I have started to read your substack from its inception because you are the only person I chanced upon that makes good use of the Italian realist school. Your approach is original and thoughtful. Some brief comments on your understand of it.
In France and Italy coexist two competing elites : the Catholic and the Masonic. The Italian elitist school started out as an effort to understand how the Catholic elite was kept out of power in a democracy in countries where 75% and 95% of the population is Catholic and supports the policies of the Catholic elite when asked on specific topics. The elite in the anglo-saxon countries is unified hence the introduction of the notion of surplus elite by Turchin. This surplus does exist in France and Italy but plays a minor role compared to the competition between the two elites in all arenas : political ,intellectual, cultural, economic.
The notion of political formula stems from the Italian "combinazione", the then publicly observable arrangement of state policy by the factions in power and its cladding in pro- and contra- forms that ensure its long-term rooting. The formalisation of the "combinazione" proved very fruitful quite beyond its original meaning.
One chagrin that I have with your work is your use of the selfish gene and to a lesser extent evolutionary psychology. The selfish gene is simply wrong. The very notion is a misunderstanding of the role of a gene. It appeared in the era when it was observed that genes together make up only 1% to 20% of the DNA, the rest being relegated to the status of junk DNA. Anyone who learnt introductory genetics after 2000 has learnt better and cannot take such an idea seriously. Using this notion destroys your credibility instantly.
Evolutionary psychology misses a lot in its understanding of human nature. As far as I understand, it reduces the human to a drive for reproduction through the acquisition of resources and status. How does the love of and quest for diversity fit into this framework ? What about art and the quest for beauty ? Music and dancing are supposed to be indicators of fitness : really hard to believe. However the main problem with this approach is that it favours the sociable, gregarious, or "popular" in the American meaning the word. Those on the misanthropic scale should have been eliminated long ago : the solitary, lonesome, surly, gloomy, obstinate, peevish, heterodox characters. Yet all human populations have a significant share of such people.
I do believe in the notion of cultural-genetic co-evolution. It does have explanatory power. But one has to define its boundaries correctly; and that is hard.
Have you read the Master and his Emissary, by McGilchrist? It brings a number of insights into the human mind from psychiatric and neurological studies.
I look forward to your book. I am French and Catholic and part of the Catholic elite excluded from power. I am amused that you discovered the French (legitimist and) organicist school. 200 years of denigration and suppression but still around. There must be something to it. Michéa is a former Communist. That is how he became a university professor. Being curious and honest he started to inquire beyond the frame of his intellectual formation.
Though I'm sure some would say I've drifted far away, I like to think what I've been working on lately still sits comfortably within the broad frame of the Italian realists. It was necessary though for me to acknowledge, as I do for instance in the Parvini review, that they are members of the managerial class, and their political theories cannot be abstracted out of those class interests. It is the enthusiasts of that school who too often treat them as theoretical deities, above the fray of the very power relations that the school makes the object of its scholarly attention, with whom I find myself the object of disapproval. Oh well. You can’t please everyone.
I appreciate you taking the time to write to me with your critiques of my biological positions. I’m wondering if you’ve read my book, Biological Realism. I do think it would clarify my responses to a lot of these matters. But I’ll offer a few words here in defense of my position. When you say that the selfish gene theory is simply wrong, I’m not entirely sure what you mean by that. I don’t think science works that way; it’s more about degrees of confidence in a hypothesis or theory, which recalibrates in light of newly incoming evidence. But I accept that you have very low confidence in the theory.
Very briefly on the junk DNA matter, this is an observation about alleles. There are in fact, across different disciplines, different definitions of genes. In Dawkins’ case he uses the term to refer to the unit of replication, which doesn’t assume the exact genetics: e.g., canalized allele or epigenetic dynamics. Which is why he prefers the phrase replicator. In this regard, he’s much more consistent with post-2000 thinking than you acknowledge. We do indeed know, now, as you imply, that much of what was once thought of as junk plays roles in genetic regulation. I agree, the post-2000 model emphasizing pleiotropy, polygenic inheritance, and epistasis has rendered the pre-2000 model of canalized genes to be less compelling. However, for the reasons provided above, the theory of the selfish gene is not compromised by those developments – certainly not rendered simply wrong.
