The Lessons of the Titanic (and Iraq) Revisited

The very name “Titanic” evokes the image of one of history’s great, avoidable tragedies. On its maiden voyage in 1912, this luxurious and supposedly “unsinkable” new ocean liner – featuring many watertight compartments – hit an iceberg and sank in about two and one-half hours. Some 1500 of the 2200 people on board perished, most of them by freezing to death in the icy North Atlantic waters.

Over the years many lessons have been drawn from the numerous “what ifs” that played a role in this disaster – lessons that are still relevant today. What if there had been enough lifeboats for everyone on board? Incredibly, this was not required of merchant vessels in those days. There were only 20 lifeboats on Titanic, enough for about half of the passengers and crew, and many of these boats abandoned the stricken ship with partial loads.

What if the ship’s highly experienced captain, Edward Smith, had heeded the ice warnings radioed from other ships and had slowed down? Instead, he had ordered an increase to full speed earlier in the day at the behest of Bruce Ismay, President of the White Star Line (the ship’s proud owner), who was aboard for the maiden voyage and wanted to set a new record for early arrival in New York harbor.

What if the ship’s lookouts had been provided with binoculars? These had mysteriously gone missing before the departure. Or what if the duty officer on the bridge that fateful night (William Murdoch), when he first spotted the iceberg, had not mistakenly ordered that the engines be thrown into reverse, which actually reduced the ability of the ship to turn and avoid a collision?

What makes this long-ago episode still timely is the recent finding by researchers (reported in The New York Times) that many of the Titanic’s rivets were of poor quality. It seems there was a great shortage of rivets when the Titanic and a sister ship were being built simultaneously at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Northern Ireland – and many rivets were purchased indiscriminately from small, low-quality producers.

We now know, and this is confirmed by the sea floor investigations of Titanic’s broken hull by oceanographer Robert Ballard and his colleagues, that the iceberg did not penetrate the many steel plates that formed the ship’s outer skin. It popped the rivets that were holding them together and opened up a seam under the water line that was more than 200 feet long. Seawater immediately began to rush into six of the forward-most compartments. As these filled, water spilled over their open tops into compartments that were farther aft, enough water ultimately to sink the vessel.

So now another “what if” has been added to the list. What if the shipbuilder had been more scrupulous about using only the highest grade of rivets, even though it would have delayed the completion date for the much-heralded super-liner? If any one of these and other “what ifs” had been different, the Titanic’s fate might have been very different. Yet all of the particular causes obscure the most important factor. The thread that ties all of the “what ifs” together – call it the “ultimate cause” – resonates with many other historic disasters, including most recently the war in Iraq.

Underlying all of the many failures was an arrogant ambition – the single-minded pursuit of a grand objective by the key players that subverted their objectivity and prudence. They aspired to build “the ship of dreams” and trump an arch rival in the New York passenger trade, the Cunard Line. They were abetted by an over-weaning hubris (they apparently believed their own propaganda that the ship’s design made it practically unsinkable). And they were negligent in ignoring circumstances and facts on the ground that, if taken seriously and acted upon, would have obstructed or diminished their achievement. In short, it was the ego-driven pursuit of economic, political and personal goals in a context of supreme over confidence that created the fatal mix of “what ifs.”

Thus, most of the repeated ice warning signals from other ships were stuffed into the pockets of Bruce Ismay and Captain Smith rather than being posted on the bridge where the duty officer would see them. In fact, Captain Smith was not even on the bridge during the period of maximum danger, which was heightened by the rare combination of a dark, moonless night and a flat calm, making it extremely difficult to spot icebergs. Captain Smith was well aware of this condition (based on a documented conversation on the bridge earlier that night). Had he been on the bridge and fully alert to the threat that lay ahead, he might have proceeded more slowly. (At least one other ship in the area had actually stopped its engines). Perhaps, too, he might not have made the mistake of throwing the engines into reverse when the iceberg loomed.

As fate also had it, the person who was the chief designer of the ship and who had supervised its construction, Harland and Wolff’s managing director Robert Andrews, was also aboard for the maiden voyage and surely must have known about the rivets problem. The increased vulnerability of the ship’s hull and the extreme shortage of lifeboats created a serious risk and called for extra caution. (The original plan called for twice as many lifeboats, but many were ultimately omitted to allow more space for a passenger promenade.) However, none of the three principal actors aboard (Ismay, Smith and Andrews) seemed to have been concerned about the potential danger. The old expression “blind ambition” sums it up.

Our own modern-day Titanic disaster, the war in Iraq, shares with its namesake the same lethal combination of vaulting ambition, overconfidence and a failure to exercise due diligence. In the Iraq war as in the Titanic tragedy, passionate dedication to a cause, or an organization, or a leader can override objectivity and induce resistance or even a denial of contrary or conflicting information. As Mark Twain put it, history may not repeat itself, but it does tend to rhyme.

