…and this is a 
Spandrels!
Category: Evolution
Posted on: October 6, 2007 6:49 PM, by PZ Myers
John Dennehy's citation classic this week is The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme, by Gould and Lewontin. It's one of my favorite papers of all time — if you haven't read it, you should do so now. It contains a set of ideas that are essential to understanding evo-devo.
Gould always struck me as a closet developmental biologist — he should have studied it more!
Comments
I also enjoyed this paper, although Dennett completely smashes it in "Darwin's dangerous idea". I guess the main issue that people have with this paper is semantics.. The things that are pointed out can be interpreted in various ways.
Posted by: Oliver | October 6, 2007 7:10 PM
Didn't Sean Carroll credit Gould's Ontogony and Phylogeny with starting evo-devo?
Posted by: John Pieret | October 6, 2007 7:32 PM
Dennett's chapter on this paper is a piece of crap only surpassed in its wrongfulness and maliciousness by the Creationist literature. The rest of his book is not much better - one of the worst pro-evolution books ever written.
Posted by: coturnix | October 6, 2007 7:42 PM
It's kind of odd to bash Gould for punctuated equilibria when simultaneously praising him for spandrels, don't you think? Regardless of one's opinion of punctuated equilibria (and as far as I can tell, it's easily as well-supported as Dawkins' beloved gene selection), spandrels are pretty closely related to that theory.
You can accept the concept of spandrels and reject the theory of punctuated equilibria, but accepting the former really does limit the degree to which the latter can be considered strange or unsupported. I think it's important to understand Gould's writing in the context of the hardcore 'neo-Darwinian' tendency that he was in conflict with.
As far as I know, if Ontogeny and Phylogeny didn't start evo-devo, it was certainly a foundational work. When I read it recently, nearly every page (in the science chapters) made me think "hey, PZ mentioned this before."
Posted by: Djur | October 6, 2007 7:44 PM
Hi!
To all of you Gould fans, you should enjoy this:
The Spaniels of St. Marx and the Panglossian Paradox: A Critique of a Rhetorical Programme
David C. Queller
The Quarterly Review of Biology, Vol. 70, No. 4 (Dec., 1995), pp. 485-489
Kind regards,
Lorenzo
Posted by: Lorenzo | October 6, 2007 7:47 PM
Many evo-devo pioneers are quite open that Ontogeny and Phylogeny was the book that inspired them to start this new discipline, some as early as in 1977 when the book first came out.
Posted by: coturnix | October 6, 2007 7:53 PM
For all his brilliance, Gould never overcame his religious upbringing. Never under estimate the power of a religious unbringing. (I typed unbringing, perphaps a Freudian thingamagig.
Posted by: Duff | October 6, 2007 7:58 PM
I loved Darwin's Dangerous Idea. I did think he devoted a bit much time solely to pick on Gould. Any specific issues with the rest of it?
Posted by: Abbie | October 6, 2007 8:06 PM
There is a reason that many philosophers of biology refer to it as "Dennett's Dangerous Idea" to get your associative skills working... There is no stronger adaptationist and determinist publishing out there who can come close to Dennett. If one rewinds the tape of life a million times, Dennett expects to see himself writing his book every single time - that deterministic (especially in private, when taken off guard).
Posted by: coturnix | October 6, 2007 8:09 PM
Wow, I misread your last sentence as "God always struck me as a closet developmental biologist..." After my mouth hit the floor, I reread and saw my mistake. Funny, thought you were really throwing a curveball.
Posted by: Mark Powell | October 6, 2007 8:26 PM
I'ts a good read but for the comment "Since Darwin has attained sainthood (if not divinity) among evolutionary biologists"......really
Posted by: Deeks | October 6, 2007 8:32 PM
Regarding Gould and Biology, as a minor point of reference, when I took Biology 101 at Antioch in 1959 he was my lab instructor. Who knew !!???
David
Posted by: David | October 6, 2007 8:40 PM
coturnix:
Talk is cheap.
