of cases the occurrence of complexity -- say in the shapes of leaves -- is in essence just a side effect of the particular rules of growth that happen to result from the underlying properties of the plant."
Wolfram demonstrates across disciplines that great complexity can be simply the result of the evolution of quite simple rules. To me, the implication is (supported by the other examples he gives) that nature may have certain inherent "structural rules" -- a kind of instruction set -- that is not susceptible to natural selection. Rather, it is both the complement of natural selection, and its limit. "Randomness" gets demoted a notch here: To put it crudely, you can only "select" from the "selectable." What is "unselectable" is off limits in principle.
I'm no expert, and the Wolfram controversy will be settled, as ever, by the experts. One thing is good: They can't hang Christianity on him. (His spiritual proclivities incline to Zen, I gather.)
I haven't been reading the reviews, but I did hear of the case of a renowned mathematician who, first panning the book, reversed himself and praised Wolfram for the genius of his "computatively equivalent" Turing machine based on the Rule 110 cellular automaton.
Thanks for writing, Doc.
For heaven's sake, PH, would you finally, please get the message: It's not my "reading into" social policy, not my construction of it that matters at all; I've been describing the message that has been massively received and internalized by Western culture over the past century-plus. And not only have I never said Darwin ever intended this reading, this state of affairs, but I've been running all over town recently, defending his "good name" all over the place. As you should know, since I pinged 'em to ya.
A few hundred years is only 9 generations on a human time scale. Even for dogs( 30 generations) that's not long. The scale is more like tens of thousands to > millions. For bacteria a generation is on the order of 20min, so there is where folks look for change. Biologists have just recently rearranged reclassified the species of bacteria, because of recent info regarding their relationships.
I made a post to Phaedrus at 419 concerning "persuasion". I was attempting a simple explanation, or outline of the process, here. It's a simple concept, as I have outlined, but to grasp the mechanics isn't so simple. I would never attempt to persuade someone that doesn't already have a grasp of biology, genetics in particular, that it occurs. I also don't know of any good quick books w/o much mechanical details. That doesn't mean they don't exist though. If you're really skeptical it will take some time and thought.
I've never spent much time studying evolution, because it's really only a biological specialty. I believe man evolved and I also believe in God. I never had a problem between the 2. Other people use evolution as an analogy to corrupt things and con people. That should never be done, because it's only application is in bio, not economic theory, or political theory. It really doesn't apply to either, even as an analogy.
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