Letter to The New York Times Regarding Primary Reforms

One option for reforming the primary system that I hope Senator Feinstein and the Congress will consider is a schedule with a sequence of (say) three Super-Tuesdays (or better yet, Super-Saturdays), where the states are clustered by size. Thus, a set of geographically-diverse small states (Iowa, New Hampshire and others) might lead off in February as initial “testing grounds,” followed by a group of mid-size states perhaps in March and by all of the large states in May. With such an arrangement, all states would have a voice, small states would play a significant part (and provide an opportunity for unknowns), but the outcome would not be definitively settled until the final inning. Such a system would also be more likely to arouse and sustain voter interest and participation. The problem, I know, is to get the states to cooperate. Maybe they could be persuaded (once again) to help form “a more perfect union.”

Toward an Ecological Way of Death

If we are going to get serious about recycling, and about reducing our consumption of natural resources, why not recycle ourselves?

Traditional funeral practices are ecologically unsound. Both increasingly valuable prime land and precious resources are consumed in many millions of “bites” each year through the more or less elaborate funeral and burial rituals that occur in almost every country. Even cremation uses up fossil fuels and contributes to air pollution.

A better way would be to use our bodies to fertilize and nurture something that would be renewing and life-sustaining – like a tree. Think of it this way. If every currently-living human being – some 6.5 billion of us, and that’s a lot of biomass – were (in due course) to be buried under a newly planted tree as part of a vast, global reforestation effort, our rich endowment of painstakingly acquired organic and inorganic chemicals and minerals would greatly benefit the soil and the trees. In the bargain, the money we now spend on our various funeral practices could be re-directed to something more beneficial – namely, the reforestation of our fragile planet.

Here’s how it could work. Traditional funeral and memorial services could still be conducted as in the past, even to the point of using recyclable caskets, if deemed important. But instead of the traditional burial or cremation ritual, our bodies could be transported in biodegradable shrouds to designated “memorial forests,” where we would be ceremoniously “planted” together with a young tree of the appropriate kind. A small, durable memorial plaque might be placed near the tree, and the GPS coordinates would be recorded for the family and the public record. It might even be possible to arrange for a video recording, or even live (remote) coverage of the event if the family and friends desired it. And the fee that would be charged for the service would cover the transportation, planting, ceremonial and administrative costs, along with an “insurance” surcharge to provide for the possibility of needing to replant the tree during some “warranty period” (say 50-100 years).

Needless to say, this idea represents a radical change in our traditional burial customs, which have deep cultural and religious roots (if you’ll pardon the pun), but now is the time to begin thinking about changing these ultimately destructive practices in a way that would benefit future generations.

Thought for the day: For scientists, seeing is believing, but for religious fanatics (and paranoids) it’s the other way around.

The Altruism Puzzle

Last Sunday’s New York Times magazine was devoted to illuminating altruism in its many contemporary forms. All the evidence presented in the Times’ articles supported the conclusion that the charitable spirit is still alive and well in our self-absorbed, greed-besotted society. Our deeper, more caring instincts have not been extinguished by our acquisitive culture.

And yet, in evolutionary terms human altruism remains a puzzle. In our willingness to sacrifice sometimes even our lives for our fellows, we resemble army ants, honey bees and a small number of other communal living species. How come?

In the lead-in article for the Times’ special issue, writer Jim Holt pondered this question and trotted out the reasoning of modern evolutionary psychology. Unfortunately, mainstream evolutionary psychologists are still dogmatically devoted to neo-Darwinism and the “selfish gene” paradigm, so their proposed explanation for human altruism is constricted and unconvincing. Neo-Darwinists recognize only sacrifices for close relatives (“kin selection”) and tit-for-tat reciprocities (“reciprocal altruism”), and maybe some social concern for one’s reputation and standing in the community. How the latter trait evolved is unclear and none of these supposed “mechanisms” can account for the soldiers who volunteer to die for their country or, for that matter, the suicide bombers who sacrifice their lives to kill “infidels.”

What’s missing from the evolutionary psychologists’ conventional wisdom is a perfectly logical explanation that is still taboo in some quarters – group selection. The reason is that evolutionary theorists have traditionally viewed the group selection hypothesis in a very restrictive way, so that it appears on its face to be very unlikely.

Without venturing too far into this theoretical thicket, suffice it to say that, for the most part, the issue of group selection has been debated without reference to the likely context in which humankind evolved. The accumulating evidence suggests that our ancestors evolved over several million years in small, closely cooperating groups of both kin and non-kin that formed interdependent “survival units.” They mostly inhabited highly dangerous and changeable environments where they were often in direct competition not only with other groups of their own kind but with an array of other group-living, pack-hunting predators – wild dogs, hyenas, lions and many others that are now extinct. So our ancestral hominid groups were not just abstract “gene pools” but multi-purpose survival units – “superorganisms” in the sociobiologists’ parlance. They collaborated most importantly in group defense against various threats, as well as in foraging, migrations, and in other ways, and the genes they were protecting and promoting were their own and those of their offspring, as well as close kin and some non-kin. Sacrifices for the good of the group could directly improve an altruist's fitness, because his/her offspring depended on the group. And the groups that were the most effective in promoting the interests of their groups (and minimizing cheating and “free-riders”) were differentially “selected”, as Darwin himself proposed in The Descent of Man.

