SWAMPOODLE REPORT: WHEN SCIENCE, POLITICS, RELIGION & JOURNALISM MEET

Sam Smith

Several months ago, Suzan Mazur wrote of an important upcoming conference of scientists who did not reject Darwin's beliefs about evolution but who thought things that had been learned in the succeeding century and a half might expand or alter some of the underlying assumptions.

A reasonable, unsurprising, yet important project, one that one naturally expects of scientists. And newsworthy. In fact, however, only the New Zealand online journal Scoop and the Progressive Review, so far as we can tell, told the story.

Now another journal has finally published a report on the conference (for paid subscribers only): Science Magazine, the publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Admittedly, Science takes a number of slaps at what it considers Mazur's hyperbole, such as her calling the Altenberg Conference the "Woodstock" of evolution science that "promises to be far more transforming for the world" than was the 1969 music festival. But without Mazur's article, Science might have just let this important meeting remain in the obscurity it had been otherwise awarded.

The popular view of science - which the profession is careful not to discourage - is of brilliant, earnest and honest sorts plumbing the inner recesses of reality for new truths. In fact, scientists tend to be like other human beings, in that they can also be petty, jealous, cautious and suspicious (albeit expressing these ordinary foibles with particular erudition).

And, if they are on campus, they are also subject to that most pernicious of academic temptations: the desires and biases of their funders. Mazur believes this is a factor key to the way evolution has been handled of late. Certainly it would not be the first time in science, witness the distorting role of the Defense Department, agribusiness and pharmaceutical corporations in supposedly objective science.

At the very least, it can easily become a matter of what fiscally correct questions one feels comfortable asking and which are best left to someone else. And it may explain why the Altenberg 16 conference was not public.

Evolutionary scientists are also particularly on guard these days because of the craziness of creationism. Mention the possibility that Darwin may not have told the whole story and the reaction in some quarters is to consider the mere question to be aid and comfort to the enemy. To understand how complicated this can get, consider on the other hand the born again corporate executive who simultaneously believes his salary and bonus to be the logical product of both intelligent design and the survival of the fittest.

In any case, scientists, like the rest of us mortals, don't work in a vacuum. If there is anything we should have learned from Hiroshima and climate change it is that what goes on in the research lab doesn't necessarily stay in the research lab.

This is where journalism can help. What Suzan Mazur did is what journalists find themselves doing from time to time: snooping around the lab before they're invited. It is an effort often unappreciated by scientists, who typically feel they should control the amount, character, timing and wording of the knowledge they possess. But the reporter's point is not to provide a final or complete explanation, or to overturn existing ones, but simply to shine some light in the dark, in this case without fear of either funders or fundamentalists.

THE BACK STORY

Suzan Mazur, Scoop, NZ, July 10 It's not Yasgur's Farm, but what happens at the Konrad Lorenz Institute in Altenberg, Austria this July promises to be far more transforming for the world than Woodstock. What it amounts to is a gathering of 16 biologists and philosophers of rock star stature - let's call them "the Altenberg 16" - who recognize that the theory of evolution which most practicing biologists accept and which is taught in classrooms today, is inadequate in explaining our existence. It's pre the discovery of DNA, lacks a theory for body form and does not accommodate other new phenomena. So the theory Charles Darwin gave us, which was dusted off and repackaged 70 years ago, seems about to be reborn as the "Extended Evolutionary Synthesis".

Papers are in. MIT will publish the findings in 2009 - the 150th anniversary of Darwin's publication of the Origin of Species. And despite the fact that organizers are downplaying the Altenberg meeting as a discussion about whether there should be a new theory, it already appears a done deal. Some kind of shift away from the population genetic-centered view of evolution is afoot. . .

When I asked esteemed Harvard evolutionary geneticist Richard Lewontin in a phone conversation what role natural selection plays in evolution, he said, "Natural selection occurs."

Lewontin thinks it's important to view the living world holistically. He says natural selection is not the only biological force operating on the composition of populations. And whatever the mechanism of passage of information from parent to offspring contributing to your formation, what natural selection addresses is "do you survive?"

In an aside, Lewontin noted natural selection's tie-in to capitalism, saying, "Well, that's where Darwin got the idea from, that's for sure. . . He read the stock market every day . . . How do you think he made a living?". . .

