Episode 104: 3rd Way Evolution vs the Critics

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Unofficial, reviewed transcript. It may still contain mistakes; check the podcast when wording matters.

Speakers are labeled by first name where identified. Unidentified-speaker labels may refer to different people. Bracketed question marks indicate uncertain wording.

Transcript

[00:00:00]  Unidentified speaker: Hello, out there.

[00:00:02]  Peter: How well do the collection of assertions called Third Way Evolution stand up to criticism? Here, in our second of at least three episodes on this, Bruce considers the criticisms of Denis Noble and James Shapiro by YouTuber and evolutionary biologist Zach Hancock in his epic video on the subject. Perhaps the role of epigenetics is overstated. Lamarckism is not back and neo-Darwinism is not dead after all. We try to be the kind of podcast that explores compelling issues rather than promotes a specific point of view, and we're sure exploring this one. Hope someone out there enjoys listening to Bruce on this as much as I did.

[00:00:56]  Unidentified speaker: Welcome to The Theory of Anything Podcast.

[00:00:58]  Bruce: Hey, Peter.

[00:00:59]  Peter: Hello, Bruce.

[00:01:00]  Unidentified speaker: How you doing?

[00:01:01]  Unidentified speaker: Good.

[00:01:01]  Bruce: We've got another epic length episode today as we continue our discussion about evolution.

[00:01:10]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:01:12]  Bruce: So if it would be okay, I'd like to actually read the description of the summary of the last episode.

[00:01:18]  Unidentified speaker: So part one, so.

[00:01:19]  Peter: Okay, well, I just love to hear myself quoted to myself.

[00:01:23]  Unidentified speaker: That's great.

[00:01:25]  Bruce: So for those who don't know, Peter usually writes the summaries. Like I get final say, sometimes I'll tweak them a little or something. Sometimes they're kind of a mixture of the two of us. But more often than not, Peter does such a great job.

[00:01:38]  Unidentified speaker: I just leave it the way it is.

[00:01:40]  Bruce: So this is Peter's summary for part one, which he named neo-Darwinism versus post-Darwinism. This week, we discussed neo-Darwinism versus post-Darwinism. The neo-Darwinism meaning a gene-centric view of evolution, which is also called the Great Synthesis, since it unifies natural selection with genetic and paleontology, and perhaps even human psychology. Post-Darwinism is a view that emphasizes factors outside random mutation, like epigenetics or the assertion that organisms and cells can alter their own genome in a beneficial way. By the way, that's actually a really good summary of what we talked about in the last episode, even though I don't think most of these terms I even used. So this is Peter interpreting accurately the vibe I was going for in the episode.

[00:02:27]  Unidentified speaker: I'm trying my best.

[00:02:29]  Unidentified speaker: One step behind you.

[00:02:30]  Bruce: Then he says, here Bruce specifically concentrates on the work of biologist James Shapiro's critical look at Richard Dawkins' Neo-Darwinism. We consider, does it really make sense to see our bodies and minds as tools governed by our master's DNA? Does post-Darwinism, also called third-way evolution, offer a meaningful alternative to both neo-Darwinism and the theism of intelligent design? Does this way of looking at biology say something about the very nature of reality and the laws of physics? Okay, the reason why I'm reading that is because we're going to get some challenge to a lot of what we said in the past episode. So today we're going to cover Zach B. Hancock's critique of Denis Noble and James Shapiro. He concentrates mostly on Denis Noble, but he has a whole section on James Shapiro also. This is from his YouTube video, which is called, Denis Noble is Wrong About Evolution.

[00:03:29]  Unidentified speaker: And by the way, it's excellent.

[00:03:30]  Unidentified speaker: And I mentioned it.

[00:03:31]  Bruce: Did you get a chance to watch it, Peter?

[00:03:34]  Unidentified speaker: I did not.

[00:03:36]  Unidentified speaker: I don't think he sent it to me.

[00:03:38]  Unidentified speaker: It's really good.

[00:03:39]  Unidentified speaker: I think I just told you the title.

[00:03:41]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:03:41]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[00:03:41]  Unidentified speaker: So I don't think I ever sent you a link.

[00:03:43]  Unidentified speaker: I think I just took the title.

[00:03:44]  Unidentified speaker: Zach B.

[00:03:45]  Unidentified speaker: Hancock?

[00:03:46]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[00:03:46]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:03:46]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:03:47]  Bruce: So I'm going to cover it in quite a bit of detail, although I am for sure counter reading Zach Hancock.

[00:03:53]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:03:54]  Bruce: So, but, but I, there's so much he says that is so good and that I totally agree with. So the way I've written this, I worry that people are going to think I'm being critical of Hancock. And I am sort of, but like he really does a good job. And he, he, in my opinion, a lot of his critique of Denis Noble in particular, but the third way in general is quite devastating.

[00:04:21]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:04:22]  Bruce: So I want to go over his point of view, but we are counter reading. And the reason why we went over Shapiro's point of view first was so that we were in a position to counter read, to really kind of look at, you know, we know that he's got a very negative view of Denis Noble in the third way.

[00:04:38]  Unidentified speaker: But what does he say they get right?

[00:04:40]  Bruce: And that's what we're interested in, if that makes any sense.

[00:04:43]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:04:45]  Bruce: So in the previous episode, we went over James Shapiro's arguments that there is something wrong with quote neo-Darwinism or modern synthesis. He treats those two as interchangeable terms.

[00:04:53]  Unidentified speaker: Shapiro argued the following.

[00:04:55]  Bruce: So in summary, gradualism, he argued against gradualism.

[00:04:59]  Unidentified speaker: He said it's incorrect.

[00:05:00]  Bruce: Evolution often takes huge single generational steps. He gives the example of hybridization, new species formed within a single generation due to interbreeding. And symbiogenesis, formation of the first eukaryotes or cells with a nucleus, happened in a single generation. And it was a huge jump in one generation. These are not controversial, by the way. Like it is well known and well accepted that these are exceptions to gradualism that played a huge role in the evolutionary process. So he also argues that gene centricism is incorrect. Evolution relies on, he claims, natural genetic engineering or NGE that knows how to read and write DNA and uses it to store data, then utilizes sequences to move them around in the genome or even spread them horizontally. So not from like father to son, but instead from parent to child, but instead from like a virus, it spreads horizontally. It's leaps from your nose onto a virus and onto somebody else, right? One question I asked was, even if he's right, would this really mean that neo-Darwinism and modern synthesis was incorrect? For example, would neo-Darwinists really see hybridization or, for that matter, symbiogenesis as somehow at odds with the current theory?

[00:06:25]  Unidentified speaker: I argued most likely not.

[00:06:27]  Bruce: But I also pointed out that these counter-examples did surprise me, like deeply surprised me when I started reading Shapiro, because they break the way evolution is taught in schools, even at college-level biology classes. So at a minimum, I feel Shapiro's critique could be thought of as a fair critique of a certain simplified schoolroom version of neo-Darwinism. This is going to play an important role in today's discussion.

[00:06:55]  Unidentified speaker: So, who is Zach B.

[00:06:56]  Unidentified speaker: Hancock?

[00:06:58]  Bruce: We're going to be taking a look at his video called Denis Noble is Wrong About Evolution. Hancock is an evolutionary biologist.

[00:07:04]  Unidentified speaker: This is going to turn out to be important.

[00:07:05]  Unidentified speaker: What's an evolutionary biologist?

[00:07:07]  Bruce: So, it's a biologist that studies biology from the point of view of evolution.

[00:07:11]  Unidentified speaker: Not all biologists do.

[00:07:13]  Bruce: Okay, most don't. If I could use maybe an analogy here, think about all physicists versus cosmologists who are trying to study what's the actual nature of physics. And like David Deutsch points out that very few physicists accept many worlds, but that almost all the cosmologists do, because it's their job to try to understand what is actually going on, and they've just got nowhere to go. We're going to see something similar here, that you have this group of people, biologists, and then you've got a smaller group, evolutionary biologists, who make it their job to understand biology in terms of evolution. Okay, so they specifically study evolutionary biology, unlike most biologists, and Hancock is uniquely positioned to critique Noble's and Shapiro's views. His critique is not only of Denis Noble, but also Shapiro's ideas, particularly of his idea of natural genetic engineering. So I feel his critique is quite devastating to much of the claims of the so-called third-way approach to evolution, but it's also surprising what they end up agreeing on. And in fact, in some ways, I found that more interesting than what they disagreed over. Before I get into that, though, I probably should give my own view of Denis Noble. So before, way back at episode 21, we had an episode where I went over Michael Levin's work, who we're going to cover in detail in the next episode, okay? And in that episode, I also covered an excellent paper that was written by Denis Noble along with his brother Ray.

[00:08:49]  Unidentified speaker: I back then embarrassingly called him Denise Noble because I didn't know who the heck he was.

[00:08:54]  Unidentified speaker: And he spells his name very funny.

[00:08:56]  Unidentified speaker: It's not the normal way you would spell either Dennis or Denise, so I wasn't quite sure if it was male or female.

[00:09:02]  Bruce: And the paper is called, Was the Watchmaker Blind or Was She One-Eyed?

[00:09:07]  Unidentified speaker: I still highly recommend this paper to anyone.

[00:09:09]  Unidentified speaker: It is a very, very good paper.

[00:09:12]  Bruce: Now, I've quoted this paper quite a bit about the immune system. Whenever I talk about the immune system, I'm taking it from this paper and how it uses a mini form of evolution or natural selection to create knowledge about how to create the right recipe for an antibody to defeat a pathogen or a bacteria. So having found this paper excellent, I decided to try buying one of Denis' books called The Music of Life, Biology Beyond Genes. So I was really excited because I had this positive view of Denis Noble from this paper and I loved Michael Levin's work.

[00:09:49]  Unidentified speaker: I thought, this is it.

[00:09:50]  Bruce: I'm going to really be learning a lot about this non-gene-centric view of biology. I was just overwhelmingly disappointed with the book. So let me read a few parts of this book to show off how badly some of it comes crossed. So from page 3, DNA mania is the delusion that the DNA's code causes life in much the same way as a CD causes my experience in the Schubert Piano Trio. I was like, what does that even mean? We also need to, page 16, we also need to recognize that much of what is stated about genes at the reductionist level comes close to circularity. Molecular success for a gene is reproducing itself as much as possible so that its frequency in the gene pool increases. So, okay, yes, we tend to ignore such integrative, collaborative properties of a higher level network, which would apply to many genes simultaneously.

[00:10:46]  Unidentified speaker: And I'm like, huh?

[00:10:48]  Bruce: I don't understand why that would matter.

[00:10:50]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:10:51]  Bruce: So then he says on page 35, function is also dependent on the properties of water lipids and many other molecules that are not coded for in the genes. I'm thinking, oh my gosh, seriously, Denis? And then he says, there are no genes for the properties of water for the fatty lipids that form cell membranes. And I'm like, okay, paint me red and call me a corpuscle. Like I don't even know what to make of a statement like that. It's just, it's a meaningless statement, right? And then he says, page 37, it relies time and again on mother nature's ability to know how to make an omelet.

[00:11:28]  Unidentified speaker: I'm like, what does that even mean?

[00:11:29]  Unidentified speaker: I don't know what that means.

[00:11:31]  Bruce: So this is starting to border on outright humorous. Of course, when we think of replicators and genes, we aren't claiming the genes don't rely on existing laws of physics or even existing knowledge elsewhere in the world to be able to replicate. So like, for example, clearly a lion's genes rely on the existence of the antelope's genes to survive, right? So knowledge begets knowledge.

[00:11:55]  Unidentified speaker: A few more examples.

[00:11:57]  Bruce: In order to pursue the book, the book analogy, he has this analogy of genes as a book, for genes, we have to at least to ask what it could be said to be, said the book is about.

[00:12:10]  Unidentified speaker: So is it about life?

[00:12:11]  Unidentified speaker: I'm like, what the frick?

[00:12:13]  Bruce: I don't understand why he's asking this. Page 38 was what that was. Page 105 now. We sometimes say things like, this gene does such and such, but this sort of statement tends to be misleading. A gene will do one thing in one set of circumstances and another if circumstances change. So should I not say cars are used to drive to work because they are also used to drive to school? Like, I don't understand what the point is here, right?

[00:12:41]  Unidentified speaker: Page 105 also.

[00:12:42]  Bruce: Indeed, it might be more helpful to avoid saying that genes do anything at all. It is more that genes are used. I'm thinking, what the heck? Like, I don't, these seem so silly, right? Like, he's making points and it's it's it almost sounds just outright humorous what he's saying.

[00:13:02]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:13:03]  Bruce: So sure, that's not less confusing to say genes are out. Why would we want to say genes are it's more that genes are used? How can that be less confusing or less specific or more helpful?