An analogy can be found in each of our ten trillion or so cells. We now know that modern, eukaryotic (nucleated) cells are the product of a partnership that was formed between ancient bacterial ancestors of our mitochondria (the “energy factories” in each of our cells) and early one-celled protists. Over time, the partners became completely interdependent. They have a “shared fate.” And so, ultimately, do we and our progeny.

Thought for the day: There’s a good reason why, as the old saying goes, “it’s the squeaky wheel that gets the grease.” It’s not a matter of charity but a recognition that we depend on that wheel.

Electric Universe? Mea Culpa

Like most other non-physicists in the scientific community, I have always assumed that the evidence for the Big Bang, black holes, dark energy, and the like was rock-solid, and I even promoted this cosmology in one of my recent books. Alas! Now I am convinced that modern astrophysics is a pseudo-science with overtones of a religious dogma that fabricates stories to prop up its reigning deity and treats contradictory evidence as a heresy.

These are strong words, I know, but they are well supported in a mind-opening, paradigm shattering book called The Electric Sky by the emeritus electrical engineer (University of Massachusetts) cum astronomer, Donald E. Scott. Our mainstream view of the cosmos has been shaped by an interpretation of the red shift phenomenon that is demonstrably wrong, by a misplaced reliance on gravity as the primary shaping force in the universe, and by plugging up the serious deficiencies in this model with imaginary (unverifiable) theories about black holes, dark matter, dark energy, and other creations.

Meanwhile, compelling evidence that electric plasmas, electromagnetic forces, ubiquitous electric current “filaments” and related phenomena represent a vastly greater cosmic influence and account for 99% of the matter/energy in the universe has been rejected with thinly veiled hostility. Consider this simple household experiment: It takes only a small toy magnet to induce a gravity-defying leap by, say, a nail or a ball bearing. Electromagnetism is vastly more powerful than gravity, and it can be used in a plasma laboratory to simulate such cosmic phenomena as galaxies without recourse to mysterious, unseen shaping influences. We can see evidence of these cosmic plasmas in our own ionosphere and in the brilliant auroras that can light up the night sky. We can see them also in our solar corona and the misnamed “solar wind.” And we can see them shaping whole galaxies, like our Milky Way.

Nevertheless, modern astrophysicists are in denial and posit a plethora of ever more fanciful hypothetical entities – WIMPS, MACHOS, MOND, SIDM, SADM, FDM and so on – to mask the inherent deficiencies of a gravitation-only universe. Of course, a lot is at stake for the astrophysics cult. Emperors do not like to be unclothed. But more important, they are on the wrong side of a scientific revolution the like of which we have not seen since Copernicus and Galileo. It seems clear that the Big Bang never happened, that there are no black holes, dark energy, dark matter, MACHOS, or any other invisible and unverifiable mysteries. Moreover, it seems that our sun is not a gravity-driven thermonuclear reactor but a plasma pinch-driven generator. Even Einstein has been knocked off his pedestal. No wonder the astrophysicists “do not go gentle into that good night” (to borrow a famous line from poet Dylan Thomas). But don’t take my word for all this. Read Donald Scott’s book (including the open letter now signed by more than 400 scientists), or go online and visit the website of the distinguished electrical engineer Anthony Peratt (http://plasmauniverse.info) or read his book, Physics of the Plasma Universe.

As I said, Mea Culpa.

Thought for the Day: Scott characterizes mainstream cosmology with the acronym: Fabricated Ad hoc Inventions Repeatedly Invoked in Efforts to Defend Untenable Scientific Theories (FAIRIE DUST). It is also a classic case of what can be called mathematical mysticism, an affliction that can be traced back to one of the founders of Western science, Pythagoras of Samos and his Pythagorean Brotherhood. It involves a conviction that the mathematical properties that can be found in the natural world are the underlying reality; if it’s logically tight it must be true. However, the map is not the territory, to quote a famous iconoclast, Alfred Korzybski.

Complexity is Just a Word!

What is complexity, asks author-journalist George Johnson in the science section of The New York Times a few years back? Below the headline, "Researchers on Complexity Ponder What It's All About," Johnson reports that there is still no agreed-upon definition, much less a theoretically-rigorous formalization, despite the fact that complexity is currently a "hot" research topic. Many books and innumerable scholarly papers have been published on the subject in the past few years, and there is even a journal, Complexity, devoted to this nascent science. Johnson quotes Dan Stein, chairman of the physics department at the University of Arizona: "Everybody talks about it. [But] in the absence of a good definition, complexity is pretty much in the eye of the beholder."

This is not to say that the researchers in this area have not been trying to define it. In the 1970s, Gregory Chaitin and Alexei Kolmogorov (independently) pioneered a mathematical measuring-rod that Chaitin called "algorithmic complexity" -- that is, the length of the shortest "recipe" for the complete reproduction of a mathematical treatment. The problem with this definition, as Chaitin concedes, is that random sequences are invariably more complex because in each case the recipe is as long as the whole thing being specified; it cannot be "compressed".

