After Lewontin: Dr. Pangloss and His Imaniged Community

Abstract

Richard Lewontin’s two influential papers “The Apportionment of Human Diversity” (1971) and “The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglosissan Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme” (1979) co-authored with Stephen Jay Gould have a profound effect on post-Darwinian evolutionary biology discourse. He is celebrated for causing a major paradigm shift in scientific thought on race by demonstrating that there was more variance within human populations than between in his 1971 paper and shares the joy with Gould of triggering another one by laying the adaptationist view on the table in their 1979 paper. Lewontin’s contributions to the discussions on the relationship between race and genetics and adaptationist approach has also a tremendous political impact, which is compatible with his ideals as a “good scientist” since his notion of science implicates producing politically useful knowledge. This paper aims to evaluate the two papers in extenso, in terms of their scientific reliability and their relationship with the political discussions back in their day. It also aims to discuss the concepts introduced by Lewontin such as “good science” and “politically responsible scientist”.

Keywords

• Lewontin
• Apportionment
• Adaptationism
• Adaptationism
• Apportionment
• Lewontin

After Lewontin: Dr. Pangloss and His Imagined Community

Abstract

Two influential papers of Richard Lewontin “The Apportionment of Human Diversity” (1971) and “The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme” (1979) co-authored with Stephen Jay Gould have a profound effect on post-Darwinian evolutionary biology discourse. In his 1971 paper, he is credited for causing a major paradigm shift in scientific thought on race by demonstrating that there was more variation within human populations than between them. He also shares Gould’s joy in triggering another one by laying out the case of the adaptation in their 1979 paper. Lewontin’s contributions to the discussions on the relationship between race and genetics, as well as his adaptationist approach, had a tremendous political impact, which is consistent with his ideals as a “good scientist” since his definition of science entails producing politically useful knowledge. This paper assesses the two papers comprehensively , in terms of their scientific reliability and relevance to current political discussions. It also aims to discuss the concepts introduced by Lewontin such as “good science” and “politically responsible scientist”. It can be recommended that these ideas should be reconsidered and that their value as a legacy needs to be discussed again.

Keywords

• Adaptationism
• Apportionment
• Lewontin

References

1. Allen, GE. (1984). The Roots of Biological Determinism, Journal of the History of Biology, 17(1), 141145. Retrieved from: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00397505 google scholar
2. Barlow, GW. (1991). Nature-Nurture and the Debates Surrounding Ethology and Sociobiology. American Zoologist, 31(2), 286-296. http://wwwjstor.org/stable/3883406 google scholar
3. Braide, M. (1999). Lewontin’s Legacy. Biology and Philosophy, 14, 157-158. https://dx.doi. org/10.1023/A:1006694619486 google scholar
4. Carlson, J., & Harris, K. (2022) The apportionment of citations: a scientometric analysis of Lewontin 1972. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (377). https://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2020.0409 google scholar
5. Dennett, DC. (1995). Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. google scholar
6. Feldman, MW., & Lewontin, RC. (1975). The heritability hang-up. Science, 190, 1163-1168. https:// dx.doi.org/:10.1126/science.1198102 google scholar
7. Gould, SJ., & Lewontin, RC. (1979). The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, 205(1161), 581-598. https://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.1979.0086 google scholar
8. Gould, SJ. (1980) The Mismeasure of Man. W. W. Norton & Company google scholar

