Customer Reviews

Lifelines: Biology Beyond Determinism

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

We are not objects. We cannot be defined by our genes. It is only through an understanding of our developmental history in interaction with our environment that we can hope to know who we are.

Thus Steven Rose, molecular brain biologist and staunch foe of reductionist biology, has called upon the metaphor "lifelines" to describe our "trajectory" through time and space. We are processes. Furthermore, we are not passive processes, tossed hither and yon through life by a blind watchmaker and the dictates of our selfish genes, but active participants, helping to shape our destinies as we go along. We are to some significant degree "self-created." Rose writes: "The central property of life is the capacity and necessity to build, maintain and preserve itself, a process known as autopoiesis" (p. 18). On page 6, he opines, "We are...the products of the constant dialectic between the biological and the social."

Rose also points out that our ability to perform experiments in the real world is limited; how even the most dedicated and thorough scientist in the field can only hope to observe a sampling of the behavior of the animals he or she is watching; how the variables in the real world are so very, very many; and how our attempts to control them can actually result in a falsification of the environment we want to observe. He argues convincingly that the hard sciences, especially physics, have yielded to reduction simply because they are not anywhere near as complex as biology.

Consequently I was very impressed with this book for the first 174 pages or so. Then came the chapters on evolution. Suddenly Rose unaccountably loses his objectivity and his reasoned tone and starts inventing straw men, one he calls "sociobiology" and puts these macho words in its mouth: "Males and their sperm compete, females and their ova quiescently await their fate" (p. 198).

Oops, have I picked up the wrong book? Could this be some rad fem polemic intent on winning some political point? This claim that sociobiologists think that females "await their fate" is particularly startling since on the previous page Rose writes that "Darwin's view was that, by and large, it is the female of the species that does the choosing." Rose then mocks the idea that there might be universal standards of beauty (that would be politically incorrect, no doubt). But the truth is, that while people can and do differ in details, a young, healthy, well-proportioned ("symmetrical," if you will) woman is recognized as attractive in any culture that I have ever heard of. On the next page (199) he makes fun of the idea that human females may choose males with resources ("the Porsche and the Rolex") adding that "wealth is no measure of genetic fitness...nor is there much evidence that its possession results in a greater number of offspring."

Rose knows this is fatuous. It is universally recognized that females across cultures prefer men of means. Why would a reasonable woman, given a choice, choose a poor, ineffective, unsuccessful man, to one who has the ability to help her provide for her children? Rose allows that sexual selection "may be--probably is--an important mechanism...but...we should not let its enthusiasts blind us to the more obvious explanations for the complexity of human sexual arrangements." Those "enthusiasts" are, one presumes, misguided sociobiologists. (Perhaps Rose would like to be regarded as a biology "enthusiast.") And just what are those "more obvious explanations"? Rose does not say.

He goes on to altruism but doesn't mention the handicap principle from Zahavi, Amotz and Avishag. The Handicap Principle: A Missing Piece of Darwin's Puzzle (1997), which I recommend that he read. This principle accounts for some acts of altruism by showing that such acts are the advertising of one's ability to others, in particular members of the opposite sex, and are therefore adaptive. He closes the section with a story about "two human sociobiologists" who thought that they had demonstrated that parents who both voted Conservative were more likely to send their child to a private school. Oh boy, and I might find two biologists who voted Liberal who were therefore more likely to send their child to a non-denominational school. As Rose's esteemed colleague, Steven Jay Gould likes to say, "So what?"

Rose begins the next chapter by asserting that "ultra-Darwinism" has "a metaphysical foundation" that includes the premise that "the purpose...of life is reproduction." I don't know who these "ultra-Darwinians" are but most experts on evolution tend toward the idea that "purpose" is an anthropological idea inconsistent with evolutionary theory.

So why is this book reasonable and fair three quarters of the way through and then suddenly we come upon prejudicial attacks against nonexistent bogeymen? It's the same old problem: a personal agenda. No matter how expert one may be, if the subject strays to the area of one's prejudices there is the chance that one may suddenly become as fair and objective as a radio talk show host.

What Rose wants to save us from is determinism, particularly genetic determinism. He thinks that determinism in biology or psychology may lead to the justification of some discredited ideas from eugenics. I don't agree. I think we can safely bury eugenics and such delusions as I.Q. and racial significance. The ghosts of the past are scary and we should be on watch, but we don't have to discredit the insights and accomplishments of sociobiology and/or evolutionary psychology by falsely associating them with those old, tired delusions.

