popper, deutsch, dawkins and darwin

[hibbsa]

Hi DD - I was wondering...why did you list Dawkins as one of your four
strands? I wouldn't say he's a historically important figure in Science,
though certainly he's a v.significant contemporary of yours. But he
hasn't produced important theories, or dramatically advanced any that
are pre-existing, or has he?

He wrote a landmark popular science book about the gene-centric view,
and gave it the 'selfish gene' label, but he was only writing about the
gene-centric view, he didn't invent it. He did introduce the idea of
memes, and that was his idea, so perhaps you elevated him because of
that. But that would mean Darwinian Evolution - Evolution - wasn't one
of the strands at all.

Or, if Dawkins was meant to represent Darwinism in its corrected 'New
Synthesis' form, then do you still stand by that judgement call, or in
hindsight would you now say the fourth strand is the modern
manifestation of Darwin's idea?

On the subject of Darwin's Idea, now turning to Popper. He - Popper -
surely is a very significant historical figure who contributed a great
deal of original work. Those volumes of brilliance are all his. But his
Big Idea...the simple concept that glues all of his theories together
and makes the body of work profound - is the same as Darwin's Idea, or
do you think not? I am interested to know your reasoning, and in the
meantime will advance my own.

We're talking about Darwin's natural selection. The way I see it, the
argument favouring an independent discovery by Popper, would be that he
- Popper - does define the components in a completely different way, and
as such the 'mechanism' he ends up with is different...one difference
being it is no longer 'natural' selection. And since Darwin's mechanism
definitively is 'natural selection' all of this would suggest Popper's
discovery was independnet and his own. On the face of things, it does
seem like a compelling line of argument.

But the above argument, and I think probably all possible variations of
the argument, really is totally misconceived and mistaken. The reason is
not because there is anything wrong with the reasoning itself. Nor is it
because any of the assertions within the reasoning are wrong, or
innaccurate. Popper did add originality in the way he defined those
components, and the resulting mechanism is clearly radically different.
It could even be that Popper's mechanism sits above Darwin's where
'natural selection' is a sort of special case.

All of this can wholeheartedly be accepted in the strongest possible
terms, and it won't make a jot of difference. Because the misconception
that falsifies the argument that Popper's idea was original and not
Darwin's is way more fundamental than any of that, and takes place
before the pro-popper argument is created in the first place. The
misconception is actually about Darwin's Idea.

What is Darwin's Idea...what made - and makes - 'natural selection' so
powerful and definitive? Is it the specific, detailed, definitions of
the components? How can that be so, when Darwin only vaguely grasped
what he saw must be happening? No.

The reason natural selection is profound is the opposite of that. The
'force' of natural selection emerges when a set of separate
observations/insights are considered together. Those underlying
observations or insights - or components - do become extremely important
in their own right, taking on distinctive non-trivial (and in their own
right, evolving) definitions. But they don't have to be detailed. They
don't even have to be non-trivial. They can be stated vaguely, and
'natural selection' will still emerge when the set of them are
considered all together, and all the profound implications right there
along with it.

Natural Selection is the structural arrangement - juxtapositioning - of
individual phenomena that considered alone might or might not - but
*need not* be - interesting. The reason the discovery is called
profound, and Darwin regarded at the top most table of scientific
greats, is because natural selection has to happen. And the reason it
has to happen is the independence of the emergence of it, to components
which descriptively are reducibe to the vague/trivial.

From trivial roots arises Natural Selection and that is why it is

profound, and why people knew it was correct generations before science
had a handle on how it worked. The explanation for where does the
substance come from is the increasingly substantial relationships
between those components, ultimately leading to natural selection
itself. And so by direct implication of how it comes about, Natural
Selection is a *structure* level conception that describes an
emergence...not just of natural selection itself, but the knock-on also,
of its attributes of power, far-reachingness and profundity that made it
famous and Darwin a genius. Those attributes are literally the robust
attributes of that deceptively simple underlying structure of
relationships.

And so those are the terms on which Darwin's Idea are, and must be,
defined - and this is why Popper's idea does not, and cannot, qualify as
original to Popper. Different though it is in its specifics, at the
*structural* level Popper's Big Idea is identical to Darwin's. The same
underlying components, with the same relationships arising, delivering
the same insights of far-reaching profundity. It doesn't matter what
differently Popper did in his specific definitions, because those
definitions can stripped back - reducible - to a trivial/vague core.