More recently, Charles Bennett has focused on the concept of "logical depth" -- the computational requirements for converting a recipe into a finished product. Though useful, it seems to be limited to processes in which there is a logical structure of some sort. It would seem to exclude the "booming, buzzing confusion" of the real world, where the internal logic may be problematical or only partially knowable -- say the immense number of context-specific chaotic interactions that are responsible for producing global weather "patterns", or the imponderable forces that will determine the future course of the evolutionary process itself.

A number of researchers, especially some of those who are associated with the Santa Fe Institute, believe that the key lies in the so-called "phase transitions" between highly ordered and highly disordered physical systems. An often-cited analogy is water, whose complex physical properties lie between the highly ordered state of ice crystals and the highly disordered movements of steam molecules. While the "Santa Fe Paradigm" may be useful, it also sets strict limits on what can be termed "complex". For instance, it seems to exclude the extremes associated with highly ordered or strictly random phenomena, even though there can be more or less complex patterns of order and more or less complex forms of disorder -- degrees of complexity that are not associated with phase transitions. (Indeed, random phenomena seem to be excluded by fiat from some definitions of complexity.)

To confuse matters further, a distinction must be made between what could be labeled "objective complexity" -- the "embedded" properties of a physical phenomenon and "subjective complexity" -- its "meaning" to a human observer. As Timothy Perper has observed (on-line communication), the equation w = f(z) is structurally simple, but it might have a universe of meaning depending upon how its terms are defined. Indeed, information theory is notorious for its reliance on quantitative, statistical measures and its blindness to meaning -- where much can be made of very few words. The telephone directory for a large metropolitan area contains many more words than a Shakespeare play, but is it more complex? Furthermore, as Elisabet Sahtouris has pointed out (on-line communication), the degree of complexity that we might impute to a phenomenon can depend upon our frame of reference for viewing it. If we adopt a broad, "ecological" perspective we will see many more factors, and relationships, at work than if we adopt a "physiological" perspective. When Howard Bloom (on-line communication) quotes the line "To see the World in a Grain of Sand..." from William Blake's famous poem, "Auguries of Innocence", it reminds us that even a simple object can denote a vast pattern of relationships, if we choose to see it that way. Accordingly, subjective complexity is a highly variable property of the phenomenal world.

Perhaps we need to go back to the semantic drawing-board. Complexity is, after all, a word -- a verbal construct, a mental image. Like the words "electron" or "snow" or "blue" or "tree", complexity is a shorthand tool for thinking and communicating about various aspects of the phenomenal world. Some words may be very narrow in scope. (Presumably all electrons are alike in their basic properties, although their behavior can vary greatly.) However, many other words may hold a potful of meaning. We often use the word "snow" in conversation without taking the trouble to differentiate among the many different kinds of snow, as serious skiers (and Inuit Eskimos) routinely do. Similarly, the English word "blue" refers to a broad band of hues in the color spectrum, and we must drape the word with various qualifiers, from navy blue to royal blue to robin's egg blue (and many more), to denote the subtle differences among them. So it is also, I believe, with the word "complexity"; it is used in many different ways and encompasses a great variety of phenomena. (Indeed, it seems that many theorists, to suit their own purposes, prefer not to define complexity too precisely.)

The "utility" of any word, whether broad or narrow in scope, is always a function of how much information it imparts to the user(s). Take the word "tree", for example. It tells you about certain fundamental properties that all trees have in common. But it does not tell you whether or not a given tree is deciduous, whether it is tall or short, or even whether it is living or dead. The same shortcoming applies also to the concept of "complexity". Although there may be some commonalities between a complex personality, a complex wine, a complex piece of music and a complex machine, the similarities are not obvious. Each is complex in a different way, and their complexities cannot be reduced to an all-purpose algorithm. Moreover, the differences among them are at least as important as any common properties.

What in fact does the word "complexity" connote. One of the leaders in the complexity field, Seth Lloyd of MIT, took the trouble to compile a list of some three dozen different ways in which the term is used in scientific discourse. Yet this exercise produced no blinding insight. When asked to define complexity, Lloyd told Johnson: "I can't define it for you, but I know it when I see it."

Rather than trying to define what complexity is, perhaps it would be more useful to identify the properties that are commonly associated with the term. I would suggest that complexity often (not always) implies the following attributes: (1) a complex phenomenon consists of many parts (or items, or units, or individuals); (2) there are many relationships/interactions among the parts; and (3) the parts produce combined effects (synergies) that are not easily predicted and may often be novel, unexpected, even surprising.

At the risk of inviting the wrath of the researchers in this field, I would argue that complexity per se is one of the less interesting properties of complex phenomena. The differences, and the unique combined properties (synergies) that arise in each case, are vastly more important than the commonalities. If someone does develop a grand, unifying definition-description of complexity, I predict that it will add very little to the tree of knowledge (pardon the pun). But that shouldn't deter us from trying; the very effort to do so will surely enrich our understanding.

Thought for the day: Complexity is a qualitative property that we apply to both apples and oranges -- to borrow a cliché. They are both fruits and grow on trees but also differ from each other in important ways. Despite the many fruitless attempts (pardon the pun) to develop a general definition for the term, perhaps its only universal trait is that it taxes the human mind.