I found this book an enlightening book of biology and the current reductionistic philosophy now in vogue. Includes an interesting study of the history of science and its paradigms. Here's a quote:

Being and becoming
Living organisms exist in four dimensions, the three of space and one of time, and cannot be 'read off' from the single dimension that constitutes the strand of DNA. Organisms are not empty phenotypes, related one-to-one to particular patterns of genes. Our lives form a developmental trajectory, or lifeline, stabilized by the operation of homeodynamic principles. This trajectory is not determined by our genes, nor partitioned into neatly dichotomous categories called nature and nurture. Rather, it is an autopoietic process, shaped by the interplay of specificity and plasticity. In so far as any aspect of life can be said to be 'in the genes', our genes provide the capacity for both specificity -- a lifeline relatively impervious to developmental and environmental buffeting -- and plasticity -- the ability to respond appropriately to unpredictable environmental contingency, that is, to experience. This autopoletic interplay is in some senses captured by that old paradox of Xeno -- the arrow shot at a target, which at any instant of time must be both somewhere and in transit to somewhere else. Reductionism ignores the paradox and freezes life at a moment of time. In attempting to capture its being, it loses its becoming, turning processes into reified objects. This is why reductionism always ends by impaling itself on a mythical dichotomy of materialist determinism and non-material free-will. Autopoiesis, self-construction, resolves these paradoxes. (p. 306)

Most books that set out to explain why organisms behave as they do describe observations of behaviour on almost every page. The books of Richard Dawkins, whom Rose selects as his special target, illustrate this well: readers can reject all of his interpretations while remaining fascinated by the purely factual information that they contain. How one can hope to convince anyone of the truth of a theory without supporting it with abundant facts? Yet hard biological information is extremely sparse in Rose's book. There is a great deal about what he thinks of other biologists' opinions, but almost no observations from behavioural biology. Nonetheless, in his preface he aligns himself with the practising biologists "who spend a significant part of every working day thinking about and designing experiments", dismissing Dawkins and Daniel Dennett as "people who either no longer do science or never did it." What a pity, therefore, that he chose to include so little of the experimental basis of his ideas in his book. There are a few vague remarks about how chicks behave, and that's about it.

There has been a general argument going on for several years in biology over deterministic reductionism (as exemplified by sociobiology and evolutionary psychology) and its implications (actually the restarting of an argument that has flared up every so often over the last few hundred years at least!) Unfortunately almost all of the participants are given to overstatement and polemical diatribes when deriding their opponents (an unfortunate human habit, perhaps adaptive in providing the derider with more progeny?}

Steven Rose, a Professor of Biology at Britain's Open University, jumped into this debate in 1998 with his "Lifelines", which I have just gotten around to reading. The first part in indeed very engaging. In fact I pretty much agree with both Rose and Ernst Mayr ("Toward a New Philosophy of Biology") that reduction of an organism to the level of molecules only tells part of the story. Indeed, James Watson's view that "there is only one science, physics: everything else is social work" and his insistence that organismic biology was a waste of time stimulated E. O. Wilson to develop sociobiology in order to save some part of organismic biology at Harvard!

Rose goes on to expand on Theodosius Dobzhansky's thought that "nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution" by adding both the history of the earth and the history of biological thought as well, a grouping of which I heartily approve. If you do not understand how we got to this point in the scientific dialog, you really cannot understand the debate!

An example of one contentious argument developed in this book is that of the effects of sexual selection on human reproductive success. Rose's point (in chapter seven) that rich men are not automatically reproductively successful is not without foundation, but must also be compared to the success in this area by very rich men such as Kings and Sultans, who were successful enough to get large harems and thus produce large numbers of offspring. It simply may not work as well today because rich men are not as often allowed the luxury of obtaining a huge number of wives (but see the Sultan of Brunei!) Many modern rich men may have substituted money for sex as their main preoccupation! However, from a purely genetic point of view, at least some rich men may be unfit to produce viable progeny. Also social custom, such as the killing of siblings as possible rivals (as was notorious in the Ottoman Empire) and female infanticide (common in China and India) can mitigate that success. Finally wealth does not guarantee successful child rearing! It might also be noted that in most countries large families often were poor ones! Poor people needed more hands to do the work and might have 20 children by one or more wives! On top of everything else, we have no idea how humans behaved in the Pleistocene! Behavior is not fossilized! As usual things are more complicated then we might think, whatever the "apparent" tendency!

Unfortunately, Rose starts to use the term ultra-Darwinist in Chapter eight. While his points are well taken, I do wish that both sides of this essentially unprovable argument would cease and desist in their name-calling. Such tactics remind me of creationists' characterizing of all evolutionists as Satan-loving, God-hating, moral relativists who have no scruples and are trying to ruin our society! Because of the use of "ultra-Darwinist" I dropped Rose's book to four stars.

