Darwin's Dangerous Idea (62 page)

nomination, and he was dogged by the "quotation" for the rest of his days.

The old Panglossianism had dimly thought in terms of adaptations being We can press this frozen accident into new service. There is little doubt for "the good of the species"; Williams, Maynard Smith, Dawkins, and others
why
the mutated version of Wilson's remarks spread. Before people would showed that "for the good of the organism" was just as myopic a perspective approve Charles Wilson for this important decision-making post, they wanted as "for the good of the species" had been. In order to see this, one had to to assure themselves about who would be the
principal beneficiary
of his adopt a still more undeluded perspective, the gene's perspective, and ask decisions: the country or General Motors. Was he going to make selfish what was good for the genes. At first it does seem hard-boiled, coldhearted, decisions, or decisions for the benefit of the whole body politic? His actual ruthless. It reminds me, in fact, of that hackneyed rule of thumb made famous answer did little to reassure them. They smelled a rat, and exposed it in the in hard-boiled mystery stories:
cherchez la femme!
—look for the woman!7

mutation of his words that they disseminated. He seemed to be claiming that The idea is that, as any tough-minded, worldly-wise detective should know, nobody should be concerned about his decision-making, since even if the the key that unlocks your mystery will involve some woman or other in some principal or direct beneficiary was General Motors, it would all work out fine way or other. Probably bad advice, even in the stylized and unrealistic world for the whole country. A dubious claim to be sure. Although it might be true of whodunits. Better advice, claim the gene centrists, is
cherchez le gene!
We most of the time—"other things being equal"—what about the times when saw a good example of this in the account in chapter other things wouldn't be equal? Whose benefit would Wilson further in those circumstances? That is what had people upset, and rightly so. They wanted the actual decision-making by the Secretary of Defense to be
directly
responsive to the
national
interest. If decisions reached under those benign 7. The original or at least primary source of
"cherchez la femme!"
is Alexandre Dumas's circumstances benefited General Motors (and

(that's Dumas
pere,
not
fils)
novel
Les Mohicans de Paris,
in which the inspector, M.

Jackal, enunciates the principle several times. The remark has also been attributed to Talleyrand and others. (Thanks to Justin Leiber for the scholarly sleuthing.) 326 CONTROVERSIES CONTAINED

Cui Bono? 327

9 of David Haig's sleuthing, but there are hundreds or thousands of others be mere "bookkeeping" (and as unilluminating as a molecular-level box score that could be cited. (Cronin 1991 and Matt Ridley 1993 survey the history of of a baseball game). William Wimsatt (1980) introduced the term this research up to the present.) Whenever you have an evolutionary puzzle,

"bookkeeping" to refer to the fact, agreed to on all sides, that the genes are the gene's-eye perspective is apt to yield a solution in terms of some gene or the storehouse of information on genetic change, leaving it debatable whether other being favored for one reason or other. Insofar as adaptations are the gene-centered view was
just
bookkeeping, a charge that has often been manifestly for the good of the organism (the eagle-as-organism surely made (e.g., by Gould 1992a). George Williams (1985, p. 4) accepts the label benefits from its eagle-eye and eagle-wing), this is largely for the Wilsonian but vigorously defends the importance of bookkeeping: "The idea that reason: what's good for the genes is good for the whole organism. But when bookkeeping has been taking place in the past is what gives the theory of push comes to shove, what's good for the genes determines what the future natural selection its most important kind of predictive power." (See Buss will hold. They are, after all, the replicators whose varying prospects in the 1987, especially pp. 174ff., for important reflections on this self-replication competitions set the whole process of evolution in motion, claim.)

and keep it in motion.

