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A mystery still
BOOK REVIEWS
A mystery still Mystery of Mysteries: Is Evolution a Social Construction? by Michael Ruse Harvard University Press, 1999. £16.95 hbk (xii 1 296 pages) ISBN 0 674 46706 X
I
s scientific ‘knowledge’ merely culture masquerading as objective truth? Is it a creation rather than a discovery, an artifact of a particular society that would not necessarily be the same in different places and at different times, and thus has no special claim to ‘truth’? Was Einstein’s theory of relativity merely part of a ‘general social and cultural transformation which expressed itself in a variety of “modern” movements’1? Is the ‘individualistic view of the biological world’ characteristic of Darwinism ‘simply a reflection of the ideologies of the bourgeois revolutions of the eighteenth century’2? Or, does scientific knowledge describe a real world that exists independently of human cognizance and that would be the same even if we had never been? Should we say with Max Planck, ‘there is a real world independent of our senses; the laws of nature were not invented by man, but forced upon him by that natural world. They are the expression of a rational world order’? Such questions are at the center of the ongoing ‘science wars’ between social constructivists3,4 and their realist critics5–7. Evolutionary biology is a particularly good place to consider such questions because metaphors drawn from culture play such an obvious, central and, perhaps, ineliminable role in evolutionary theorizing. Think, for instance, of the struggle for existence, natural and sexual selection, adaptive landscapes, the Red Queen hypothesis, game theory, selfish genes, outlaw genes, slave ants, queen bees, arms races, trees of life, etc. If we cannot conceptualize evolution apart from such metaphors, does this mean that our scientific knowledge is inescapably tainted by our culturally derived subjective limitations? Does evolutionary theory provide us with a grasp of the structure of nature as it exists independently from us, or does it merely reflect our very human preoccupations? Ruse sets out to answer such questions, to salvage what is reasonable from the claims of both constructivists and realists, and to find a via media between the two. His methodology consists of examining the role of cultural versus epistemic values in the work of ten prominent evolutionists to discover what role cultural values play for TREE vol. 14, no. 10 October 1999
each, and whether there is a set or body of norms, values or constraints that guide scientists in their theorizing and observing. Ruse’s discussion of E.O. Wilson is typical. He points out that while there is no reason to take Wilson’s talk of ‘slave species’ of ants as showing his solidarity with the antebellum South, nonetheless without metaphors borrowed (or simply absorbed) from his society, his science would not exist. Culturally derived metaphors are essential to science, yet in the end it is the application of the distinctive epistemic values of predictive accuracy, coherence, consistency, unificatory power, fertility and simplicity that decides the fate of scientific claims. Ruse concludes that ‘science is indeed a social construction’. Yet, ‘however socially or culturally congenial one may find the science, if it does not succeed in the fiery pit of experience, it can and should be rejected’. Ruse’s trek through 250 years of evolutionary biology yields another interesting finding: as a science matures and becomes more professionalized, epistemic values internal to the discipline become more explicit, more important and more thoroughly satisfied, whereas cultural values, although never completely absent, become relatively less significant. In short, ‘Geoffrey Parker is a long way from Erasmus Darwin. A very long way’. What about the sort of question that Ruse began with; that is, ‘does an objective, “real world” exist “out there” that can be known through the methods of science, or is science a subjective construction corresponding to the shifting contingencies of culture and history, with nothing “real” beneath it?’. Even if (as Ruse shows) scientists increasingly value epistemic over cultural values in their science, what guarantee is there that the application of these epistemic values brings one any closer to the truth? Notoriously, Kuhn8,9 stressed the importance of values internal to the practice of science, yet is widely regarded as having laid the foundation for the constructivist interpretation of science. Despite priming the reader to expect a serious discussion of such issues, in the final chapter, Ruse simply punts on them, admitting that ‘a naturalistic approach as we have taken [i.e., looking at evidence from the history of science]… is not going to work’. Ruse’s history has taught us that science is ‘special’ because it has internal standards, but also ‘cultural’ because it draws upon cultural resources. We see that more clearly thanks to Ruse’s discussion, but we are no further ahead in knowing how to resolve the most fundamental issues raised by the constructivist challenge. In the end, Mystery of Mysteries leaves the answer to the deeper question posed in its subtitle a mystery still.