As a field biologist I have always been impressed with the complexity of ecosystems and organisms. I also like solid data for every claim in a theory, if at all possible. I sometimes think that these preferences are what separates those who believe in the complexity of nature and those who seem to require a simple system that can be easily understood! Rose has said essentially "It's not that simple," and I am inclined to agree, although I also understand the need to try and model nature to make it more understandable. Let's just not confuse the model or the hypothesis for the real thing!

An engaging book to read, along with those of Gould, Dennett, Mayr, Dawkins, and Wilson. However, I would take no one's word that the final definitive book has been writen on the subject!

The word that comes to mind in describing this book is `quandary'. As a non-scientist, with a background in nursing, I found the read both challenging and interesting. In fact, I wrote many marginal notes, generally reserved for books that capture my enthusiasm. I was fascinated by Rose's attention to the history of genetic research and appreciated his seemingly unique view on `nature vs. nurture'. I must admit that in this debate I am an ardent `nature' advocate myself. He, however, was able to convince me of suspending my judgment, at least temporarily, in appreciation of his line of reasoning. He supports his view of freedom of choice in relation to genetic predisposition with theories on the influence of the environment as well as genetics in determining behavior. He uses the analogy of life as a trajectory, or vector, from birth to death made up of inherent genetic predisposition in juxtaposition with the interplay of individuals and the events and circumstances that make up their day-to-day lives. People are able to alter the direction of their life vector, in his view, through the decisions that guide their actions as well as their overall developmental and genetic predisposition toward a particular course of action. He debates the scientific theories of reductionism and determinism in supporting his claim of free-will over destiny and artfully crosses the line between philosophy and objectivism in drawing the reader into his line of reasoning.

While Rose stimulated my thinking and educated me on scientific history, hegemony and recent developments in genetics, I found his theoretical basis weak, his ability to draw together his argument on the basis of research somewhat scattered and his argument confusing. I'm left wanting to know more of what this author thinks, however, due to his creative and at times witty approach to genetic research and to those scientists influencing efforts on its behalf. The book is worth reading and I look forward to its sequel.

In the beginning of the book, Rose cites the successful popular books
by Levins and Levontin such as "Dialectical Biologists" and "Not in
Our Genes". He claims that their thesis of dialectical approach to
evolution and rejection of reductionism in biology bears
repeating. So, apparently, Rose decided to write a me-too book on the
subject. To increase the number of good books so to speak. Problem is
that he tries to extirpate the evils of reductionist thinking without
bothering to learn to write cogently.

Remember the silly principle they taught you in grad school as to how
to write a research paper? Where in the introduction you say what you
are going to say, then say it, then you say what you have said in the
conclusion. Now imagine the whole book where every second sentence is
reflective of what is happening. That's "Lifelines". Rose takes care
to constantly explain to us what it is that he is explaining. He also
makes sure to forward and backward reference the other parts of the
book lest we forget. Rose ensures that the attention is never drawn
from him, the main character of the book. We are expected to observe
and admire how clever he is.

The style is certainly annoying. However, the main problem with the
book is that Rose does not back up his claims with facts
extensively. He sprinkles anecdotes here and there but he assumes that
if he just says the _right words_ the argument should be convincing
enough. And indeed, Rose views lie in dialectical, progressive part of
academic spectrum. It would have been a great book had he been able to
argue his points convincingly. Instead the book reads like a
scatterbrained self-centered academic cocktail party ramble.

One can still glean some interesting bits of information and key in on
the researchers' names and concepts Rose drops. But such useful bits
are few and far between. With this book, Rose does a disservice to the
cause he set out to support.

First, I note that most of the other people who wrote a review of this book are unsympathetic. Several note that--unlike Dawkins--Rose does not fill his book with a myriad of examples drawn from biology as does Dawkins. However, Rose is not a biologist. Rather he is a biochemist whose specialty is the biochemistry of memory in the brain. And to give Rose credit he does introduce a number of notions from biochemistry. Second, if this book had been written in the latter half of the nineteenth century I would dare hazard that it would have been titled: A Treatise on Philosophical Biology. I don't know how many people have actually read his book, but I would wager that with such a formidable title fewer still would have been enticed to read it. If I had written this book, I might have called it The Complexity of Life Trajectories, but Lifelines is mercifully brief and non-threatening. It would be interesting if we knew what potential titles flitted through Rose's mind (brain) while he was composing the book.

