A Review of Biological Emergences: Evolution by Natural Experiment
2008; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 10; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1532-7000
Autores Tópico(s)Global Energy and Sustainability Research
ResumoA Review of Biological Emergences: Evolution by Natural Experiment written by Robert G.B. Reid reviewed by Peter A. Corning published by The MIT Press ISBN 9780262182577 (2007) Emeritus biologist (University of Victoria, B.C.) Robert Reid's magnum opus-an impressive piece of scholarship in support of a controversial thesis-demonstrates once again that, in scientific debates as in politics, the truth often lies in the middle. There have been many new books recently that have drawn our attention to the creative role in evolution of emergent phenomena, including symbiosis, epigenetic and developmental influences, and especially behavioral innovations (e.g., the so-called Baldwin Effect). But Reid goes a giant step beyond this in his new book with the provocative claim that emergence has been the principle shaper of evolution (meaning greater complexity, adaptability and of choice), and that natural selection has mostly been an obstacle to this trend. In fact, Reid argues that freedom from ecological competition and natural selection is often an important facilitator of emergence, and that the contribution of natural selection to the history of life on Earth has been confined largely to fine-tuning and stabilizing the innovations that arise from what he characterizes as an directed process. In other words, emergence is where the real action is in evolution, and natural selection has been only a bit player. As Reid puts it, Darwin got it fundamentally wrong. Once basic organismal integrity and homeostatic capabilities evolved, evolution could go forward as an internally driven process subject only to the obstructionism of natural selection, he argues. At best, natural selection is irrelevant to the explanation of progressive evolution. However radical it may sound to a Darwinian theorist, Reid's thesis must be taken seriously, first because he marshals a comprehensive treatment of the relevant scientific literature and, second, because he has many sympathizers among a constellation of antireductionist, anti-neo-Darwinian, and even anti-selectionist theorists. Indeed, as Reid acknowledges and thoroughly documents, he is resurrecting a two-century-old contrarian theoretical tradition - one that has long championed the idea of autonomous, self-directed, emergent influences in evolution. This tradition can be traced back even to Lamarck (Reid speaks approvingly of Lamarck's central idea that there is an inherent complexifying trend, or drive in evolution), and it includes Herbert Spencer (with his universal law of evolutionary complexification), as well as early emergentists like St. George Jackson Mivart, Henry Drummond, Richard Goldschmidt, D'Arcy Thompson, Lancelot Law Whyte, C.H. Waddington, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, and, more recently, Gareth Nelson, Mae-Wan Ho, Brian Goodwin, Stanley Salthe, Stuart Kauffman, John Holland, and others. (Reid also resurrects such controversial concepts as orthogenesis, saltationism, hopeful monsters, and even the neo-Lamarckian inheritance of acquired characters-though he supports only Waddington's related concept of genetic assimilation.) Some of Reid's criticisms of classical neo-Darwinism are certainly well justified. He attacks its reductionist, gene-centered focus, its heavy emphasis on selfish genes and ecological competition, its claims for the hegemony of natural selection as a causal agency in evolution, its dogmatic gradualism, and its one-dimensional definition of evolution as a change of frequencies in abstract gene pools. He is not alone in these criticisms, however, and it is a straw man to paint the diverse contemporary community of evolutionary biologists with such a narrow brush. (For a detailed review of some recent trends in evolutionary theory, see my 2005 book, Holistic Darwinism: Synergy, Cybernetics and the Bioeconomics of Evolution.) Worse yet, Reid's criticisms of the neoDarwinists have a venomous, ad hominem quality to them. …
Referência(s)