古道之争号称世纪之争,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawkins_vs._Gould, Kim Sterelny专门写一本专门介绍这两人或者两个学派的分歧
部分摘录书中对Gould和Darkins分歧的总结部分:
In Dawkins' argument, selection acts on lineages of replicators, which are mostly but not exclusively genes. Ideas and skills are the replicators in animals capable of social learning, and "the earliest replicators were certainly not genes". (p. 167) Genetic competition occurs through vehicle-building alliances, with
selection dependent on repeatable influences on those vehicles (指生物). Other genetic replication strategies include Outlaws, the prospects of which are enhanced at the expense of vehicle adaptiveness.
And extended phenotype(表型) genes advantageously enhance their environment. Evolution's central explanatory imperative is the existence of complex adaptation, which can only be explained by natural selection. This complex adaptation evolves gradually, with occasional replication errors resulting in large but survivable phenotypic change. Humans are unusual species in that they are vehicles for memes as well as genes, although humans are not exempt from evolutionary biological explanations.
Extrapolationism (外推主义——适应度在微观进化层次上的累积性) is a sound working theory, with most evolutionary patterns the result of microevolutionary change over vast geological time. Major animal lineages are the result of ordinary speciation processes, although possibility-expanding changes may result in some form of lineage-level selection.
In contrast, Gould sees
selection as usually acting on organisms in a local population, although in theory and practice, it can occur at many levels, with change at one level often affecting future options at other levels. Selection can occur at the group level, with some species lineages having characteristics which make extinction less likely, or speciation more likely. And while rare, selection can occur on genes within an organism. While selection is important, and requires understanding,
it is just one of many factors explaining microevolutionary events and macroevolutionary patterns.
Further, complex adaptations are but one phenomenon explanations in evolutionary biology.
Extrapolationism is not a good theory, with large-scale patterns in the history of life not explainable by extrapolating from measurable events in local populations...
Developmental biology (发育生物学) is relevant to this debate in another important way: "The role of selection in evolution.
Gould is betting that when the facts of developmental biology are in, it will turn out that the evolutionary possibilities of most lineages are highly constrained", with some characteristics "frozen" into their respective lineages. "They are developmentally entrenched. That is, these basic organisational features are connected in development to most aspects of the organism's phenotype, and that makes them hard to change." (p. 172) And "since variation in these frozen-in features is unlikely, selection is not likely to be important in explaining their persistence", (p. 173) and Gould thinks 'frozen accidents' are important in explanations of evolutionary patterns found in the fossil record.
Conversely, Dawkins thinks that over time, selection can alter the range of a lineage's evolutionary possibilities. "So he thinks both that selection has a larger range of variation with which to work, and that when patterns do exist over long periods ... selection will have played a stabilising role." (p. 173) The integration of evolution and development "is the hottest of hot topics in contemporary evolutionary theory, and this issue is still most certainly open". In discussing the effects of mutations, Sterelny's "best current guess is that developmental biology probably does generate biases in the variation that is available to selection, and hence that evolutionary trajectories will often depend both on selection and these biases in supply" (173), vindicating Gould's view that developmental biology is crucial to explaining evolutionary patterns. (p. 174)
"But it is harder to see how to resolve some of Gould's other claims about the large-scale history of life. Despite the plausibility of the distinction between disparity and diversity, we are not close to constructing a good account of disparity and its measurement". (p. 174) Further, convergent evolution belies the unpredictability that Gould supposes. However, "most examples of convergence are not independent of evolutionary experiments. For they concern lineages with an enormous amount of shared history, and hence shared developmental potential", as in "the standard example of streamlining in marine reptiles, sharks, pelagic bony fish like the tuna, and dolphins". (p. 175) Further, "the scale is not large enough. The fact that eyes have often evolved does not show that had, say, the earliest chordates succumbed to a bit of bad luck (and become extinct), then vertebrate-like organisms wold have evolved again." (p. 175) Moreover, Gould's main concern is not with adaptive complexes, which are the source of the above, oft-cited examples, "but with body plans—basic ways of assembling organisms." Sterelny thinks that "we have to score Gould's contingency claims as:
'Don't know; and at this stage don't know how to find out'". (p. 175)
"
So it has been hard to find really convincing examples of species-level properties that are built by species-level selection. The problem is to find: (i) traits that are aspects of species, not the organisms making up the species; (ii) traits that are relevant to extinction and survival; and (iii) traits that are transmitted to daughter species, granddaughter species and so forth". And "transmission to daughter species is especially problematic". (p. 177)