Living things we know, that is the earth’s biota, does not
tolerate extremes. Once we accept the idea that behavior is the result of
adaptive evolutionary forces, which it is, we can add extremes in behaviors to
the list of physical things we put limits on. Implicit in that last sentience
is the idea the “we can put limits” on behavior. However, the first response of
most people to this is that we cannot manipulate our physical being but can
manipulate behavior. That is the basis of many of our institutions: family
structure, schools, prisons, and advertising, for example. Since about 1970, scientists
have learned the significance of what they have known how to do for a long time
but haven’t done, which is to partition behavior into genetic and environmental
components. The addition of genetics as a factor in behavior is a great departure
from the era of the “blank slate” where environment was everything.
I remember a number of years ago, beef farmers realized the
animals they raise had long legs and big heads, therefore, if the selected
animals with small heads and short legs for mating, they would end up with more
marketable beef. This is what happened but the resulting animals appeared grotesque.
Because of the short legs, they could not move about pastures to graze, but the
biggest objection was that they looked odd or unnatural. The conclusion was that
they meat was “unnatural” therefore not good to eat, much the same as the GMO controversy of today.
A Russian scientist tried
to domesticate foxes and found that in the process he changed multiple physical
characteristics making the domesticated foxes less desirable as a fur producer.
This is mentioned as an example to point out the complexity of
the process. Scientists seemed stunned when the fox experiments showed that behavior and physical structure are
so related when they shouldn't have been. Chickens act like chickens, dogs act like
dogs, and people act like people. Refined to within species behavior verses
physical attributes, everyone knows that certain mental and physical aberrations
go together, for example we all know about Down syndrome.
The only conclusion possible is that from for well over
thousands of years, scientists have known we can manipulate physical structure
as well as behavior. I should also emphasis that they do not always make wise
choices. Although I usually refer to dog breeds as the most familiar example to
make this point, as pointed out above, farmers have been doing this to their
animals for thousands of years. In fact,
we unquestionably know we can manipulate both behavior and physicals
structure: domestication of milk cows, and strong and mean junkyard dogs. Some scientists object to the idea that we can
manipulate genomes, claiming it takes eons and eons. Genome manipulation is a complicated
and time-consuming process related to allele selection and population genetics
and not so much mutation selection by the trial and error of evolution. It also
includes the idea of genetic synergy, genes working together; the same genes in
different combinations result in different outcomes. Strangely, this put some
scientists in direct conflict with what we see around us everyday, as just pointed out. Instead of
being the leaders in pushing back the frontiers of knowledge, scientists were
followers.
Let me explain. Each scientific discipline has extremely knowledgeable
experts working within the limits of that discipline. To make “progress”, they fracture the massive body of knowledge related to human evolution to many, many
bodies of knowledge, each excelling in it own right; it would take pages to
list them individually. They have reached an extreme of reduction-ism, they
broke humpty dumpty into a thousand parts and as with all biological extremes, and
they are not feeling comfortable with what they have done; they realize that and are now trying to put it all back together again.
This point has been driven home in a number
of recently published books. Invariable, the authors
of these books, all scientists refer to long lists of disciplines that overlap.
The book edited by political scientists Peter Hatemi and Rose McDermott, Man Is
by Nature a Political Animal: Evolution, Biology, Politics (AmazonKindle.com) is
a case in point. It is a collection of chapters written by a wide range of
scientists. That trend is what E. O. Wilson and others started back in the 1970,
and what Wilson summarized as ‘consilience’ in a book by that name. Some scientists have jealously refused to endorse the concept.
They show their displeasure by disparaging evolutionary psychologist, one of the
big re-grouping of scientists who have to do with behavior as “not being science” (for example see, blog site by P. Z.
Meyer, Pharnygula); the concept is too extreme. Que lastima!
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