[From Bill Powers (2012.09.13.0944 MDT)]
Hi to CSGNET and PCT modelers,
I was teaching a seminar course with a biologist last spring, so I've been reading a lot of biology lately, and a new development in evolutionary theory has caught my attention�something called "niche construction," which seems closely related to PCT.
[REST OF KENT'S POST AT END FOR CC LIST]
Hi, Kent --
I think your analysis of niche construction is on the mark. But what are we going to do about this? For decades we have simply tried to publish papers on subjects of interest to us, hoping, mostly in vain, that others might see their more general significance and pick up on PCT. Once again we see people feeling their way among the ideas which, pursued further, would lead to PCT, but not doing a damned thing that will carry them over the threshold.
We've even gone through this within our own group. Every time I have proposed that we "start over" in some field, the immediate response by many has been "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater." There is a lot of protectiveness about ideas from the past, a lot of reluctance to reach the conclusion that most of it is worthless, the greatest reluctance being reserved for protecting ideas that the objector chose for a thesis topic or published knowledgeable papers about, or otherwise swore allegiance to in earlier years before running into PCT.
Is this just an illustration of how difficult it is, even for the willing, to change a system concept? Or is it simply that we have been too timid and too eager to avoid confrontations? The last sounds a lot like me, I confess. I don't like fights, I don't like to give offense, even though I have not always managed to avoid doing that.
Or is it that PCT is just a systematic delusion, or as that Wiki commentator said, "fringe science?" Now that's something to consider, isn't it? Are we all a bunch of gullible fools? Am I just another L. Ron Hubbard, with PCT being just another brand of Scientology? If you really think about that question, does it scare you to think the answer could be "yes?"
It really doesn't scare me. PCT is a solid idea, on firm ground, seemingly irrefutable. That's how living systems work, all the way down to the bottom. But if you believe that, where is the fringe science?
It's where those old ideas being protected, the babies in the bathwater, are. The old science is the fringe science, and that's what we're trying to change. I think most of us, reading the literature, can see how non-explanatory the explanations of behavior are, how magical, how baseless, just a bunch of words. Once you have seen a real theory of behavior that works, how can you even think of going back to the old ideas? How much is any concept of behavior worth if it's still based on the idea that inputs to an organism cause its outputs?
I don't think that all of us have gone that far with PCT, far enough to be sure that any theory that doesn't include control of input is simply wrong. Far enough to be sure that there is not yet any such thing as "behavioral science." Sometimes I wonder if any of us have gone that far, including me. Is that the conflict that has held us back? Is there still an idea, in the CSG, that a strong committment is just too risky, that the whole house of cards could still collapse if someone pushes on it a little too hard?
That's what we all have to make up our minds about, to shape what we will do about all this for the rest of our lives. If we don't make up our minds, PCT will still prevail eventually, but for me "eventually" isn't very long if I go by my ancestors. Maybe another ten years. I truly want to see how this story comes out, so all you guys out there had better buckle down and get the job done. Do this one for the Gipper (I do qualify as a Gipper by now, don't I?)!
Best,
Bill P.
[REMAINDER OF KENT'S POST]
···
At 12:43 AM 9/13/2012 +0000, McClelland, Kent wrote:
This new theory is an extension of standard evolutionary theory, which is all about how natural selection happens, how factors in the environment of a population of organisms give a reproductive advantage to some combinations of genes over other genes, so that organisms with those genes have more descendants, and thus the gene pool of that species will change over time to include a larger proportion of the advantageous genes, so that evolution has taken place. In standard evolutionary theory, the causal arrow is all one way, from changes in the environment to changes in the genetic makeup of organisms, or E->O.