What is Natural Selection?

The truth is there are a variety of definitions out there in the mountainous literature on evolution, and there is no consensus, even among biologists, about how Darwin’s central concept should be defined. One reason is that natural selection does not refer to a thing, or a discrete “mechanism.” It’s really a metaphor – what I call an “umbrella category” – that directs our attention to a fundamental aspect of the history of life on Earth.

Given the misunderstandings that are evident in various writings about evolution, it’s worth re-stating Darwin’s basic idea. In a nutshell, he posited that the history of life on Earth has involved a very long, trans-generational process characterized by both continuities and “progressive” (and sometimes regressive) functional developments over time. Moreover, both the continuities and the changes that have occurred in the course of evolution have been the ultimate result of a causal dynamic that is internal to the process itself. It was not imposed from outside.

In essence, this causal dynamic is a process in which the outcomes (in terms of survival and reproduction) in each generation of living organisms are determined in situ by the functional relationships and interactions that occur between organisms and their specific environments. Both the organism and its environment are important players in this dynamic, and it is absolutely wrong to say that inanimate environments do any “selecting”. Even as a metaphor, this is misleading. Likewise, it is onerous to say that something is “selected for.” It implies premeditation.

Darwin characterized this dynamic as “natural selection,” but he well understood (despite his sometimes flagrant rhetoric) that natural selection is not a concrete mechanism, and it does not actually do anything. In fact, it was based on an analogy with artificial selection by animal breeders. Nor did he claim that natural selection was the exclusive agency of evolutionary change; he was well aware of the complexities.

A crucial point about Darwin’s theory, which is often overlooked by his critics, is that it rests on the fundamental assumption that life is a contingent and often precarious process (a “struggle for existence” as Darwin put it) and that “earning a living” (and reproducing) in the “economy of nature” is the basic vocation for all life forms. In other words, in evolution there is no free lunch.

Given this premise, and given the well-documented fact that living systems can vary greatly in their functional capabilities – their ability to earn a living in a given environment – it follows that there will be differential success in surviving and reproducing. So natural selection refers to the survival/reproduction outcomes in each generation, including both the continuities and the changes -- the weeding in as well as the weeding out. (I’m partial to biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky’s distinction between “normalizing” or stabilizing selection, positive selection, and negative selection.) Darwin also adopted the Malthusian assumption of relentless population growth, which greatly intensifies competition for the means of subsistence, but this assumption is not essential to the theory and is not always the case in nature.

So why is there no “standard definition” of natural selection. In part, no doubt, the very subtlety of the idea challenges our efforts to provide a simple one-sentence definition. But partly too, I suspect the differences reflect varying degrees of bias among those who are strongly pro-natural selection and those who would wish to minimize or even reject Darwin’s theory. The pro-Darwinians often speak about natural selection as if it were an active, even omnipotent selecting agency. Thus, paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson asserted that "The mechanism of adaptation is natural selection....[It] usually operates in favor of maintained or increased adaptation to a given way of life." Similarly, biologist Ernst Mayr informed us that "Natural selection does its best to favor the production of programs guaranteeing behavior that increases fitness." And, in his discipline-defining volume Sociobiology, Edward O. Wilson assured us that "natural selection is the agent that molds virtually all of the characters of species."

On the other side of the fence are anti-Darwinian theorists like biologist Robert Reid, in his book Biological Emergences, who claims that natural selection is “irrelevant” to the explanation of complexity in the natural world. Evolution is an internally-driven, “emergent” process, he tells us, and natural selection is mostly “obstructionist”. At best it may play a minor, “fine-tuning” and “stabilizing” role by “weeding out” unfit variants. Likewise, biologist Lynn Margulis and her son and co-author, Dorion Sagan, while not hostile to natural selection, nevertheless downplay its role in making their case for “symbiogenesis” as a creative agency in evolution. In their book, Acquiring Genomes, they speak of natural selection as “a strictly subtractive process.”

In other words, some theorists see natural selection as the “creator” while others see it as the “executioner”. It’s analogous to a situation in which two critics, viewing an old-fashioned black and white photograph, get into an argument about the role of the negative. One critic asserts that, since the paper used for the print is white to begin with, only the black portions can be attributed to the influence of the negative. On the contrary, the other critic argues, the negative is only responsible for the white portion of the print, since that is where the negative acted to block the developer light from passing through to darken the print. In fact, the negative controls both the light and dark portions of the print by virtue of its ability either to block the light or allow it to pass through. And so it is also with natural selection. To repeat, natural selection both weeds in and weeds out evolutionary novelties, and gives a pass to prior developments that still work.

This formulation can be illustrated with a textbook example of evolutionary change -- "industrial melanism." Until the Industrial Revolution, a "cryptic" (light-colored) species of the peppered moth (Biston betularia) predominated in the English countryside over a darker "melanic" form (Biston carbonaria). The wing coloration of B. betularia provided camouflage from avian predators as the moths rested on the trunks of lichen-encrusted trees, an advantage that was not shared by the darker form. But as soot blackened the tree trunks in areas near growing industrial cities, in due course the relative frequency of the two forms was reversed; the birds began to prey more heavily on the now more visible cryptic species and overlooked the darker form.

