Customer Reviews

The Altenberg 16: An Exposé of the Evolution Industry

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The book may feel disjointed to some, but for good reason: The theory of evolution itself is disjointed. This is readily apparent, even if you only spend a few minutes looking under the hood. As you go from chapter to chapter, you begin to develop a sense of how wide-ranging the views of evolution really are, inside the biology industry. Of all the books I've read, this one illustrates this fact most clearly.

You have Richard Lewontin, who essentially says "So what's the problem? The theory is basically fine" and you have Lynn Margulis, who says that Neo-Darwinism is a wildly over-rated foundation of Anglo-capitalist views - and whose alternate theories of symbiogenesis have much to commend them. There is a plurality of views in between.

One of the persistent themes that appears over and over again is that many who approach evolution from a strictly secular viewpoint won't give a theory the time of day, if it even appears to give ammo to creationists or ID. If science itself is based on a presumption of underlying order, one tends to wonder if this political bias will cause them to overlook some important clues.

I've been researching evolution intensively for 5 years and this book gave me some new avenues of exploration, especially the parts on Symbiogenesis. I personally found the speculations of some of the astrobiologists almost humorous in their lack of scientific rigor. But regardless of the particular angle taken in any one chapter, Mazur clearly understands that Neo-Darwinism is in trouble, that it is an industry calcified in good-ol-boys club traditions... and there really is a vacuum that seeks to be filled.

Although I enjoyed the book, I found the title misleading. I went into the reading of this expecting an overview of the meeting held, and a summary of their opinions updating recent thoughts on evolution. Really, this book is a cross-reference to many thoughts on evolution from an experts point of view, with an emphasis on self assembly. The interviews contained therein, place less emphasis on natural selection as the major process behind evolution in light of works by many investigators whose works are not well accepted in the current environment. The author tries to highlight suppression of data by the major players for various and sundry reasons. Information passed on to the public is therefore colored by those whose influence is greastest. Some have associated this author with creationism, which is far from the truth. I found the overview of evolution enjoyable in light of the academic in-fighting that occurs and of which most people are unaware.

This is a horribly written and edited book. It is basically a blog that has been printed out in book form. You read phrases repeated verbatim in different chapters. The author is either paranoid or dishonest in selling the idea of an "evolution industry" with dirty secrets she is exposing. That is just sensationalist journalism to make a buck as far as I can tell. The only reason I bought it was to read about my buddies. For that it was good. But the author doesn't understand the deeper concepts they are working on and doesn't know how to draw out of them material to coherently convey the concepts to the reader. To see what really happened at the "Altenberg 16" meeting, read the proceedings, Evolution--the Extended Synthesis. As they say, 'any publicity is better than no publicity', so this book will have been worthwhile if it piqued the interest of even one person to go and study evolution, but it is destructive if its sensationalism stanched the curiosity of even one person from further study.

If you want to read a real "expose" of a scientific field where certain approaches have become like an industrial monopoly, read The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next. Smolin gives a coherent exposition of the social mechanisms and consequences of string theory pushing out all other approaches to particle physics for funding and faculty positions.

Fortunately, the field of evolution is still a wild-west of opportunity, in my opinion, and only stifled when there are failures of imagination.

Suzan Mazur is a natural history science reporter based in New Zealand. As such, she is probably as knowledgeable as any single person might be regards the state of current thinking on the front lines of natural history research. As a reporter Mazur has written for several publications and also maintains her own website, which see. This book is based on a conference, organized by Gerd Muller, chairman of the Konrad Lorenz Institute of Evolution and Cognition in Altenberg, Austria. The conference took place in July of 2008. In addition to the 16 scientists and philosophers attending that Altenberg conference, Mazur's book also provides marvelous interviews with and glimpse into the thinking of other non-traditional, leading edge thinkers in the field of Natural History research who didn't attend the conference. Mazur's book is thus a marvelous resource for further research. A caveat is that, being that the content was primarily taken from Mazur's blog, the book is lacking in style and editing.