Please provide some support for those statements.
Posted by: John Marley | October 6, 2007 8:40 PM
Read 25 years of literature in philosophy of biology and talk to some of those guys who know Dennett well in person.
Posted by: coturnix | October 6, 2007 8:42 PM
Like these guys for instance.
Posted by: coturnix | October 6, 2007 8:46 PM
You should take this discussion of Dennett to the Sandwalk if you want some real fun.
Posted by: PZ Myers | October 6, 2007 8:54 PM
I did, a couple of months ago when Larry was cutting Dennett into pieces.
Posted by: coturnix | October 6, 2007 9:00 PM
Hey, I just read this paper in my Human Biology class...that and something Gould wrote about spotted hyena genitalia.
Posted by: Vanessa | October 6, 2007 9:03 PM
Could he be expressing an opinion about an ultimately deterministic universe rather than deterministic biology? I know you keep saying this about Dennett, but I haven't seen hints anywhere that he considers Nazis, himself, etc. necessary consequences of convergent evolution.
Dennett in DDI: If by "us" he meant something very particular--Steve Gould and Dan Dennett, let's say--then we wouldn't need the hypothesis of mass extinction to persuade us how lucky we are to be alive: if our two moms had never met our respective dads, that would suffice to consign us both to Neverland...
Posted by: windy | October 6, 2007 9:08 PM
Coturnix said:
I'm glad I'm not the only one who didn't like this book (not that I really thought I was). His arguments were all over the map, and, in my eyes at least, were so lacking in cohesion that they ended up being completely unpersuasive.
Posted by: Dave Carlson | October 6, 2007 9:19 PM
"and something Gould wrote about spotted hyena genitalia."
His hypothesis happened to be wrong in that particular case.
'Exposure to naturally circulating androgens during foetal life incurs direct reproductive costs in female spotted hyenas, but is prerequisite for male mating.'
C M Drea, N J Place, M L Weldele, E M Coscia, P Licht, and S E Glickman
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1691120
"Through hormonal manipulation, our previous studies
(Drea et al. 1998; Glickman et al. 1998) indicated that
formation of the masculinized external genitalia of female
spotted hyenas involves more than early androgen
exposure and, therefore, can not be merely a secondary
developmental consequence of selection for hormonally
mediated traits."
Posted by: Colugo | October 6, 2007 9:24 PM
I did, a couple of months ago when Larry was cutting Dennett into pieces.
I see that you wrote there "I bet if he reran the tape of life a million times, he would expect to see himself writing his books every single time". Now you state it as a fact. So how much did your bet bring?
Posted by: windy | October 6, 2007 9:27 PM
Also, while much ink was spilled on implicit criticism of Dennett-style misunderstanding of evolution, perhaps the best source, due to being an explicit deconstruction, is Stephen Rose's book "Lifelines". The book was written to directly explain and demonstrate why Dennett (and his smarter buddy Dawkins) is wrong.
Many say they like to read Dawkins' biology and don't like to read Dawkins' pro-atheist writings. I am the opposite. The only bad part of God Delusion was a chapter in the middle where Dawkins explains evolution all wrong, reverting back to Selfish Gene-level of analysis, demonstrating that he did not actually learn anything from decades of criticism and decades of his own responses to such criticisms with writing explanationas that appeared more and more sophisticated over time. I guess he never really internalized it. And if Dawkins is wrong, Dennett is wrong squared, as he does not even have biological training to help him out when his silliness gets exposed.
Posted by: coturnix | October 6, 2007 9:29 PM
His hypothesis happened to be wrong in that particular case.
Yeah, that's actually why we were asked to read it. As an illustration of the need for empirical evidence, otherwise you get a just-so story (even when you're trying to de-bunk other just-so stories).
Posted by: Vanessa | October 6, 2007 9:40 PM
Still not supporting your argument. You made a claim. The burden of proof is on you. Even one actual reference would be a start.