[00:13:17]  Unidentified speaker: I don't get it.

[00:13:18]  Bruce: Like, what's what's his point here that he's trying to make? So I came away from the book feeling more confused than ever about the content or lack thereof of his theory. So I see Shapiro, and this is why I did Shapiro instead of Denis Noble as our first episode, as making far more specific and narrow claims than Noble. Shapiro is saying that neo-Darwinism, neo-Darwinian evolution, is a sort of standard story of evolution that really only takes one kind of gene transfer into consideration, although admittedly an important version of it, and that is vertical transfer of genes from parent to child. And then gradual mutation through mutation of a single base pair. But even a hardcore neo-Darwinist like Darwin will admit that this isn't the whole story.

[00:14:08]  Unidentified speaker: Sorry, like Dawkins, I meant.

[00:14:10]  Bruce: Dawkins, for example, points out that neo-Darwinism might include something like a cell learning to replicate outside of DNA transfer via sex cells and thus might become a pathogen. He actually specifically talks about that in the book Selfish Gene. But this exception case just still isn't the full story. DNA is just cleverer than this. And I particularly like the term natural genetic evolution as a way of describing what is missing from the way we normally think about biological evolution. Though note that standard neo-Darwinists are not denying the existence of things like jumping genes that move around inside the chromosomes. Okay, so we talked about that in the last episode. So there is kind of this weird space where it's a little unclear what's being disagreed upon. Okay, this is not an uncommon thing with passionate disagreements. So Shapiro's main concern is how neo-Darwinian evolution is understood in general, not necessarily a claim that every single evolutionary scientist has it wrong. So for example, from page XV of his book, despite massive genomic evidence to the contrary, the philosophy of evolution by fully random processes, the neo-Darwinian modern synthesis, still reigns supreme in the mind, in the public mind, in the classroom, and in the minds of many scientists and clinicians as well. Now, you know, that statement could be true, even if there's nothing particularly wrong with the theory.

[00:15:42]  Unidentified speaker: It could just be that people have imbibed it wrongly.

[00:15:45]  Bruce: Okay, and you can read Shapiro as maybe making that claim instead, which would be a softer claim.

[00:15:51]  Unidentified speaker: Okay, but is that correct?

[00:15:53]  Bruce: Or is this just Shapiro imagining something that isn't there?

[00:15:57]  Unidentified speaker: That's really the question I want to ask.

[00:15:59]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:16:00]  Bruce: Now with this, we're going to start talking about Hancock's summary of his critique of the Third Way. He summarizes them as having four points. The first one is inheritance of acquired characteristics, i.e.

[00:16:13]  Unidentified speaker: Lamarckian inheritance.

[00:16:15]  Bruce: So he calls this traits acquired during your lifetime can be passed on to your offspring and that this process drives adapted evolution. Number two was organisms purposefully shape their own evolution. He explains this as, this is Hancock when I say he, organisms are purposeful agents of their own evolution, not the products of random mutation and natural selection. Number three, natural genetic engineering. Organisms purposefully modify their own genome to respond to the world around them. And number four, that's the third way, is opposed to gene centricism. We are not products of our genes, and therefore any theory of evolution that is gene centered is faulty. So those are the four points that Hancock is one by one in the video gonna go through, and he's gonna critique each of those four points.

[00:17:04]  Unidentified speaker: So keep that in mind, okay?

[00:17:06]  Bruce: So what's Hancock's overall position? In response to a list of supposed missing mechanisms, so Shapiro has like this diagram saying, here's these missing mechanisms from evolution that biologists are not accepting. Hancock at 3 minutes and 26 seconds says, none of the mechanisms listed in the wider diagram are missing from contemporary evolutionary theory. And in fact, most of them were known before the discovery of DNA. At minute 51, he says, I have mostly ignored Noble and his colleagues as just contrarian cranks. And at minute 7, he says, evolutionary theory is an extremely robust and mature science. To claim that it is dead or in need of radical revision is an extraordinary claim. I think that summarizes Hancock's overall view. And we know right off the bat, he has a negative view of Noble and company, Noble and Shapiro. And in his opinion, there's nothing really wrong with neo-Darwinian evolution.

[00:18:12]  Peter: So now, is this an argument about more emphasis, about or are these like, I mean, are the claims that Shapiro and Noble are making, I mean, a lot of them are widely accepted.

[00:18:29]  Unidentified speaker: That's right.

[00:18:31]  Peter: About epigenetics and some of the other kinds of things you mentioned.

[00:18:39]  Unidentified speaker: Is that right?

[00:18:40]  Unidentified speaker: That is correct.

[00:18:42]  Bruce: So it's a little difficult to point to what the disagreement is, right?

[00:18:47]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[00:18:47]  Bruce: And I think it's safe to say that very few modern science biologists would consider the ability of the genes to modify themselves. They won't deny genes can modify themselves. The immune system can modify itself for sure, right? But you're not going to see them thinking that that's some central missing mechanism that is important to understanding how evolution works.

[00:19:16]  Unidentified speaker: They're just not going to see it that way, right?

[00:19:18]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:19:18]  Bruce: And so, I think you're right. One of the things we want to ask is, is this just the difference in emphasis? Like, are they actually disagreeing? Are they disagreeing over the overall emphasis?

[00:19:31]  Unidentified speaker: Is there a specific disagreement?

[00:19:34]  Bruce: Is it a different disagreement over definitions? Do they maybe define things differently?

[00:19:39]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:19:40]  Bruce: And this is what we really want to pay attention to throughout the critique.

[00:19:43]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:19:44]  Bruce: So it's interesting that Shapiro, sorry, Hancock talks about the original meaning of the term neo-Darwinism and its history as to what it meant.

[00:19:55]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:19:56]  Bruce: So at 750, he says, language changes through time, words don't have fixed meanings, and there's really nothing to be gained by wading through the swamp of semantic debate. Then he says, critics of the modern synthesis often call the modern synthesis neo-Darwinism, a trend that goes back to Conrad Waddington. And in the 1950s, the paleontologist Stephen J. Gould did the same thing and ultimately many of the supporters of the modern synthesis, including yours truly, Hancock says, have adopted the mantle and used the words interchangeably.

[00:20:30]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:20:30]  Unidentified speaker: So it's interesting.

[00:20:32]  Bruce: He's admitting that modernly neo-Darwinism is just a synonym for modern synthesis and vice versa. But he's going to say, that's not how it got started.

[00:20:41]  Unidentified speaker: That happened later.

[00:20:43]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:20:44]  Bruce: So neo-Darwinism isn't originally the same as modern synthesis and in fact, predates the modern synthesis. But over time, the two terms merged to mean the same thing. And then Hancock says, but for this discussion, it is helpful to distinguish them, at least historically, because neo-Darwinism preceded the modern synthesis by over 50 years.

[00:21:05]  Unidentified speaker: So just a quick history here.

[00:21:09]  Bruce: Fleeming Jenkin, he did some studies of a population of wolves, with one wolf having a favorable trait. And he talked about how it would have to mate with wolves without the trait, and it would dilute it over time. And the trait, through the mutation, would get washed out.

[00:21:27]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:21:29]  Bruce: So at 944, Hancock says, this observation by Jenkins startled Darwin so much that he removed the example from later editions of Origin of the Species. Darwin had a big inheritance problem if he couldn't come up with a theory of inheritance that could overcome the effects of blending. Natural selection might be dead. So historically, this was kind of a big deal. It was a challenge because it went against Darwin's theory and in fact, falsified Darwin's theory. So Darwin came up with a theory of pangenesis, that the cells of the body, the soma, produce gemmules that carry information from the soma, the body, to the germ cells, allowing information from the body learned from the environment to be inherited. Now wait, isn't that inheritance of acquired characteristics? And therefore isn't that Lamarckism? According to Hancock, yes, it is. Darwin's original theory wasn't natural selection. It was a mixture of natural selection and Lamarckism, according to Hancock, okay.

[00:22:37]  Unidentified speaker: Is that controversial though?

[00:22:38]  Peter: Because I've heard it's asserted that Darwin was believed in Lamarckism, essentially, right?

[00:22:46]  Bruce: So he, yes, he, so one of the things I'm going to ask throughout this episode is, what is Lamarckism? And it turns out it's not obvious, okay? But Darwin, whether than ask the question, was Darwin a Lamarck, was Darwin a Lamarckist? We might want to say, did Darwin believe that there were gemmules that were in the body, that through the environment, the body would adapt and it would carry information into the cert, these gemmules would carry information into the, the germ cells, the sex cells, and then allow the acquired characteristics in the lifetime of an animal to be inherited by their offspring. Okay, yes, Darwin absolutely believed that. That was part of his theory. Okay, now is that Lamarckism?

[00:23:35]  Unidentified speaker: That sounds like Lamarckism to me.

[00:23:36]  Bruce: Like that sounds exactly with what, what I thought Lamarckism was. Okay, and Hancock seems to be agreeing with that. He seems to be saying, yes, Darwin's original theory was a mixture of natural selection and Lamarckism. So according to Hancock, Darwinism included Lamarckism as a partial component. Now, there was a number of experiments that killed Darwin's theory of pangenesis. So Francis Galton's experiment of swapping blood in rabbits to see if the inherited traits of the offspring changed. So he theorized that the gemmules were carried in the blood.

[00:24:09]  Unidentified speaker: It was the only thing that made sense to him.

[00:24:10]  Bruce: He would swap blood of rabbits and then he would see if the acquired characteristics would change based on the blood changing.

[00:24:17]  Unidentified speaker: And of course nothing happens, right?

[00:24:20]  Bruce: So Weismann, of the Weismann barrier, he did experiments to show that only the germ cells carry information to inheritance. What he did is he cut off the tails of mice and then he would see if that change in the environment would change what was inherited.

[00:24:39]  Unidentified speaker: And of course it did nothing, right?

[00:24:41]  Bruce: Cutting off the tail of a mouse does not change the length of the tail of the offspring of that mouse. So at 1420, Hancock says, the term neo-Darwinism was coined by George Romanes to serve as a distinction between Darwin's concept of natural selection, which included this Lamarckian concept, and that favored by Weismann, which did not include it.

[00:25:04]  Unidentified speaker: Yes, that's right.

[00:25:05]  Bruce: According to Hancock, Darwinism, quote unquote, is a theory that blends inheritance due to the environment, Lamarckism, and the germ line, whereas neo-Darwinism is just inheritance of the germ line. This is not what I thought neo-Darwinism referred to. So that was a big eye-opener for me to realize this history of the term neo-Darwinism, and to realize that it meant something totally different than what I thought it did. For that matter, I didn't actually know that Darwin was a Lamarckist, right, or a form of Lamarckist.

[00:25:37]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:25:37]  Peter: I mean, to be fair, he didn't know anything about genes.

[00:25:41]  Unidentified speaker: That's correct.

[00:25:42]  Peter: And although, interestingly, I just read that Tom Wolfe book about Darwin and Chomsky. And he mentions that Darwin had Mendel's paper that talks about dominant and recessive traits and all this. But he was in his possession, but the letter was unopened.

[00:26:10]  Unidentified speaker: He'd never read it, but he had the paper.

[00:26:12]  Unidentified speaker: Oh, wow, wow, wow, wow.

[00:26:14]  Unidentified speaker: That's amazing.

[00:26:15]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[00:26:16]  Unidentified speaker: All right.

[00:26:17]  Bruce: There were later experiments, according to Hancock, that showed environmental pressure played no role in acquiring new characteristics. So Wilhelm Johansson did self-fertilizing beans. He showed that when there is no underlying genetic variation, the phenome would regress to the mean. So he had this way of allowing the beans to clone themselves so that there couldn't be any genetic variation. And so they would all eventually regress to the mean.

[00:26:48]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:26:48]  Bruce: So this shows environmental pressure did not change the heritable traits on its own.

[00:26:52]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:26:53]  Bruce: By the way, the term from machine learning, linear regression, actually comes from this idea of regression to the mean that was done in studies like this, believe it or not. They don't seem related anymore at this point, but that was actually where the idea of linear regression came from was this idea that you could measure the regression to the mean using a line. So, and then there was the Luria-Delbrook Fluctuation Test and later experiments by the Lederbergs, which tested if resistance came due to exposure, or in other words, it was Lamarckian, or due to pre-existing genetic variations. So they had a way to make a copy of a group of bacteria so they could take snapshots of colonies and then determined by experiment, if the genetic variation, let's say resistance to an antibiotic, came first or in response to environmental pressure. So in other words, you could, because you can make snapshots, checkpoints, right? You can check to see if a group that becomes resistant to an antibody, whether that resistance already existed prior to the introduction of the antibody, or if the antibody was introduced first before the adaption took place. And what they found is that the mutation always happened first, before the antibody was ever introduced to it.