I’m not sure a Freudian concept like “drive” is really appropriate to the discussion. I’d prefer to emphasize Darwin’s original insight that specific traits are favored for their ability to reproduce themselves. So, yes, given what we know about genetic heritably through behavioral genetics, any trait that enhances successful reproduction is more likely to be selectively retained. So, yes, most things, for a sexually reproducing species, in the end come down to sex. But evolutionary psychology – or even biology – has never claimed everything came down to fitness through sex. Gould long ago pointed to the existence of what he called spandrels as an illustration of such epiphenomena. The Santa Barbara school of evolutionary psychology likewise has frequently emphasized this point.
As to the specific examples you offer to cast doubt on the selfish gene theory, music and dancing seem particularly peculiar. Are these not obviously fitness enhancing in so far as they make for (more) effective wooing? Have you had a look at Geoffrey Miller’s book, The Mating Mind? I’m not fully convinced of all his arguments, but on this point his case seems pretty compelling. As for the matter of anti-social behaviour, I agree that this sort of thing is often trickier for evolutionary theory, but it’s hardly as if such matters haven’t been addressed with extended arguments. I’d particularly point you in the direction of the work of Robert Trivers or Richard Alexander on such matters. They’re both also good on another challenge, which you don’t mention, how self-sacrificing altruism can be fitness enhancing. (Alexander also has some fascinating insights into the fitness advantages of the artist.)
But more to the core of the matter, it can be taken that your anti-social phenotypes could be considered a breed of free riders on the benefits of human sociality. But of course, evolutionary theory is full of discussion of the endless “arms race” between free riders and those trying to identify and punish them. There are evolutionary pressures providing fitness benefits in both directions. The marriage of evolutionary theory to game theory, such as with John Maynard Smith, provided a lot of insight into these dynamics. Also of interest, in a future post, I’ll be doing a dive into the “spiteful mutant” arguments of Woodley and company, which provides a fascinating wrinkle on this whole question of competition between pro- and anti-social phenotypes, and unconventional methods of genetic selection.
Sorry for going on this long, but you did raise several points. In any event, in short, these are among the reasons that I persist in my commitment to biological realism, notwithstanding such criticisms. Though, as mentioned, I provide much more thorough treatments in my earlier books, especially Biological Realism. But I do very much appreciate your having taken the time to write with your criticisms. It’s always valuable to have one’s axioms challenged; there’s always a danger of getting lazy and feeling like I’ve settled something in the past, and not being sufficiently vigilant about whether my original premises may have lost their moorings or were based on originally incorrect analysis. So, such challenges are welcomed and appreciated.
Thank you for the thorough reply. In general I do not challenge the importance of biology in studying the behaviour of individuals or groups whether human, animal, plant, bacterial, etc. I shall try to formulate better my objection to the "selfish gene".
The use of the replicator instead of the gene is indeed a worthy amendment to the original view. However there are good reasons for declaring it wrong and most people working in cell biology are of the same opinion. The crux of the theory is that the selective pressures act at the gene (or replicator) level and mutations propagate when the fitness of the replicator is enhanced. Selection does not apply at the cell level, tissue level, organ level, individual level, or population level. This is contradicted by two simple facts. First the rejection of single-base mutations varies depending on the DNA locus by up to an order of magnitude within a single species. It is not a gene-level feature and it clearly designates preferred loci for mutation/evolution. This is a widespread phenomenon and occurs in humans. The second counter-example are the plasmids : small circular chromosomes, prone to mutation hence to genetic turnover, and exchanged between individuals; their conservation, replication, and translation by the host is purely utilitarian. From these two examples positing that the gene or replicator is the exclusive or dominant level at which selection applies is simply wrong in general. It may be true for some gene/replicator families in some species and its importance must have waxed and waned over the millions of years of life, but as a general statement it does not stand.
You also do not need the selfish replicator for biological realism. This sort of low-level discussion is rather a distraction from the more-interesting discussion on the importance of mating to the human behaviour. I have not read the authors you mention. However your reply was quite illuminating on the topic of evolutionary psychology and shall take some time to reflect on it.