The question is, where in this example was natural selection "located?" The short answer is that natural selection encompasses the entire configuration of factors that combined to influence differential survival and reproduction. In this case, an alteration in the relationship between the coloration of the trees and the wing pigmentation of the moths, as a consequence of industrial pollution, was an important proximate factor. But this factor was important only because of the inflexible resting behavior of the moths and the feeding habits and perceptual abilities of the birds. Had the moths been subject only to insect-eating bats that use "sonar" rather than a visual detection system to catch insects on the wing, the change in background coloration would not have been significant. Nor would it have been significant had there not been genetically based patterns of wing coloration in the two forms that were available for "selection" in the two forms. (Later studies concerning the additional influence of air pollution can be left out of the discussion for our purpose.)

Accordingly, one cannot properly speak of "mechanisms" or fix on a particular "selection pressure" in explaining the causes of evolutionary change via natural selection. One must focus on the interactions that occur within an organism and between the organism and its environment(s), inclusive of other organisms; natural selection is about adaptively significant changes in organism-environment relationships. But this begs the question: What factors are responsible for bringing about changes in organism-environment relationships? The answer, of course, is many things. It could be a functionally-significant mutation, a chromosomal transposition, a change in the physical environment, a change in one species that affects another species, or it could be a change in behavior that results in a new organism-environment relationship. In fact, a whole sequence of changes may ripple through a complex pattern of relationships. For instance, a climate change might alter the ecology, which might induce a behavioral shift to a new habitat, which might encourage an alteration in nutritional habits, which might precipitate changes in the interactions among different species, resulting ultimately in the differential survival and reproduction of alternative morphological characters and the genes that support them. (An excellent illustration of this causal dynamic can be found in the long-running research program in the Galápagos Islands among "Darwin's finches" by the husband and wife team, Peter and Rosemary Grant.)

The bottom line is this: It is the functional effects or consequences of various organism-environment pattern-changes, insofar as they may impact on differential survival, that constitute the "causes" of natural selection. Another way of putting it is that causation in evolution also runs backwards from our conventional view of things; in evolution, functional effects are also causes. It is an iterative process. To use Ernst Mayr's (1965) well-known distinction, it is the "proximate" functional effects which result from any change in the organism-environment relationship that are the causes of the "ultimate" (transgenerational) selective changes in the genotype, and the gene pool of a species.

Thought for the Day: “When the words are confused, the mind is also” -- Seneca

The Dawkins Delusion

Though Richard Dawkins is viewed as an oracle in some quarters, and as an incarnation of the devil in others, neither view is justified, and it would be good for all of us if our various Dawkins delusions were deflated. There can certainly be no gainsaying his enormous talent and prodigious accomplishments. The problem is with the content – and with his calculated rhetoric – which has enriched him while, at the same time, misleading both his acolytes and his enemies.

Let’s start with the “selfish gene” – at once a cunningly clever metaphor and a serious distortion of the evolutionary process. Dawkins became famous for this inspired image (the title of his first book, in 1976), and for his assertion that we are all “robot vehicles” that are “blindly programmed to serve the selfish molecules known as genes.” This reductionist, simplistic view of evolution (which endows DNA with an all-powerful teleology) is, as Winston Churchill once said in a much different context, a “terminological inexactitude.”

In fact, Dawkins himself backpedaled from this provocative caricature even in the recesses of The Selfish Gene. On page 37 he concedes that, of course, the genes are not really free and independent agents: “They collaborate and interact in inextricably complex ways….Building a leg is a multi-gene cooperative enterprise.” To underscore the point, Dawkins employs a rowing metaphor: One oarsman on his own cannot win the Oxford and Cambridge boat race. He needs eight colleagues….Rowing the boat is a cooperative venture” (p.38).

Even more discordant is a remark Dawkins made in a subsequent book, The Blind Watchmaker, where he describes embryonic development and concludes: “We have a picture of teams of genes all evolving toward cooperative solutions to problems….It is the ‘team’ that evolves” (p171). Some would call this “group selection,” though Dawkins officially rejects the idea (more on this below). So Dawkins has always had a tendency to talk out of both sides of his mouth, with all the aplomb of an elected politician.

On one point, though, Dawkins has been consistent – and consistently wrong. On the subject of human nature and the nature of human societies, he remains a “head in the bag” neo-Darwinian (to borrow one of his own terms of opprobrium). He sees evolution as a being predominately a process of relentless, gladiatorial competition among individuals: “I think ‘nature red in tooth and claw’ sums up our modern understanding of natural selection admirably,” he wrote on page two of The Selfish Gene. This applies to human evolution as well. In his paradigm, competition has been the norm, and social life in human societies is derived from “kin selection” – altruism toward close kin that is ultimately self-serving genetically. From this narrow perspective, then, tribalism, nationalism and other group loyalties in humans are a distortion (a hypertrophy in biospeak) of the kin-based social bonds that were the basis of our evolution as a species.