Given this, what is Rose's chief aim in the book? I think he is anxious to distinguish several forms of reductionism, particularly methodological reductionism from philosophical reductionism. Has reductionism been successful as the dominant methodology for science in the past three-and-a-half centuries? Even Rose admits that it has been spectacularly successful. Breaking things down into their constituent parts and carefully isolating a variable and investigating its effect by changing it under carefully controlled conditions has enabled humans to achieve success after success in mastering and controlling the physical world. In addition, this methodology is very amenable to mathematical treatment. Reductionism does work and under the right conditions it works exceedingly well indeed.

Rose's concern, and it is a paramount concern, is when methodological reductionism (a very good practice for working scientists) ends up as philosophical reductionism. He points out that once you start down the slippery slope of philosophical reductionism, you will ultimately end in the belief that the entire universe, all the one hundred billion or so galaxies each having billions of stars, and all human beings who have ever lived, are living now, and who will ever live, who we are--are desires, drives, loves, hates, you name it--can ultimately be explainable by one master equation--the holy grail of reductionist physics--the so-called theory of everything, which Rose reduces to its ultimate risible acronym, TOE.

This proposition is so patently ridiculous as to be a howler of the first magnitude, but plenty of people exist who believe it. Stopping at biological reductionism, all human beings--and all life on Earth--are reduced to nothing but their genes, conceived of as atom-like entities. Then when the master equation of gene interactions is worked out, this will thus explain once and forever all human behavior. This idea is again so patently ridiculous as to be a howler of the first magnitude. However, lots of people believe this proposition also, and Rose mentions some of them explicitly by name: J. Watson, R. Dawkins, D. Dennett, E.O. Wilson, to name a few, and even L. Pauling, who ought to have known better.

The idea that a person can be wholly explicable by one's genes alone can easily lead to a type of genetic racism. One reason why biological reductionism is very appealing is that it gives an easy answer to human behavior. That is, it reduces the complexity to a simple solution, and oh do we humans love simple solutions. Remember Adolf Hitler? He was a master of the simple solution. His simple solutions resulted in the needless and brutal deaths of millions. If I recorded some of the more recent simple solutions I've heard bandied about, I wouldn't be able to post this review.

If biological reductionism is correct, then how a person behaves lies solely in her/his genes. Don't like the behavior? Well, just eliminate the person who has the "bad" genes or engineer the bad genes out, and presumably that solves the problem. A reviewer commented that we humans can now see past the bad old eugenics movement. Well, I'll say this. I would hazard a guess that no one in Germany in 1913 would have thought in their wildest dreams that within twenty years Germany would be completely taken over by a group of people who would push the eugenics movement to its ultimate extreme in the Holocaust, which incidentally killed off lots of people besides Jews. It can most certainly happen again, and if you think it can't, then you're very naïve.

Several people have also noted that Rose's book is very short on a methodological approach that goes beyond reductionism without falling into antiscientific, New Age mysticism or religious creationism and ID nonsense, all of which Rose explicitly repudiates. In short, is reductionism the only way to approach natural phenomena? Here is where complexity enters the picture. This approach is quite new, stemming from the late 1960s to the present. A period of merely fifty years. Even now it isn't clear how research will proceed with this concept. Complexity theory involves nonlinear mathematics, and anyone who has ever played around with math knows that nonlinear equations don't have exact solutions and make a set of linear equations look like child's play.

It seems highly likely that the only way to proceed mathematically with complexity theory will be with novel developments in computer science. Rose doesn't develop the methodology of complexity theory very well in his book since very little has been developed. However, it seems clear that the path to understanding complex systems such as living forms, the human brain, human society, living things in ecological communities and possibly some astronomical phenomena such as the organizations of galaxies will proceed through complexity theory. I haven't read Rose's revised edition (2006), so perhaps he addresses this serious flaw in this new edition. Nevertheless, I give this book five stars for its provocative ideas and a different way of thinking about biological phenomena and the complexity of life trajectories of all living things on this planet.

...

"Why do Rose et al find it necessary to reduce a perfectly
sensible belief (that complex wholes should be explained in
terms of their parts) to an idiotic travesty (that the
properties of a complex whole are simply the sum of those same
properties in the parts)? "In terms of" covers a multitude of
highly sophisticated causal interactions, and mathematical
relations of which summation is only the simplest.
Reductionism, in the "sum of the parts" sense, is obviously
daft, and is nowhere to be found in the writings of real
biologists. Reductionism, in the "in terms of " sense, is,
in the words of the Medawars, "the most successful research
stratagem ever devised" (Aristotle to Zoos, 1984)."