I, incidentally, am an archangel. Or, at least, named after one of them. So, I feel in good company.
Before I come to my main response to your follow-up message, a few qualifications are in order. This exchange has emphasized to me that there may indeed be wisdom in reverting more than I have done conventionally to Dawkins’ nomenclature of “replicators.” I’m not one hundred percent convinced of that, and I’m certainly not going to make such a recalibration for, neither future planned posts here, nor the forthcoming book. But this is something worth reflecting upon further for future work.
And that is partially because my familiarity with the molecular level analysis you’re discussing is only passing at best. I have some understanding of it, but I wouldn’t presume to try and base any extended social, or even biological, argument on that limited understanding.
With that said, I’d qualify the following with the caveat: insofar as I understood your point. And I’m not sure if I really did. Often you use “it” without my being clear to what the “it” referred. In any event, again, insofar as I understood, I’d reply, whatever the limits of my understanding of molecular biology, for my confidence in evolutionary biology, such knowledge is unnecessary. To reiterate from my previous comment: many disciplines, including molecular biology and evolutionary theory (as well as behavioral genetics) use the term “gene” to mean very different things. So, there does seem to me to be an element of talking past each other in such exchanges. So, even if I accept all your arguments at face value, they don’t shake my confidence in the evolutionary biology paradigm, because they don’t really have any impact on it.
If (at least) part of your point is that selection is happening in places other than the DNA, that’s fine. I don’t doubt that at all. But wherever selection is happening, that’s the replicator. So, I don’t really see how that observation bears upon the argument. But, again, maybe I’m just not following your point.
Going back to Darwin, though, evolutionary biology never required an explanation of the replicating mechanisms to know that there was a replicating mechanism. Going back at least a century and a half to Mendel we’ve had experimental evidence demonstrating the existence of heritability. That was a hundred years before anyone ever saw a chromosome, for instance. And if to this day, no one still had ever seen a chromosome that would change nothing about the fact that traits which enhance the ability to get portions of one's genome (if that term can include plasmids, and whatever) into future generations are disproportionately replicated in those future generations. So, somewhere, somehow, some replication process was translating adaptive success into fitness. So, I’ll leave debates about the internal operating mechanisms of such a replicator to those with the knowledge and aptitude for such work.
What it turns out to be – if ever confidence in a theory reaches a high enough level to feel it’s something like explained – will be interesting, but ultimately not relevant to the biological and social processes that it underpins. So, if your criticism is with the use of the term gene, or an over-reliance on reference to DNA, you may well have a valid point. As I’ve said, here and in my previously mentioned book, the former is an imprecise and occasionally confusing term. If though your criticism is that the replicator(s), based in genes, chromosomes, or whatever, are not “selfish,” in the sense of “selecting” for traits that replicate themselves into future generations, that claim I find much less convincing on the basis of disputes about the internal mechanism.
In any event, as ever, I’m not trying to convince you to think as I do. I’m only explaining why I do. And, again, I’m uncertain I understood your point. So, my apologies if my reply missed the mark.
Thanks again for your contribution to the comment discussion. Alas, I probably shouldn’t be writing lengthy responses any more this week, as my daughter is getting married on the weekend. Much to do. So, if you feel compelled to reply, it would probably be a while before I could reciprocate.
Thank you for the thorough answer that you wrote. You are right, my objection does not pertain to the evolutionary paradigm or to the social processes that it underpins, using your words.
I apologise for not having paid attention to the polysemy of the word gene. For me and anyone that I know, it has one meaning only: a stretch of DNA (or RNA) that is transcribed to RNA then translated into a peptide, which is a sequence of amino-acids. To bring more clarity, a replicator is a stretch of DNA that provides a biological function: genes, centromeres (the central part of the chromosome where the two strands are joined), telomeres (terminal parts of the chromosome), pseudo-genes (stretch of DNA with a sequence that would result in a known peptide but that lacks the initiation portion, hence is never translated into a peptide), etc.
Two quotes from your reply.
(1) "But wherever selection is happening, that’s the replicator."
(2) "If though your criticism is that the replicator(s), based in genes, chromosomes, or whatever, are not 'selfish,' in the sense of 'selecting' for traits that replicate themselves into future generations, that claim I find much less convincing on the basis of disputes about the internal mechanism."
