"Egads!" A more qualified voice
has been found to elaborate on
the tiny bit of
mentioned last time unit.
Robert Sapolsky (paired with Stanford University)
has brought his
"Human Behavioral Biology" course to Youtube.
As if there were not already
enough things to admire
about his communication M.O..
he is explicitly careful,
from the start of things,
to provide a cautionary warning
about "categorical thinking":
that is, the danger of being stuck
in so-called 'buckets' (or "-isms")
of interpretation.
Why might this be useful, and how does it tie in?
Don't be alarmed by the length,
the part we're interested in (albeit myopically)
starts at just past the one-hour mark.
However, the whole video (series) is unequivocally worth watching:
it's extremely helpful to note
that this course was designed so that
individuals don't necessarily need to come from
a canonical science background,
which amounts to a friendly
(rather than blistering)
rate of introduction to the material.
A couple quick notes:
Sapolsky's commentary on
contemporary refinements of "group selection" theories
seems roughly parallel to the
"Lamarckian evolution"/epigenetic inheritance controversy.
Why bother to try the analogy?
Well, it helps to illustrate a trend in biology to
develop a theory which may be false
as a dominant mode or mechanism,
but one that may accurately predict an outcome
of some other theory when
a special set of circumstances are applied.
In a very loose analogy to physics,
the dynamic is akin to the
seemingly dichotomous relationship
between classical "Newtonian" models
and Special Relativity.
The first model, when applied over the whole range,
fails to accurately explain certain phenomena, but
can be fully accounted for
by the predictions of the second theory.
The most abstracted way
to summarize the importance
of such a review is the following:
"assumptions about evolutionary hypotheses
cannot be made from within an absolutist standpoint,
(such as the notion that every trait is adaptive)
but must be accountable to
empirical scrutiny at all levels,
such as genetics or population mathematics."
Another great point that was highlighted described Gould's "spandrels",
which ties in perfectly to the anthropocentric fallacies of the Cabbages post.
Once again, it seems there is a nearly irresistible tendency
to believe that evolution somehow strives for/achieves "perfection"
as opposed to "just good enough".
Tremendously complicated arguments,
but absolutely critical to an understanding of evolution.
Hopefully, this post was a fair treatment that sparked your curiosity.
If it didn't, SPARK.
Readers who are still interested:
Let's meet here at some point in time, but only when entropy has increased.
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