Posted by: John Marley | October 6, 2007 9:57 PM
Perhaps I should note that Dennett's philosophical training helped him write a much better book on religion last year than Dawkins could. It's not that I hate the guy, I just think that he is out of his league when he touches evolutionary theory.
Posted by: coturnix | October 6, 2007 9:58 PM
I referred you to "Lifelines" by Rose. Read it. Come back and we can talk.
Papers and books by Paul Griffiths, Bob Brandon, Bill Whimsatt, Evelyn Fox-Keller, Fred Nijhout, Richard Lewontin, Stephen Rose, Michael Odling-Smee...that's just a begining.
Posted by: coturnix | October 6, 2007 10:01 PM
Sorry, I see that you did give one reference.
I am not familiar with Lifelines, nor with Stephen Rose.
A quick google does not produce any actual reviews, but I'll check it out if I can find it at the library.
Posted by: John Marley | October 6, 2007 10:04 PM
I found two reviews.
This one says nothing of substance about the content of the book, and reads like a plug or cover jacket blurb.
This one is, well, less than good.
Neither mentions where Rose "directly explain[s] and demonstrate[s] why Dennett (and his smarter buddy Dawkins) is wrong."
Posted by: John Marley | October 6, 2007 10:13 PM
There was actually a special issue of some Journal (I forgot which one) a few years back which collected many reviews of Lifelines. Closed Access, though.
When Darwin's Dangerous Idea first came out, I started reading it kinda fast. He develops his argument step-wise, i.e., If A then B, if B then C, if C then D, etc. Suddenly, I found him out in la-la land and I missed which link was broken. I had to start from the beginning and read really carefully in order to find the spot where he stated that 'if G then H' when that was actually not true. But it was written so nicely - Dennett is a great writer - it was very difficult (probably impossible for a layperson) to identify where Dennett slips and in which step his claim has no legs. That is why this is a dangerous book - it is deceptive.
Posted by: coturnix | October 6, 2007 10:15 PM
Yes, I found the only review from that journal (Behavioral and Brain Sciences)that seems to be online. It mentios that there were about 30 in that issue.
It was highly unfavorable.
That sums up the entire review pretty well.
Posted by: John Marley | October 6, 2007 10:18 PM
I don't recall "if G then H' as an actual argument from Dennett. You can't expect me to simply take your word that some unspecified argument was wrong and led to "la la land."
Posted by: John Marley | October 6, 2007 10:21 PM
Since I am a layperson, and may have missed where Dennett slips, please enlighten me.
Posted by: John Marley | October 6, 2007 10:24 PM
You picked an unfavourable review (or whoever chose which one to make freely available picked it). There was good stuff there as well, not just the crap you blockquoted.
I trashed the book long ago so I cannot go back, re-read it for your pleasure (and my displeasure - reading that shit once was enough, twice would be unconstitutional) and explain all the steps and which one is wrong and why. Even if I was disposed to do it, a comment on a blog is not enough space for such a detailed analysis. Rose needed an entire book to do it effectively.
Posted by: coturnix | October 6, 2007 10:27 PM
PS:
If you couldn't remember which journal it was, how did you know it was closed access?
Posted by: John Marley | October 6, 2007 10:27 PM
It is not worth it anyone's time and attention anyway. Read something better instead.
Posted by: coturnix | October 6, 2007 10:29 PM
A final note, then I'm gone until tomorrow afternoon.
From the above mentioned review of Lifelines
Posted by: John Marley | October 6, 2007 10:29 PM
Because this debate/polemic is boringly showing up on blogs every couple of months or so, and once I tried accessing with no success so I gave up - it is not that important. I do not want to get into deep discussions about a bad book, just to warn people about its worth so they can read it cautiously or decide not to read it at all.
Posted by: coturnix | October 6, 2007 10:31 PM
Also, Behavioral and Brain Sciences is a bastion of genetic determinism so they handpicked the reviewers they liked and they STILL got some positive reviews of the book despite their efforts to demolish it.
Posted by: coturnix | October 6, 2007 10:33 PM
OK, I lied.
