http://johnhawks.net/weblog/topics/evolution/selection/acceleration/lewontin-essay-no-recent-selection-2009.html

Steve Hsu here points out the Lewontin fallacy, another example of Lewontin’s ideological bias.

http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2008/01/no-scientific-basis-for-race.html

Its as if every time we hear of another refreshing exercise focused solution to a serious mental health or physical problem its as if we’re hearing thissolution for the first time!

How can this be?

But then I think to myself. I am 56 and when I come to think back I have never been advised by a medical practitioner to take exercise; simply for the purpose of taking exercise and the good it will do me.

Surely in 56 years it would be resonable to think that this would have been mentioned in pasiing; given that I’m a normal sort of guy with a pretty ordinary mix of ailments that I’ve been afflicted with over the passing years.

Dare i ask? Are we in the realm of there being a politically correct issue here? Are profesionals in some way frightened about saying very loudly and very clearly, [because people don't exercise and generally don't seem to want to] that exercise is something they must partake in and that this is what they HAVE GOT TO DO?

The health of our nation is in crissis. Exercise has a major role to play in helping to correct many conditions; how is it the’get fit and keep fit’ sector, for want of a better phrase, is so poorly funded; that the insights of the general masses are so shallow in terms of what exercises they should be doing and the reality that as new exercise focused solutions keep popping up we keep thinking a great new revaltion has been presented to us.

I don’t have the transcript, but I imagine the argument follows that of a Lewontin article from 1998:

http://www3.isrl.uiuc.edu/%7Ejunwang4/langev/localcopy/pdf/lewontin98theEvolution.pdf

The argument makes a lot of sense to me. It’s hard to see how we will ever know how language arose in any sense other than the extremely general. Though modern science operates on the assumption that the universe is knowable, in its entirety, it strikes me as miraculous to assume that a contingently evolved brain could possibly understand everything about the universe — or itself!

Whether Lewontin is arrogant or not seems beside the point — ad hominem. Who cares? His ideas are what need to be addressed, not his personality. Furthermore, Lewontin’s work in population genetics is utterly foundational; he’s not “out there in left field,” though his theoretical work is definitely anti-adaptationist. Whether any thinker’s work is in the minority or majority at any given time is also beside the point.

It’s true that Lewontin’s argument, if accepted, would grind much research to a halt, but that should not be relevant either. I know there are still a bunch of behaviorists out there, grinding along, but it’s very hard to see what the point of that theoretical tack is nowadays. Of course, they, or the evolutionary psychologists, may indeed be proven right — or at least fruitful — in the future, but, again, the ideas must be dealt with in and of themselves.

This podcast is the best thing that has happened to me in years. It is not always that easy for me to educate myself in a country that doesn’t speak English, but BSP has really helped. Thnaks.

Curtis Kelly
Kyoto Japan