[00:28:08]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:28:09]  Bruce: So they found genetic variation always came first. Now these experiments showed inheritance is only via genetic variation, not via environmental variation. So what are epigenetics then? So Noble appeals to epigenetics as overturning the Weismann barrier, and a return to Lamarckism.

[00:28:30]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:28:31]  Bruce: Hancock points out that epigenetics has no clear-cut meaning, and has meant different things in different circumstances. I didn't know that either, by the way. So, canalization from Conrad Hal Waddington is the first time we ever hear of epigenetics.

[00:28:48]  Unidentified speaker: He invented the term, I think.

[00:28:49]  Bruce: It's the idea that genetic variations tend to not change phenotype too much, that there are compensating factors. So, at 24.08, Hancock says, despite many interacting genes and variable environments, development, development, environments, development funnels organisms into the same phenotype, in effect, developmental pathways are extremely robust to perturbations from both the environment and genetic mutation. Okay, let me explain that in plain English, because it's maybe not the easiest sentence to understand. The idea here is that you tend to learn about mutation to a base pair, that's the gene, this is the way they teach it in school, in the kind of the stupefied, simplified version that they teach to teach you in school, and then that's going to change your eyes from brown to blue or something like that, right? So, what he's actually trying to explain here is that it just isn't like that. That when you get a mutated gene, that the overall effect of the genes against each other is that the phenotype usually doesn't change at all, even though the genetics have changed, and that it actually takes multiple perturbations before the phenotype will actually change, in most cases.

[00:30:07]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:30:08]  Bruce: This idea, so this led Waddington to suggest selection acts as a gene regulatory network rather than direct genes held in DNA. Note that this is one of the objections I quoted Shapiro as raising in the past episode. He tried to explain it in terms of the body's ability to checkpoint and error-correct genetic damage or other issues. This is one kind of epigenetics where environment shifts phenotype with, shifts genes without changing the phenotype.

[00:30:37]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:30:38]  Bruce: And then once that happens, or it could shift phenotype without changing the genotype, similar to phenotypic plasticity.

[00:30:45]  Unidentified speaker: The environment is different.

[00:30:46]  Unidentified speaker: It's the same genes.

[00:30:48]  Bruce: But because the environment is different, you get a different phenotype.

[00:30:51]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:30:52]  Bruce: Now, when that happens, that means that mutations to the genes will then shift the underlying genes that create that phenotype to match so that becomes the new phenotype genetically in the normal environment.

[00:31:04]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:31:05]  Bruce: This is what Waddington meant by epigenetics. It has nothing to do with inheritance of acquired traits.

[00:31:12]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:31:13]  Bruce: Now, however, Waddington's understanding of epigenetics just isn't normally how we think of the term today. We would normally understand epigenetics more like the next two definitions. So Robin Holliday defined epigenetics as nuclear inheritance, not based on differences in DNA sequence. And later, Wu and Morris called it the study of changes in gene function that are [mitotically and meiotically?] heritable, and that do not entail a change in DNA sequence.

[00:31:46]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:31:46]  Bruce: So that's what really epigenetics has come to mean. It's some sort of inheritance that's got nothing to do with the genes in the sex cells, the DNA in the sex cells. So at 3242, Hancock says this leads us to a key question about the basic role of epigenetics has played in the development of evolutionary theory. To understand this, we need to remember that evolution, while intimately connected with heredity, is a theory about the forces of change of population over generations. This can technically occur in both Mendelian and non-Mendelian systems of heredity. And there exists a breadth of mathematical tools at our disposal for evaluating each. So, Hancock's key argument is going to be that epigenetics, that is to say, inheritance, not via genes, does not violate neo-Darwinian evolution. Now, this statement may or may not surprise you. It definitely surprised me, because I had in my mind that neo-Darwinian evolution was specifically a gene-centric view of evolution, selfish gene, right? And here we have Hancock saying, actually, the correct understanding of neo-Darwinian evolution does not care if we're talking about genetic or non-genetic inheritance. Now, let's talk now about the question of what does it mean to be Lamarckian? Because you kind of asked about that, was Darwin a Lamarckian? So what does it mean to be Lamarckian evolution? Now, we all know the story of an imaginary giraffe that stretches its neck to eat leaves in a tree, and then passes a slightly longer neck onto its offspring, effectively allowing the giraffe to breed traits purposefully.

[00:33:38]  Bruce: This is the prototypical example of Lamarckian evolution, and most of us get our understanding of a Lamarckian evolution from this prototypical example. Now, here's the thing, it can be conceptualized in several different ways. So, for example, Peter, maybe try to answer this question.

[00:33:55]  Unidentified speaker: It's okay if you don't know the answer.

[00:33:57]  Unidentified speaker: Just think about it a little bit.

[00:33:58]  Bruce: Is dog breeding Lamarckian evolution? After all, it is directed and purposeful evolution, right?

[00:34:05]  Unidentified speaker: Fair enough.

[00:34:06]  Peter: I mean, I'm not hung up on a word.

[00:34:10]  Unidentified speaker: You could say that.

[00:34:13]  Bruce: Would you think of Lamarckian evolution, sorry, is dog breeding as Lamarckian evolution?

[00:34:21]  Peter: I don't think most people would make that claim.

[00:34:24]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:34:24]  Unidentified speaker: Well, why not?

[00:34:25]  Bruce: Because, I mean, didn't we just talk about this purposeful evolution of this giraffe? It stretches its neck and then it directs its offspring. Isn't that exactly what we're doing with dog breeding?

[00:34:39]  Peter: Yeah, but then, you know, the purpose comes from the human intervention, right?

[00:34:44]  Unidentified speaker: Hmm.

[00:34:45]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:34:45]  Bruce: So you have some questions about whether it should be considered Lamarckian evolution if the purpose comes from the human.

[00:34:54]  Unidentified speaker: Is that correct?

[00:34:54]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:34:55]  Bruce: So what if I gave you an example of where the animal does it on their own? Does the breeding selection on their own just like dog breeding? Would you then change your mind and decide that that would be Lamarckian evolution?

[00:35:09]  Unidentified speaker: Maybe, but I'm curious.

[00:35:11]  Unidentified speaker: I'm curious what you would say.

[00:35:13]  Bruce: So Popper argued that the peacock's beautifully attractive, but impractical tail makes little sense from a strict Darwinian natural selection standpoint. I don't have a citation there, but there's like a specific paper where he talks about this, um, which I'll have to—I'm not even sure, I'm not—I have a copy of it, but I don't know if there's a link available on the web, so I don't even know if I can link to it. So instead, he felt that this was an example of sexual selection, i.e. the female peacocks found the tail attractive and selected their mates based on that despite the disadvantages. Now, Richard Dawkins, in The Selfish Gene, tried to explain this away in the form of showing off health, and even he admitted it sounded a bit far-fetched.

[00:35:56]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:35:58]  Bruce: So is this a case of Lamarckian evolution? Because it is a purposeful evolution similar to the dog breeding, but in this case, the breeding is done by the females of the species. The purpose is not coming from a human, it's coming from the species, from the females of the species, based on what they find attractive.

[00:36:16]  Unidentified speaker: And that's a question?

[00:36:18]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah, that's a question.

[00:36:20]  Bruce: Is this now Lamarckian evolution?

[00:36:22]  Peter: Well, you know, I'm not, like Popper said, I'm not hung up on words. I guess I don't have a specific enough, I haven't reflected enough on what is and what is not Lamarckian evolution. I do know that Popper had a very unique take on Darwinism that I've been meaning to look into more. You know, after reading that book I mentioned earlier about Tom Wolfe, where he was critical of Darwinism in a really interesting way, basically said, he said that I can cut this out if you want, but he said that it doesn't really make any sense to say that humans evolved from apes because we're distinct in nature, we're so different in nature due to our language and rational thought that it's essentially an irrelevant point that we came from apes. And then once I read that book, other books started coming up in my recommended books list. And one of them was all these people critiquing Darwin. And there was a whole chapter on Popper, I guess, on Popper's critique of Darwin. I'm kind of curious how it's what it said now.

[00:37:49]  Bruce: So that paper that I'm quoting or paraphrasing, it's the one where Popper famously says that he does now accept that natural selection is a scientifically testable theory. I'm going to cover that in a future podcast because everybody points to that paper and says, Popper changed his mind and said that natural selection was a scientifically testable theory. And I'm going to argue that even though he vibe-wise says that, content-wise, he says something like the opposite of that in that paper.

[00:38:21]  Peter: At one point, he said it was a metaphysical research program.

[00:38:24]  Bruce: Yes, and he continues to make that claim even in this paper where he supposedly changes his mind.

[00:38:30]  Unidentified speaker: He actually doesn't change his mind.

[00:38:32]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:38:33]  Bruce: So we're going to cover that in a future podcast. But the whole idea of, so let's just, this idea. So I tried to get you to buy off on if the purpose came from the animal, would you accept it as Lamarckian? And then I gave you an example of where the purpose did come from the animal, right?

[00:38:50]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[00:38:51]  Bruce: And you're still not sure you buy it as Lamarckian. And you said, I'm not quite sure where the cutoff is. Let me suggest, nobody's really sure where the cutoff is, right?

[00:39:00]  Unidentified speaker: Fair enough.

[00:39:01]  Bruce: That Lamarckianism is a very squishy idea that has no clear cutoff.

[00:39:07]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:39:08]  Bruce: Maybe peacocks are Lamarckian, maybe they're not. Probably, most people would not consider them Lamarckian, but I don't think most people could explain why they don't consider it Lamarckian.

[00:39:17]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:39:18]  Bruce: So now, scientists aren't stupid. We're going to see that Hancock is able to define Lamarckian in an interesting way that has a clear cut cutoff. But it probably isn't what you thought Lamarckianism was.

[00:39:30]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:39:30]  Unidentified speaker: And this is why I'm making a big deal out of this.

[00:39:32]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:39:33]  Bruce: So if the main thing you take away from Lamarckian evolution is that it's purposeful rather than random, these are examples of Lamarckian evolution. But it's just as easy to argue that dog breeding is not Lamarckian in that dogs do not pass along acquired characteristics within their lifetime to their kin.

[00:39:53]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:39:54]  Bruce: The dog's variations, this would be true for the peacocks too, due to mutation still happens irrespective of the selection environment.

[00:40:01]  Unidentified speaker: In this case, humans are the female peacocks.

[00:40:04]  Unidentified speaker: So then, what about epigenetics?

[00:40:06]  Bruce: Aren't epigenetics an inheritance of acquired characteristics in the lifetime of an animal? And are epigenetics Lamarckian?

[00:40:14]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:40:14]  Bruce: So notice how we can conceptualize Lamarckian in multiple ways. And depending on which way you conceptualize, it determines how you're going to answer, okay? And that there are, even than this, more ways to conceptualize it.

[00:40:27]  Unidentified speaker: Note that epigenetics are not in doubt.

[00:40:29]  Bruce: We know epigenetics exist, that there are inherited traits that are non-genetic, and that we still, in general, biologists would never consider them Lamarckian, even though, like, that is how most people would understand Lamarckian evolution.

[00:40:44]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:40:45]  Unidentified speaker: It's kind of a dirty word, in a way.

[00:40:47]  Unidentified speaker: They just want to...

[00:40:48]  Bruce: Yes, they just don't like the word, right? Okay, so if acquired characteristics in the lifetime of an animal is what defines Lamarckianism, Lamarckism, Lamarckianism, Lamarckism, I don't know which word it is. And how about human memes? Deutsch is quick to point out that unlike biological evolution, human memes evolve for specific conscious goals and purposes. And they are much faster evolutionarily speaking, precisely because we can develop them and pass them along within our own lifetime and even horizontally, not merely parent-child, but like I can pass it over to you. Does that mean that memetic evolution is Lamarckian?

[00:41:26]  Unidentified speaker: Think about that for a second.

[00:41:31]  Peter: Well, you know, I've heard it alleged, I don't know if it was by Deutsch or someone else, that the meme has sort of supplanted evolution. And that's really where humans are evolving, is at the level of the meme and not the gene, which, I mean, I think that makes a lot of sense in a way.

[00:41:58]  Bruce: Does that mean that we're Lamarckian?

[00:42:01]  Unidentified speaker: Well, I don't know.

[00:42:02]  Unidentified speaker: I don't know.

[00:42:03]  Peter: Again, it's a word. It wouldn't be how you would normally think of what Lamarckian evolution is, but I mean, I don't have a problem with it.

[00:42:16]  Bruce: All right, so let's say we answer, because most people, I agree, most people would say memes are not Lamarckian.

