From: Rakesh Bhandari (rakeshb@STANFORD.EDU)
Date: Wed Nov 19 2003 - 22:21:35 EST
In the Hitchcock lecture at UC Berekeley today Richard Lewontin returned to Darwin and argued against the idea that the principle of natural selection operating in different ecological niches accounts for the gross morphological differences between so called races. Groups haven't become whiter or blacker as a result of adaptation to varying levels of sunlight. Much more likely cause of differences in eye shape, hair texture and color, etc--that is of features that have little, if no, adaptive value--is Darwin's other principle, the principle of sexual selection. Though Darwin devoted a good part of Descent of Man to this principle, it seems not to figure much in the popular reception of Darwin. It's obvious why this other mechanism hasn't received the attention it deserves: Gender bias pervades the reception, if not the doing, of science, too. (While Alchian, Nelson and Winter have used Darwin's principle of natural selection to understand economic evolution, I don't know of any attempt to find an analogue to sexual selection, though one could argue that a certain design gets locked in because of its superficial appeal as related by advertising, which would then 'feminize' the consumer though giving her the power to drive evolution.) While Lewontin's lecture was about race, I would say that most people were already familiar with his analytical conclusion of about 85% of human genetic variation existing within small groups (his conclusion is now supported by DNA sequences), about 5 % within what are counted as races and 10% between races; and most probably already knew that there is not a single gene that is unique to what would be considered a race. But that Lewontin saved for his parting point the probable importance of sexual selection suggests that it's more likely that the activity of females will be ignored (and thus be surprising to his audience) than race biologically reified in polite academic circles. Or perhaps for we "bottom-line" Americans it's astonishing that much of the world is the result not of functional but aesthetic value, though to frame it that way is probably already misleading. Though I (for one) do not underestimate the unconscious importance of race as a structuring principle in popular and scientific thinking. Lewontin's lecture yesterday reprised his wonderful book, The Triple Helix. He developed his ideas about how organisms construct their own worlds, their own environments. There is no environment without an organism. In the middle of his lecture he said that he would give a prize to anyone who knew who said there is not act of production that is not an act of consumption and vice versa. I got it right. rakesh
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 21 2003 - 00:00:00 EST