I don't expect you to lay it out in detail, but if you want your argument to be taken seriously, you need to be at least specific enough that I can see where to look for the error.
Anyway, I get that you don't like Dennett. That's okay.
You claim that Dennett is wrong, but without backup, everything you've said is opinion.
Now I really am off to bed.
Posted by: John Marley | October 6, 2007 10:34 PM
This review of another book by Rose may be enlightening on his style, if you feel you can trust Dawkins on this. (Love that part about the cake.)
Posted by: windy | October 6, 2007 10:56 PM
I am just tired of this topic.
You may also want to read:
Richard Lewontin - The Triple Helix
Evelyn Fox Keller - The Century of the Gene
David Moore - The Dependent Gene
Jonathan Marks - What it means to be 98% chimpanzee
Lewontin, Rose and Kamin - Not In Our Genes
Dorothy Nelkin and M.Susan Lindee - The DNA Mystique
Ruth Hubbard abd Elijah Wald - Exploding the Gene Myth
Susan Oyama - The Ontogeny of Information: Developmental Systems and Evolution
Susan Oyama - Cycles of Contingency : Developmental Systems and Evolution
Most of those books do not address Dennett by name but address the naive ideas about evolution as exemplified by Dennett's book. Most of these books are also somewhat old (~10 years), as Philosophers of Biology consider this topic solved and have moved on to more interesting projects.
For a good explanation of adaptation, read Robert Brandon's book 'Adaptation and Environment'. He is the clearest writer (and thinker) in the field and easiest to read for a non-expert. Bill Whimsatt is as good but he is the opposite - the most difficult to read (it takes me about three days to read and digest any one of his papers). Those guys will give you tools and ammunitiion to fight this fight if you are into it.
When Dennett published his book, all the philosophers of biology read it and considered it trash. But they gave Dennett a benefit of the doubt. After all, he was just moving from one field to another and that was his first attempt. He got it wrong, but that happens. So, over the following couple of years they engaged him and tried to educate him. He stubbornly resisted so they gave up on him. They now ignore him. They do not mention him in their writings because they do not consider him to be a player in the field any more.
Yet, this is not groupishness or clanishness. They really tried to teach him. And they are open to people who are willing to learn. Alex Rosenberg was, ten years ago, just as naive about evolutions as Dennett was. But Alex is an open-minded person, more interested in learning than in self-promotion. So he read and read an read, and learned a lot. His undertsanding of evolution is now quite sophisticated and he is making real contribution to the theory. I got but not yet cracked open Alex's newest book and I am looking forward to reading it. I doubt I'll ever read another Denett biology book again if he writes one.
Posted by: coturnix | October 6, 2007 11:01 PM
Gould and Dawkins are both great writers and evolutionary theorists even if they do have beliefs toward opposite ends of the "evolutionary spectrum". Both must be read and appreciated in order to understand the wide range of opinions to which one may be led by the same set of facts. Gould, however, seemed to always have his eye on his legacy and to his hoped for place in the pantheon beside his heroes Aggasiz, Owens, Cuvier and the like. He was, after all, a student of the history of science and new full well a scientists' fame is gained not only by new discoveries and ideas, but by the controversy they cause and perhaps even the enemies they make. Never-the-less Gould has always been one of my favorite authors and I've read all his books with the exception of his opus, which I've purchased and perused, but never had a spare year to read.
Posted by: S. Fisher | October 6, 2007 11:10 PM
For all his brilliance, Gould never overcame his religious upbringing. Never under estimate the power of a religious unbringing."
You mean his worship of the Yankees?
Posted by: Mike from Ottawa | October 6, 2007 11:24 PM
The view that Gould is self-aggrandising / disingenuous / ideological is not exactly uncommon among evolutionary biologists. Dennett's view of Gould is at least fairly well represented among evolutionary biologists. Maynard Smith, Dawkins, EO Wilson, Steven Pinker, Trivers etc have all expressed similar sentiments. It is one thing to disagree with Dennett - Gould is a polarizing figure with both supporters and detractors; it is another entirely to call Dennett's opinion 'malicious crap'. I have to admit to being less than persuaded by coturnix's 'arguments' on this page.
