Re: [Marxism] Darwin and gradualism

[Ian Angus <ecosocialism@xxxxxxxxx>]

An interesting discussion!  Some brief responses ....

David wrote:

>I believe you have committed a bit of an anachronism by stating that
>Darwin thought of species as "populations." I think that Ernst Mayr was
>the guy who invented the concept of "population" to indicate a
>non-essentialist concept of species.

You're right, the term "population" was introduced and developed by
Ernst Mayr, who was not only a great evolutionary biologists, but a
consistent materialist. My view is that the population concept was at
least implied in Origin of Species, so I used that terminology. I
should have been more precise.

>I may be wrong about this, but I believe that the Frenchman Lamark, neither a 
>Victorian nor an
>Englishman, was the originator of the idea of gradual, incremental change.

Lamarck certainly believed in gradual change, but his theory was so
unlike anything we know today that it is hard to categorize it.

As a result of post-Darwin debates, Lamarck's name has become
synonymous with "inheritance of acquired characteristics," but Lamarck
himself viewed that as a secondary process. He believed that every
living lineage developed separately -- each originated as a
spontaneously-generated unicellular animal that had an innate drive to
become "more perfect" by which he seems to have meant more complex.
Each line would inevitably reach perfection -- ie, each line would
ultimately become human. Lines that aren't human simply started up the
ladder later than we did. Along the way, some lineages adapted
themselves to specific circumstances -- eg the famous giraffe
stretching its neck to reach high leaves. He wasn't clear on whether
those detours were dead ends or simply alternative routes to
perfection.

-----------

Joaquin wrote:

>In other words, I don't think "dialectics" are simply in our perceptions,
>in the way we organize data, think about it, or assimilate it. I think
>dialectics are "out there," in nature, in society, and the more dialectical
>explanation is likely to be the truer one.

I agree. But in the case of evolutionary theory, there is more than
one explanation that is"dialectical." The fact that punctuated
equilibrium postulates periods of "faster" change doesn't make it
"more dialectical" than one that postulates longer term change. The
important insight dialectics brings to the discussion is NOT that
change sometimes happens quickly, but that over time quantitative
changes lead to qualitative change.

----------

Shane wrote

>Lyell, with his ultra-gradualist "uniformitarian" theory of geological 
>evolution.
>It was Cuvier, the catastrophist, who saw clearly that the fossil and 
>geological evidence points
>uniformly to a record of repeated abrupt and violent changes to our planets 
>surface and biosphere.
>But with the victory of the Holy Alliance the counter-revolutionary ideology 
>of gradualism in all things
>made the false viewpoint of Lyell the only acceptable outlook.

All I can say is that you are projecting 20th century views back onto
a debate they don't belong in. In its time, Lyell's uniformitarian
view was an important and progressive break with the "God did it"
explanations of the various catastrophist schools, including Cuvier's.
By insisting that science had to assume that past events were caused
by processes similar to those we see in the world today, he was
excluding miracles from scientific discussion, insisting that we look
for natural causes. Of course he was limited by the scientific
knowledge of his day -- for example, he rejected "transmutation of
species" because he couldn't think of any natural cause that would
cause one species to change into another. Darwin took Lyell's
insistence on looking for natural causes seriously -- the result was
the theory of Natural Selection.

Ian Angus

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