[00:42:22]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[00:42:22]  Bruce: Probably have given little thought as to why it is or isn't Lamarckian, okay? But if not, that apparently even inheriting acquired characteristics within the lifetime of an animal is an insufficient criterion for counting as Lamarckian.

[00:42:36]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:42:37]  Bruce: So now the book The Mocking Memes by Evan Louis Sheehan, clearly a pen name meant to sound like evolution, offers a different way to understand Lamarckism. So he says, concerning genes, there is a unidirectional arrow of causation pointing from gene to individuals, from the seed to its phenotype. Note that this is a form of the central dogma of molecular biology, where information passes from the gene to the protein, but never in reverse. So on page 72, he says, Sheehan says, A system is said to be Lamarckian only if it allows reverse engineering from the phenotype back to the seed. This sounds sort of reasonable to me, okay? But Sheehan quickly points out that we can and do reverse engineer memes just like this. If you see an idea, in fact, that's kind of the whole point of a meme, is that you see somebody doing something and then you're able to get them, somebody else to do it as well, because they're able to reverse engineer it. He says, page 73, the meme equivalent to phenotypes can often be easily reverse engineered to reveal the pattern of how they were produced. So based on this, Sheehan pronounces memes to be Lamarckian evolution, and uses that as explanation for why they evolve so much faster than genetic evolution, because that was one of the ideas was that Lamarckian evolution, because you can acquire characteristics in your lifetime, you can pass it to your offspring, that it would speed evolution up, it would make it more purpose-driven, okay?

[00:44:10]  Bruce: So according to Sheehan, memes are Lamarckian, and he's actually got a criteria based on whether you can reverse engineer or not, which is equivalent to the central dogma of molecular biology. So it's got roots in deep theory, okay? And based on that, he's defined Lamarckian in such a way that genes aren't and memes are, all right? Now let's compare this with how Deutsch conceptualizes Lamarckism in terms of the spontaneous generation of knowledge, which by definition is impossible, so can't exist. So this is from Beginning of Infinity, page 88. He argues that, quote, The fundamental error being made by Lamarck has the same logic as inductivism. Both assume that new knowledge, adaptions and scientific theories respectively, is somehow already present in experience or can be derived mechanically from experience. But the truth is always that knowledge must be first conjectured and then tested. That is what Darwin's theory says. First, random mutations happen. They do not take account of what problem is being solved. Then natural selection discards the variant genes that are less good at causing themselves to be present again in future generations.

[00:45:27]  Unidentified speaker: This is on page 89.

[00:45:29]  Bruce: But suppose Darwin's pangenesis had been correct. What if a man that worked out did pass acquired characteristics onto his children via his blood cells containing gemmules? This supposedly Lamarckian evolution that Hancock does not mind calling Lamarckian, would it really be knowledge being spontaneously generated? Couldn't we, like memes, claim that the body contained a learning algorithm? That via a variation selection of its own, created the knowledge and then passed it along. In fact, isn't that exactly what acquired characteristics are? If I go work out, my body has the knowledge and it knows, okay, we need to try increasing the amount of muscle mass. Okay, so it has its own little learning algorithm that it does, and it acquires this new characteristic. Now, at this point, you'd say, yes, but it knows how to do that because of the genes. But now you're taking the gene-centric view and you don't have to. Okay, what if it had been one extra step and the genes had created a way that that acquired characteristic could then be passed on? Okay, there wouldn't be a spontaneous generation of knowledge in this case. Sure, we could credit the genes with creating the knowledge, when what we really mean is that it created the learning algorithm that created the law of knowledge, okay? But there would be no claim of spontaneous generation of knowledge in Darwin's admittedly now defunct theory. So, it wasn't obvious back in Darwin's day or even today that Lamarckism can be ruled out as spontaneous creation of knowledge, in part because the theory is quite squishy.

[00:47:05]  Unidentified speaker: It means different things in different circumstances.

[00:47:09]  Unidentified speaker: So key point here.

[00:47:10]  Bruce: So it turns out it's actually pretty difficult to even agree upon what Lamarckian evolution even is. It's a vague concept that has several important ideas to it that include purposefulness, inheriting acquired characteristics, the central dogma of molecular biology, the direction arrow of information, and spontaneous generation of knowledge. You can easily claim something is or is not Lamarckian by just choosing a different defining criterion. Herein lies my biggest issue with Denis Noble. He throws around sayings like Lamarckism is back, but it's often unclear what he means. That is to say, his theories and his definitions are squishy, which might be another term for easy to vary or ad hoc. Denis might be saying something as innocuous as animals sometimes pass traits along via epigenetics instead of genetics, a claim that is trivially accepted as true by everyone. And in fact, I'll give you a quote here a little later on, but that is what he's actually saying. Or he might be claiming spontaneous generation of knowledge, a claim presumably no one, not even Noble, would make because it's obviously impossible. Or he might be saying something else, but what? So Hancock goes to the literature to try to define what Lamarckism is. He wants to explain how an evolutionary biologist like himself would understand Lamarckism in a more technical fashion. So he wants a definition of Lamarckism that is distinct from just regular plasticity and distinct from natural selection.

[00:48:48]  Bruce: Now, plasticity is the idea that a gene will manifest differently depending on the environment, that it has the knowledge to manifest one way in one environment and a different way in a different environment.

[00:48:57]  Unidentified speaker: No one doubts the reality of plasticity.

[00:49:00]  Bruce: This makes sense because genes could merely contain the knowledge of how to manifest differently depending on the environment, because that would help the survival of the organism. Moreover, Hancock accepts that things like epigenetics do exist, but he sees them merely as a new form of mutation.

[00:49:15]  Unidentified speaker: So, quote, this is around minute 34.

[00:49:19]  Bruce: Natural selection can shape gene regulatory networks such that they can themselves be responsive. Quote, if this is the case, then we're dealing with plasticity, not Lamarckian evolution, i.e. evolution can wire into gene regulatory networks the knowledge of how to respond to different environments. If epigenetics creates a new trait acquired in the lifetime of the animal and passes it along to the offspring and then the new trait survives via regular selection, then to Hancock, this should be understood to still be regular neo-Darwinian theory.

[00:49:55]  Unidentified speaker: Okay?

[00:49:56]  Bruce: Thus, Hancock sees Lamarckism as requiring something more than merely acquiring new traits, but as inductions of traits that are themselves adaptive. So, Hancock explains his point more technically using the Price equations.

[00:50:12]  Unidentified speaker: This is going to become a big deal from this point forward.

[00:50:14]  Bruce: I had never heard of the Price equations prior to watching this video, by the way. So, they are representations of any kind of biological system. The Price equations makes no assumptions about the specific mode of inheritance. It could be, say, cultural, according to Hancock, similar to substrate independence, we might say. Hancock points out that originally evolution was about any sort of heritable material and only later was narrowed specifically to DNA. At 4657, he says, thus, non-genetic inheritance is not a forgotten mechanism of evolution. And Hancock argues it is already incorporated into the theory. At 4831, he says, nothing we've discussed this thus far is outside the modern synthesis or at least outside of contemporary evolutionary theory. So Hancock's point is that the Price equations define what we technically mean by natural selection. At 4838, he says, indeed, in the version of the Price equations we just derived, adaption occurs solely through natural selection and hence it still rejects a Lamarckian mode of evolution. All the various proposals for Lamarckian evolution, whether we're talking about dogs, peacocks, or epigenetics, all follow the Price equations because they involve mutations or new variants, in other words, and then a survival of the fittest of best variants. Thus, Hancock considers them natural selection, not Lamarckian evolution. So he rejects all those examples as being Lamarckian because of the way he's choosing to define Lamarckian evolution. So, in The Sources of Adaptive Variation by Charlesworth et al.,

[00:52:04]  Bruce: he defines how we tell if something was Lamarckian. So this is the definition that Hancock's going with. A claim of Lamarckian evolution, according to Charlesworth, needs to establish three things. One, a given environmental treatment tends systematically to induce heritable, adaptive, epiallelic variants, that is epigenetic variants. Two, natural selection is not involved in the spread of such variants through populations. Three, the variants in question must be stably transmitted for many generations in the absence of the treatment of the environment. Okay, so once the new variant exists, if you take that environment away, it continues to spread as its own variant. So put in plain English, it only counts as Lamarckian if the environment produces epigenetic variations, not merely as a source of variation that is then selected via normal means, and then must be transmitted for generations afterwards, even without the environment that produced it. So at 5046, Hancock says, In the sources of adapted variation, if the environment induces a genetic change that is adaptive, but it's regular selection that causes it to spread, then all we've done is recreate the scenario modeled by the Price equations. [Lamarckian?] evolution supposes that environmental induction is itself a cause of adaption, not merely an extra source of variation for Darwinian selection to act upon. At 5518, he says, studies found very weak selective effects on epigenetic mutations.

[00:53:49]  Unidentified speaker: Johannes et al.

[00:53:50]  Bruce: found epigenetic transmission across eight generations. By the way, that's a lot more than I would have guessed, by far. And then he says, for mammals are more like three generations.

[00:54:01]  Unidentified speaker: Even that's more than I would have guessed.

[00:54:04]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:54:05]  Bruce: So 5908, he says, thus the present evidence for transgenerational epigenetic inheritance, i.e. non-genetic inheritance, is mixed, he says. It appears that plants, it might be an important source of variation, since the Weismann barrier is weak or non-existent in plants, given that their germ cells emerge directly from their somatic or body cells. Let me just say, first of all, let me say that that was a really surprising conclusion that he found. For me, probably not for any evolutionary biologist, but he's basically admitting that, at least in plants, epigenetics plays a really big role, and in animals not so much, but more than I would have expected. And then he says, and let me also say that I doubt that this is how Denis Noble defines Lamarckism. I doubt even Lamarck would have understood his own theory this way. So I think Noble has a squishier version of Lamarckism in mind. In The Music of Life, Noble says, Lamarckism, this is a quote from page 92, Lamarckism, the inheritance of acquired characteristics, is widely and wrongly thought to be the antithesis of Darwinism. So right there, he's defining Lamarckism as the inheritance of acquired characteristics, which Hancock is admitting exists.

[00:55:31]  Unidentified speaker: Okay?

[00:55:32]  Bruce: So note that Noble merely equates Lamarckism to inheritance of acquired characteristics through epigenetics. And Hancock's agreeing that that actually does happen. It's not a huge influence for animals, but it takes place. This is surely what I thought Lamarckism meant prior to watching Hancock's video. Also note that Noble is specifically claiming that Lamarckism is compatible with Darwin's original theory. And recall that Hancock has already admitted that this is correct. Recall neo-Darwinism, according to Hancock, was a new version of Darwinism that dropped the Lamarckian elements like pangenesis. Still, I like this more rigorous definition of Lamarckism that Hancock is offering, even though it isn't what I think Noble has in mind.

[00:56:20]  Unidentified speaker: I don't think it's what Lamarck had in mind.

[00:56:23]  Bruce: And the reason why I like it is because it forces Lamarckism out of the squishy zone so that it can finally be criticized. And this is something that I've made a big deal on this podcast out of. That the choice to make you theories not squishy so that they can be criticized is a choice. You can always make your theory immune to criticism by making it just kind of vague and squishy.

[00:56:44]  Unidentified speaker: Okay, I called that vague manning your theories.

[00:56:47]  Bruce: So Noble would probably say, oh, I'm being straw manned here. But if Lamarckism merely means any form of acquired characteristics, then the existence of any epigenetics, even if they wash out after three generations would count as Lamarckism. And under that specific definition, Noble would be correct that Lamarckism is back. But epigenetics has been accepted by neo-Darwinists for a very long time, 80 years, according to Hancock. So this isn't a very radical claim on its own. And indeed, human memes are even more obviously Lamarckian by this definition. So this takes Noble's seemingly radical claim that Lamarckism is back, and it makes you realize that you either have to accept it, it just means what Noble says it means, acquired characteristics, inheritance of acquired characteristics, in which case, yeah, sure, Lamarckism is back, who cares? It's an almost inanely uninteresting claim. Or you have to see him as claiming that Lamarckism is back in the more rigorous form that Hancock and other evolutionary biologists understand Lamarckism, which would be a radical claim if that were what Noble was claiming, okay? Because it's so much harder for, it's very hard to even imagine that ever coming back, okay? Thus Hancock's conclusion at one hour and 14 seconds, epigenetics is still a new and exciting field of inquiry. Future work will clarify the undoubtedly important roles of epigenetics in shaping trait variations and the ability of organisms to respond plastically to their environment.

[00:58:30]  Bruce: But no discovery thus far from anything in developmental or molecular biology has challenged the basic tenets of the modern synthesis or undermine natural selection as the sole force of adaption.

