Stephen Jay Gould Flashcards
(27 cards)
Racism and Recapitulation: Recapitulation
Brinton tells us blacks are inferior because they retain juvenile traits.
The believe that individuals in their own embryonic and juvenile growth repeat the adult stages of their ancestors. In the late 19 century recapitulation was one of the three leading scientific arguments for racism.
By the end of the 1920’s however the theory of recapitulation had utterly collapsed
Racism and Recapitulation: What did we learn from this
science did not influence racial attitudes quit the revers scientists selected facts that would yield their favored conclusion according to theories currently in vogue
Racism and Recapitulation: Neotany as racsit argument
Bolk blacks are inferior because they develop beyond the juvenile traits that whites retain.
Racism and Recapitulation: There is a hooker in the neotenic argument
It can scarcely be denied that he most juvenilized of human races are not white but mongoloid. Bolk darted around it and Havelock Ellis met it squarely and admitted defeat.
Racism and Recapitulation: Neotany superiority of women
Women are more childlike in their anatomy than men a sure sing of inferiority as Cope argued so vociferously in the 1880’s tet in the neotenic hypothesis women should be superior by the same evidence.
The Nonscience of human nature: Deterministic arguments devided in two groups
- Those based on the supposed nature of our species in general
- Those that invoke presumed differences among racial groups of homo sapiens
The Nonscience of human nature: The story of pop ethology has been built on two lines of supposed evidence both highly disputable
- Analogies with the behavior of other animals. The fallacy of this assumption reflects a basic issue in evolutionary theory. Evolutionists divide the similarities between two species in homologous and analogous.
- Evidence from hominid fossils. Ardrey claims for territoriality rest upon the assumption that our African ancestor Australopithecus africanus was a carnivore. But bone piles used fo this argument are more likely the work of hyenas than other hominids. Teeth evidence is not poor if not contradictory.
The Nonscience of human nature: Issue of Biological determinism
The issue of biological determinism is not an abstract mater to be debated within academic cloisters. These ideas have important consequences and they have already permeated our mass media. But the most immediate impact will be felt as male privilege grids its loins to battle a growing women’s movement.
Biological potentiality vs biological determinism: Linnaeus
faced the difficult decision of how to classify his own species in the definitive edition of his systema naturae. Linnaeus compromised and placed homo sapiens close to monkeys and bats but set us apart by his description. Described our relatives by number of toes fingers etc. but only described us by know thyself.
Biological potentiality vs biological determinism: altruistic behavior
There is no doubt that the patterns of human social behavior including altruistic behavior are under genetic control in the sense that they represent a restricted subset of possible patterns that are very different from the patterns of termites, chimpanzees, and other animal species.
Biological determinism is the primary theme in Wilson’s discussion of human behavior
Biological potentiality vs biological determinism: Sociobiologist must advance indirect arguments based on plausibility. Wilson uses three major strategies
Universality: Analogie, homologie
Continuity: kin selections
Adaptiveness: Adaptation is the hallmark of Darwinian processes
Biological potentiality vs biological determinism:
why is it such a delicate and explosive issue. There is no hard evidence for either position, what difference does it make? Or we conform because conformer genes have been selected or because our general genetic makeup permits conformity as one strategy among many?
Biological potentiality vs biological determinism: Other animals
We are both like and different from other animals. Now we may need to emphasize our differences as flexible animals with a vast range of potential behavior. Our biological nature does not stand in the way of social reform.
So cleverly kind an animal: civilization
It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built up upon a renunciation of instinct, how much it presupposes precisely the nonsatisfaction of powerful instincts dominates the this cultural frustration dominates the large field of social relationships between human beings
So cleverly kind an animal:
It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built up upon a renunciation of instinct, how much it presupposes precisely the nonsatisfaction of powerful instincts dominates the this cultural frustration dominates the large field of social relationships between human beings
So cleverly kind an animal altruism
Kin selection altruism voorbeeld monster en 3 broers.
So cleverly kind an animal: Kin selection in Hymenoptera
Queen related ½ to offspring
Sister related to brother ¼
Sister related to sister ¾
Assemytry male female
weight 3:1
So cleverly kind an animal: Worries about
deterministic uses of kin selection. But applauds the insight it offers fo his foverd theme of biological potentiality.
Epilogue: Where is Darwinism going
Darwins view was pluralistic and accommodating.
Stephen jay gold predicts the triumph of Darwinian pluralism.
Epilogue: Sociobiologists
Sociobiologists are presenting a series of elaborate speculations rooted in the premise that all major patterns of behavior must be adaptive as the products of natural selection. With supreme confidence in universal adaptation sociobiologists are advocating the ultimate atomism.
Epilogue: molecular evolutionists
Many molecular evolutionists take the opposite view that much evolutionary change is not only uninfluenced by selection but truly random in direction.
Molecular biologists have detected more variability in proteins than models based on natural selection should permit a population to maintain. In addition, they have inferred a strikingly regular almost clocklike rate for evolutionary changes in proteins over long periods of time.
A positive conclusion: Debunking as positive science
The popular impression that disproof represents a negative side of science arises from a common but erroneous view of history. Scientists do not debunk only to cleanse and purge they refute older ideas in the light of a different view about the nature of things
A positive conclusion: Learning by debunking
We have rejected many specific theories of biological determinism because our knowledge about human biology, evolution and genetics has increased.
A positive conclusion: Biology and human nature
The evolutionary unity of humans with all other organisms is the cardinal message of Darwin’s revolution for nature’s most arrogant species. Cultural evolution can proceed so quickly because it operates as biological evolution does not. Knowledge can be transferred to the next generation. The classical arguments of biological determinism fail because of the features they invoke to make distinctions among groups are usually the products of cultural evolution.