The claim that the gene-centrist perspective is best, or most important, is This perspective, sometimes called gene centrism, or the gene's-eye point not a claim about the importance of molecular biology, but about something of view, has provoked a great deal of criticism, much of it misguided. For more abstract: about which level does the most explanatory work under most instance, it is
often
said that gene
centrism is
"reductionistic."
So it is, in the
conditions. Philosophers of biology have paid more close attention, and made good sense. That is, it shuns skyhooks, and insists that all lifting in Design more substantive contributions, to the analysis of this issue than to any other Space must be done by cranes. But as we saw in chapter 3, sometimes people in evolutionary theory. I have just mentioned Wimsatt, and there are others—

use "reductionism" to refer to the view that one should "reduce" all science, to pick just some of the best, David Hull ( 1980), Elliot Sober (1981a), and or all explanations, to some lowest level—the molecular level or the atomic Kim Sterelny and Philip Kitcher (1988). One reason philosophers have been or subatomic level (but probably nobody has ever espoused this variety of attracted to the question is surely its ab-stractness and conceptual intricacy.

reductionism, for it is manifestly silly). In any event, gene centrism is Thinking about it soon gets you into deep questions about what it is to explain triumphantly non-reductionistic, in that sense of the term. What could be less something, what causation is, what a level is, and so forth. This is one of the reductionistic (in that sense of the term) than explaining the presence of, say, brightest areas in recent philosophy of science; the scientists have paid a particular amino-acid molecule in a particular location in a particular body respectful attention to their philosophical colleagues, and have had that by citing, not some other molecular-level facts, but, rather, the fact that the attention repaid with knowledgeable and well-communicated analyses and body in question was a female in a species that provides prolonged care for arguments by the philosophers, to which the scientists in turn have responded its young? The gene's-eye point of view explains things in terms of the with discussions of their own of more than workaday philosophical intricate interactions between long-range, large-scale ecological facts, long-significance. It is a rich harvest, and I find it hard to tear myself away from it term historical facts, and local, molecular-level facts.

without giving a proper introduction to the subtleties in the issues, all the Natural selection is not a force that "acts" at one level—for
instance, the
more so because I have strongly held opinions about where the bulk of the molecular level as opposed to the population level or organism level. Natural wisdom lies with these controversies, but I have a different agenda here, selection occurs because a sum of events, of all sorts and sizes, has a which is, curiously enough, to
drain the drama
from them. They are excellent particular statistically describable outcome. The blue whale teeters on the scientific and philosophical problems, but no matter how they come out, their brink of extinction; if it goes extinct, a particularly magnificent and almost answers won't have the impact that some have feared. (This will be a topic of impossible to replace set of volumes in the Library of Mendel will cease to further discussion in chapter 16.)

have extant copies, but the factor that best explains why those characteristic The tantalizing recursions and reflections of evolutionary explanation are chromosomes, or collections of DNA nucleotide sequences, vanish from the reason enough for philosophers to pay close attention to the units-of-selection earth might be a virus that somehow directly attacked the DNA-replicating controversy, but another reason it has attracted so much attention is surely machinery in the whales, a stray comet landing near the pod of the survivors the reflection with which we began this section: people feel threatened by the at just the wrong time, or a surfeit of television publicity, causing curious gene's-eye perspective for the same reason they felt threatened by Charles humans to interfere catastrophically with their breeding habits! There is Wilson's allegiance to General Motors. People want to be in charge of their always a gene's-eye description of every evolutionary effect, but the more own destinies; they take themselves to be both the deciders important question is whether such a description might often 328 CONTROVERSIES CONTAINED

Cut Bono?
329

and the principal beneficiaries of their decisions, and many are afraid that To whose interests is the actual "decision-making" of natural selection Darwinism, in its gene-centered version, will undercut their assurance on that most directly responsive? It is not controversial that conflicts between genes score. They are apt to see Dawkins' vivid picture of organisms as mere vehicles and bodies (between genes and the phenotypic expressions of the genotypes created to carry a gaggle of genes into future vehicles as intellectual assault and of which they are a proper part) can arise. Moreover, no one doubts that in battery. So one reason, I venture, why organism-level and group-level general the body's claim to be considered the principal beneficiary lapses as perspectives are so frequently hailed as a worthy opponent to the gene-level soon as it has completed its procreational mission. Once the salmon have perspective is the background thought—never articulated— that
we
are fought their way upstream and successfully spawned, they are dead meat.