Timothy Shanahan Dept of Philosophy, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA 90045, USA ([email protected])
References 1 Ferguson, H. (1990) The Science of Pleasure: Cosmos and Psyche in the Bourgeois World View, Routledge 2 Lewontin, R.C. (1991) Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA, Anansi 3 Shapin, S. (1982) Hist. Sci. 20, 157–211 4 Desmond, A. and Moore, J. (1992) Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist, Warner 5 Gross, P.R. and Levitt, N. (1994) Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and its Quarrels with Science, Johns Hopkins University Press 6 Sokal, A.D. (1996) Social Text 46, 217–252 7 Sokal, A.D. (1996) Lingua Franca May/June, 62–64 8 Kuhn, T. (1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University of Chicago Press 9 Kuhn, T. (1977) The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change, University of Chicago Press
Parrot paradox Kea – Bird of Paradox. The Evolution and Behaviour of a New Zealand Parrot by J. Diamond and A.B. Bond University of California Press, 1999. £29.95 hbk (x 1 230 pages) ISBN 0 520 213 394
T
he kea (Nestor notabilis), New Zealand’s alpine parrot, has a complex social organization, highly developed learned behaviours and a propensity to investigate any potential food source or novel item they encounter. Kea harass and occasionally kill sheep, damage vehicles and equipment and forage amongst rubbish, while their endearing antics entertain visitors to the South Island alpine villages and skifields they frequent. Kea are prominent in New Zealand folklore yet few scientific studies have been made of this probably threatened species. Kea – Bird of Paradox arose from a study by Diamond and Bond, two American ethologists, of the ontogeny of behaviour and play behaviours of kea at the rubbish dump near the South Island alpine village of Arthur’s Pass. The chapters that describe the authors’ original research are valuable contributions to both our knowledge of kea and to a more general understanding of play and the development of behaviour.
0169-5347/99/$ – see front matter © 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
411
A mystery still Mystery of Mysteries: Is Evolution a Social Construction? by Michael Ruse Harvard University Press, 1999. £16.95 hbk (xii 1 296 pages) ISBN 0 674 46706 X
I
s scientific ‘knowledge’ merely culture masquerading as objective truth? Is it a creation rather than a discovery, an artifact of a particular society that would not necessarily be the same in different places and at different times, and thus has no special claim to ‘truth’? Was Einstein’s theory of relativity merely part of a ‘general social and cultural transformation which expressed itself in a variety of “modern” movements’1? Is the ‘individualistic view of the biological world’ characteristic of Darwinism ‘simply a reflection of the ideologies of the bourgeois revolutions of the eighteenth century’2? Or, does scientific knowledge describe a real world that exists independently of human cognizance and that would be the same even if we had never been? Should we say with Max Planck, ‘there is a real world independent of our senses; the laws of nature were not invented by man, but forced upon him by that natural world. They are the expression of a rational world order’? Such questions are at the center of the ongoing ‘science wars’ between social constructivists3,4 and their realist critics5–7. Evolutionary biology is a particularly good place to consider such questions because metaphors drawn from culture play such an obvious, central and, perhaps, ineliminable role in evolutionary theorizing. Think, for instance, of the struggle for existence, natural and sexual selection, adaptive landscapes, the Red Queen hypothesis, game theory, selfish genes, outlaw genes, slave ants, queen bees, arms races, trees of life, etc. If we cannot conceptualize evolution apart from such metaphors, does this mean that our scientific knowledge is inescapably tainted by our culturally derived subjective limitations? Does evolutionary theory provide us with a grasp of the structure of nature as it exists independently from us, or does it merely reflect our very human preoccupations? Ruse sets out to answer such questions, to salvage what is reasonable from the claims of both constructivists and realists, and to find a via media between the two. His methodology consists of examining the role of cultural versus epistemic values in the work of ten prominent evolutionists to discover what role cultural values play for TREE vol. 14, no. 10 October 1999