Dawkins convinced quite a few people, including you, that selection enhances fitness at level of the replicator. According to Dawkins, a replicator favours itself, not the organism or the species which hosts it; it favours the latter only when it favours itself. He gave examples of that in his book and posited that it is true in general.
My point and the opinion of quite a few beyond me is that selection happens at the level of the organism or the population, at least for the more complex organisms: traits that enhance the fitness of the organism or the population are favoured and the accompanying mutations may enhance or degrade or be without impact on the success of a given replicator. The plasmids provide a good example : a bacterium may simply discard a whole plasmid if that is beneficial. That spells the end for the replicators in the discarded plasmid. The variability of the mutation rate depending on the position on the DNA molecule means that changes in some portions changes are desired by the organism whereas in others changes are rejected. A replicator "wants" to replicate itself identically or almost hence it is hard to believe that replicators in the DNA loci with high mutation rates designated themselves for change.
Dawkins' point that replicators are selfish is true for some replicators and some species. It is contradicted by some very generic mechanisms though. That is why his thesis is not taken seriously by people with knowledge of molecular biology. But his inversion of the roles of the replicators and organism/population has taken hold as evidenced by you and many others.
I hope that I brought more clarity. Please do spend time preparing for the wedding of your daughter. Congratulations to the two families and may the fiancés found a good and happy family.
Thank you for you kind words regarding the wedding, Archangel. It was wonderful and very moving. My only daughter. So, a very special moment indeed.
As to our disagreement(?), if that's the word, I appreciate that my limits in the knowledge of molecular biology may make it impossible to have a fully fleshed out discussion. And given my anti-technocratic distrust of experts, I can't just take your word for it. ;-)
At this point, the only additional thoughts I have are: 1) I expect Dawkins would initially consent to the proposition that "a replicator is a stretch of DNA that provides a biological function." However, if you pushed him on it, at least logically, he'd have to agree that that was not a sufficient definition. A replicator is composed of whatever contributes to the replication of traits. At least in theory, that wouldn't even be restricted to the molecular level. So, I'm still not certain we're on the same page over the idea of replicators, but I won't repeat the remarks from my last post.
2) While Dawkins may not, I certainly would agree that there are pressures at other levels: e.g., multi-cellular organism and the latter's society. I just don't see how those pressures can manifest in selective retention without being filtered through the replicator. That of course does not mean that all previously functioning replicators will benefit from such selective retention nor the pressures that give rise to such a retention profile. A case in point I often cite are sea mammals who, once they evolved to become sea living animals lost their capacity for tri-color vision. That replicator continued to function in their evolutionary cousins who remained on the land, but living in the sea, tri-color vision didn't provide sufficient benefit to create the pressures to select against damage to the replicator (which is visible in the degraded genes necessary for the third opsin to operate).
3) And I do not believe that replicators are inevitably some divine coherent whole. Here it may be useful to reintroduce something more like a molecular biology understanding of the gene. There can be genes which operate to damage and destroy replicators, and certainly to damage the multicellular organism within which they operate. (And presumably the societies within which the latter live.) That was beautifully explored by the great (though for me pretty difficult) book by Burt and Trivers, Genes in Conflict. I take it to be a study of the kind of thing you're discussion. Though, as the subtitle states, the authors take this as evidence for, not against, the selfishness of genes. But I concede, at this point, I'm more of a curious onlooker than one with a deep enough knowledge to participate in the debate.
I don't think we can productively take this much further, but I very much appreciate your having taken the time to write these lengthy, detailed and thoughtful comments. When time permits, I will make an effort to dig a little more deeply into these topics. I find them of great interest, though as we've established, I'm not sure I'm as convinced of their importance for replicators as you are. Still, it was an invigorating discussion. All the best. And always feel free to share your thoughts on anything discussed here. It is always appreciated.
Dear Evolved Psyché,
I have started to read your substack from its inception because you are the only person I chanced upon that makes good use of the Italian realist school. Your approach is original and thoughtful. Some brief comments on your understand of it.