[00:58:44]  Unidentified speaker: Here I note two things.

[00:58:45]  Bruce: First, it's pretty clear Hancock and Noble are using different usages of the word Lamarckism. Second, they are even using different usages in the term natural selection, which to Hancock means anything at all that matches the Price equations, even if non-genetic inheritance is acquired in the life of the organism and inherited via epigenetics. I can appreciate Hancock's point that epigenetics wash out quickly, so they can't possibly be the driving force, as far as empirical tests have shown so far, behind evolution. That being the case, we can think of Noble as being nominally correct that Lamarckism is back, but it turns out to be a mountain out of a molehill.

[00:59:33]  Unidentified speaker: Now let's talk about natural genetic engineering.

[00:59:36]  Bruce: Hancock, at 1 hour 18 minutes 20 seconds, he says, The biochemist James Shapiro argues that organisms direct their own evolution. This they do by directly modifying their own DNA. Shapiro calls this natural genetic engineering, a term that, as you might have guessed, has also been seized by creationists. All throughout this, Hancock is trying to kind of, you know, guilt by association by showing that Noble and Shapiro are connected to creationists in some way. But if it's true, Hancock continues, it would certainly be a non-trivial action of purpose. Indeed, if an organism were capable of modifying its own DNA in service of adaption, it would be a remarkable departure from the modern synthetic paradigm. So it is interesting that Hancock is admitting that if natural genetic engineering, as Shapiro is suggesting, is true, if it actually is as true as Shapiro seems to think, he agrees it is a departure from the modern synthetic paradigm.

[01:00:43]  Unidentified speaker: So...

[01:00:46]  Peter: So is your central claim that Noble or Shapiro and Hancock are kind of talking past each other or arguing about words?

[01:00:57]  Unidentified speaker: That's a really good question.

[01:00:59]  Peter: Would you say that is that kind of where you're going with this?

[01:01:02]  Bruce: You know, I think I'm considering that possibility, but let's keep going.

[01:01:08]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[01:01:09]  Bruce: Let's consider the fact that maybe that's what's going on and maybe not.

[01:01:14]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[01:01:14]  Bruce: And but I'm certainly trying to make it obvious that that is a possibility we need to consider.

[01:01:20]  Unidentified speaker: And at least in some cases, I think they are talking past each other.

[01:01:22]  Bruce: It's less clear if that is the central disagreement, though.

[01:01:26]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[01:01:28]  Unidentified speaker: Fair enough.

[01:01:29]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[01:01:29]  Bruce: So now it's interesting that Hancock says that if natural genetic engineering were true, that would be a departure from modern synthetic paradigm.

[01:01:40]  Unidentified speaker: But isn't that what the immune system does?

[01:01:43]  Bruce: So Hancock never addresses this directly. So I'm going to call it out, and then I'm going to also ignore it. But I would guess that Hancock is unimpressed with the idea that the immune system is a form of natural genetic engineering, and would simply clarify that he meant modifications of DNA and sex cells. So Hancock's key point is this. One hour, 21 minutes, 40 seconds. It has been long established that transport—trans—transposon mobilization is overwhelmingly harmful to the host genome, as would be expected if they originate as selfish genomic parasites. So what are genomic parasites? They are genes that have learned to replicate themselves directly without the need for an organism and sexual selection. This is like where a lot of pathogens come from, is that there's some sort of mutation that allows the DNA to start replicating itself and it doesn't need sexual transmission anymore. Thus, in most organisms, this is quoting Hancock again, and thus in most organisms, a large portion of transposon elements, like ourselves, are silenced. And if these silencers are removed, mobile elements wreak havoc on the genome. Thus, for natural genetic engineering to rely so heavily on transposon mobilization, as Shapiro claims, certainly casts doubt on how good of an engineer a given cell is. So now at one hour, 23 minutes, 38 seconds, he says, Shapiro might cry foul, might hear cry foul. He'd point out that there is an ample studies documenting transposons contributing their regulatory apparatus to the host genome.

[01:03:23]  Unidentified speaker: And sometimes these can be helpful in stress response.

[01:03:26]  Bruce: Remember, we made a big deal about this idea of natural genetic engineering and a lot of the things that Shapiro is talking about happening in response to stress as a way of a survival mechanism. But I contend, Hancock continues, this is a misinterpretation of the causal direction. Hancock then gives us a hypothetical example using little bunny icons. He never calls them bunnies, but I'm going to. So around one hour and 23 minutes. So we have a group of bunnies. Their DNA contains genomic parasites, that is selfish transposable elements. So genes that will try to hop around if not silenced and rearrange the genome. They are currently silenced by methylation caused by another gene. Then suddenly a heat wave causes a stress event to the population of bunnies. This quote, allows the transposable elements to start to proliferate and transpose into other parts of the genome.

[01:04:21]  Unidentified speaker: That was quoting Hancock.

[01:04:23]  Bruce: But they are selfishly trying to replicate themselves, even at the expense of the bunnies. They aren't doing this for the benefit of the bunnies, of course. All they know is that quote, their silencer has been removed, and so they are starting, they start doing their thing.

[01:04:37]  Unidentified speaker: That was quoting Hancock again.

[01:04:39]  Bruce: It just so happens that some of the bunnies have transposable variants that are helpful in a heat wave. So this normally parasitic element actually boosts the bunnies' ability to survive through the heat wave. It outcompetes other bunnies in the population when those without the variants die off. Eventually the heat wave passes and the methylation starts back up again, silencing the transposons. So Hancock, one hour, 27 minutes and 22 seconds. Now none of this is to deny that transposons can and do get co-opted by the host genome to perform all sorts of tasks. Notice that he's admitting to at least a part of what Shapiro is claiming. But this co-option is done by the standard population genetic processes. If a transposon gets inserted into a region upstream of, say, a protein in need of a promoter, the protein can now make use of that transposon promoter and be favored by selection. That is, in effect, a mutation.

[01:05:41]  Unidentified speaker: So it still fits the Price equations, according to Hancock.

[01:05:44]  Bruce: The transposon insertion followed by selection, yet again a classic neo-Darwinian tale, he says. Here is where I take some issue with Hancock, though maybe not too much. It is not hard to see that Hancock's example is a pretty good explanation of exactly how the genome might have come to learn how to engineer itself. This bunny now carries in it both a gene that silences the transposon when there isn't a heat wave, plus a gene that unsilenced it right when it's needed most to create the promoter for the protein. Yes, of course, this wasn't purposeful, it was a random variant. But the variant now moves through the population precisely because it allows offspring of the surviving bunny an adaptive advantage. Now imagine that over time this continues to happen, hopefully, it happens multiple times over multiple generations, until it isn't that strange that this population of bunnies has a fairly sophisticated set of software that implements genomic change right when it needs it and turns it off when it doesn't. Indeed, the bunny may have evolved a learning algorithm that updates its own genes by this point. Now Hancock, whether he realizes it or not, just explained how natural genetic engineering really could come just by come to be using just regular evolutionary theory via the Price equations. Where he seems to be taking issue with Shapiro is over an assumption that Shapiro sees this as somehow purposeful. Surely, how it got initially created was not purposeful, but the end result really is now purposeful.

[01:07:21]  Bruce: Every bit as much as saying that the purpose of a heart is to pump blood. It would make perfect sense to now say this gene's purpose is to change the genome in case of a heat wave to increase survival value. So, I'm not clear how this example is really at odds with Shapiro's claims. It seems to me that Hancock interprets Shapiro as believing that the natural genetic engineering came to be was itself not via regular natural selection. But I do not read Shapiro that way, at least not in his blog post. And he does not come across to me as ever having said that. There seems to be a disagreement over how we can use the word purposeful. To Shapiro, this gene variant now has a purpose. Which is surely true if we use the word purpose is its regular layman sense. Hancock has an issue with using the word purpose this way because there was just regular natural variation and selection that created this variant. So no overall purpose of some designer. Hancock goes on to point out that most mutations of this sort, like all mutations, are deleterious and reduce fitness of the organism. Hancock claims this goes against the predictions of Shapiro's theory that it should make mutations on average beneficial. Now I'm unclear if this is a valid criticism or not. I've only read Shapiro's blog posts and he doesn't make any such claim in his blog posts. It may be in the wider group of things that Shapiro said, he has made a claim to the effect that mutations on average should be beneficial.

[01:09:04]  Unidentified speaker: If so, then I actually agree with Hancock that Shapiro is wrong, okay.

[01:09:09]  Unidentified speaker: But let me be honest here.

[01:09:12]  Bruce: Now having only read Shapiro's blog posts, he surely does give examples of mutations spreading too fast that standard evolutionary theory does not seem to allow for it.

[01:09:21]  Unidentified speaker: And that was what we did in the last episode.

[01:09:24]  Bruce: And that is exactly correct for the immune system. It hypermutates, but only part of the genome gets hypermutated, where it won't cause damage. Thus, its mutations are not likely to be deleterious to the organism. So at least we have one example, the immune system, where the average mutation is not deleterious. I'm sure this just isn't what Hancock had in mind. I'm trying to point out that Hancock isn't covering every possible case, right? That there are counter examples, that as a rule of thumb, he's probably right, but there's easy counter examples to it. And I just don't perceive Shapiro as making a general claim that the genome is so smart that most mutations are positive. If Shapiro is making that claim, then yes, I agree with Hancock for sure. And that is an empirical question. And from what I understand, it's incorrect, just empirically speaking. Overall, there seems to be a substantial agreement between Hancock and Shapiro.

[01:10:20]  Unidentified speaker: And I think that's what matters to me.

[01:10:22]  Unidentified speaker: Let's quickly cover what they agree upon.

[01:10:24]  Bruce: They agree the genome includes transposable elements that rewire the genes when under stress conditions, and that the process gets co-opted by evolution as positive mutations that increase overall fitness. The result is a gene variant that has a purpose to change the genome under stress. Neither seems to disagree over anything I just said. It is less clear what they disagree over. The main disagreement that I have discussed is whether or not we should call this process neo-Darwinian or not. Since Hancock considers any form of evolution that fits the Price equations, regardless of the source of information, DNA or not, and the source of mutation. So based on that, then yes, Shapiro's examples do fit Hancock's definition of neo-Darwinian evolution because they fit the Price equations. But for most people, it seems likely that you did not equate neo-Darwinian evolution with the Price equations. In which case, whether you realize it or not, you sort of agree with Shapiro that we're starting to push beyond neo-Darwinian evolution here. Regardless, it seems to me to now be more an argument over definition than a true disagreement. Note, there is one thing that they do seem, Hancock and Shapiro do seem to strongly disagree over, that strikes me as more legitimate. And that's whether or not there is junk DNA.

[01:11:39]  Unidentified speaker: And I'm with Hancock on this.

[01:11:41]  Bruce: Shapiro claims there is not junk DNA.

[01:11:43]  Unidentified speaker: I just don't even believe that.

[01:11:44]  Bruce: Okay, so Hancock says that's not true.

[01:11:46]  Unidentified speaker: I believe Hancock.

[01:11:49]  Bruce: That won't play a big role in what we're going to be discussing today, but I did want to kind of put that out there because that I think is a legitimate disagreement between them. Whereas whether we should call this purposeful, whether we should call this neo-Darwinian evolution or not, that seems to be more a matter of definitions. Interestingly, we talked a little bit about the central dogma of molecular biology. And Hancock goes over the fact that Shapiro and Noble get the central dogma of molecular biology wrong. Now, Hancock admits that nearly everybody gets this wrong, and that likely you were even taught it wrong in schools. And I'm not going to go into what it is, but let's just say that there was two versions of it. Crick's version is the correct version, and Watson's version is the incorrect version, from Crick and Watson, the Discoverers of DNA. And Watson's version, the incorrect version, is the one that caught on and got taught in schools, and shows up in textbooks, and is what you get taught in schools, and it's incorrect. So Hancock tries to position this argument something like this. Noble and Shapiro don't really have the necessary familiarity with evolutionary biology to even realize that they are criticizing a currently known to be incorrect version of the central dogma of molecular biology. However, if the phrase central dogma of molecular biology has come to be used in general to mean Watson's incorrect version of it, as Hancock is admitting is the case, then it seems to me that Noble is right to criticize it.

[01:13:20]  Bruce: This isn't any different than when I criticize, say, the pseudo-Deutsch theory of knowledge or the [crit-rat?] loophole. I'm sure a Hancock-like figure could easily point to me that I'm not criticizing the best version of these theories, as originally created by, say, Popper or Deutsch. Of course, this might well be true.

[01:13:39]  Unidentified speaker: But so what?

