Selfish Allele, Selfish Gene, Selfish Genome, Selfish Person, Selfish Group
We think with words in the sense that words constrain or focus or guide our thinking. Words create classes, create fences around a group of things, designate one thing as not like another thing; bestows on one thing qualities, capacities, rights that are not the province of another thing.
In this sense, the term "selfish gene" is unfortunate because it bestows upon the gene properties that it does not have. Dawkins claims that he uses the term "selfish" in a technical or jargonistic sense, but that does not absolve the term from being supremely misleading and confusing. This is so because the term "selfish" is so embedded in Western culture as implying individual consciousness and agency as to overwhelm any other supposed connotation in its definition. Part of the reason the term may have caught on is the surprising juxtaposition of "selfish" with a non-person noun. Do we often think of a "selfish pineapple" or a "selfish river" a "selfish cloud" a "selfish book"? We might consider a "selfish worm" or a "selfish fish", but the term is so loaded with anthropomorphic individualism that a "selfish ant" or a "selfish bee" seems inappropriate.
The problem with the term "selfish gene" is that it continues to insert individualism into a group or class phenomenon, that is into the theory of evolution. To put it simplistically, individuals do not evolve, groups evolve. An individual may be considered the product or outcome of evolution, but they cannot be said to be evolving; it would be like calling one link in a chain, the chain itself.
That evolution is a group phenomena starts with the fact that all living things die. For life to continue requires that the living thing reproduce itself. In reproducing itself, the thing-as-a-class evolves. But reproduction means at least two. A population of single cell individuals would evolve slowly because a change in its genome is left to chance mutation, whereas sexual reproduction doubles, in a sense, the rate of evolutionary change.
But evolution is not simply a product or quality of the population, rather it is a quality of the ecosystem or environment. If we conceptually separate a group from its environment, then we might say that the group responds to or is adapted to its environment. And if the environment changes in some way fundamental to the group's survival -- the average temperature goes up or down, certain plants die off -- then the group must either adapt to that change, or itself die off.
Suppose that the atmosphere changes and only one individual in the group has the capability to breathe this new atmosphere. Even if that individual might have had the ability to reproduce, if they did not, and every other member of the group dies, the eventual outcome for the group is that it would become extinct because that one adapted individual would eventually die, thus leaving no members of the group. Further evolution of the group stops because there is no reproduction: Evolution requires at least two.
Even two is barely adequate for continued reproduction, and this may be "recognized" by evolution itself as expressed in the incest taboo and the tendency of people of small tribes to seek mates outside the tribe. There is also the example of "pure breed" animals -- Dalmatians' deafness, Siamese cats' poor night vision -- where certain genetic "defects" are preserved, these "defects" being so severe that the breed would probably become extinct if it were not supported by humans and left to itself in the natural world.
So a more complete picture of evolution is that life adapts to its environment and the environment is changed by life, which results in life having to evolve to adapt to the changed environment that adaptation in turn changing the environment....
In this sense, the term "selfish gene" is unfortunate because it bestows upon the gene properties that it does not have. Dawkins claims that he uses the term "selfish" in a technical or jargonistic sense, but that does not absolve the term from being supremely misleading and confusing. This is so because the term "selfish" is so embedded in Western culture as implying individual consciousness and agency as to overwhelm any other supposed connotation in its definition. Part of the reason the term may have caught on is the surprising juxtaposition of "selfish" with a non-person noun. Do we often think of a "selfish pineapple" or a "selfish river" a "selfish cloud" a "selfish book"? We might consider a "selfish worm" or a "selfish fish", but the term is so loaded with anthropomorphic individualism that a "selfish ant" or a "selfish bee" seems inappropriate.
The problem with the term "selfish gene" is that it continues to insert individualism into a group or class phenomenon, that is into the theory of evolution. To put it simplistically, individuals do not evolve, groups evolve. An individual may be considered the product or outcome of evolution, but they cannot be said to be evolving; it would be like calling one link in a chain, the chain itself.
That evolution is a group phenomena starts with the fact that all living things die. For life to continue requires that the living thing reproduce itself. In reproducing itself, the thing-as-a-class evolves. But reproduction means at least two. A population of single cell individuals would evolve slowly because a change in its genome is left to chance mutation, whereas sexual reproduction doubles, in a sense, the rate of evolutionary change.
But evolution is not simply a product or quality of the population, rather it is a quality of the ecosystem or environment. If we conceptually separate a group from its environment, then we might say that the group responds to or is adapted to its environment. And if the environment changes in some way fundamental to the group's survival -- the average temperature goes up or down, certain plants die off -- then the group must either adapt to that change, or itself die off.
Suppose that the atmosphere changes and only one individual in the group has the capability to breathe this new atmosphere. Even if that individual might have had the ability to reproduce, if they did not, and every other member of the group dies, the eventual outcome for the group is that it would become extinct because that one adapted individual would eventually die, thus leaving no members of the group. Further evolution of the group stops because there is no reproduction: Evolution requires at least two.
Even two is barely adequate for continued reproduction, and this may be "recognized" by evolution itself as expressed in the incest taboo and the tendency of people of small tribes to seek mates outside the tribe. There is also the example of "pure breed" animals -- Dalmatians' deafness, Siamese cats' poor night vision -- where certain genetic "defects" are preserved, these "defects" being so severe that the breed would probably become extinct if it were not supported by humans and left to itself in the natural world.
So a more complete picture of evolution is that life adapts to its environment and the environment is changed by life, which results in life having to evolve to adapt to the changed environment that adaptation in turn changing the environment....
posted by Godel at 11:12 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home