In France and Italy coexist two competing elites : the Catholic and the Masonic. The Italian elitist school started out as an effort to understand how the Catholic elite was kept out of power in a democracy in countries where 75% and 95% of the population is Catholic and supports the policies of the Catholic elite when asked on specific topics. The elite in the anglo-saxon countries is unified hence the introduction of the notion of surplus elite by Turchin. This surplus does exist in France and Italy but plays a minor role compared to the competition between the two elites in all arenas : political ,intellectual, cultural, economic.
The notion of political formula stems from the Italian "combinazione", the then publicly observable arrangement of state policy by the factions in power and its cladding in pro- and contra- forms that ensure its long-term rooting. The formalisation of the "combinazione" proved very fruitful quite beyond its original meaning.
One chagrin that I have with your work is your use of the selfish gene and to a lesser extent evolutionary psychology. The selfish gene is simply wrong. The very notion is a misunderstanding of the role of a gene. It appeared in the era when it was observed that genes together make up only 1% to 20% of the DNA, the rest being relegated to the status of junk DNA. Anyone who learnt introductory genetics after 2000 has learnt better and cannot take such an idea seriously. Using this notion destroys your credibility instantly.
Evolutionary psychology misses a lot in its understanding of human nature. As far as I understand, it reduces the human to a drive for reproduction through the acquisition of resources and status. How does the love of and quest for diversity fit into this framework ? What about art and the quest for beauty ? Music and dancing are supposed to be indicators of fitness : really hard to believe. However the main problem with this approach is that it favours the sociable, gregarious, or "popular" in the American meaning the word. Those on the misanthropic scale should have been eliminated long ago : the solitary, lonesome, surly, gloomy, obstinate, peevish, heterodox characters. Yet all human populations have a significant share of such people.
I do believe in the notion of cultural-genetic co-evolution. It does have explanatory power. But one has to define its boundaries correctly; and that is hard.
Have you read the Master and his Emissary, by McGilchrist? It brings a number of insights into the human mind from psychiatric and neurological studies.
I look forward to your book. I am French and Catholic and part of the Catholic elite excluded from power. I am amused that you discovered the French (legitimist and) organicist school. 200 years of denigration and suppression but still around. There must be something to it. Michéa is a former Communist. That is how he became a university professor. Being curious and honest he started to inquire beyond the frame of his intellectual formation.
Greetings to France.
Though I'm sure some would say I've drifted far away, I like to think what I've been working on lately still sits comfortably within the broad frame of the Italian realists. It was necessary though for me to acknowledge, as I do for instance in the Parvini review, that they are members of the managerial class, and their political theories cannot be abstracted out of those class interests. It is the enthusiasts of that school who too often treat them as theoretical deities, above the fray of the very power relations that the school makes the object of its scholarly attention, with whom I find myself the object of disapproval. Oh well. You can’t please everyone.
I appreciate you taking the time to write to me with your critiques of my biological positions. I’m wondering if you’ve read my book, Biological Realism. I do think it would clarify my responses to a lot of these matters. But I’ll offer a few words here in defense of my position. When you say that the selfish gene theory is simply wrong, I’m not entirely sure what you mean by that. I don’t think science works that way; it’s more about degrees of confidence in a hypothesis or theory, which recalibrates in light of newly incoming evidence. But I accept that you have very low confidence in the theory.
Very briefly on the junk DNA matter, this is an observation about alleles. There are in fact, across different disciplines, different definitions of genes. In Dawkins’ case he uses the term to refer to the unit of replication, which doesn’t assume the exact genetics: e.g., canalized allele or epigenetic dynamics. Which is why he prefers the phrase replicator. In this regard, he’s much more consistent with post-2000 thinking than you acknowledge. We do indeed know, now, as you imply, that much of what was once thought of as junk plays roles in genetic regulation. I agree, the post-2000 model emphasizing pleiotropy, polygenic inheritance, and epistasis has rendered the pre-2000 model of canalized genes to be less compelling. However, for the reasons provided above, the theory of the selfish gene is not compromised by those developments – certainly not rendered simply wrong.