[01:13:40]  Bruce: I'm criticizing a commonly held theory that is wrong and needs criticism. I just don't see how that's a problem. And yes, part of my criticism will probably be, you're misinterpreting Popper here, okay? I should note that when I do claim that these theories are misunderstandings of Deutsch and Popper, that I get vehement pushback that these are Deutsch and Popper's theories that I'm criticizing. Further, both Deutsch and Popper are just vague enough that it's difficult to prove that I'm right, that they are misreading Deutsch, that these people are misreading Deutsch and Popper. Perhaps it is me that is misreading them, and actually Popper and Deutsch do hold false theories.

[01:14:20]  Unidentified speaker: That's not impossible, right?

[01:14:21]  Bruce: So I often just have to say, okay, suppose you're correct that these theories come from Deutsch and Popper, so what?

[01:14:28]  Unidentified speaker: They are still refuted theories and we need a new theory.

[01:14:32]  Bruce: I don't see a problem with Noble doing exactly the same thing here, okay? So I see Hancock's point that maybe they should instead tell, Noble should instead be telling people, what you think of as the central dogma is incorrect, here is the correct version. Which is what I do with the pseudo-Deutsch theory of knowledge and the [crit-lap-rat?] loophole.

[01:14:53]  Unidentified speaker: But the end result tends to be exactly the same.

[01:14:55]  Bruce: The person I'm talking to vehemently holds to the original bad theory and insists it comes from Deutsch and Popper respectively. I think a criticism of a bad theory is a criticism of a bad theory. What string of characters by which we label it shouldn't matter. The bottom line is that Hancock is here saying that Noble is correct in his criticism of what is widely understood to be the central dogma of molecular biology. And to me, that seems like Hancock is admitting Noble is correct here. What about Shapiro's claim that innovation is the most important part of evolution because selection only sifts through innovations that are provided. Note that Kenneth Stanley made the same claim back in episodes 88 and 96. He literally claimed in episode 88, this is the one where I'm going over his work, that selection plays no role in creativity and in fact reduces creativity. So Stanley imagined a version of the earth where nothing gets selected. He argues that the creativity of evolution would be enhanced because the search algorithm would search further and wider in such an environment. Now, I suspect this claim will be very off-putting from Kenneth Stanley to many crit rats, particularly the Deutschian ones. I've had the Deutschian crit rats argue this point with me quite forcefully, insisting that selection is a requirement for creativity. So is Stanley and Shapiro wrong about this? Okay, this claim that the innovations actually, it's the mutations of the innovations that are the source of creativity and that selection plays no role in it.

[01:16:33]  Bruce: So I would have thought Hancock would have argued this is wrong because this seems like a kind of out-there, you've never heard this before kind of viewpoint that I know when I bring up to people, they just shut it down immediately. Like there is really strong dogma against this. Hancock, interestingly, agrees with Shapiro on this. At 1 hour, 34 minutes and 5 seconds, he says, There are some who claim that selection is itself a sort of creative force of evolution, but I tend to disagree, mutations are the creative force of evolution.

[01:17:07]  Unidentified speaker: So that's another interesting overlap between Hancock's and Shapiro's viewpoints here.

[01:17:14]  Bruce: At 1 hour, 35 minutes and 42 seconds, Hancock says, This finally brings us to the last of Denis Noble and the Third Way's critique of neo-Darwinism, an abhorrence of Richard Dawkins and his notion of selfish [James?]. Now we've seen up to this point that Hancock has some pretty good arguments, but that there's also some surprising agreements. Sometimes the agreements are hidden due to disagreements over wording. But surely Hancock is going to disagree with Noble and company over Dawkins' interpretation of Darwinism, right?

[01:17:47]  Unidentified speaker: Right?

[01:17:48]  Bruce: Because we all know that Dawkins' interpretation of Darwinism is the premier understanding of Neo-Darwinian evolution, right?

[01:17:57]  Unidentified speaker: Nope!

[01:17:59]  Bruce: Noble, sorry, Hancock, does not see it that way. He quote says, in this final section, this is the fourth point, he's disagreed with the first three points, he's going to the fourth point. In this final section, we're going to finally find some common ground with Denis Noble and some of his critiques here.

[01:18:17]  Unidentified speaker: I quite agree with, says Hancock.

[01:18:20]  Bruce: Now, if you are like me, you pretty much thought that Dawkins' version of Darwinian evolution was Neo-Darwinian evolution. That is why I read Peter's summary from the previous episode. And I don't think most people would have ever thought that there was anything wrong with that summary, because in their minds, probably widely in most people's minds, Neo-Darwinian evolution equals Dawkins' Selfish Gene Theory.

[01:18:45]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[01:18:48]  Unidentified speaker: So recall in the previous episodes.

[01:18:50]  Bruce: Also, I guess that was why, when Peter said that at the very beginning of the last episode, I kind of called it out and said, remember that, mark it. And honestly, that's what I thought Neo-Darwinism meant too.

[01:19:02]  Unidentified speaker: Like I'm no different than Peter on this.

[01:19:04]  Bruce: So I was in shock when I realized that Hancock absolutely does not see it that way. So it turns out that evolutionary biologists like Hancock, or at least so Hancock claims, I mean, I guess we don't know for sure if Hancock's correct or not, but this is what he's saying, is that they just do not see Dawkins' theory as equivalent to Neo-Darwinian modern evolutionary theory. On the contrary, they understand the gene-centric view of evolution to be questionable and to not be a correct understanding of Neo-Darwinism. Now, this really surprised me when I watched his video. Okay, so at one hour, 36 minutes and 47 seconds, he says, anyone who has read any of the Nobles' papers or listened to these podcasts he's been on, knows he's really, really obsessed with Richard Dawkins. Like, if he's going to cite a single evolutionary biologist, it's going to be Dawkins, and it's almost always his 1976 book, The Selfish Gene. Hancock points out that to Noble, Neo-Darwinism is a term for Dawkins' selfish gene.

[01:20:10]  Unidentified speaker: An interpretation of Darwinism.

[01:20:13]  Bruce: One hour, 38 minutes, 30 seconds.

[01:20:16]  Unidentified speaker: This is Hancock, this is Noble speaking here.

[01:20:20]  Unidentified speaker: Like, he's playing Noble's words.

[01:20:22]  Bruce: I debated the whole question with the main exponent of Neo-Darwinism, Richard Dawkins, Noble says. When asked if Neo-Darwinism was a term that referred to the selfish gene theory, Noble responded, this is at one hour, 39 minutes, 14 seconds.

[01:20:39]  Unidentified speaker: And again, this is Noble talking, not Hancock.

[01:20:42]  Bruce: Neo-Darwinism that became the selfish gene, aka the modern synthesis or gene-centered theory of evolution, is all the same thing.

[01:20:53]  Unidentified speaker: That's it.

[01:20:54]  Unidentified speaker: That's the best definition.

[01:20:57]  Bruce: Hancock claims this is all incorrect. One hour, 37 minutes, 18 seconds. Noble credits this view almost exclusively to Dawkins, as if Dawkins not only came up with the idea of the selfish genes, but that he has somehow risen to the level of an architect of the modern synthesis, that Dawkins' ideas are akin to those of Ernst Mayr or R.

[01:21:19]  Unidentified speaker: A.

[01:21:20]  Bruce: Fisher or something, and all biologists have just accepted his word blindly as gospel.

[01:21:26]  Unidentified speaker: Whoa.

[01:21:27]  Unidentified speaker: Consider me floored.

[01:21:29]  Unidentified speaker: In retrospect, I should have seen this coming.

[01:21:31]  Bruce: Hancock's history of neo-Darwinian evolution in the modern synthesis placed it long before the idea of the selfish gene. So it makes sense that the phrase neo-Darwinism and even modern synthesis cannot be referring to Dawkins' selfish gene interpretation of Darwinism.

[01:21:46]  Peter: Well, according to ChatGPT, this term goes back to the early to mid-20th century, and all it means is a synthesis of Mendelian genetics and Darwinism, which obviously predates Dawkins' 1976 book. But that his book, maybe it is, again, an emphasis kind of a thing where his book shifted the focus to the role of natural selection being dominated by genes.

[01:22:25]  Unidentified speaker: That's kind of what I'm getting.

[01:22:26]  Unidentified speaker: Yes.

[01:22:27]  Bruce: So you got the dates exactly right. Neo-Darwinism was coined in the late 19th century, so it wasn't even the 20th century. Modern synthesis is 1930 to 1940.

[01:22:38]  Unidentified speaker: Dawkins' book is 1976.

[01:22:40]  Bruce: So there are decades between these theories. So it was impossible that Neo-Darwinism could have meant the selfish gene interpretation of Darwinism. Despite this, I was floored when I realized that I completely misunderstood what Neo-Darwinism meant, at least to an evolutionary biologist like Hancock. So Hancock, by the way, you just said maybe it shifted the emphasis. So let's continue with that realization because that could be. It could be that these are...

[01:23:09]  Unidentified speaker: Theories don't stay the same.

[01:23:10]  Bruce: So it could have been that the selfish gene book, that it made us rethink Neo-Darwinian evolution and modern synthesis and to see things from the gene-centric, the gene's eye view. And maybe that then went on to be the kind of the accepted interpretation of Neo-Darwinism. Maybe that's why we think of Neo-Darwinism as meaning Dawkins' theory.

[01:23:34]  Unidentified speaker: Hancock continues.

[01:23:35]  Bruce: One hour, 39 minutes, 29 seconds. The fact that Noble equates the modern synthesis, Neo-Darwinism and gene-centricism as the same thing is a stunning testament to his misreading of the history of evolutionary theory. Oops, apparently that's not what Hancock was saying. He is now going to argue that that is just wrong, that Dawkins' theory is not the modern way we would think of Neo-Darwinism.

[01:24:03]  Unidentified speaker: So we're just talking about terms, though, right?

[01:24:05]  Bruce: Surely modern Neo-Darwinians all accept selfish gene theory as the best explanation of Darwinism, right? Hancock then says, one hour, 39 minutes, 36 seconds, to virtually all the architects of modern synthesis, as well as Fisher, Wright and Haldane, natural selection acted on individuals, not genes. That is the modern synthesis is not gene centric, Hancock says.

[01:24:35]  Unidentified speaker: Again, consider me floored.

[01:24:38]  Unidentified speaker: So he's not claiming that.

[01:24:39]  Bruce: He's not merely trying to say that these came before, but maybe now the term refers to gene centricism. He's saying modern evolutionary theory is not gene centric.

[01:24:54]  Unidentified speaker: That is not the accepted paradigm of neo-Darwinism.

[01:24:59]  Unidentified speaker: That's what Hancock's actually saying.

[01:25:01]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[01:25:03]  Bruce: So I had no idea whatsoever prior to watching Hancock's video that evolutionary biologists do not widely accept gene centricism. Interestingly, Hancock goes on to agree with Noble's criticism of gene centricism, referring to them as subtle. Hancock quotes Noble approvingly, and this is the only place he does in his criticism of the Human Genome Project and how it has yet to produce any cures to the supposedly genetic diseases like heart disease or cancer. At one hour, 42 minutes, 56 seconds, Hancock says, but to people like Noble and myself, for the record, this promise of the Human Genome Project finding genetic cures was built on a false premise. It was assumed that all of these things even had a genetic basis in the first place. However, in the 20 years since, we still don't know anything about the genetic basis for any of these big killers. At one hour, 45 minutes, and 58 seconds, I'm also largely sympathetic to Noble's critique of genetic reductionism, largely because it can slip dangerously close to hereditarianism. So now let's look at Hancock's own summary of his views of the Third Way. At one hour, 46 minutes, 46 seconds, he says, honestly, this has been the consistent theme throughout the Third Way. Supporters have consistently misrepresented or just misunderstood the history and development of evolutionary theory. They've straw-manned arguments by the proponents of the modern synthesis. He then gives a specific example of how the Third Way is incorrect, taken from Carl Zimmer's account of an exchange between Denis Noble and David Shuker at a Third Way conference.

[01:26:53]  Bruce: There's an experiment where they cut off the tails of bacteria so they can't swim, and in less than four days the bacteria are swimming again. Noble's conclusion is, this strategy is to produce rapid evolutionary genome change in response to the unfavorable environment. Shuker was unsatisfied and asked Noble to comment on the mechanism of how it worked. According to Zimmer, who is a journalist, but obviously one that's way more sympathetic to Shuker, Shuker's viewpoint, Noble was unable to give more than a vague answer about it being related to, quote, networks and regulation and a desperate search for a solution to a crisis. And then at one hour, 50 minutes, Hancock says, while Noble was, this is Hancock quoting the journalist now, while Noble was struggling, according to Zimmer, to respond, Shuker went back to the paper on an iPad, and now he read the abstract in a booming voice. Our results demonstrate that natural selection can rapidly rewire regulatory networks, Shuker said.