At that abstract/stucture level the only differences between Popper's
and Darwin's mechanism, are negatively scored against Popper. There is
less true independence, because some of Popper's components invoke large
assumptions....about human rationality, the human condition and so on.
Maybe all of it correct, or substantially or mostly correct, or at least
partially. Who knows...but what it definitely is is a very large and far
extending stack of assumptions. And the profundity of natural selection
is - as described above - very much a function of the absense or
minimization of assumptions, and it is for that reason it it can be said
that - by definition - it is not possible that Popper successfully
preserves the profundity of Darwin's Idea across into his version of
natural selection.

Which is not to say Popper's version lacks profundity. But it is
dependent on how well all those assumptions reflect the real world.
Which is the normal structure of dependencies for pretty much every
scientific theory...except Darwin's.

[David Deutsch]

Post by hibbsa
Hi DD - I was wondering...why did you list Dawkins as one of your four
strands? I wouldn't say he's a historically important figure in Science,
though certainly he's a v.significant contemporary of yours. But he
hasn't produced important theories, or dramatically advanced any that
are pre-existing, or has he?
He wrote a landmark popular science book about the gene-centric view,
and gave it the 'selfish gene' label, but he was only writing about the
gene-centric view, he didn't invent it. He did introduce the idea of
memes, and that was his idea, so perhaps you elevated him because of
that. But that would mean Darwinian Evolution - Evolution - wasn't one
of the strands at all.
Or, if Dawkins was meant to represent Darwinism in its corrected 'New
Synthesis' form, then do you still stand by that judgement call, or in
hindsight would you now say the fourth strand is the modern
manifestation of Darwin's idea?

I'm not an expert on the history of science. Aspects of it do interest me, but discovering who "really" thought of an idea first is not one of them. It's not very important whether the author of Shakespeare's plays was Shakespeare. As I said in The Beginning of Infinity, it wouldn't change much if it turned out that Einstein had written his relativity papers as a joke, and the same goes for if a historian were to discover that those ideas had all been knocking around for years before Einstein.

Having said that, I think that Dawkins underrates the size of his own contribution. It is true that the theory itself had been there for a considerable time before he wrote The Selfish Gene and was not due to him. But that is like saying that the inverse-square force law of gravity had been there for a considerable time before Newton published his version. Or that Hilbert had written down Einstein's equations before Einstein did. There's postulating a theory, and then there's understanding it. Neo-Darwinism (the 'selfish gene theory') is quite easy to state as a factual theory but quite hard to 'get' as an explanatory theory. A token of that is, for instance, that Steven Jay Gould, who was very knowledgable and interested in the matter, never got it. And recently, it turned out that nor had E.O. Wilson, whom everyone had regarded as one of its most prominent advocates.

I could easily be mistaken about the history, and about who deserves credit. But the dedication page of my book is not about that. It's not the Nobel Prize. I just wanted to thank those four most prominent advocates of the four strands of the book, and through that fourfold dedication, to kick off my discussion of the four strands, which ends with pointing out the remarkable similarities between the ways in which those four people both succeeded and failed to get the respective ideas across.

-- David Deutsch

[hibbsa]

Post by hibbsa
Hi DD - I was wondering...why did you list Dawkins as one of your four
strands? I wouldn't say he's a historically important figure in Science,
though certainly he's a v.significant contemporary of yours. But he
hasn't produced important theories, or dramatically advanced any that
are pre-existing, or has he?
He wrote a landmark popular science book about the gene-centric view,
and gave it the 'selfish gene' label, but he was only writing about the
gene-centric view, he didn't invent it. He did introduce the idea of
memes, and that was his idea, so perhaps you elevated him because of
that. But that would mean Darwinian Evolution - Evolution - wasn't one
of the strands at all.
Or, if Dawkins was meant to represent Darwinism in its corrected 'New
Synthesis' form, then do you still stand by that judgement call, or in
hindsight would you now say the fourth strand is the modern
manifestation of Darwin's idea?

