Is the evolution debate between Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould a battle between liberals and conservatives? Richard Dawkins puts his faith in scientific truth and argues for gradual evolution, while Stephen Jay Gould focuses on social factors and argues for multilevel selection. Their debate is an important scientific conversation that delves into the depths of evolutionary theory.
The Richard Dawkins/Stephen Jay Gould debate is often characterized as liberal, with Richard Dawkins being a believer in science, and conservative, with Stephen Jay Gould raising the idea that theories are theories and may not be true. But it’s hard to see how blind faith in science can be considered progressive. Perhaps the entire field of science is conservative. This is because scientific theories that have already gained traction tend to maintain existing theories rather than encourage new attempts. Therefore, which thinking is conservative and which is progressive may depend on the interpretation. For example, in the world of evolutionary biology, Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene would be a “stone in the ground. Steven Jay Gould’s multilevel selectionism, on the other hand, is a “rolling stone” that is trying to get out of the way, and it hasn’t come out yet. Richard Dawkins hasn’t had a major crisis; in fact, he seems to have been shattered by the rolled stone.
Stephen Jay Gould, however, is looking for a very important topic in a different way than Richard Dawkins. It’s a question about the “higher-level” creation processes that have had the most pronounced impact on the long evolutionary history of living species. According to evolutionary theory, life started with the first replicators, which became DNA, and evolved into unicellular and then multicellular organisms. During this process, why did single cells cooperate with other single cells to create larger single-celled entities? In doing so, they would have had to solve the problem of betrayal. Cancer cells, for example, are renegade cells that don’t cooperate with other cells and instead make infinite copies of themselves. Stephen Jay Gould’s theory of multilevel selection helps us to understand the evolution of life by focusing on this transition.
The key idea of the New Synthesis in evolutionary theory is that evolution is directional and progressive. This means that in the survival of the fittest, inferior beings are culled to extinction. Humans on Earth consider themselves to be the most advanced species, but Stephen Jay Gould criticizes the theory, arguing that the idea of inevitable superiority derived from the evolution of apes to modern humans is a product of human arrogance. The world as it is today is the realization of one of many possibilities, not something that was predetermined. Human beings have a habit of exploring their own existence, which leads to anthropocentric thinking. Stephen Jay Gould emphasizes that the history of life is a process of diversification, not “development”.
Korean professor Dae-Ik Jang, author of Darwin’s Table, agrees with Richard Dawkins, arguing that evolution occurs gradually, over hundreds of thousands or millions of generations, within a certain unit of geologic time. This is in line with Richard Dawkins’ refutation of punctuated equilibrium theory, in that the rate of evolution can vary depending on the scale or time frame in which it is viewed. Richard Dawkins argues that the goal of evolutionary theory should be cumulative natural selection to explain adaptation in living things. He argues that cumulative natural selection is the key to explaining “adaptation,” and that adaptation is not the same as the rapid selection that Stephen Jay Gould criticizes because it does not evolve in sudden leaps. Richard Dawkins criticizes Stephen Jay Gould for using punctuated equilibrium to deny evolution and undermine Darwin’s gradualism in order to promote the authority of Christianity. Darwin’s Table is structured as a debate between two groups of opposing viewpoints, and I could tell that Professor Dae-Ik Jang was in favor of Richard Dawkins because the content was skewed toward a particular position. I also tend to favor Richard Dawkins over Stephen Jay Gould. However, I also have questions about Richard Dawkins’ arguments.
Richard Dawkins uses many examples of organisms and their genetic dynamics to make his point. However, it’s doubtful that they can be generalized to all species and individuals. The lifestyles of individuals also vary depending on their environment, so can all of this be summarized as simply as Richard Dawkins thinks? Richard Dawkins’ logic is clear, but it leaves many questions unanswered, such as the criteria for selecting the range of a single gene, the behavior of bearing and raising offspring of different individuals or species, and the lack of competition among genes that live in symbiosis. It also leads to the existential question of whether individual happiness or life is meaningless if the human body is just a shell and genes are the means to survive.
Richard Dawkins does not mention the starting point of genes. How did the history of genes as we know it begin? There is no explanation of whether genes were selfish to begin with, or whether they became selfish along the way, or what the circumstances of their creation were that made them selfish. The genes that Richard Dawkins describes are probably only a small fraction of the genes. Richard Dawkins says that altruistic behavior is ultimately the intention of selfish genes, but it is also possible that selfish behavior is the result of altruistic intentions in the life of a gene.
Richard Dawkins’ idea is groundbreaking and logical. But I’m not sure it’s the right answer, and I hope it’s not. Someone may prove him wrong in the future. Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould call themselves true descendants of Darwin and are not afraid to express their differences. However, the scientific status of Darwin’s theory of evolution is a matter of opinion. Richard Dawkins strongly believes in science as truth, while Stephen Jay Gould is wary of the possibility that social ideology can contaminate science. These two positions may not be polar opposites when it comes to science. Richard Dawkins argues for the superiority of science over other disciplines. Stephen Jay Gould does not completely deny the truth of science.
When Stephen Jay Gould died in 2002, Richard Dawkins remembered him as a positive influence. Both men knew that their arguments were strengthened by criticizing each other and creating new evidence. It would be unreasonable to label either of them as liberal or conservative. In the end, they are both conservative in that they maintain and advance Darwin’s theory of evolution, and progressive in that they deny creation and bring new logic and arguments to the scientific community. Just as the debate between Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould sharpened Darwinian evolutionary theory, scientific debate is inevitable as humanity seeks to better understand the truth.