I’m not sure a Freudian concept like “drive” is really appropriate to the discussion. I’d prefer to emphasize Darwin’s original insight that specific traits are favored for their ability to reproduce themselves. So, yes, given what we know about genetic heritably through behavioral genetics, any trait that enhances successful reproduction is more likely to be selectively retained. So, yes, most things, for a sexually reproducing species, in the end come down to sex. But evolutionary psychology – or even biology – has never claimed everything came down to fitness through sex. Gould long ago pointed to the existence of what he called spandrels as an illustration of such epiphenomena. The Santa Barbara school of evolutionary psychology likewise has frequently emphasized this point.
As to the specific examples you offer to cast doubt on the selfish gene theory, music and dancing seem particularly peculiar. Are these not obviously fitness enhancing in so far as they make for (more) effective wooing? Have you had a look at Geoffrey Miller’s book, The Mating Mind? I’m not fully convinced of all his arguments, but on this point his case seems pretty compelling. As for the matter of anti-social behaviour, I agree that this sort of thing is often trickier for evolutionary theory, but it’s hardly as if such matters haven’t been addressed with extended arguments. I’d particularly point you in the direction of the work of Robert Trivers or Richard Alexander on such matters. They’re both also good on another challenge, which you don’t mention, how self-sacrificing altruism can be fitness enhancing. (Alexander also has some fascinating insights into the fitness advantages of the artist.)
But more to the core of the matter, it can be taken that your anti-social phenotypes could be considered a breed of free riders on the benefits of human sociality. But of course, evolutionary theory is full of discussion of the endless “arms race” between free riders and those trying to identify and punish them. There are evolutionary pressures providing fitness benefits in both directions. The marriage of evolutionary theory to game theory, such as with John Maynard Smith, provided a lot of insight into these dynamics. Also of interest, in a future post, I’ll be doing a dive into the “spiteful mutant” arguments of Woodley and company, which provides a fascinating wrinkle on this whole question of competition between pro- and anti-social phenotypes, and unconventional methods of genetic selection.
Sorry for going on this long, but you did raise several points. In any event, in short, these are among the reasons that I persist in my commitment to biological realism, notwithstanding such criticisms. Though, as mentioned, I provide much more thorough treatments in my earlier books, especially Biological Realism. But I do very much appreciate your having taken the time to write with your criticisms. It’s always valuable to have one’s axioms challenged; there’s always a danger of getting lazy and feeling like I’ve settled something in the past, and not being sufficiently vigilant about whether my original premises may have lost their moorings or were based on originally incorrect analysis. So, such challenges are welcomed and appreciated.
So, thanks again.
Dear Evolved Psyché,
Thank you for the thorough reply. In general I do not challenge the importance of biology in studying the behaviour of individuals or groups whether human, animal, plant, bacterial, etc. I shall try to formulate better my objection to the "selfish gene".
The use of the replicator instead of the gene is indeed a worthy amendment to the original view. However there are good reasons for declaring it wrong and most people working in cell biology are of the same opinion. The crux of the theory is that the selective pressures act at the gene (or replicator) level and mutations propagate when the fitness of the replicator is enhanced. Selection does not apply at the cell level, tissue level, organ level, individual level, or population level. This is contradicted by two simple facts. First the rejection of single-base mutations varies depending on the DNA locus by up to an order of magnitude within a single species. It is not a gene-level feature and it clearly designates preferred loci for mutation/evolution. This is a widespread phenomenon and occurs in humans. The second counter-example are the plasmids : small circular chromosomes, prone to mutation hence to genetic turnover, and exchanged between individuals; their conservation, replication, and translation by the host is purely utilitarian. From these two examples positing that the gene or replicator is the exclusive or dominant level at which selection applies is simply wrong in general. It may be true for some gene/replicator families in some species and its importance must have waxed and waned over the millions of years of life, but as a general statement it does not stand.
You also do not need the selfish replicator for biological realism. This sort of low-level discussion is rather a distraction from the more-interesting discussion on the importance of mating to the human behaviour. I have not read the authors you mention. However your reply was quite illuminating on the topic of evolutionary psychology and shall take some time to reflect on it.
Dear Archangel
I, incidentally, am an archangel. Or, at least, named after one of them. So, I feel in good company.