Contrary to this sanguinary view of evolution, it has become increasingly clear during the past decade or so that symbiosis and cooperative relationships are widespread in nature and are also fundamental properties of the natural world. In effect, competition and cooperation share the credit for “progressive” evolutionary changes, at all levels. Dawkins could just as well have titled his famous book The Cooperative Gene (and in fact biologist Mark Ridley did just so in his 2001 book). Moreover, this model has been especially applicable to human evolution, and the shaping of human nature. There is growing support among human evolutionists (across several disciplines) for the view that humankind evolved, over several million years, in closely cooperating groups that included non-kin as well as close relatives and that “group selection” (the differential survival of competing groups) greatly encouraged our proclivities for group solidarity, morality and “coherence,” as Darwin himself put it in The Descent of Man. The flip side of this, of course, is our propensity for xenophobia. It seems the current generation of evolutionary theorists are rediscovering Darwin’s Darwinism.

So, in this light, let’s talk about Dawkins’ latest piece of in flagrante delicto prose -- The God Delusion. A full-scale rebuttal is not possible here, but it boils down to this key point: Blaming religion for the various travesties committed by human groups is like blaming the car for the behavior of the driver. The problem lies in our evolved human nature, not in the excesses that religions sometimes foster and commit. Nor are religious organizations the only culprits in perpetrating group conflicts. Consider the antagonisms that have, historically, swirled around tribalism, ethnic identities, nationalism, ideological cleavages (communists and capitalists), economic interests (e.g., the north and south in the American Civil War), and even soccer matches. Indeed, Dawkins’ all-out assault on religion is a reflection of yet another such cleavage -- the ongoing political conflict between a beleaguered scientific community and the “intelligent design” crowd. So let’s stop blaming the car.

Thought for the day: Personally, I see religion as being double-edged, like so much else in life. Organized religions have perpetrated a great many atrocities historically, but at their best they may also help the poor and afflicted, reinforce moral conduct, provide comfort and solace, and facilitate social relationships and social bonds. As Frank Sinatra put it: “I’m in favor of anything that will get you through the night.”

The Rise and Fall of the American Empire

When it comes to empires these days, it’s “easy come, easy go.” Only a few years ago, around the time of our cake-walk invasion of Iraq (and before the “oops” part), our media was full of self-congratulatory and, as it turns out, delusive claims that America, for better or worse, was now an empire – like Rome and Great Britain in their heyday. (Our pundits tended to overlook the darker examples of the Japanese and Soviet empires in the 20th century, for some reason.) We were told that now the United States was the “hegemon” – meaning that it was undisputed as the dominant military power – and the keeper of a stable international order.

Of course, past empires occupied and controlled “colonies” that they blatantly exploited for their own advantage. Also, a few historical details were overlooked by the pundits: Rome was undisputed in its power only for a (relatively) brief period in the middle of its thousand-year history; it remained a republic during much of its ascendancy and fought an unending series of wars against the “barbarians” in its latter stages. And British power was never uncontested. Indeed, the 18th and 19th century race for colonies among the British, French, Germans, Austro-Hungarians, Russians, Spanish, Italians, and Americans, was intense and contributed to the cataclysm of World Wars One and Two. Moreover, the voluntary dismantling of their empires by both the British and the Americans after World War Two (and somewhat more reluctantly by the French and then the Soviets after the fall of the Berlin Wall) seemed to bring an end to the imperialist era. Self-determination became the new mantra of a more democratic world order, or so the optimists proclaimed.

To be sure, America still guards the gates in various places – Germany, South Korea and the Middle East. And our military machine is still formidable, despite the costly humbling we have suffered in Iraq. Our annual military budget is greater than those of all the rest of the industrialized nations combined (but watch out for China). Equally important, the economic order that we have sponsored and supported – most significantly through the World Bank and the World Trade Organization – have been instrumentalities for advancing American economic interests (namely, capitalism and “free” trade -- with a few obvious exceptions like farm products). Our cultural exports have also been influential in the global community.

But there the analogy ends, and the disanalogies are growing stronger by the day – it seems. In fact, free trade has been hollowing out the underlying source of our power –our industrial capacity and trade surpluses. At the end of World War Two, the United States produced 50% of the world’s total Gross Domestic Product and was undisputed leader in just about every industrial sector. We had a favorable balance of trade for more than half a century. Now 70% of our GDP consists of consumer spending, much of it with borrowed money and much of it spent on goods (and oil) imported from China and everywhere else. More important, we have gone from being the world’s banker after World War Two to being world’s biggest debtor nation. Control over our own fiscal and economic destiny is rapidly slipping from our hands, as even some of the biggest of Wall Street’s banking and investment houses are being auctioned off to recoup from the sub-prime mortgage calamity.

Equally significant, what was once the world’s highest standard of living and most modern infrastructure has slipped badly; we now rank closer to some developing countries. To maintain our humongous military machine, we have also been starving the underpinnings of our society – our educational system, our public works, and more. (And this is not just an ideological stance; just look at the comparative statistics.) And, where once we were leaders in the world community, now our representatives (at the recent Bali climate change conference) are booed and we are asked please to “get out of the way.” Finally, a resurgent Russia and an emergent China are subtly resisting and challenging our “leadership.”

