The Altenberg 16: An Exposé of the Evolution Industry Paperback – February 9, 2010

Twas well priced and in decent time.

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.

this book by Suzan Mazur give us a perfect, clear, 360° scenario of one of the most discussed arguments in science today.

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 couple of caveats: Some of the content was taken from Mazur's website and some not. Thus the style is a bit clunky and content at times is somewhat repetitious. Secondly, an index is sorely needed.

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 Foreword 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.

NOTE AND UPDATE OF 11 / 20 / 2012:

As she stated in Mazur's book, at the time when the now late Lynn Margulis was well into what was to become her enormously important contributions to the advancement of Natural History studies, i.e., her work regards symbiogenesis, Margulis was surprised to learn that much earlier a Russian, Boris Mikhaylovich Kozo-Polyansky, had already made very similar discoveries and interpretations. I have thus been reading Kozo-Polyansky's A NEW PRINCIPLE OF EVOLUTION ([1924], 2010) that Margulis referred to. The 2010 edition was translated from the Russian by Victor Fet and edited by Fet and Margulis.

In the following quote of BMK, information in the square brackets is of the 2010 editors. The asterisk is BMK's and refers to his 1923 book, THE LAST WORD OF ANTI-DARWINISM, which apparently is not yet available in English. Koso-Polyansky writes (p.117):

"According to Darwin, the best manner in which to present relatedness among living organisms is a tree with multiple divergent branches, a `family tree' similar in shape to a real tree.

"This opinion is accepted by the overwhelming majority of evolutionists. According to some, however ([Leo] Berg [1922]), genealogical relationships should be presented in the shape of a rye field --- as numerous parallel, similar phyletic rows. Elsewhere*, I attempted to show that this fantasy has no validity.

"Without a doubt, a `genealogical tree,' as an expression of these phenomena, should be preferred. Everything described here demonstrates that in this case we also have to make a radical [topological] correction.

"A genealogical tree of organic nature does not follow the shape of a real tree. The genealogy of organisms is expressed not only in divergence of lineages but also in fusion, or joining; two or more branches fuse and give a merged lineage [anastomosis]. This branch, in its turn, can fuse or merge with other branches to give a new branch of higher order, etc.

"One has to keep in mind, however, that this fusion, i.e., the association of several types of organisms to make a composite type (fungus + alga = lichen) has nothing to do with convergence in the sense of Danilevsky, Berg, etc., where this term designates full SIMILARITY among several organisms belonging to different genetic lineages."

In Mazur's book, Margulis similarly accepts what I refer to as Evolution, i.e., the notion that includes common ancestry, a tree-of-life, etc. Margulis states (p.279):

"Everybody agrees with ultimate common ancestry of Earth's life, because the DNA, RNA messenger, transfer RNA, membrane-bounded cell constituents (lipids, the phospholids) that we share --- they're all virtually identical in all life today, it's all one single lineage. So that part of Darwinism --- that we're all related by common ancestry --- no scientist disagrees with."

Well, if that is what all current scientists think (and similar statements have been made by other Evolutionists), then obviously society needs to spend less on scientists and more on students of chemistry, bio-chemistry, mathematics, and physics.

To be clear, and for what it is worth after several decades of study, I disagree with Margulis on two fronts: (1). I accept the common, popular understanding of "evolution" (which I capitalize as "Evolution") which incorporates the notion of common ancestry in the definition of the word itself. Margulis states that "evolution" is equivalent to Darwin's "descent with modification." I disagree. It is clear to me that soon after "evolution" was associated with Darwin's work --- by Herbert Spencer, Thomas Huxley, George Romanes and others --- the term was primarily used, often later confusedly and irresponsibly as continues to this day with more trivial meanings, to indicate Darwin's entire primary thesis including the orgins of species (previously termed transmutation). Thus the meaning of "evolution" came to include 'decent with modification from common ancestors.' So as to avoid confusion, I have thus come to avoid all uses of the word where common descent is not intended, except when quoting others. The Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, the Dover PA 2005 trial regards the teaching of ID, and the endless arguments with Supernaturalists (Creationists and IDers) over the decades since Darwin surely haven't been focused on the trivial "change through time" which even biblicists accept. (2). I obviously also reject the ideology, well enunciated by BMK and LM, that Evolution (common ancestry) is true. In the view of Naturalistic Parallelism that I have come to accept over the decades, samenesses (Darwin's "homologies" as also applied to genomes) do not automatically equate to relationship. That is, just as many complex chemicals are known to exist in parallel on Earth and in the Universe at large resulting in the same apparent designs (consider snowflakes), so too is it probable that life arouse many times in parallel and continued to so develop. In my view, if an eukaryotic cell can originate via serial endosymbiosis (as very well indicated by LM 1998), then there is no reason why such an event could not have happened many, many, times. Etc. Furthermore, such parallelism seems to be well indicated in the fossil record both prior to and after eukaryotic cell formation. (A "web of life" is also presumed, commonly by origins-of-life researchers, to be a dominant feature, especially prior to the Cambrian.)

While I see zillions of forests and gazillions of trees rather than the "rye field" that BMK reports that Leo Berg saw, it nevertheless would be interesting to read both Berg's work as well as BMK's objections. Would these writings were available in English.

UPDATE OF 8.9.17: Leo S. Berg's NOMOGENESIS OR EVOLUTION DETERMINED BY LAW ([1922], 1969) is currently out of print. I was able to obtain a used copy of this very important book. Berg effectively refuted Darwin in several key areas. First, by suggesting that it is populations that "evolve" as opposed to single organisms, Berg anticipated population genetics. However, unlike Darwin and PG, Berg minimizes the role of natural selection. He is able to do this because he sees "evolution" as being primarily convergent (parallelism) as opposed to divergent as a matter of natural law/s. Furthermore, where Darwin ultimately assumed a single progenitor at origins-of-life (and modern Evolutionists have continued to so do), Berg posits "tens of thousands of primary forms."

Interestingly, Berg defines life in terms of thermodynamics: "'Living bodies' may [....] be defined 'as responding, as a rule, to stimuli in a purposeful manner and systematically transforming heat into work.' It would seem to us that by such a definition, embracing all the characters of the living body, the latter can always be distinguished from a non-living body (i.e. either one that had been, or one that had never been, alive)." [Note that "purposeful" is used in its appropriate naturalistic teleonomic sense as opposed to the inappropriate final cause teleological sense.]

While I find myself mostly in agreement with Berg, in regards to life verses non-life, there may be somewhat of a quibble. I have just been reading DESIGN IN NATURE: HOW THE CONSTRUCTAL LAW GOVERNS EVOLUTION IN BIOLOGY,PHYSICS, TECHNOLOGY,AND SOCIAL ORGANIZATION (2012) by Andrian Berjan and J. Pedar Zane. Bejan is a mechanical engineer specializing in thermodynamics and mechanical cooling systems and has applied that knowledge to the organic world. Bejan, and other writers (most notably A. Lima-de-Faria who is discussed in Mazur's book) draw less of a distinction between life and non-life.

What I especially like about all these writers is that they have been thinking in terms of "laws of nature" as opposed to the emphasis on chance and natural selection that Darwin infused into the mind of academia.

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.