Steve's Primordial Soup: Odds and Ends

[This post is a continuation of a discussion (begun here) of Crawling Out of the Primordial Soup: A Step toward the Emergence of an LDS Theology Compatible with Organic Evolution" (PDF), by BYU biologist Steven Peck.]

It's time to wrap up this series. Here I will briefly touch on some odds and ends, and then conclude.

Gender

Toward the end of his paper Steve touches briefly on the issue of gender. He notes that the "The Family: A Proclamation to the World" defends gender as part of pre-mortal existence. Exactly what that entails, however, is not clear. The degree of conflict between evolution and pre-mortal gender is likely to turn on how closely mortal and pre-mortal gender are claimed to correspond with one another. Evolution aside, one need not look any farther than the natural world in the present to find at least some conflict with this teaching. (See, for example, Duane Jeffery's Dialogue article, "Intersexes in Humans: An Introductory Exploration.")

Although there are many exceptions, sexual reproduction is pervasive throughout the biosphere. The exact reasons for this are unknown, but one popular hypothesis is that the mixing of genes facilitates the genetic flexibility needed to adapt to new environments and to battle parasites. Given its popularity as a reproductive mechanism, it seems that sexual reproduction provides a strong selective advantage over asexual reproduction, and is the type of thing we might expect to repeatedly arise on planets with life.

Selfish Genes

In his discussion of gender, Steve invokes arguments by biologist Joan Roughgarden regarding the role of the sexes in nature.

Recently [Roughgarden] has argued for a new model of evolution, based not on selfish genetic forces (Richard Dawkins’s selfish gene model), but on models of cooperation among creatures in a gendered and sexual context.

I am at a disadvantage here because I have not read Roughgarden. However, the contrast between selfish genes and cooperating creatures represents a common misunderstanding of Dawkins, which Steve unfortunately perpetuates. Dawkins used the term 'selfish gene' as a metaphor for understanding how the the effects of genes play out in the world, and how those effects promote the continued survival of those genes in a population. It was simply a metaphor and was not meant to imply that the creatures built by those genes are, or should be, selfish (which is also a common misunderstanding of natural selection), nor was it meant to imply, as some others have thought, that genes actually have conscious motivations. To the contrary, genes only survive in relationships with other genes. As Dawkins later wrote (The Ancestor's Tale, p.187 ),

My first book, The Selfish Gene, could equally have been called The Co-operative Gene without a word of the book itself needing to be changed. Indeed, this might have saved some misunderstanding (some of the book's most vocal critics are content to read the book by title only). Selfishness and co-operation are two sides of a Darwinian coin. Each gene promotes its own selfish welfare, by co-operating with the other genes in the sexually stirred gene pool which is that gene's environment, to build shared bodies.

There is no necessary conceptual conflict between selfish genes and cooperating creatures. Indeed, if cooperating with other creatures represents a successful strategy of survival and reproduction, then genes that encourage cooperation will be selected for. Metaphorically speaking, we could say that those genes ensure their own survival (a selfish goal) by encouraging cooperation between their host organism and others--a sort of selfless selfishness, if you will.

William Chamberlin

The year 1911 saw the culmination of a controversy over evolution (and other topics) at BYU when several of the faculty where forced to leave. Evolution was banished from the campus and would not formally return until the early 1970s. Although he hung around for a few additional years, William Chamberlin was among the casualties. Naturally, I tend to view this as unfortunate, although it is easy to sit in judgment a century after the fact. However, after reading Steve's discussion of Chamberlin's ideas, and reviewing the history again, I find the decision less objectionable. The reason is, I have no idea what William Chamberlin was talking about.

I don't mean to by catty, nor do I think that the ideas expressed at a university should be limited to the horizons of my own understanding. Joseph F. Smith and others were worried that these faculty (and their students) were getting too caught up in philosophical and theological speculation. From what I can tell, Chamberlin's ideas (as described by Steve) were a kind of mystical mishmash of science and theology. If this was what he was teaching then his (and his cohort's) downfall is more understandable because he was not a martyr for science as such, but for his own speculative theology. In fact, apparently theology, not science, was William's main teaching responsibility. This is not to say that the science teachers were safe (e.g. his brother, Ralph), but strictly speaking, most of the trouble seems to have come from philosophy and theology, not science.

I am not saying that I agree with what happened, but at a minimum I think we can say that, like Galileo, these men contributed to their own problems. The desire to harmonize science and religion is almost irresistible, but any attempt to do so must necessarily remain largely speculative. It seems to me that these men may have put too much stock in their ideas. To publicly teach and defend them at a Church-owned school was courting trouble.

It seems appropriate, then, that Steve's article repeatedly reminds us that the ideas expressed in it are speculative and hypothetical. Evolution now has a firm and successful presence at BYU, and this can certainly be partially attributed to the care with which the faculty have performed their balancing act. As a BYU biologist, Steve is not only smart enough to recognize when his ideas are speculative, but he's also savvy enough to advertise them as such. Whether Chamberlin deserved what happened or not, a century later his example remains relevant.

Conclusion

The Drake equation is an attempt to organize all of the known parameters that determine the probability of us finding communication from an alien civilization into a single mathematical equation. It is not an equation that can give a reliable answer because the values of many of the variables simply are not known and the outcome is wildly dependent on whatever values one assigns to these unknowns. If it has any use, it is in helping to make assumptions explicit and laying out a framework for thinking about the issue.

I view attempts to bring science and religion together in a similar light. There is a lot that we do not know, and there are many assumptions guiding our thinking that we are barely aware of. We may not get a definitive answer from these exercises, but hopefully our thinking will be clearer and more informed. I appreciate Steve's contribution to the discussion of the relationship between evolution and Mormon theology, and thank him for being a good sport about my criticisms.

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