Just-So Adaptationism

[from Gary Cziko 930130.0350]

Greg Williams (930228)

1. Quoting Durward L. Allen (Professor of Wildlife Biology, Purdue
University), WOLVES OF MINONG [ISLE ROYALE, IN LAKE SUPERIOR]: THEIR
VITAL ROLE IN A WILD COMMUNITY, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1979:

321-323, 325-326 - "Sometimes we see animals doing things that spell
individual destruction. How do they get away with it? How could THIS
have survival value? If we pause to reflect, these are not questions
to be asked of individuals, but of species. Maybe it was for the
common good that the individual did die. Then too, everything dies; it
is only a question of when. . . . etc.

Gary, I'd be
interested in reactions of U. of Illinois evolutionary biologists to
these references. Also, I think the sort of connections Wilson is
considering might prove to be important in reorganization processes.
Basically, Wilson explored the upshot of cases where organism A
increases the probability of survival of organism B (perhaps a
different species than A), which (perhaps through a complicated chain)
increases the probability of survival of organism A. The abstract of
Sloan's SCIENCE paper is as follows:

Greg, I have not been able to find any body here at Illinois very much
interested in the big evolutionary questions like individual vs. group
selection, adaptation vs. exaptation, neutralism, etc. Also, issues such
as the effect of A on B and B on A have been presented by Dawkins in _The
Selfish Gene_ and _The Extended Phenotype_.

I basically agree with Powers's reactions to your quotes. I believe that
where we see instances of fit of one system to another, a
blind-variation-and-selective-retention process is the only natural
explanation. But this does not mean that every behavior, biological
structure, or result of behavior is fit or adaptive. To think so leads to
the "just-so" stories that Gould derides.--Gary

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