As a result of the Altenberg conference, M.I.T. published two great books. The first is a reprint of Julian Huxley's EVOLUTION: THE MODERN SYNTHESIS (2010) that was first published in 1942. Massimo Pigliucci and Gerd Muller provide a new Forward to this edition. The second companion volume is EVOLUTION: THE EXTENDED SYNTHESIS (2010) edited by Pigliucci and Muller. This second book has 17 papers that resulted from the conference.

Mazur's book and the two books resulting from Altenberg are all certainly 5-star works and certainly represent a step in the right direction although, in my view, not quite "there" yet. Lynn Margulis, well known for her important work regards symbiosis, when interviewed by Mazur for the book provided one of the common definitions of "evolution." Margulis said, "[e]volution" just means change through time." As far as I am aware, the Altenberg attendees and others mentioned by Mazur also all accept the notion of common ancestry and a single tree-of-life. Thus, in my view, they are appropriately yet labeled Evolutionists (with capital E) whereas, in my view, the appropriate approach is Naturalistic Parallelism.

Shocking and insightful. Mainly consists of interviews and transcripts. The interview with Lynn Margulis is excellent. I wish Mazur could keep cranking out more works on this issues.

If you are looking for a big "crisis" this is NOT the book for you.

It follows no format is full of authors own personel views and NOT the scientests.

There is no expose' just mindless chatter.

Save your money.

Suzan Mazur's "The Altenberg 16" describes the evolution industry in crisis, given an apparent emptiness in the neo-Darwinian account. Mazur interviewed many world-wide scholars, and not just those that attended the 2008 meeting in Altenberg, Austria. Stewart Newman, Antonio Lima-de-Faria and Lynn Margulis provide among of the most interesting and credible accounts of an evolution that is not stuck in a dogmatic and hopeless neo-Darwinism. This is not to say that most scientists don`t still over prescribe Darwin`s simplistic theory, and some of these folks are interviewed in Mazur`s book. You will find Richard Dawkins interviewed.

There is no guarantee that The Extended Synthesis (when it comes out) will reflect the best thinking. The worst science is still hung-up on Darwinism, religion, politics, and campaigns of persuasion that are empty of factual disclosures. The outspoken will have their say and even drown out the voices of reason, if our history is any guide. Perhaps my expectation will be disproved. We will see!

Mazur also described the 2009 meeting in Rome, titled "Biological Facts and Theories." She presented the abstracts for each of 8 talks. It was on page 225 that I found the most remarkable abstract authored by Robert Ulanowicz, for a talk called "Process and Ontological Priorities in Evolution." Ulanowicz`s three-paragraph abstract follows:

"Charles Darwin, a fervid admirer of Isaac Newton, nonetheless describes evolution as a process, rather than as the actions of laws upon objects. Against this bold initiative, the Grand Synthesis of Fisher and Wright and the ensuing discoveries in molecular biology ushered in the Neo-Darwinian scenario wherein ontological emphasis has reverted to material objects and mechanisms. Other life sciences, however, continue to lend themselves more naturally to description in terms of processes."
"The dynamics of the ecosystems, for example, can be seen to rest upon a set of fundamental postulates corresponding to the attributes of processes. Mutuality stands at the ontological core of this perspective, known as process ecology. By comparison, competition is seen to be accidental and derivative. Unlike in the Newtonian/Darwinian schema, selection in process ecology can occur internal to the system, rather than solely via the exogenous agency of natural selection."
"The monist dictum of survival of the fittest appears to relate to only one side of a broader Heraclitean/Hegelian agonism. Such discrepancies with orthodox evolutionary theory suggest that a far richer picture of evolution (and the ethos that informs) may be possible by reverting to Darwin`s initial instinct to describe the living nature primarily as process. Adopting the process perspective mitigates many of the ostensible conflicts between science and religion."


What is remarkable in this abstract is the apparent understanding that there is something wrong with our naive notion of "law" as it pertains to "process." "Law" carries the connotation of "equation," and equation can be transformed into a pure abstraction and given life in Plato`s world of ideal forms. This one-sided exaltation and abstraction is completely wrong-headed, and Ulanowicz was smart enough to pick up on this. I am not sure that Lima-de-Faria understands this fine point even when he (page 83) goes so far to write: "... life has no beginning; it's a process inherent to the structure of the universe."