[01:28:03]  Unidentified speaker: He put down the iPad.

[01:28:05]  Bruce: So, it's a perfect, beautiful example of rapid neo-Darwinian evolution, he claimed. In short, the genes did in fact ignore the schoolroom version of Darwinism, and instead did hypermutation to, within the lifetime of the organism, change the genome and adapt in real time. But because this hypermutation process itself follows the Price equations, Hancock, Zimmer, Shuker broadly understand neo-Darwinian evolution such that this would still be considered regular, old, neo-Darwinian evolution.

[01:28:38]  Unidentified speaker: So, let's be clear.

[01:28:39]  Bruce: This example shows that evolutionary biologists do not understand neo-Darwinian evolution as gene-centric or via sexual replication. They understand it broadly as anything that follows the Price equations. The information does not even have to be passed via DNA to count as neo-Darwinism. That is why epigenetics aren't seen as refuting it. And if it happens quickly in response to the environment, that is still, to them, is still considered neo-Darwinian. So, 1 hour, 50 minutes, 55 seconds, Hancock says, this is the fate of all third-wave claims. They are specific details about specific systems. They are the proximate mechanisms. But what evolutionary theory is, is all about the ultimate mechanisms. What is the source of the origin of these systems, and what allows them to spread and be maintained in a population? The answer to these questions lies in the basic modern synthetic paradigm, mutation, selection, and drift. By the way, drift basically means the random events that lead to random fluctuations in the inherited frequencies. Usually, alleles, if we're talking DNA, and is unrelated to selection itself. Obviously, there's just a certain amount of natural drift that just takes place.

[01:29:57]  Unidentified speaker: It's got nothing to do with mutation or selection.

[01:30:01]  Unidentified speaker: To Hancock, that is all there is to it.

[01:30:03]  Bruce: Neo-Darwinian evolution is non-gene-centric, does not require DNA, and really the thing that makes it neo-Darwinian is that it does mutation, selection, and drift. To summarize Hancock then, neo-Darwinian evolution is anything that follows the Price equations and has nothing to do with genetic replicators.

[01:30:25]  Unidentified speaker: Epigenetic ones are fine.

[01:30:27]  Bruce: Nor with seeing genes as central or as the blueprints. Hancock is denying any of that is central to neo-Darwinian evolution. Or put another way, the correct theory of natural selection says nothing specific about DNA or genes. Now up to this point, you're probably thinking, Bruce just spent most of his time saying positive things about the third way, so he must be against Hancock's claims and in favor of the third way claims.

[01:30:55]  Unidentified speaker: You would be wrong.

[01:30:57]  Bruce: In every conceivable way, Hancock's view is the better view here, at least so far.

[01:31:02]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[01:31:03]  Bruce: Yes, I am claiming Noble and Shapiro are saying something worth hearing. They are right to the degree that there are legitimate misunderstandings of natural selection, and that is a problem.

[01:31:13]  Unidentified speaker: And we'll consider that question in a moment.

[01:31:16]  Bruce: But there is no doubt that Hancock has explained this way better than Noble and company. Put bluntly, Hancock is correct, but the correct way to understand Darwinian evolution or natural selection is the Price equations that define hard to vary principles of evolution and are, to use an analogy, substrate neutral, i.e. they don't care if we're talking about DNA and genes or not. I'm kind of misusing the term substrate neutral here. And Hancock's definition of Lamarckism is also hard to vary in that he's quite precise in how he defines it so that his view would be easy to falsify if he was wrong. But in fact, he can't be falsified presumably because he's correct, or at least more correct than Noble. By comparison, Noble and Shapiro are squishy in how they understand terms like natural selection and Lamarckism. When Noble and Shapiro referred to natural selection, they seem to solely mean the simplistic version taught in school, i.e. that there's a set of genes that gradually change over a very long period of very slow mutations, one base pair at a time. Likewise, when Noble speaks of Lamarckism, he seems to mean something like non-genetic inheritance via epigenetics that take place in the lifetime of the organism, and fails to mention that this form of Lamarckism easily and quite naturally fits into the Price equations, which is the best way to understand natural selection, making Noble's form of Lamarckism really just a subset of natural selection. So now, as a side note, this also explains why Deutsch understands Lamarckism as a form of knowledge spontaneous generation.

[01:32:53]  Bruce: Hancock's definition of Lamarckism is falsifiable. He's quite specific of what a counter example would look like, but also basically impossible. If it did take place, it would presumably break everything we think we know about how knowledge is created via variation and selection. It would be indistinguishable from spontaneous generation. That's what Deutsch was actually getting at, and why he defined Lamarckism that way. So I see Deutsch and Hancock ultimately as agreeing on this. The Popperian analysis is pretty straightforward here. Noble and Shapiro's squishy theories and definitions are not preferred to Hancock's hard-to-vary theories, because we know exactly how to falsify Hancock, i.e. he lays out precisely what would count as a form of Lamarckism that violates the Price equations. By comparison, Noble and Shapiro are correct in that there is no doubt that there is such things as non-genetic inheritance, epigenetics, non-entirely random mutation, i.e. genes being somewhat smart, and so they control the mutation to be more beneficial. But this really only falsifies the schoolroom version of natural selection, not the far broader and more precise Price equations version of natural selection. So theory-wise, we should go with Hancock and Price, not Noble and Shapiro. Now that being said, it was due to Noble and Shapiro that I discovered I had an incorrect gene-centric understanding of natural selection and Darwinian evolution.

[01:34:31]  Bruce: I only became aware of the gene-neutral Price equation version of natural selection due to trying to research what I had read in Shapiro to see if he was correct or not. And basically, if you scrape away the vibes and look only at the content, we can summarize Hancock's view as saying something like this. Yes, you learned evolution wrong in school, and Noble and Shapiro are basically correct about that. But really, the correct way to understand natural selection is the Price equations approach. Sure, you've never heard of that, and it doesn't get taught in schools well. But once you adopt that view, all these non-genetic evolution turns out to still be a form of natural selection, and it isn't really some kind of separate Lamarckian theory. So let's take seriously Hancock's claim that natural selection means mutation, selection, and drift in any form. So unless the third way can show examples of evolution that do not boil down to mutation, selection, and drift of any kind, they are not even challenging neo-Darwinian evolution, as Hancock and evolutionary biologists understand that term. Now, as I mentioned, I sure did not know this was how evolutionary biologists understood the term neo-Darwinian evolution.

[01:35:53]  Unidentified speaker: And in fact, I'm floored that this is the case.

[01:35:56]  Bruce: Why did I or we, apparently many of us, think that neo-Darwinian evolution was a term that referred to selfish gene theory, why didn't our years in biology class correct this misunderstanding? Or we may be just stupid laypeople and pretty much all smart scientists have this correct? This is really an empirical question, so let's actually test this question, using real life examples. This is quoting Shapiro, page XVI from his book. At the symposium, a highly respected oncologist informed us that research grants proposals in the National Cancer Institute, NCI, are not considered seriously if they do not accept the fundamental premise of the modern synthesis, namely, that genomic change in cancer tumor evolution results from the action of accidental mutations and natural selection. Okay, so to be clear, the NCI, at least according to this oncologist, is claiming that the idea of accidental mutations by regulatory regular natural selection is the basis for cancer mutation.

[01:37:02]  Unidentified speaker: And if you think otherwise, you won't get funded.

[01:37:05]  Bruce: There is a good chance my audience just went, wait, of course it is.

[01:37:09]  Unidentified speaker: How could it not be natural selection and mutation?

[01:37:12]  Unidentified speaker: Ah, now we're starting to get to the key question.

[01:37:15]  Bruce: Consider this example from Shapiro. According to Shapiro here, it turns out that tumor cells, often when they become more dangerous, use deeply evolved DNA damage responses shared by plants and animals to create radically new genome structures, enabling them to grow unceasingly, metastasize in new tissue in the body and resist chemotherapy. Contrary to what conventional evolutionary wisdom teaches about the long periods of time needed for major hereditary changes to accumulate, these complex genome modification responses in cancer obviously occur within the span of a single human lifetime, and often within a few cell division cycles in laboratory experiments. Moreover, it is becoming clear that certain highly toxic chemotherapies can trigger the very macroevolutionary changes that convert tolerable tumors into unstoppable lethal malignancies. In other words, taking a 21st century view of somatic tumor macroevolution may lead us to extending life expectancies of patients with cancer by understanding better the genomic consequences of the therapies we apply to treat the disease and moderating their use to avoid triggering a fatal macroevolutionary cascade. That was all from pages XVI to XVII. So when I read this passage, that may have been a little bit hard to solve, to parse, because Shapiro talks with really big terms, but I realized something. I had no idea that cancer cells evolve.

[01:38:50]  Unidentified speaker: I would have assumed they did.

[01:38:52]  Bruce: They did so more or less similar to regular organisms. But if that's true, the process of mutation would be very, very slow and there would be no real need for concern. I also had no idea whatsoever that cancer cells adapt to treatment via hypermutation. I mean, like that's what he was trying to say in that last quote that's a little bit hard to parse. He's saying the cancer cells, when you treat them, they will, just like a bacteria responding to antibodies, they will increase the rate of the hypermutation until they become resistant to the cure. So the issue here is that Shapiro words this as evolution doesn't happen through natural selection and mutation, when what he really means is doesn't happen solely through the kinds of simplistic natural selection and mutation that you've been taught in school, i.e. via vertical transfer via generations. This is going to prove the key misunderstanding that emerges between third-way types and the more mainstream, but knowledgeable evolutionary biologists. Mainstream evolutionary biologists are going to say, look, the Price equations, i.e. mutation and natural selection, is mutation and natural selection all the way down. The third-wayers are going to say, yes, but you now mean something totally different by those terms than what everybody else thinks those terms mean. And the mainstreamers are going to respond, what are you talking about?

[01:40:23]  Unidentified speaker: You're still describing exactly what we mean by mutation and natural selection.

[01:40:27]  Bruce: And a huge part of the argument is going to be over whether or not the term natural selection and the term mutation means what you were probably taught in schools, i.e. that there is a specific sex cell with a specific gene base pair that gets mutated by a cosmic ray and accidentally gives the offspring an advantage that causes it to replicate versus what actually happens in real life, which is far, far, far messier. For example, the fact that the cancer cells have actual learning algorithms that exploit to intentionally mutate in partially random but partially non-random ways specifically to overcome a treatment that's being used to kill them.

[01:41:07]  Unidentified speaker: So this isn't so weird.

[01:41:09]  Bruce: I mean, this is basically what we learned back in episode 77, how the immune system works. The immune system would be useless if it could only respond to pathogens that had existed in the history of the genes.

[01:41:22]  Peter: So cancer is an example of Lamarckism.

[01:41:24]  Unidentified speaker: Is that what I'm getting?

[01:41:27]  Bruce: I mean, yes, depending on how you define Lamarckism, I guess.

[01:41:30]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[01:41:31]  Bruce: Yet when it comes down to it, the immune system or cancer cell is still doing something just like natural selection and mutation. It's just over the lifetime of a cell instead of an organism. The mutations aren't pure chance, but they are quite intentional as a response to a challenge. So this is still neo-Darwinian evolution. Is this still neo-Darwinian evolution or not? If you decide neo-Darwinian evolution slash modern synthesis specifically means gene-centric mutation of sex cells, then Shapiro is not describing neo-Darwinian evolution slash modern synthesis anymore.

[01:42:08]  Unidentified speaker: This is a new theory.

[01:42:09]  Bruce: But if you decide neo-Darwinian evolution slash modern synthesis actually means the Price equations, as Hancock and apparently, according to him, all evolutionary biologists assume, then you are going to look at Shapiro and say, wait, this is just neo-Darwinian evolution and modern synthesis. There's no there there. I suppose what I'm arguing is that both of these views are in their own way correct, for neo-Darwinian evolution and modern synthesis simply does not have the same meaning for everyone. Okay, but I can hear you protest, laymen don't count. Sure, Bruce, you misunderstood, and maybe even you were taught wrong in school, but yes, of course, they teach simplified and false views of things. I mean, think about how they used to, as a child, they probably taught you about electrons orbiting a nucleus, and it's totally not true. And like, they know it's not true, but they lie to you as a child, they tell you electrons orbit the nucleus, because they know that you're going to understand it easier, if they teach it to you that way. Okay, so it's just not that uncommon for us to intentionally lie to school children with a simplified view of a theory.

[01:43:19]  Unidentified speaker: How is this any different?