So the truth is that our imperial period never existed. It amount to a passing whiff of hubris -- followed by nemesis, of course. Now we ache to be out of Iraq. And we watch with baited breath as our economy struggles with the latest wasteful and destructive “bubble” (the sub-prime mortgage debacle), and with all the other sins of a spendthrift society. We will be hard-pressed to prevent further economic decline and, indeed, poverty and hardship on a scale that we have not experienced in this country for many years. The reality isn’t pretty, but facing up to it honestly is the first step toward coping with it. I keep waiting for candid leadership from our present crop of Presidential candidates. So far, no good.

Thought for the day: Sic transit Gloria mundi (thus passes the glory of the world), or fame is fleeting. It’s a lesson that each new generation seems to re-learn the hard way. Among the many variations on this theme (some humorous) was this headline in the New York Daily News some years back about the hospitalization of the prominent New York heiress Gloria Vanderbilt: “Sick Gloria in Transit Monday.”

Emergence and Evolution

“Emergence” seems to be the latest buzzword among a new generation of holistic/systems-oriented theorists. I say a “new” generation because emergence theory is not new. It can be traced back to a similar movement in the latter 19th century. (The history of this earlier movement is described in a recent article of mine in the journal Complexity called “The Re-emergence of Emergence: A Venerable Concept in Search of a Theory.”)

Among the many problems with the current reincarnation of emergence is the fact that there is no agreement on how to define the term in such a way that you can recognize emergence when you see it. One theorist who has done a creditable job, however, is biologist Robert Reid in his new book, Biological Emergences: Evolution by Natural Experiment (MIT Press 2007). Reid focuses on increases in biological complexity that produce qualitatively new functional properties, and he identifies three broad categories of emergent phenomena: (1) symbiosis and associations, (2) physiological and behavioral innovations, and (3) developmental and epigenetic influences. Reid also makes a compelling case for the thesis that emergence as he defines it has played a major creative role in evolution.

So far, so good. But Reid also attacks neo-Darwinism and claims that natural selection has had little to do with “progressive” evolution – meaning the evolution of complexity over time. Its role is primarily confined to “stabilizing” the innovations that have arisen autonomously, he asserts. Here, I’m afraid, we part company.

I certainly agree with Reid’s critique of the neo-Darwinists. And I certainly agree with his basic argument that emergence has played a fundamental creative role in evolution. How could I disagree. My own “Synergism Hypothesis” is really about emergent complexity -- though my theory emphasizes the functional (bioeconomic) effects – and their evolutionary consequences -- rather than the causes of emergence and embraces other, non-emergent forms of synergy as well. And yet, there remains a huge difference in our views about the role of natural selection, and I suspect it is traceable to differences in our "ground-zero" assumptions (as I call them) about the nature of life.

When all of Darwin's rhetorical flourishes, and his gradualism, and other problems with his theory are stripped away, the heart of his vision, I believe, is his assumption that life is at bottom a contingent, often precarious phenomenon (a "struggle for existence") and that "earning a living" in "the economy of nature" is the fundamental challenge for all life forms. I like to call it a "survival enterprise." In other words, failure is always an option. And, given the fact that life is predominately pursued in collectivities (emergent systems), the evolutionary process is -- at every level of complexity -- quintessentially a "collective survival enterprise." Moreover, economic criteria are crucially important; there are always costs for emergent novelties, and the benefits must outweigh the costs. (That is why the functional synergies associated with emergence are so significant.)

When this assumption is put together with Darwin's other basic assumption, that functionally important variability is a rule in the natural world, this means that natural selection (broadly defined) is inescapable. That is, the variants in every generation are subject to "differential survival and reproduction" based on their functional differences. It may be that some, or all, or none, of these variants can "make the cut" in any generation, but being subjected to the test of fitness is unavoidable. And this applies to any emergent novelty as well. Reid himself speaks of "natural experiments," and "adaptation," and "adaptability," and "functionality" (physiology is all about functions, he points out), and "workability," and "does it work?" The question is, adaptable/functional/workable for what? The answer, of course, is for ensuring/furthering/enhancing the "collective survival enterprise" in a given environmental context. I like biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky's characterization (or was it Julian Huxley's?) of evolution as a process of "trial-and-success."

So, while I wholeheartedly endorse Reid’s critique of the gene-centered, neo-Darwinian (mutation/competition/selection) paradigm, with its emphasis on ecological competition and its abstract "gene pool" model of the evolutionary process, and while I think emergence is of fundamental causal importance in evolution, I think natural selection (broadly defined) is also a party to the process at every step. I like evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr's short-hand description of evolution as a "two-step tandem process" -- meaning (1) functional innovations, from whatever source, coupled with (2) differential success/failure over time. To assume otherwise is to assume away the basic survival problem, I believe. (Much of this is discussed further in my most recent book: Holistic Darwinism: Synergy, Cybernetics and the Bioeconomics of Evolution.)

Thought for the day: To quote again the great 20th century evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky: "No theory of evolution that leaves the phenomenon of adaptation an unexplained mystery can be acceptable."