The laws are better described as Kantian synthetics, which means that they are two-sided as I have explained in my Amazon review of Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini`s "What Darwin Got Wrong." Even the second law of thermodynamics is found two-sided. This better understanding of law is finding agreement with the emerging field of information-physics. The implication is that a one-sided causation must be relaxed, and this is where neo-Darwinism fails. The middle-term that holds the two-sided laws together remains undeclared.

Ulanowicz`s better account of evolution can now find agreement with a Trinitarian vitalism of a kind described in my book. The better account can find agreement with Amit Goswami`s theory of evolution:

Creative Evolution: A Physicist's Resolution Between Darwinism and Intelligent Design

There remains an issue of a presumed rejection of vitalism by those that still over prescribe biochemistry, and chemistry, or the "laws" of form. Lima-de-Faria (page 90) departs further from the truth (in my view) by hinting that life`s self-assembly has no need of vitalism. In fact, life can`t be fully explained by chemistry or by synthetical laws that are two-sided. The laws of physics are time symmetric, or two-sided as in the case of the second law. To say that laws explain away vitalism is to exclude the middle term that holds the two-sided laws together; it can`t be done. To say that vitalism is safely excluded is to commit the fallacy of excluded middle. Life`s vitality is self-evident by the fact that the whole is not explained by its parts, and hence the middle-term is found active and is found impacting on the question of causation. The middle-term is the driver of evolution, thereby agreeing with Ulanowicz. It`s the process!

The apparently monolithic character of the Darwin establishment is belied in this excellent report on the Altenberg conference of biologists and scientists examining the limits of the Darwinian paradigm. The reign of Darwinism has gone on far too long and the realization that many in the academic/scientific world are in reality Darwin doubters should give pause to those who trumpet the scientific character of reductionist evolutionism.
Mazur's journalistic accounts of the various scientists involved are short and to the point, and it is not entirely clear what these scientists propose to take the place of Darwinian natural selection. In fact, there is no 'next' paradigm, and it is time to dispense with propaganda substituting for evolutionary theories. The next fake theory will be self-organization claims (indeed Stuart Kaufman has already produced a new approach along these lines). We need to move beyond the oversimplifications that have haunted evolutionary biology since Darwin oversimplified the deep insights of Lamarck, the true founder of evolutionary science (despite his wrong-headed adaptationist claims).
The scientists interviewed here show an awareness of Darwinism's limits, but there is very little to do with the critique of ideology, the economic connection in the promotion of free market shibboleths under the rubric of Darwin, etc, etc... It is time to wean oneself from the misleading ministrations of the scientific priesthood (to say nothing of the ID theological wing)and realize that no general theory of evolution exists as yet. Current science cannot explain the evolution of ethics, of consciousness, of language, and much else.
A reckoning of the misleading promotion of Darwinism is needed for the scientific community to reestablish its credibility.
In the nonce, Mazur's excellent account is essential reading for those who are constantly bombarded with the endlessly hyped theory of natural selection and intimidated into silence. The realization that many good scientists are ex-Darwinists should be a tonic for public recovery of nerve in the domination of rival propagandists.

Update, March 3: I wrote this review (below), then took it down, then put it back, because it is unclear whether the Altenberg 16 are really going to critique Darwinism, or else just spin the treadmill of evolution jargon, another fake paradigm like Darwinism. But that issue can't be decided as yet. In the nonce, this book by Mazur is an excellent journalistic account of a conference on evolution and its participants. I am wary that the evolution establishment is going to try and con us with some form of 'Postdarwinism' to replace the ideological control vested in the old, so I may end up being very critical, and less enthusiastic than I sound in the original review below. A real Postdarwinism requires far more than what we seem to be getting in this material described.
A book on the conference is coming out soon (from MIT press, The Extended Synthesis), so we can defer the issue til then. So keep your wits about you.