Before I come to my main response to your follow-up message, a few qualifications are in order. This exchange has emphasized to me that there may indeed be wisdom in reverting more than I have done conventionally to Dawkins’ nomenclature of “replicators.” I’m not one hundred percent convinced of that, and I’m certainly not going to make such a recalibration for, neither future planned posts here, nor the forthcoming book. But this is something worth reflecting upon further for future work.
And that is partially because my familiarity with the molecular level analysis you’re discussing is only passing at best. I have some understanding of it, but I wouldn’t presume to try and base any extended social, or even biological, argument on that limited understanding.
With that said, I’d qualify the following with the caveat: insofar as I understood your point. And I’m not sure if I really did. Often you use “it” without my being clear to what the “it” referred. In any event, again, insofar as I understood, I’d reply, whatever the limits of my understanding of molecular biology, for my confidence in evolutionary biology, such knowledge is unnecessary. To reiterate from my previous comment: many disciplines, including molecular biology and evolutionary theory (as well as behavioral genetics) use the term “gene” to mean very different things. So, there does seem to me to be an element of talking past each other in such exchanges. So, even if I accept all your arguments at face value, they don’t shake my confidence in the evolutionary biology paradigm, because they don’t really have any impact on it.
If (at least) part of your point is that selection is happening in places other than the DNA, that’s fine. I don’t doubt that at all. But wherever selection is happening, that’s the replicator. So, I don’t really see how that observation bears upon the argument. But, again, maybe I’m just not following your point.
Going back to Darwin, though, evolutionary biology never required an explanation of the replicating mechanisms to know that there was a replicating mechanism. Going back at least a century and a half to Mendel we’ve had experimental evidence demonstrating the existence of heritability. That was a hundred years before anyone ever saw a chromosome, for instance. And if to this day, no one still had ever seen a chromosome that would change nothing about the fact that traits which enhance the ability to get portions of one's genome (if that term can include plasmids, and whatever) into future generations are disproportionately replicated in those future generations. So, somewhere, somehow, some replication process was translating adaptive success into fitness. So, I’ll leave debates about the internal operating mechanisms of such a replicator to those with the knowledge and aptitude for such work.
What it turns out to be – if ever confidence in a theory reaches a high enough level to feel it’s something like explained – will be interesting, but ultimately not relevant to the biological and social processes that it underpins. So, if your criticism is with the use of the term gene, or an over-reliance on reference to DNA, you may well have a valid point. As I’ve said, here and in my previously mentioned book, the former is an imprecise and occasionally confusing term. If though your criticism is that the replicator(s), based in genes, chromosomes, or whatever, are not “selfish,” in the sense of “selecting” for traits that replicate themselves into future generations, that claim I find much less convincing on the basis of disputes about the internal mechanism.
In any event, as ever, I’m not trying to convince you to think as I do. I’m only explaining why I do. And, again, I’m uncertain I understood your point. So, my apologies if my reply missed the mark.
Thanks again for your contribution to the comment discussion. Alas, I probably shouldn’t be writing lengthy responses any more this week, as my daughter is getting married on the weekend. Much to do. So, if you feel compelled to reply, it would probably be a while before I could reciprocate.
Regards. Michael
Dear Evolved Psyché,
Thank you for the thorough answer that you wrote. You are right, my objection does not pertain to the evolutionary paradigm or to the social processes that it underpins, using your words.
I apologise for not having paid attention to the polysemy of the word gene. For me and anyone that I know, it has one meaning only: a stretch of DNA (or RNA) that is transcribed to RNA then translated into a peptide, which is a sequence of amino-acids. To bring more clarity, a replicator is a stretch of DNA that provides a biological function: genes, centromeres (the central part of the chromosome where the two strands are joined), telomeres (terminal parts of the chromosome), pseudo-genes (stretch of DNA with a sequence that would result in a known peptide but that lacks the initiation portion, hence is never translated into a peptide), etc.
Two quotes from your reply.
(1) "But wherever selection is happening, that’s the replicator."
(2) "If though your criticism is that the replicator(s), based in genes, chromosomes, or whatever, are not 'selfish,' in the sense of 'selecting' for traits that replicate themselves into future generations, that claim I find much less convincing on the basis of disputes about the internal mechanism."