Just for fun, some assessments of Gould by non-biologists
http://www.slate.com/default.aspx?id=2016
http://www.nonzero.org/newyorker.htm
http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/evolute.html
Posted by: D | October 6, 2007 11:41 PM
I am a layperson when it comes to understanding evolution, but what I've read by Dawkins makes sense. My knee-jerk reaction is to use this as an easy out (you don't like Dawkins, and everyone else seems to, so I'll just go with him) but I would like to understand the debate.
I think I understand Dennet's criticism of "punctuated equilibrium" and I agree with him on that point. I'm less familiar with the adaptationist/whatever the opposite of adaptationist is debate. I'm seeing you disagree with Dawkins and Dennet in a fundamental way, so I guess I'll need to read up on this specific feud before passing judgement.
Posted by: Abbie | October 6, 2007 11:54 PM
Mike, that was funny. Hey, F@#$ the "Yankees."
The spandrels paper was instrumental in a soul-searching,self-conscious redirection of my field, ecological animal physiology, documented in New Directions in Ecological Physiology (1986).
Please don't make the same mistake as Larry Moran and some of his commenters., though--adaptation is empirical and nearly ubiquitous.
Posted by: Sven DiMlo | October 7, 2007 12:01 AM
Hi Coturnix,
why do you think Dennett would expect to find the same results if you rewound the tape of life a million times? I really think you've misunderstood him on this point.
Of course, in a deterministic universe, you would trivially get the same result every time with the same initial conditions. But I find nothing in DDI or other writing to suggest he has such a fatalistic view of rewinding the tape with slightly different initial conditions.
Anyway, you've already poured a lot into this topic here, so maybe just a link to your previous review, which I would really like to read.. all I could find on the blogotubes were several variations of your claim about rewinding the tape of life a million times.
Posted by: Pete | October 7, 2007 12:20 AM
Both Gould and Dawkins are a bit overrated. Gould's best book is Ontogeny and Phylogeny; Dawkins' is The Extended Phenotype. Gould's major contribution was reviving half-forgotten and discarded ideas; Dawkins' was clarifying and making accessible contemporary ideas.
There is a theoretical rift within evolutionary biology, sometimes called adaptationist vs pluralist. Positions on a number of specific debates (adaptation, levels of selection, genes and behavior etc) tend to cluster in these factions, but there are different combinations of positions. That's perfectly normal and healthy for a science. As popular writers, Gould and Dawkins became the representatives of these factions. (It's actually more complicated than that, with multiple schools with different emphases. Then there are those who are such unorthodox - and anti-Darwinian - evolutionists they make the pluralist/Gouldian school look like adaptationists in comparison.) Some of these debates go back deep into the nineteenth century.
Decades ago Tinbergen attempted to integrate different approaches with his four questions; Gould (2002) presented a causal factors triangle diagram with a similar theme.
Posted by: Colugo | October 7, 2007 12:21 AM
I have never been able to understand why there's any dispute over the existence of spandrels.
I mean, I've got a photo of one right here.
Posted by: Chris Clarke | October 7, 2007 12:36 AM
You know, for me, the whole Gould/Dennett thing is settled by the fact that Dennett is fun to read and Gould isn't. I always found Gould corny and schmaltzy when he's using his "common touch" and annoying on science, because no matter how good his ideas he always had to present himself as some kind of scientific Garibaldi, a voice in the wilderness the establishment didn't want to hear.
Dennett is wrong a lot (though I don't think you can come up with any quote that would reveal him to be a determinist to the degree you imply, coturnix), but he does point out a lot of logical and semantic flaws in evolutionary debates, and I have yet to see a convincing refutation of the claim that there is a tendency toward increasing complexity, and would be again after the rewind.