each, and whether there is a set or body of norms, values or constraints that guide scientists in their theorizing and observing. Ruse’s discussion of E.O. Wilson is typical. He points out that while there is no reason to take Wilson’s talk of ‘slave species’ of ants as showing his solidarity with the antebellum South, nonetheless without metaphors borrowed (or simply absorbed) from his society, his science would not exist. Culturally derived metaphors are essential to science, yet in the end it is the application of the distinctive epistemic values of predictive accuracy, coherence, consistency, unificatory power, fertility and simplicity that decides the fate of scientific claims. Ruse concludes that ‘science is indeed a social construction’. Yet, ‘however socially or culturally congenial one may find the science, if it does not succeed in the fiery pit of experience, it can and should be rejected’. Ruse’s trek through 250 years of evolutionary biology yields another interesting finding: as a science matures and becomes more professionalized, epistemic values internal to the discipline become more explicit, more important and more thoroughly satisfied, whereas cultural values, although never completely absent, become relatively less significant. In short, ‘Geoffrey Parker is a long way from Erasmus Darwin. A very long way’. What about the sort of question that Ruse began with; that is, ‘does an objective, “real world” exist “out there” that can be known through the methods of science, or is science a subjective construction corresponding to the shifting contingencies of culture and history, with nothing “real” beneath it?’. Even if (as Ruse shows) scientists increasingly value epistemic over cultural values in their science, what guarantee is there that the application of these epistemic values brings one any closer to the truth? Notoriously, Kuhn8,9 stressed the importance of values internal to the practice of science, yet is widely regarded as having laid the foundation for the constructivist interpretation of science. Despite priming the reader to expect a serious discussion of such issues, in the final chapter, Ruse simply punts on them, admitting that ‘a naturalistic approach as we have taken [i.e., looking at evidence from the history of science]… is not going to work’. Ruse’s history has taught us that science is ‘special’ because it has internal standards, but also ‘cultural’ because it draws upon cultural resources. We see that more clearly thanks to Ruse’s discussion, but we are no further ahead in knowing how to resolve the most fundamental issues raised by the constructivist challenge. In the end, Mystery of Mysteries leaves the answer to the deeper question posed in its subtitle a mystery still.
Timothy Shanahan Dept of Philosophy, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA 90045, USA ([email protected])
References 1 Ferguson, H. (1990) The Science of Pleasure: Cosmos and Psyche in the Bourgeois World View, Routledge 2 Lewontin, R.C. (1991) Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA, Anansi 3 Shapin, S. (1982) Hist. Sci. 20, 157–211 4 Desmond, A. and Moore, J. (1992) Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist, Warner 5 Gross, P.R. and Levitt, N. (1994) Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and its Quarrels with Science, Johns Hopkins University Press 6 Sokal, A.D. (1996) Social Text 46, 217–252 7 Sokal, A.D. (1996) Lingua Franca May/June, 62–64 8 Kuhn, T. (1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University of Chicago Press 9 Kuhn, T. (1977) The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change, University of Chicago Press
Parrot paradox Kea – Bird of Paradox. The Evolution and Behaviour of a New Zealand Parrot by J. Diamond and A.B. Bond University of California Press, 1999. £29.95 hbk (x 1 230 pages) ISBN 0 520 213 394
T
he kea (Nestor notabilis), New Zealand’s alpine parrot, has a complex social organization, highly developed learned behaviours and a propensity to investigate any potential food source or novel item they encounter. Kea harass and occasionally kill sheep, damage vehicles and equipment and forage amongst rubbish, while their endearing antics entertain visitors to the South Island alpine villages and skifields they frequent. Kea are prominent in New Zealand folklore yet few scientific studies have been made of this probably threatened species. Kea – Bird of Paradox arose from a study by Diamond and Bond, two American ethologists, of the ontogeny of behaviour and play behaviours of kea at the rubbish dump near the South Island alpine village of Arthur’s Pass. The chapters that describe the authors’ original research are valuable contributions to both our knowledge of kea and to a more general understanding of play and the development of behaviour.
0169-5347/99/$ – see front matter © 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
411