Evolutionists at war over altruism's origins
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Thursday, 10 January 2008
An intellectual war of words has broken out between two of the world's leading evolutionists. Oxford University's Richard Dawkins and Harvard's Edward Wilson have gone head to head over the evolution of altruism in the animal kingdom, and whether it can have come about as a result of something called group selection.
The subject matter of their dispute is social insects, particularly ants, which display a supreme form of altruism in that sterile workers lay down their lives for the benefit of their fertile colleagues in the colony.
Conventional Darwinian theory could not really explain why one individual should sacrifice its own life, and its precious genes, for the benefit of another individual, unless it could be viewed in terms of group selection, when indi-viduals do it for the benefit of the colony or the species.
GARETH CATTERMOLE/GETTY IMAGESRichard Dawkins poses with The Readers Digest Author Of The Year Award at the Galaxy British Book Awards 2007
But nearly half a century ago, scientists punched intellectual holes in the theory of group selection and pointed instead to something called kin selection, when altruism in social communities evolves as a result of one individual being closely related to a member of the same colony.
Social insects such as ants display unusual degrees of relatedness within the colony, with sister workers being more closely related to one another than to the offspring they may have. It was therefore seen as beneficial for individual sisters to sacrifice their fertility for their sister queen because of the genes they had in common....
Read more here/Leia mais aqui: The Independent
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“If the Nowak et al. paper is so bad, why was it published? That's obvious, and is an object lesson in the sociology of science. If Joe Schmo et al. from Buggerall State University had submitted such a misguided paper to Nature, it would have been rejected within an hour (yes, Nature sometimes does that with online submissions!). The only reason this paper was published is because it has two big-name authors, Nowak and Wilson, hailing from Mother Harvard. That, and the fact that such a contrarian paper, flying in the face of accepted evolutionary theory, was bound to cause controversy. Well, Nature got its controversy but lost its intellectual integrity, becoming something of a scientific National Enquirer.
The lesson: if you're a famous biologist you can get away with publishing dreck. So much for our objective search for truth—a search that's not supposed to depend on authors' fame and authority.”
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UAU! A casa de Darwin está dividida, e uma casa dividida não fica em pé!!! A teoria da evolução é um conglomerado confuso de ideias evolucionárias que não concordam entre si. Darwin, quem diria, está pra lá de Marrakesh de unanimidade heurística até entre os evolucionistas.
E não se esqueçam: esta é a maior ideia que toda a humanidade já teve!!! Tão certa como a Terra gira ao redor do Sol, e muito mais corroborada cientificamente do que a Lei da gravidade!!! Não se esqueçam da retórica apologética darwiniana. Sim, retórica, mas retórica vazia.
GARETH CATTERMOLE/GETTY IMAGES
Richard Dawkins poses with The Readers Digest Author Of The Year Award at the Galaxy British Book Awards 2007
“If the Nowak et al. paper is so bad, why was it published? That's obvious, and is an object lesson in the sociology of science. If Joe Schmo et al. from Buggerall State University had submitted such a misguided paper to Nature, it would have been rejected within an hour (yes, Nature sometimes does that with online submissions!). The only reason this paper was published is because it has two big-name authors, Nowak and Wilson, hailing from Mother Harvard. That, and the fact that such a contrarian paper, flying in the face of accepted evolutionary theory, was bound to cause controversy. Well, Nature got its controversy but lost its intellectual integrity, becoming something of a scientific National Enquirer.
The lesson: if you're a famous biologist you can get away with publishing dreck. So much for our objective search for truth—a search that's not supposed to depend on authors' fame and authority.”
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UAU! A casa de Darwin está dividida, e uma casa dividida não fica em pé!!! A teoria da evolução é um conglomerado confuso de ideias evolucionárias que não concordam entre si. Darwin, quem diria, está pra lá de Marrakesh de unanimidade heurística até entre os evolucionistas.
E não se esqueçam: esta é a maior ideia que toda a humanidade já teve!!! Tão certa como a Terra gira ao redor do Sol, e muito mais corroborada cientificamente do que a Lei da gravidade!!! Não se esqueçam da retórica apologética darwiniana. Sim, retórica, mas retórica vazia.