It was something Dennett was wrong about the cemented the centrality of development to evolution for me. His description of evolution as a substrate-neutral, algorithmic process is compelling, and correct in the abstract. The error is that he assumes that what is being replicated (with mistakes) is the same thing that is being selected. The Modern Synthesis makes this error, too. Both forget that its the genotype that is copied, but the phenotype that is selected. Conflating these two, or assuming there is some kind of 1-1 mapping between them, is a serious mistake that has dogged biology for decades.
No one mentions Kirschner and Gerhart's book in this thread... ok, they sort of pass a lot of old ideas off as novel by giving them new names, but the book is well written and avoids the polemics others can't seem to.
Posted by: miko | October 7, 2007 12:43 AM
Oh, silly Chris @45: that's not a spandrel, this is.
Posted by: NelC | October 7, 2007 12:45 AM
I vividly recall reading Gould's paper on spotted hyenas, mumblety years ago in my high school library. Natural History was one of my favorite periodicals to browse, especially when I was supposed to be doing something else.
What sticks it in my mind was his description of the way the males and females look so similar (he referred to the females as having evolved a 'false scrotum') that the only way they could be distinguished was through... erm, palpitation.
I decided not to major in biology.
Posted by: melior | October 7, 2007 1:50 AM
miko: "No one mentions Kirschner and Gerhart's book in this thread."
They are on the cutting edge, like West-Eberhard and Deacon. The next evolutionary synthesis will fully incorporate Baldwinism, like the last century's synthesis brought Mendelism into Darwinism.
Posted by: Colugo | October 7, 2007 2:19 AM
I read that paper as part of my biology 101, and it was extremely interesting- I find myself in the position of agreeing with both Gould and Dawkins on evolutionary matters, to a degree.Yes, spandrels and and maybe even bauplans exist, but that doesn't mean they can't be selected for/against long-term since what constitutes a spandrel in one environment may very well be a positive(or negative)-value trait in another.
Posted by: AntonGarou | October 7, 2007 2:43 AM
Dennett's chapter on this paper is a piece of crap only surpassed in its wrongfulness and maliciousness by the Creationist literature. The rest of his book is not much better - one of the worst pro-evolution books ever written.
Wow, that's a cogent argument.
If one rewinds the tape of life a million times, Dennett expects to see himself writing his book every single time - that deterministic (especially in private, when taken off guard).
That's an ideologically driven lie -- Dennett has been quite explicit that he only holds that certain general characteristics would be repeated -- that the arisal of humans specifically is historically contingent, as opposed to the arisal of human-like intelligence.
Posted by: truth machine | October 7, 2007 2:44 AM
I don't expect you to lay it out in detail, but if you want your argument to be taken seriously, you need to be at least specific enough that I can see where to look for the error.
After his performance here, it should be hard for anyone to take coturnix seriously.
Posted by: truth machine | October 7, 2007 2:52 AM
I have yet to see a convincing refutation of the claim that there is a tendency toward increasing complexity, and would be again after the rewind.
It's so obvious that one must be in the grips of an ideology to deny it. If common descent is true, any organism must have some simpler progenitor.
Posted by: truth machine | October 7, 2007 2:58 AM
The error is that he assumes that what is being replicated (with mistakes) is the same thing that is being selected. The Modern Synthesis makes this error, too. Both forget that its the genotype that is copied, but the phenotype that is selected. Conflating these two, or assuming there is some kind of 1-1 mapping between them, is a serious mistake that has dogged biology for decades.
Where does Dennett make this mistake? In any case, Dawkins made a central point of correcting it.
Posted by: truth machine | October 7, 2007 3:01 AM
I have never been able to understand why there's any dispute over the existence of spandrels.
There isn't.
Posted by: truth machine | October 7, 2007 3:02 AM
Hi Coturnix,
why do you think Dennett would expect to find the same results if you rewound the tape of life a million times? I really think you've misunderstood him on this point.
He had to go out of his way to do so, throwing in some lies about Dennett's "private" claims in the process.
