Abstract
Stephen J. Gould famously differs in opinion with adaptationist evolutionary theorists about the importance of natural selection as a mechanism of evolution. While agreeing that natural selection is the only origin of design in nature, they disagree about how powerful it is vis-à-vis the many constraints it has to struggle with and how ubiquitous it is vis-à-vis alternative mechanisms of evolutionary change. In this chapter, I argue, firstly, that this debate is muddled by the fact that both adaptationism and Gould’s criticism come in many varieties. Next, I contend that both parties (and many commentators) mistakenly consider the disagreement to be an empirical issue. Finally, I indicate how and why Gould’s work on constraints can be used to complement and contravene adaptationist explanations of mental disorders.
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Notes
- 1.
In this context, it is perhaps instructive to know that, when examined on Dennett’s engineering metaphor, students typically go astray by presenting Dennett as a proponent of the Intelligent Design movement, confusing his ‘engineer’ with ID’s ‘Designer’. The engineering metaphor is also central to contemporary evolutionary psychology. For example, Tooby and Cosmides (1992, 75) note that ‘an evolutionary functional analysis consists of asking a series of engineering questions’.
- 2.
A similar take on the use of engineering metaphors in evolutionary biology can be found in Lewens (2007, 47–8).
- 3.
However, a recent theory suggests that the appendix may act as a safe house for beneficial bacteria in the human gut (Bollinger et al., 2007).
- 4.
In a similar vein, Jacob (1977, 1163–4) famously compares natural selection to a tinkerer, rather than an engineer: ‘[I]f one wanted to play with a comparison, one would have to say that natural selection does not work as an engineer works. It works like a tinkerer – a tinkerer who does not know exactly what he is going to produce but uses whatever he finds around him (…) [and] who uses everything at his disposal to produce some kind of workable object. (…) The tinkerer (…) always manages with odds and ends. What he ultimately produces is generally related to no special project, and it results from a series of contingent events, of all the opportunities he had to enrich his stock with leftovers’.
- 5.
Given their criticism of the adaptationist stance, Gould’s (and Lewontin’s) heavy focus on exaptations, rather than non-adaptive spandrels, is very curious and has led many commentators astray. Spandrels are often confused with exaptations, even though not all spandrels are exaptations and, conversely, not all exaptations are spandrels, since the set of exaptations also includes characters directly shaped by natural selection and then co-opted for a new use (see, e.g. Gould, 2002, 1233 and 1248).
- 6.
Originally, Gould and Lewontin were very favourable to Darwin, praising his ‘pluralism’ in thinking about the many causes of evolutionary change (see also Gould, 2000) against the panglossians’ monomaniac obsession with natural selection. Throughout the years, however, Gould has slightly changed his mind (even though his reverence remains): ‘I have already noted Darwin’s own excellent strategy [in dealing with exceptions or constraints to natural selection]: admit the historical inputs [phylogenetic constraints, see below], but attribute their cause to natural selection in the past; then admit the structural inputs [architectural and developmental constraints] as genuine exceptions, but relegate them to a low and insignificant relative frequency. Thus, all “constraints” either record the operation of the canonical mechanism in the past, or stand as genuine exceptions rendered impotent by their rarity’ (Gould, 2002, 1058).
- 7.
Darwin made a very similar remark in warning his readers not to expect evolution to produce perfect design: ‘Nor ought we to marvel if all the contrivances in nature be not, as far as we can judge, absolutely perfect. (…) The wonder indeed is, on the theory of natural selection, that more cases of the want of absolute perfection have not been observed’ (Darwin, 1859, 472).
- 8.
Godfrey-Smith (2001, 338) explicitly notes that all three varieties of adaptationism are ‘logically independent’ of each other, adding that ‘no one of these forms of adaptationism implies another’.
- 9.
However, my discussion of the persistence of particular basic body plans throughout evolutionary history shows that Gould and Lewontin take it to be an example of a (phyletic) constraint to natural selection, rather than ‘an alternative to explanation by adaptation’ (Sterelny and Griffiths, 1999, 229).
- 10.
Gould would probably argue against methodological adaptationism on similar grounds. For if spandrels are as ubiquitous as Gould thinks they are, then why should we start any investigation of a biological trait by assuming that it is an adaptation?
- 11.
Typically, he even claims that ‘the implicit spandrels in an organ of such complexity must exceed the overt functional reasons for its origin’, conferring more ‘evolutionary importance’ to spandrels than to ‘primary adaptations’ (Gould, 1997, 10754–5). It is unclear, however, why any increase in brain complexity must necessarily boost the number of spandrels involved, unless we assume that the human brain is a highly integrated organ, rather than a loose set of separable modules – a claim for which Gould never provides any evidence. Yet for the purpose of this chapter, it is not necessary that the brain is full of spandrels, only that it houses a number of them, some of which may help us to understand and explain mental disorders.
- 12.
‘Reading and writing are now highly adaptive for humans, but the mental machinery for these crucial capacities must have originated as spandrels that were co-opted later, for the brain reached its current size and conformation tens of thousands of years before any human invented reading and writing’ (Gould, 2000, 449).
- 13.
The two examples of non-adaptive spandrels Gould mentions in most works are ‘the nonfunctional nipples of males’ and ‘the clitoral site of female orgasm’: ‘As a spandrel, the clitoral site would represent the different expression of a male adaptation [i.e. male orgasm], just as male nipples may be the spandrels of a female adaptation [i.e. female breast]’ (Gould, 1997, 10754; Gould, 2002, 1263).
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Adriaens, P.R. (2012). Design and Disorder: Gould, Adaptationism and Evolutionary Psychiatry. In: Swan, L., Gordon, R., Seckbach, J. (eds) Origin(s) of Design in Nature. Cellular Origin, Life in Extreme Habitats and Astrobiology, vol 23. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4156-0_17
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