The biologists and evolutionary anthropologists interested in the new theory (the two biggest names seem to be a couple of Brits: F. John Odling-Smee from Cambridge University and Kevin N. Laland from the University of St. Andrews) have observed that the behavior of organisms can have a big impact on their own environments, either by compensating for random changes in their own environments (which sounds a lot like control to me!) or moving to a different environment, when the environment they're in is not to their liking (more control). The theorists then hypothesize that these changes that organisms make in their own environments, which they call niche construction, can have an impact on the course of evolution. In other words, they're interested in the causal arrows from the organism to the environment (O->E), as well as the feedback effects in this causal loop, E->O->E.
These biological theorists cite work by a group of ecologists, Jones, Lawton, and Shanuck, who talk about "organisms as ecosystem engineers" and focus on such animals as beavers, whose dam-building activities can transform local ecosystems. Odling-Smee and Laland give a variety of other examples, as well, of organisms whose niche-constructing activities can have big impacts on their local environments: leaf-cutter ants that build enormous nests and practice a kind of agriculture, raising a crop of mold that they eat; bacteria that produce bacteriocins, chemicals lethal to other bacteria in the neighborhood but not to themselves; earthworms that have a breathing apparatus inherited from their aquatic worm ancestors but can live in underground because of their own tunneling, urine, and dragging of leaf litter below ground, which changes the soil dramatically enough that they can survive and thrive in it; and dozens of other examples. The changes that these organisms make in their own environments, according to Odling-Smee and Laland, have to have a big impact on the evolution of subsequent generations of their species, as well as on the evolution of other species in the immediate ecosystem. Thus, evolutionary theorists should be paying attention to these feedback effects.
This theory of niche construction really caught my interest, because it seems to dovetail nicely with my own recent work on "stabilization of the environment." As I've been arguing in the essays I've written about stabilization, we in the PCT community might do well to emphasize that control of perceptions has some real and important impacts on the environments in which humans are doing their controlling, and that for most people most of the time, the purpose of their control efforts is to transform their own environments to match their own reference conditions and then maintain those preferred conditions as best they can.
Unfortunately, from my point of view, Odling-Smee and Laland themselves seem unaware of PCT and its relevance to their work, and I don't get the impression that they've really thought through the idea of behavior as control. They do say that "natural selection has furnished organisms with onboard guidance systems that allow them to learn about their environment and, within some constraints, to adjust their behavior accordingly during their lives", and they compare the behavioral process to the on-board guidance systems of smart missiles (Odling-Smee et al. 2003, p. 256). But then they go on to describe those onboard guidance systems as working by the "law of effect", which "states that actions that are followed by a positive outcome are likely to be repeated, while those followed by a negative outcome will be eliminated" (p. 256) (sounds a lot like behaviorism to me).
In any case, their recognition that organisms have purposes, that they affect their own environments, and that the causal arrows aren't just one way from environment to organism, all seem like steps in the right direction to me. Gary Cziko's books have already done a nice job of relating PCT to evolutionary theory, but this new development seems to tie it even closer.
Here are some relevant citations:
Odling-Smee, F. John, Kevin N. Laland and Marcus W. Feldman. 2003. Niche Construction: The Neglected Process in Evolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Odling-Smee, F. John and Kevin N. Laland. 2009. �Cultural Niche Construction: Evolution�s Cradle of Language.� Pp. 99-121 in The Prehistory of Language, edited by Rudolf Botha and Chris Knight. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Odling-Smee, John. 2009. �Niche Construction in Evolution, Ecosystems and Developmental Biology.� Pp. 69-91 in Mapping the Future of Biology: Evolving Concepts and Theories, edited by Anouk Barbarousse, Michel Morange and Thomas Pradeau. New York: Springer.
Jones, Clive. G., Lawton, John. H. and Moshe Shachak. 1994. "Organisms as Ecosystem Engineers." Oikos 69:373-386.
Jones, Clive. G., Lawton, John. H. and Moshe Shachak. 1997. "Positive and Negative Effects of Organisms as Physical Ecosystem Engineers." Ecology 78(7):1946�1957.
Kent