[01:43:21]  Bruce: Okay, now, if the misunderstandings were strictly held to, say, elementary school children or even high school students. Okay, but keep in mind that I was taught wrong in college biology as well, right? So okay, maybe I can hear you say, laymen still don't count. Maybe we shouldn't even expect college students to be taught the real truth about our theories in a class. It's only a 100-level biology class.

[01:43:44]  Unidentified speaker: It's meant for non-biology students.

[01:43:47]  Bruce: So the key point here is that we should expect better, not of Bruce and Peter, but of Shapiro and Noble. They should have been well aware that neo-Darwinian evolution was really the Price equations, not Dawkins' selfish gene theory. But if this is what you were arguing, you've now got a new problem to deal with because Shapiro just gave you a specific example of where the National Cancer Institute had misunderstood neo-Darwinian evolution as well.

[01:44:17]  Unidentified speaker: And they make decisions to ex-

[01:44:18]  Bruce: were making decisions to exclude research based on that misunderstanding. So at least for the NCI, there is apparently, apparently there is a there there in Shapiro's criticisms. Okay, but maybe that's just one more one-off example, right? So you might be thinking, tell me Bruce, do you have any more examples than this one? Isn't there, isn't this, isn't it usually just laymen that misunderstand? Maybe Bruce is cherry picking here. How about a prominent scientist then? Recall that according to Hancock, the Dawkins selfish gene version of Darwinian evolution is not the best interpretation of evolution. And he claims neo-Darwinism is not gene centric. But, David Deutsch claims otherwise. From The Fabric of Reality, this is page 176. This gene-based understanding of life regarding organisms as part of the environment of genes has implicitly been the basis for biology since Darwin. But it was overlooked until at least the 1960s and not fully understood until Richard Dawkins published The Selfish Gene in 1976 and The Extended Phenotype in 1982.

[01:45:33]  Bruce: Deutsch continues along this line on page 334. It is specifically Dawkins' version of Darwinism that has become the prevailing theory of evolution in the pragmatic sense. Dawkins elaborated Darwin's theory in its modern form as the theory of replicators. When we talk about David Deutsch's Four Strands, we do not mean Darwin's evolution. To Deutsch, the founders of the current Four Strands are, from page 335, Popper, Turing, Everett and Dawkins.

[01:46:07]  Unidentified speaker: So now we have a problem.

[01:46:08]  Unidentified speaker: Who is correct?

[01:46:09]  Bruce: Zach Hancock, who is an actual evolutionary biologist or world-famous physicist David Deutsch? Are we going to claim that Zach Hancock is just outright incorrect and that Neo-Darwinian evolution is just outright incorrect and that Neo-Darwinian evolution actually is Dawkins' gene-centric selfish gene version? If so, then apparently Noble and company were actually correct about their main point, that Neo-Darwinian evolution is modernly equated to Dawkins' interpretation of evolution. Or we're going to claim that Hancock is correct. Neo-Darwinian evolution is based only on the gene-neutral Price equations, and that it's David Deutsch that has misunderstood what Neo-Darwinian evolution is. If so, then isn't that a tacit admission that the level of misunderstanding of Neo-Darwinian evolution reaches far beyond mere layman? If so, Noble and company are actually correct when they claim that Neo-Darwinian evolution has come to mean the Dawkins interpretation, and Hancock's key counter-argument against them must be understood as itself the misunderstanding. It would appear that we have to choose between these two bad options. There doesn't seem to be any middle ground we can jump to. Recall also that Deutsch has so strongly adopted the gene-centric version of Darwinism, that he has made it the most prominent feature of his constructor theory of knowledge, namely the portion that I have called the two-sources hypothesis, that there are only two sources of knowledge, genes and [means/memes?].

[01:47:43]  Bruce: Consider that Zach Hancock's view, which he claims is the view held by any competent evolutionary biologist, is at odds with Deutsch's two-sources hypothesis, since for example epigenetics can be considered a source of knowledge, i.e. a source of mutation, albeit not yet believed to be a major one since they don't persist for more than eight generations.

[01:48:05]  Unidentified speaker: Okay, but eight generations is nothing to sneeze at.

[01:48:08]  Bruce: So this exchange between Hancock and the Third Way poses an interesting problem for Deutsch's theories. Apparently, both sides of this argument reject Deutsch's gene-centric Dawkins version of evolution. Noble and company are arguing that Dawkins' version is the overwhelmingly accepted view of Darwinian evolution today, and they're giving examples of how it's wrong. Hancock is not denying the examples they raise, and he's claiming they're correct. He's just denying that we should have ever understood neo-Darwinian evolution as equivalent to the Dawkins' gene-centric view.

[01:48:43]  Unidentified speaker: And this is what they're disagreeing over.

[01:48:45]  Bruce: Both are agreeing Deutsch's version is incorrect.

[01:48:50]  Unidentified speaker: Now, of course, this doesn't prove Deutsch wrong.

[01:48:51]  Bruce: It could be that Deutsch's theory, including the two sources hypothesis, is correct, and Hancock and Noble are each partially correct and partially wrong.

[01:48:59]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[01:49:00]  Bruce: I'm trying to make a point here, though, that there is no way to read Deutsch's two sources hypothesis from his work and read his version of The Four Strands and not realize that Hancock must be at least partially wrong about something.

[01:49:16]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[01:49:18]  Bruce: Interestingly, regardless of where you land on this point, it would appear the third way are seen to making some sort of fair point. Hancock must be off base in his claim that neo-Darwinism hasn't come to be widely equated to gene-centric Dawkins interpretation. If even a prominent scientist like David Deutsch thinks it is, regardless of whether he's correct or not, then it is apparently isn't mere laymen that are confused according to Hancock on this point. Okay, I hear you argue, but David Deutsch isn't a biologist.

[01:49:48]  Unidentified speaker: Maybe non-biologists get this wrong.

[01:49:50]  Bruce: Maybe even occasionally biologists get this wrong. But do you have more examples, Bruce, of examples of biologists misunderstanding neo-Darwinism as the Dawkins version? In fact, we covered more examples in our first episode, the previous episode. I just didn't make a big deal out of them at the time, but here they are again from Wikipedia on Barbara McClintock. McClintock noted unusual color patterns in the leaves.

[01:50:14]  Unidentified speaker: This is the maize corn.

[01:50:17]  Bruce: For example, one leaf had two albino patches with almost identical size located side by side on the leaf. When comparing the chromosomes of the current generation of the plants with the parent generation, she found certain parts of the chromosome had switched positions. This refuted the popular genetic theory of the time that genes were fixed in their position on chromosomes.

[01:50:37]  Unidentified speaker: Also recall this quote from Shapiro.

[01:50:42]  Bruce: The ideas of genetic transposition and control of gene expression by these non-coding mobile elements were heretical notions that did not fit the narrow confines of the modern synthesis concept of genome function and variation. Barbara McClintock told me how angry looks from her colleagues greeted her after the first presentation on controlling elements at the Cold Spring Harbor Symposium in the 1950s. Barbara McClintock went on to win a Nobel Prize. But she was hated by her colleagues because this was a discovery that changed, that went against what they thought evolution allowed for.

[01:51:26]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[01:51:27]  Bruce: Now you can easily look back now and say, well, that was dumb.

[01:51:31]  Unidentified speaker: They shouldn't have been upset because this still fits the Price equations.

[01:51:35]  Unidentified speaker: It's still natural selection.

[01:51:38]  Bruce: But that memo didn't make it to any of her colleagues.

[01:51:41]  Unidentified speaker: That's a large group of biologists, right?

[01:51:44]  Bruce: Also recalled, the Surgeon General wrongly declared, from the previous episode, declared the war on infectious disease as won, because the studies have shown bacteria should only be able to adapt at a relatively slow rate to antibiotics, only to then have superbugs adapt to antibiotics far faster than theory said should be possible. Due to the bacteria's ability to gather immune gene variants, from a wider population via horizontal transfer of genes via plasmids. From page 22 of Shapiro, Quote, There were problems both with the science and the new public health policy based on it. The Surgeon General misunderstood the bacteria, which followed their own evolutionary rules and did not listen to what the scientists said they should do. Although experimentally confirmed in the laboratory, the mutation theory of antibiotic resistance failed to account for most cases in the real world. Resistance continued to spread among bacteria isolated in the clinics around the globe. Does having the Surgeon General have a misunderstanding of neo-Darwinian evolution count? Would that then falsify Hancock's assumption that this is super well known and that there's no misunderstandings? Can we at least agree that even if Noble is technically incorrect that neo-Darwinian evolution equates to the Dawkins interpretation, that he is at least correct that this misunderstanding is widespread, even among scientists and biologists? And if so, doesn't that mean that his criticisms are valid? This is similar to the problem around the central dogma of molecular biology.

[01:53:15]  Bruce: Sure, you can say actually Noble is just misunderstanding what neo-Darwinism actually is. But if the term neo-Darwinism is widely misunderstood to be the Dawkins version of evolution, at what point do we have to admit that the phrase neo-Darwinism has come to mean the false version of the theory?

[01:53:33]  Unidentified speaker: And thus, Noble's and Shapiro's criticism is correct.

[01:53:37]  Bruce: Another interesting aspect of this that I want to quickly mention is the fact that David Deutsch's gene-centric view of knowledge, other than memes, of course, is in fact a reductionist view of biology, exactly like Noble claims gene-centrism is. Noble, page 16, from Music of Life, We also need to recognize that much of what is stated about genes at the reductionist level comes close to circularity. Here you might object, but Deutsch admits this is correct. From page 176 of Beginning of Infinity, or was it Fabric of Reality?

[01:54:10]  Unidentified speaker: I think it's Fabric of Reality.

[01:54:11]  Bruce: The great explanatory theories of Darwin in modern versions such as that propounded by Dawkins and of modern biochemistry are reductive.

[01:54:22]  Unidentified speaker: That's a quote.

[01:54:24]  Unidentified speaker: There's a common misunderstanding I want to clarify.

[01:54:25]  Bruce: There's nothing wrong with reductive theories per se. There is no doubt that reductive theories have been a powerful way to understand science and to come to understand the world. Deutsch's actual view is that reductive explanations are not more fundamental than emergent explanations. The misunderstanding that reductive explanations are more fundamental, he refers to that as reductionism. But he never intended to imply that reductive theories themselves are therefore somehow invalid. Perhaps surprisingly, even Denis Noble admits that the reductive view of biology as found in Dawkins' theories has been invaluable and we can't do without the gene-centric view.

[01:55:03]  Unidentified speaker: I didn't get a quote for that one, but he does say that in one of his interviews.

[01:55:07]  Unidentified speaker: He talks about how needed it was and how important it was.

[01:55:11]  Bruce: He just is arguing that we need to look at also emergent theories and not only look at the reductive ones. So Noble's real point here, he claims, is that we should not see the gene-centric view as fundamental because emergent explanations are often better or more important to explaining evolution. So to summarize, Noble and Shapiro are raising valid, specific issues and Hancock is agreeing with that much. But Hancock is claiming that these issues are not at odds with the correct view of neo-Darwinism as contained in the gene-neutral Price equations. So there's no need to appeal to Lamarckism or some new form of evolution. But Noble and Shapiro are objecting to that they really are widespread misunderstandings that are creating rigid thinking and slowing down more innovative, emergent theories of natural selection. And that their specific examples are meant to break people out of this rigid thinking. Hancock is correct that we can stick with the Price equations and we don't need to introduce Lamarckism. But who is right about how widespread the misunderstandings and rigid thinking are? And this brings us to the research of Michael Levin, which we will cover in the next episode.

[01:56:22]  Unidentified speaker: And that is it.

[01:56:23]  Peter: Well, Bruce, you are on your own unique intellectual journey through this life, and it's an honor to even try to keep up with you here. So look forward to next time and have a great week.

[01:56:40]  Unidentified speaker: All right.

[01:56:40]  Unidentified speaker: You too.

[01:56:41]  Bruce: Thanks a lot, Peter.

[01:56:42]  Unidentified speaker: Thank you.

[01:56:43]  Unidentified speaker: All right.

[01:56:43]  Unidentified speaker: Bye-bye.

[01:56:52]  Unidentified speaker: Hello again.

[01:56:53]  Peter: If you've made it this far, please consider giving us a nice rating on whatever platform you use, or even making a financial contribution through the link provided in the show notes. As you probably know, we are a podcast loosely tied together by the Popper Deutsch Theory of Knowledge. We believe David Deutsch's Four Strands tie everything together. So we discuss science, knowledge, computation, politics, art, and especially the search for artificial general intelligence. Also, please consider connecting with Bruce on X at BNielsen01. Also, please consider joining the Facebook group, The Many Worlds of David Deutsch, where Bruce and I first started connecting.

[01:57:36]  Unidentified speaker: Thank you.