Posted by: truth machine | October 7, 2007 3:04 AM
Here's some interesting reading:
http://www.edge.org/discourse/dennett_orr.html
Posted by: truth machine | October 7, 2007 3:28 AM
I think most of the sociobiology debate is summed up nicely by Dawkins here:
http://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins/WorldOfDawkins-archive/Dawkins/Work/Reviews/1985-01-24notinourgenes.shtml
Whenever you see words like "dialectical" in biology or philosophy of biology, you should be keenly aware that someone is trying to unsubtly point out their education in Marxism. Not that there's anything wrong with Marxism per se (I've read a lot of it), but Marxism isn't biology no matter how much people wish otherwise, and when people who aren't trying to show which party line they're toeing what to talk about different factors interacting, they almost always pick a term other than "dialectical" (like "extended phenotype"). Some other parts also serve as keywords, but "dialectical" is the biggest.
The biggest exception to this is (unsurprisingly) Gould, who was supposedly Marxist-leaning but who never decided to replace science with politics. He came up with a whole lot of really good material with which to oppose the psychology that was then in vogue, like the spandrel essay linked way way above. The only real objections to spandrels are based on fundamentally misconstruing what Gould was getting at, in my opinion.
Posted by: Dan | October 7, 2007 3:28 AM
More interesting reading:
http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2007/02/daniel-vs-christians.html
http://bostonreview.net/BR21.5/dennett.html
Posted by: truth machine | October 7, 2007 3:52 AM
I think most of the sociobiology debate is summed up nicely by Dawkins here:
http://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins/WorldOfDawkins-archive/Dawkins/Work/Reviews/1985-01-24notinourgenes.shtml
Ah yes, Dawkins' classic and delicious trashing of Rose and Lewontin.
The only real objections to spandrels are based on fundamentally misconstruing what Gould was getting at, in my opinion.
Since spandrels exist and no one has ever objected to them, that looks like a misconstrual. Dennett writes in his response to Orr (see above):
If by "spandrel" Gould and Lewontin mean the particular structure used in San Marco (properly called a pendentive) then what they say is false; pendentives are one of many options, but they are probably the optimal engineering solution to the problem of supporting the dome-what I would call a Forced Move. In this sense, spandrels (pendentives) are adaptations par excellence. If, on the other hand, Gould and Lewontin mean by "spandrel" just "whatever you put in that place between the dome and the arches," then spandrels are trivially inevitable-you have to put something there. Gould himself has recently1 opted for this reading, but as I had already pointed out in my book, pp. 272-3, this interpretation also disqualifies spandrels for their role as lead metaphor in Gould and Lewontin's biological argument. In this sense, architectural constraints present a problem, not a solution, in biology as much as in building, and that is where natural selection comes in.
Posted by: truth machine | October 7, 2007 4:03 AM
I loved Darwin's Dangerous Idea. I did think he devoted a bit much time solely to pick on Gould.
Dennett writes in his response to Orr:
Posted by: truth machine | October 7, 2007 4:13 AM
Dennett's final paragraph of his demolishing response to Orr could have been written just for coturnix:
Posted by: truth machine | October 7, 2007 4:31 AM
I don't think I've read a single comment here, purporting to be critical of Dawkins or Dennett, that shows any real familiarity with the ideas of either.
To suggest that Dawkins thinks genes have a 1:1 mapping with phenotypes is laughable, considering how often he goes to great lengths to dispel such a notion.
To claim that Dennett believes evolution isn't contingent is nothing short of dishonest.
Posted by: Thanny | October 7, 2007 5:52 AM
To suggest that Dawkins thinks genes have a 1:1 mapping with phenotypes is laughable, considering how often he goes to great lengths to dispel such a notion.
Miko made the claim about Dennett, not Dawkins.
To claim that Dennett believes evolution isn't contingent is nothing short of dishonest.
Yes, coturnix's behavior here is shameful. I suspect it's motivated by cognitive dissonance with hero worship of Gould -- see the Dennett paragragh I quoted above.
