Dawkins vs Gould: Survival of the Fittest (Revolutions in Science) (Paperback)

~ Kim Sterelny (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Science has seen its fair share of punch-ups over the years, but one debate, in the field of biology, has become notorious for its intensity. Over the last twenty years, Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould have engaged in a savage battle over evolution that shows no sign of waning.

Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker, conceives of evolution as a struggle between gene lineages; Gould, who wrote Wonderful Life and Rocks of Ages, sees it as a struggle between organisms. For Dawkins, the principles of evolutionary biology apply just as well to humans as they do to all living creatures; for Gould, however, this sociobiology is not just ill-motivated but wrong, and dangerous.

Dawkins’ views have been caricatured, and the man painted as a crazed reductionist, shrinking all the variety and complexity of life down to a struggle for existence between blind and selfish genes. Gould, too, has been falsely represented by creationists as rejecting the fundamental principles of Darwinism itself.

Kim Sterelny moves beyond caricature to expose the real differences between the conceptions of evolution of these two leading scientists. He shows that the conflict extends beyond evolution to their very beliefs in science itself; and, in Gould’s case, to domains in which science plays no role at all.

About the Author

Kim Sterenly is the author of several books, including "Sex and Death" (University of Chicago Press, 1999) and "Thought in a Hostile World" (Blackwell, 2003). He works in the philosophy departments at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand and the Australian National University, Canberra. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 106 pages
• Publisher: Totem Books (June 25, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1840462493
• ISBN-13: 978-1840462494
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,277,678 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

113 of 121 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Forever knocking heads?, March 13, 2002

By	"michaeleve" (Miami, Florida) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

As anyone who has read even one book on evolution will know the names most likely to be mentioned are Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould. They are usually referred to not only for their very different views on evolution, but also because in the often contentious and very public debates on these issues, these two gentlemen act as champions for opposing camps. Gould through his books, but also famously in a series of articles and letters in the NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS. Dawkins prefers to limit his books to scientific arguments and rebuttals and reserves his critical comments for his public engagements.

With a title DAWKINS vs GOULD the focus is naturally on these two combatants and because both are brilliant thinkers and prolific writers it makes for some stimulating and very interesting reading. The only problem with this book is that by narrowly limiting the discussion to these two men, some readers may remain unaware that they are merely representative of a much larger debate involving most of the scientific community. A debate that covers topics such as human morphology and intelligence, human origins, intelligent design vs creationism. The field of enquiry involved is much wider than evolution and includes genetics, sociobiology, primatology and paleontology to name a few.

As it relates to the two specific positions of DAWKINS vs GOULD though this litte book offers a concise and fairly complete encapsulation of the subject. Dawkins' position is sometimes called reductionist or minimalist in that he sees the gene (a selfish one) as the principal explanatory agent. From it, all we see around us are adaptations. Gould has a more catholic or broader approach and sees exceptions to the rule. Chance and his pet subject of "punctuated equilibrium" are seen as interrupting the smooth progression of linear adaptive evolution. Gould believes that there is a limit to scientific explanations but Dawkins is of the view that testable and provable hypotheses exist as explanations for all seemingly random events. This view is called "Ultra-Darwinism".

Although Gould may have a catholic view in the normative sense of the word with an expansive view, don't for a minute think that this extends in any way to be accomodating towards creationism. Just about the only area where Gould and Dawkins don't knock heads is in their dissmissive view of creationism's equally dismissive view of the reality of evolution.

76 of 81 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Solid and Lively, December 30, 2001

By	Herbert Gintis (Northampton, MA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould are prominent evolutionary biologists. Both are great writers and both are extremely contentious. Moreover, they disagree in public forums with a startling level of invective. Kim Sterelny is a philosopher with a solid background in evolutionary theory, and in this book tells the tale of their disagreements with skill and journalistic polish.

Despite the bitterness of the debate, most of the issues Dawkins and Gould disagree on are either unscientific (e.g., militant atheism vs. tolerance for religion and other non-scientific forms of knowing) or matters of interpretive preference (e.g., the role of chance vs. selection in evolution, the extent to which evolution involves increasing complexity, the importance of population genetics vs. the study of large-scale patterns in the history of life, or the view of evolution as a conflict of genes vs. an organic conflict among species-level and higher biological forms). Other issues that separate them relate to the schools of thought to which they belong---Dawkins' friends being the sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists (G. Williams, W. Hamilton, E. O. Wilson, et al.) and Gould's being the left-wing critics of sociobiology (R. Lewontin, L. Kamin, et al.). By limiting the debate to Dawkins and Gould alone, the book does not flesh out this larger, and quite interesting intellectual opposition.

Sterelny neither takes sides nor tries to adjudicate the differences between these writers, though he does say that their differences appear to be narrowing over time. Being less unpresuming, I assess the situation as follows. Dawkins' gene-centered view makes for good journalism, but is fatally flawed for one simple reason: the heart of evolution is mutation and selection, not replication, which is simply an uncreative prerequisite for evolution. A mutation can spread only if it is more fit that existing alleles, and fitness is a frequency dependent, highly nonlinear phenomenon, best described by game theory on the level of phenotypes. Gould's mass extinctions and punctuated equilibria make perfect sense from evolutionary game theory, and involve nothing beyond mutation, selection, and replication. On the other hand, Gould's dismissal of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology are ideologically based and quite without merit.

Sterelny describes a debate that is more a reflection of the expansive egos of two great popularizers, and their inability to understand, or their reluctance to publicize, the work of younger generations of evolutionary biologists, rather than some real scientific clash of paradigms. But if it gets young people interested in evolutionary biology, I'm all for it, and Sterelny does a good job of dramatizing the debate.

31 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent synthesis, August 2, 2001

By	Carlos Ponce "ponceman" (Boston, MA United States) - See all my reviews

I found Kim Sterelny's review to be a very accurate yet understandable summary. I have read many books written by Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould, so I already had a rough sketch of their contention. Sterelny's book was a great way to solidify the nature of Gould and Dawkins' scientific conflict and a great way to fill in the gaps.

I was particularly grateful by the Gould section. Dawkins has stated his views on evolution and Gould quite extensively, but I have been less exposed to Gould's original writings on punctuated equilibrium (probably because, as Sterelny noted, Gould has written about the subject mostly in essays and scientific papers). The Gould section in this book was a great clarification of punctuated equilibrium and other Gould theories.

I have not heard the opinions of the title subjects on this book, although I would very much like to. But for the moment, I found 'Dawkins vs. Gould' to be an objective, impartial and fair description of this well-known scientific clash.