organisms (and we live in groups that matter to us)—and we don't want
our
They literally fall apart, because
there is no evolutionary pressure
in favor of interests playing second fiddle to any others! My hunch is, in other words, that any of the design revisions that might prevent them from falling apart, giving we wouldn't care whether pine trees or hummingbirds were "mere survival them nice long grandparent-retirement periods like those many of us get to machines" for
their
genes if it weren't for our realization that we bear the same enjoy. In general, the body is thus only an instrumental, and hence relation to our genes that they bear to theirs. In the next chapter, I want to put secondary, beneficiary of the "decisions" made by natural selection.

that worry to rest by showing that this is really not so! Our relationship to our This is true throughout the biosphere, revealed in a pattern with a few genes is importantly different from the relationship of any other species to its important variations. In many phyla, parents die before their offspring are genes—because what
We
are is not just what we as a species are. This will pull born, and their entire lives are a preparation for a single climactic act of the plug, draining all the anxiety out of the still fascinating and unresolved replication. Others—trees, for instance—live through many generations of conceptual questions about how to think about the units of selection, but before offspring, and can hence come into competition with their own young for I turn to that task, I must make sure the threatening aspect of the issue is made sunlight and other resources. Mammals and birds typically invest large por-clear, and several common misconceptions are cleared up.

tions of their energy and activity to caring for young, and hence have many Perhaps the most misguided criticism of gene centrism is the frequently more opportunities to "choose" between themselves and their young as heard claim that genes simply cannot have interests (Midgley 1979, 1983, beneficiaries of whatever course of action they take. Creatures for which Stove 1992). This criticism, if taken seriously, would lead us to discard a such options never come up can be designed "under the assumption" (Mother treasury of insights, but it is flatly mistaken. Even if genes could not
act
on Nature's tacit assumption) that this is simply not an issue that needs any their interests in just the way we can act on ours, they can surely have them, design attention at all.

in a sense that is uncontroversial and clear. If a body politic, or General Presumably, the control system of a moth, for instance, is ruthlessly de-Motors, can have interests, so can genes. You can do something for your own signed to sacrifice the body for the sake of the genes, whenever a generic and sake, or for the sake of the children, or for the sake of art, or for the sake of recognizable opportunity to do so arises. A little fantasy: We somehow democracy, or for the sake of... peanut butter. I find it hard to imagine why surgically replace this standard system (a "Damn the torpedoes, full speed anybody would
want
to put the well-being and further flourishing of peanut ahead!" system ) with a body-favoring system ( a "To hell with my genes, I'm butter above all else, but peanut butter can be put on the pedestal just as looking out for Number One!" system). What could the replacement ever do readily as art or the children can. One could even decide—though it would be that wasn't just one way or another of committing suicide or pointlessly a strange choice—that the thing one wanted most to protect and enhance, wandering? A moth is simply not equipped to take any advantage of oppor-even at the cost of one's own life, was one's own genes. No sane
person
tunities tangential to its lifework of reproducing itself. Life-enhancing ends would make such a decision. As George Williams (1988, p. 403) says, "There are hard to take seriously, if it is the short life of a moth we are considering.

is no conceivable justification for any personal concern with the interests Birds, in contrast, may abandon a nest full of eggs when they themselves are (long-term average proliferation ) of the genes we received in the lottery of threatened in one way or another, and this looks more like what we often do, meiosis and fertilization."

but the reason they can do this is that they can start another nest—if not this But that doesn't mean that there aren't
forces
bent on furthering the sakes or season, then next. They are looking out for Number One now, but only interests of genes. In fact, until quite recently, genes were the principal because this gives their genes a better chance of getting replicated later.