Dawkins convinced quite a few people, including you, that selection enhances fitness at level of the replicator. According to Dawkins, a replicator favours itself, not the organism or the species which hosts it; it favours the latter only when it favours itself. He gave examples of that in his book and posited that it is true in general.
My point and the opinion of quite a few beyond me is that selection happens at the level of the organism or the population, at least for the more complex organisms: traits that enhance the fitness of the organism or the population are favoured and the accompanying mutations may enhance or degrade or be without impact on the success of a given replicator. The plasmids provide a good example : a bacterium may simply discard a whole plasmid if that is beneficial. That spells the end for the replicators in the discarded plasmid. The variability of the mutation rate depending on the position on the DNA molecule means that changes in some portions changes are desired by the organism whereas in others changes are rejected. A replicator "wants" to replicate itself identically or almost hence it is hard to believe that replicators in the DNA loci with high mutation rates designated themselves for change.
Dawkins' point that replicators are selfish is true for some replicators and some species. It is contradicted by some very generic mechanisms though. That is why his thesis is not taken seriously by people with knowledge of molecular biology. But his inversion of the roles of the replicators and organism/population has taken hold as evidenced by you and many others.
I hope that I brought more clarity. Please do spend time preparing for the wedding of your daughter. Congratulations to the two families and may the fiancés found a good and happy family.
Regards. Michel
Thank you for you kind words regarding the wedding, Archangel. It was wonderful and very moving. My only daughter. So, a very special moment indeed.
As to our disagreement(?), if that's the word, I appreciate that my limits in the knowledge of molecular biology may make it impossible to have a fully fleshed out discussion. And given my anti-technocratic distrust of experts, I can't just take your word for it. ;-)
At this point, the only additional thoughts I have are: 1) I expect Dawkins would initially consent to the proposition that "a replicator is a stretch of DNA that provides a biological function." However, if you pushed him on it, at least logically, he'd have to agree that that was not a sufficient definition. A replicator is composed of whatever contributes to the replication of traits. At least in theory, that wouldn't even be restricted to the molecular level. So, I'm still not certain we're on the same page over the idea of replicators, but I won't repeat the remarks from my last post.
2) While Dawkins may not, I certainly would agree that there are pressures at other levels: e.g., multi-cellular organism and the latter's society. I just don't see how those pressures can manifest in selective retention without being filtered through the replicator. That of course does not mean that all previously functioning replicators will benefit from such selective retention nor the pressures that give rise to such a retention profile. A case in point I often cite are sea mammals who, once they evolved to become sea living animals lost their capacity for tri-color vision. That replicator continued to function in their evolutionary cousins who remained on the land, but living in the sea, tri-color vision didn't provide sufficient benefit to create the pressures to select against damage to the replicator (which is visible in the degraded genes necessary for the third opsin to operate).
3) And I do not believe that replicators are inevitably some divine coherent whole. Here it may be useful to reintroduce something more like a molecular biology understanding of the gene. There can be genes which operate to damage and destroy replicators, and certainly to damage the multicellular organism within which they operate. (And presumably the societies within which the latter live.) That was beautifully explored by the great (though for me pretty difficult) book by Burt and Trivers, Genes in Conflict. I take it to be a study of the kind of thing you're discussion. Though, as the subtitle states, the authors take this as evidence for, not against, the selfishness of genes. But I concede, at this point, I'm more of a curious onlooker than one with a deep enough knowledge to participate in the debate.
I don't think we can productively take this much further, but I very much appreciate your having taken the time to write these lengthy, detailed and thoughtful comments. When time permits, I will make an effort to dig a little more deeply into these topics. I find them of great interest, though as we've established, I'm not sure I'm as convinced of their importance for replicators as you are. Still, it was an invigorating discussion. All the best. And always feel free to share your thoughts on anything discussed here. It is always appreciated.
Ahh, good news. ;)
Since you're planning on using the cycles thing as framing, Turchin has a new book out this week called End Times, just in case you hadn't heard.
I wonder if there's any novel arguments or if he's just applying this developed theory in new contexts. I'm kind of hoping the latter. ;-)
Thanks, Harrison.
We'll see! I was kind of worried it would just be a rehash of Ages of Discord, but I don't think he'd do us dirty like that.