9. Jensen, AR (1969). How much can we boost IQ and scholastic achievement? Harvard Educational Review, 39(1), 1-123. https://dx.doi.org/10.17763/haer.39.1.l3u15956627424k7 google scholar
10. Levallois, C. (2018). The Development of Sociobiology in Relation to Animal Behavior Studies, 19461975. Journal of the History of Biology, 51(3), 419-444. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44980827 google scholar
11. Lewontin, RC. (1970) Race and Intelligence, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 26(3), 2-8. https://dx.doi. org/10.1080/00963402.1970.11457774 google scholar
12. Lewontin, RC. (1972). The Apportionment of Human Diversity. In T. Dobzhansky, M.K. Hecht, and W.C. Steere (Eds.) Evolutionary Biology (pp. 381-398). New York, NY: Springer Publishing Company. https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-9063-3_14 google scholar
13. Lewontin, RC. (1974). Annotation: the analysis of variance and the analysis of causes. American Journal of Human Genetics, 26, 400-411. https://dx.doi.org/:10.1093/ije/dyl062 google scholar
14. Lewontin, RC., & Levins, R. (1985). The Dialectical Biologist. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. google scholar
15. Mastrogiorgio, A., Felin, T., Kauffman, S., & Mastrogiorgio, M. (2022). More Thumbs Than Rules: Is Rationality an Exaptation?. Frontiers in psychology, 13, 805743. https://dx.doi.org/10.3389/ fpsyg.2022.805743 google scholar
16. Mitton, JB. (1977). Genetic differentiation of races of man as judged by single-locus and multilocus analyzes. Nature, 111, 203-212. https://dx.doi.org:10.1086/283155 google scholar
17. Muller GB. (2013). Beyond Spandrels: Stephen J. Gould, EvoDevo, and the Extended Synthesis. In T. Pievani, G.A. Danieli, and A. Mineli (Eds.), Stephen J. Gould: The Scientific Legacy (pp. 85-89). New York, NY: Springer Publishing Company. google scholar
18. Nei, M., & Roychoudhury, AK. (1982). Genetic relationship and evolution of human races. Evolutionary Biology, 14, 1-59. Retrieved from: http://www.personal.psu.edu/nxm2/1982%20Publications/1982-nei-roychoudhury.pdf google scholar
19. Nielsen, R. (2009). Adaptionism-30 years after Gould and Lewontin. International Journal of Organic Evolution, 63(10), 2487-2490. https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1558-5646.2009.00799.x google scholar
20. Novembre, J. (2022) The background and legacy of Lewontin’s apportionment of human genetic diversity. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. 377(1852). https://dx.doi.org/10.1098/ rstb.2020.0406 google scholar
21. Olson, ME. (2019). Spandrels and trait delimitation: No such thing as “architectural constraint”. Evolution & development, 21(2), 59-71. https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ede.12279 google scholar
22. Pigliucci, I., & Kaplan, I. (2000). The fall and rise of Dr Pangloss: adaptationism and the Spandrels paper 20 years later. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 15(2), 66-70. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0169-5347(99)01762-0 google scholar
23. Reich, D. (2018). Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and The New Science of the Human Past. New York, NY: Pantheon Books. google scholar
24. Robinson, DH., & Wainer, H. (2006). Profiles in research - Arthur Jensen. Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, 31(3), 327-352. google scholar
25. Rosenberg, NA. (2018). Variance-partitioning and classification in human population genetics. In R.G. Winter (Ed.) Phylogenetic inference, selection theory, and history of science: selected papers of AWF Edwards with commentaries (pp. 399-404). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press google scholar
26. Ruvolo, M., & Seielstad, M. (2001) ‘The apportionment of human diversity’ 25 years later. In R.S. Sing, C.B. Krimbas, D.B. Paul, and J. Beatty (Eds.), Thinking About Evolution: Historical, Philosophical, and Political Perspectives (pp. 141-151). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. google scholar
27. Ryman, N., Chakraborty, R., & Nei, M. (1983). Differences in the relative distribution of human gene diversity between electrophoretic and red and white cell antigen loci. Human heredity, 33(2), 93-102 http://dx.doi.org:/10.1159/000153357 google scholar
28. Shen, H., & Feldman, MW. (2022) Diversity and its causes: Lewontin on racism, biological determinism and the adaptationist program. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. 377(1852). https:// dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2020.0417 google scholar
29. Spielman, RS., & Smouse, PE. (1976). Multivariate classification of human populations. I. Allocation of Yanomama Indians to villages. American Journal of Human Genetics, (28), 317- 331. google scholar
30. Smouse, PE., & Spielman, RS. (1977) How allocation of individuals depends on genetic differences among populations. In S. Armendares and R. Lisker (Eds.), Human Genetics: Proceedings of the Fifth International Congress of Human Genetics (pp. 255-260). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Excerta Medica. google scholar
31. Thomson, KS. (1994). “Spandrels” dissected. Science, 263(5147), 697. https://dx.doi.org/10.1126/ science.263.5147.697 google scholar
32. Witkowski, J. (2008). Stalin’s war on genetic science. Nature, (454), 577-579. https://dx.doi. org/10.1038/454577a google scholar