I'm not an expert on the history of science. Aspects of it do >interest me, but discovering who "really" thought of an idea first >is not one of them. It's not very important whether the author of >Shakespeare's plays was Shakespeare. As I said in The Beginning of >Infinity, it wouldn't change much if it turned out that Einstein had >written his relativity papers as a joke, and the same goes for if a >historian were to discover that those ideas had all been knocking >around for years before Einstein.
Having said that, I think that Dawkins underrates the size of his >own contribution. It is true that the theory itself had been there >for a considerable time before he wrote The Selfish Gene and was not >due to him. But that is like saying that the inverse-square force >law of gravity had been there for a considerable time before Newton >published his version. Or that Hilbert had written down Einstein's >equations before Einstein did. There's postulating a theory, and >then there's understanding it. Neo-Darwinism (the 'selfish gene >theory') is quite easy to state as a factual theory but quite hard >to 'get' as an explanatory theory. A token of that is, for instance, >that Steven Jay Gould, who was very knowledgable and interested in >the matter, never got it. And recently, it turned out that nor had >E.O. Wilson, whom everyone had regarded as one of its most prominent >advocates.
I could easily be mistaken about the history, and about who >deserves credit. But the dedication page of my book is not about >that. It's not the Nobel Prize. I just wanted to thank those four >most prominent advocates of the four strands of the book, and >through that fourfold dedication, to kick off my discussion of the >four strands, which ends with pointing out the remarkable >similarities between the ways in which those four people both >succeeded and failed to get the respective ideas across.

Thanks for that DD. I think you have a really pure and true way of looking at things and can see that who precisely did what when sits at a level of abstraction below that which is important in the scheme of how you see things.

I agree Dawkin's is probably too modest (though I believe him and don't think it's an affectation). Even so...with that about him, and knowing the other things about you, I still couldn't make sense of your choice of him except as your having not known (at the time) about the history of the gene-centric view. Which didn't feel like a criticism of you since you have been clear that specific history of ideas isn't of itself of great importance.

The reason I think an accurate history of ideas formation is important is not so much on the level of 'credit where credit due' sort of thinking, but because I think that how things come about, can be an important feature of what they are. Also, there is the possibility that if we could 'map' the progression of ideas really accurately, it is possible that regularities may reveal themselves, which would presumably be useful to an understanding of what science is, at least at a certain level of detail (thinking again of how the same explanation can re-cur on multiple levels of abstraction...from your 'reality of abstraction' chapter).

However, I appreciate you don't see much potential in this, especially as you are content with Popper's reading of this matter in his 'logic of...' works.

Thanks for your thoughtful response.

-- David Deutsch

[David Deutsch]

I think that Dawkins underrates the size of his >own contribution. It is true that the theory itself had been there >for a considerable time before he wrote The Selfish Gene and was not >due to him. But that is like saying that the inverse-square force >law of gravity had been there for a considerable time before Newton >published his version. Or that Hilbert had written down Einstein's >equations before Einstein did. There's postulating a theory, and >then there's understanding it. Neo-Darwinism (the 'selfish gene >theory') is quite easy to state as a factual theory but quite hard >to 'get' as an explanatory theory. A token of that is, for instance, >that Steven Jay Gould, who was very knowledgable and interested in >the matter, never got it. And recently, it turned out that nor had >E.O. Wilson, whom everyone had regarded as one of its most prominent >advocates.

[...]

I agree Dawkins is probably too modest (though I believe him and don't think it's an affectation). Even so...with that about him, and knowing the other things about you, I still couldn't make sense of your choice of him except as your having not known (at the time) about the history of the gene-centric view. Which didn't feel like a criticism of you since you have been clear that specific history of ideas isn't of itself of great importance.

In this regard I recommend Dawkins' book The Extended Phenotype. Not only because it illustrates the great explanatory depth I was referring to (not just "it's the genes, guys, not the organisms or the species!"), but also because it's just fascinating.

The reason I think an accurate history of ideas formation is important is not so much on the level of 'credit where credit due' sort of thinking, but because I think that how things come about, can be an important feature of what they are. Also, there is the possibility that if we could 'map' the progression of ideas really accurately, it is possible that regularities may reveal themselves, which would presumably be useful to an understanding of what science is, at least at a certain level of detail (thinking again of how the same explanation can re-cur on multiple levels of abstraction...from your 'reality of abstraction' chapter).

That could well be.

-- David Deutsch