Posted by: truth machine | October 7, 2007 6:45 AM
Here's a quote from Dennett on replaying the tape, directly contradicting coturnix's claim:
But perhaps coturnix didn't lie -- perhaps he is so blinded by his animus that he's lost his ability to comprehend what Dennett wrote.
Posted by: truth machine | October 7, 2007 6:51 AM
I'll concede to a fairly serious misconstrual regarding spandrel controversy on my part, yeah. It seems strange how different the text itself and its evident deployment as an instrument of controversy have been.
That'll show me to not expect academic bait and switch!
Posted by: Dan | October 7, 2007 8:01 AM
If one rewinds the tape of life a million times, Dennett expects to see himself writing his book every single time - that deterministic (especially in private, when taken off guard).
Back on Aug 31, coturnix wrote at sandwalk:
I bet if he rerean the tape of life a million times, he would expect to see himself writing his books every single time.
Note how, in bit over a month, he turned his own slanderous speculation into a factual claim. This firmly establishes his as a deeply dishonest, virtually criminal, lowly piece of slime.
Here's another actual quote from Dennett (emphasis added):
"Replay the tape a thousand times, and the Good Tricks will be found again and again, by one lineage or another".
Posted by: truth machine | October 7, 2007 8:15 AM
I'll concede to a fairly serious misconstrual regarding spandrel controversy on my part, yeah.
This sort of thing comes largely of repeated misrepresentations by anuses like coturnix of what folks like Dennett say -- it's the same sort of foul activity that leads people to think that PZ wants to ban the religious from science. This is why I provide actual quotations, not characterizations of what people say, and certainly not asinine claims about "private" conversations.
Posted by: truth machine | October 7, 2007 8:23 AM
Back on March 31, at sandwalk, coturnix wrote
It's interesting to see how coturnix "evolved" from reporting on what someone else said to his own speculation to stating it as a fact, as he became more and more bold in his dishonesty, sort of like a serial killer who is emboldened by not being caught. Well, buddy, you've been caught.
Posted by: truth machine | October 7, 2007 8:31 AM
Back on March 31,
Sorry, March 12: http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2007/03/evolution-as-design.html#comment-778899257879850221
Posted by: truth machine | October 7, 2007 8:34 AM
I've had casual exposure to the spandrel ... thing on and off for a while now, and most of the content of the mentions of anything relating to spandrels outside of Gould's document itself seems to be based upon the consumption of crack cocaine somewhere along the line of communication.
It's kind of interesting if you want to get into issues about the structure of academic controversy itself. It's subtler than the normal, anti-PZ type preaching, though, to the extent that it's a pretty simple and mostly-logical hop-skip between what Gould (or his supporters) have said and written about the spandrel issue outside of the way-above-linked paper and the well-known paper itself. The elegance of the swap lends itself beautifully to a far more seamless transition than I'm taken to expect.
Or maybe I'm just making excuses for having bought something I normally give myself too much credit to not notice; take your pick.
Posted by: A. Person | October 7, 2007 8:48 AM
It seems coturnix has been spreading his lies for a while. Back in 2005 he wrote at
http://circadiana.blogspot.com/2005/01/wwdd4-power-of-darwinian-method.html
Of course, we know that Dennett's writings don't predict any such thing. I think coturnix knows that too, which is why he switched to the claim (lie) that "Dennett is privately even more orthodox genocentric, super-deterministic neo-Darwinian than he lets out publically".
Posted by: truth machine | October 7, 2007 8:52 AM
Here's the continuation of the above quote:
I really have to wonder about coturnix's sanity.
Posted by: truth machine | October 7, 2007 9:00 AM
Yes, coturnix's behavior here is shameful. I suspect it's motivated by cognitive dissonance with hero worship of Gould
Here's some support for my speculation, from coturnix's other persona:
http://sciencepolitics.blogspot.com/2005/01/why-creationists-need-to-be.html