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John,
Minor detail: The Shakers are still
with us, although down to
a very small number and only one site.
However, they are currently
engaging in a campaign of conversion, the only way
they survive.
Also, Kauffman did
not originate the "rough adaptive landscape"
idea. The late Sewall Wright certainly had
it.
Barkley Rosser
-----Original Message-----
From:
John M. Legge <jlegge@xxxxxxxxxx>
To:
POST-KEYNESIAN THOUGHT <pkt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date:
Thursday, March 30, 2000 11:06 AM
Subject: RE: Whitehead on
Deduction (fwd)
Mine, Alan, Ted,
I
jumped into this thread when Mine mischaracterized a particular author
(Dawkins). The fact that Mine can cite others who make the same
error changes nothing. When Dawkins refers to "genetically
determined" he is quite simply saying that the biochemical composition
of a living creature reflects its genetic inheritance. Creatures of
differing biochemical composition have differing genetic inheritances, and
the unit of difference is the gene.
Evolution discusses the emergence of differences
and the transgenerational survival of some strains and the elimination of
others. Such reconciliation as there can ever be between scientific
determinism and philosophical constructs such as free will was performed by
Monod in Chance and Necessity. Dawkin's Selfish Gene
reflects and illustrates this: given that some biological endowments
are more favourable to phenotypic survival than others the gene combinations
associated with such biological endowments will also survive. Monod
drew up the limits within which environment could alter the outcome for
individual phenotypes and beyond which genetic change was
needed.
Stuart Kauffman has developed a rigorous account of
evolution in his work on complex landscapes. Kauffman provides an
analytically complete account of both single and multiple gene transitions
and characterises them as adaptive walks and evolutionary leaps.
Kauffman's contribution includes the point that, since each organism has
many genes, and it is their effect in combination rather than isolation that
determines phenotypic success, the fitness landscape is "rough"
with many local optima. Single changes (i.e. adaptive walks) starting
at an arbitrary point on such a landscape can only lead to a small fraction
of the possible optimum states.
Mapping Kauffman back to the Austrian/Evolutionary
school's "optimism" suggests that individual action can only lead
to a fraction of possible optimum states, and a society in which the scale
of coordinated action was limited to an arbitrarily small fraction of the
population would almost certainly lock itself into suboptimal
institutional structures. Blackwell and Eilon explore this effect
(without reference to Kauffman) in their discussion of industrial innovation
and the way that some innovations have required the precommitment of large
resources and could not have been produced by individual action.
Twenty million rednecks with shotguns will not evolve into a strategic
defense initiative.
Genetic determinism, when applied to society, does
not say which institutions and behaviours will appear, but it can identify
some that will disappear. The Shakers abhorred sexual intercourse
(even when undertaken with reproductive intent) and are no longer with
us.
JML
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