[An] article by Rutgers University philosopher Jerry Fodor in the London Review of Books called "Why Pigs Don't Have Wings" . . . essentially argues that biologists increasingly see the central story of Darwin as wrong in a way that can't be repaired. When I called Fodor to discuss the article, he joked that he was now in the Witness Protection Program because he'd been so besieged following the LRB piece. But we met for coffee anyway, on Darwin's birthday, as frothy snowflakes floated to ground around Lincoln Center. After a cappuccino or two, Fodor summed things up saying we've got to build a new theory and "all I'm wanted to argue is that whatever the story turns out to be, it's not going to be the selectionist story".

Fodor also told me that "you can't put this stuff in the press because it's an attack on the theory of natural selection" and besides "99.99% of the population have no idea what the theory of natural selection is". . .

Richard Lewontin told me he resents evolutionary biology being "invaded by people like Jerry Fodor and others" as well as by some from within the field who don't really know the "mechanical details down to the last".

Evolutionary biologist and philosopher Massimo Pigliucci is also critical of Fodor for not seeing "the big picture". Pigliucci is a principal architect of the Altenberg 16 meeting as well as a participant. . .

But while he thinks Fodor is "dead wrong" about natural selection becoming irrelevant to the theory of evolution, he does recognize the value philosophers, in general, bring to science. Several of the Altenberg 16 participants are, in fact, philosophers - including, of course, Pigliucci.

Pigliucci says philosophers have two roles to play in science. One is to keep scientists - who are focused on the details - honest by looking from a distance and asking the big questions: "Well, is the paradigm that you're working with, in fact, working? Is it useful? Could it be better?"

The second is as public intellectuals. He thinks some of the best responses he's seen against Intelligent Design and Creationism, for instance, have been by philosophers. . .

So what are those other engines of evolution that threaten to decommission natural selection - those "endogenous variables" - of which Jerry Fodor speaks . . . in his article?

Pigliucci cites epigenetic inheritance [something that affects a cell, organ or individual without directly affecting its DNA] as one of the mechanisms that Darwin knew nothing about. He says there is mounting empirical evidence to "suspect" there's a whole additional layer chemically on top of the genes that is inherited but is not DNA. Darwin, of course, did not even know of the existence of DNA.

Nevertheless, these kinds of phenomena are part of what's loosely being called self-organization, in short a spontaneous organization of systems. Snowflakes, a drop of water, a hurricane are all such spontaneously organized examples. These systems grow more complex in form as a result of a process of attraction and repulsion.

So, coming up with a "sound" theory for form is one of the big challenges for the Altenberg 16.

Developmental biologist Stuart Kauffman is clearly one who thinks we must expand evolutionary theory. . . He reminded me in our phone conversation that Darwin doesn't explain how life begins, "Darwin starts with life. He doesn't get you to life." . . . Kauffman also describes genes as "utterly dead". However, he says there are some genes that turn the rest of the genes and one another on and off. Certain chemical reactions happen. Enzymes are produced, etc. . . . "

Kauffman presents some of this in his new book Reinventing the Sacred. And natural selection is back in the equation. In his book Investigations, Kauffman wrote that "self-organization mingles with natural selection in barely understood ways to yield the magnificence of our teeming biosphere". He said he's still there, but now thinks natural selection exists throughout the universe.

Curiously, when I called Kevin Padian, president of [National Center for Science Education's] board of directors and a witness at the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover trial on Intelligent Design, to ask him about the evolution debate among scientists - he said, "On some things there is not a debate." He then hung up. . .

I also spoke with evolutionary biologist Michael Lynch at his lab at Indiana University to get his perspective on the evolution debate.

Lynch is the author of the recent book The Origins of Genome Architecture. He says it's hard enough just to be a molecular biologist or a cell biologist and that reaching out to communicate to other fields is a "daunting task". He doesn't know why there's a push for an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis and says, "Everyone's bantering around these terms complexity, evolvability, robustness, and arguing that we need a new theory to explain these; I don't see it."

Altenberg 16 Invitation - We are writing to invite you to what we hope will be a major event to be hosted by the Konrad Lorenz Institute of Evolution and Cognition Research, in Altenberg, Austria on 10-13 July 2008. Our idea is nothing less than getting together a high-level group of biologists and philosophers to have a frank exchange of ideas about what, if anything, might a new Extended Evolutionary Synthesis look like. . .

The challenge seems clear to us: how do we make sense, conceptually, of the astounding advances in biology since the 1940s?. . . Not only we have witnessed the molecular revolution, from the discovery of the structure of DNA to the genomic era, we are also grappling with the increasing . . . that we just don't have the theoretical and analytical tools necessary to make sense of the bewildering diversity and complexity of living organisms.

What is less clear is how much talk of an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis is actually going to coalesce into an organic conceptual structure capable of significantly augmenting the existing synthesis, while at the same time retaining the many key advances of Darwinism and neo-Darwinism - from population genetics theory to our still evolving understanding of the nature of species, to mention just two. . .

The central idea for the symposium is to have contributed papers on a range of conceptual issues that have not been addressed. . . with the authors attempting not as much to give the latest technical update, but rather to provide an organic view of in what sense the new ideas can be said to extend the current scope of evolutionary theory. . .

From an interview with Stuart Kauffman

Suzan Mazur: Are there alternatives to natural selection?

Stuart Kauffman: I think self-organization is part of an alternative to natural selection. . . In fact, it's a huge debate. The truth is that we don't know how to think about it.

Suzan Mazur: You said in your forward to Investigations: "Self organization mingles with natural selection in barely understood ways to yield the magnificence of our teeming biosphere. We must, therefore, expand evolutionary theory."

Stuart Kauffman: I'm still there. . . .

Suzan Mazur: You've said: "The snowflake's delicate six-fold symmetry tells us that order can arise without the benefit of natural selection." So it can arise without natural selection, but it's not living.

Stuart Kauffman: But it's not living. Right. There are all sorts of signatures of self-organization. I'll give you one that very few would doubt. . . If you take lipids like cholesterol and you put them in water, they fall into a structure - a liposome, which is called a bilipid membrane, that forms a hollow vesicle. . . . Now if you look at the structure of this bilipid membrane, it's virtually identical to the bilipid membrane in your cells. So this is a self-organized property of lipids. That's physics and chemistry. . . . And evolution has made use of it to make lipid membranes that balance cells. So that's a snowflake. It's hard to look at that and doubt it. Nothing mysterious or mystical. . . .

Suzan Mazur: No genes in the mix.

Stuart Kauffman: Genes by themselves are utterly dead. They're just DNA molecules. It takes a whole cell in the case of a fertilized egg to grow into an adult. So there's a lot of physics and chemistry. . . . And somehow the right answer is that this is a whole integrated system in which matter, energy, information, whatever that means - it turns out to be a very slippery concept - and the control of process is all organized in some way. . .

Suzan Mazur: So natural selection exists throughout the universe?

Stuart Kauffman: Well, yes, wherever there's life. But notice that there's self-organization too. . .

There are people who are spouting off as if we know the answer. We don't know the answer.

Suzan Mazur: So you're saying we should enjoy life.

Stuart Kauffman: Well, we should enjoy life. But we have to rethink evolutionary theory. It's not just natural selection. Self-organization is real.

Altenberg 2008, Final Statement - Below is the final statement emerging from the Altenberg workshop, agreed upon by all 16 participants. . . . MIT Press will publish the full proceedings by the end of 2009.

A group of 16 evolutionary biologists and philosophers of science convened at the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research in Altenberg (Austria) on July 11-13 to discuss the current status of evolutionary theory, and in particular a series of exciting empirical and conceptual advances that have marked the field in recent times.

The new information includes findings from the continuing molecular biology revolution, as well as a large body of empirical knowledge on genetic variation in natural populations, phenotypic plasticity, phylogenetics, species-level stasis and punctuational evolution, and developmental biology, among others.

The new concepts include (but are not limited to): evolvability, developmental plasticity, phenotypic and genetic accommodation, punctuated evolution, phenotypic innovation, facilitated variation, epigenetic inheritance, and multi-level selection.

By incorporating these new results and insights into our understanding of evolution, we believe that the explanatory power of evolutionary theory is greatly expanded within biology and beyond. As is the nature of science, some of the new ideas will stand the test of time, while others will be significantly modified. Nonetheless, there is much justified excitement in evolutionary biology these days. This is a propitious time to engage the scientific community in a vast interdisciplinary effort to further our understanding of how life evolves.