Hutnan Ethology Bulletin
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Hutnan Ethology Bulletin VOLUME 12, ISSUE 1 ISSN 0739-2036 MARCH 1997 © 1997 The International Society for Human Ethology obviously not in the interests of the slaves. Why don't they go on strike? Because the slaves are not genetically related to anything that comes out of the nest where they are now working. Any gene that tended to make them go on strike would have no possibility of being benefited by the striking action. The copies of their genes, the ·copies of these striking workers genes, would be back in the home nest, and they would be being turned out by the queen, which the striking workers left behind. So there would be no opportunity for a phenotypic effect, namely striking, to benefit germ line copies of themselves. You also write about an ant species called Monomorium santschii in which there are no workers. The queen invades a nest of another species, and then uses chemicals to induce the An Interview of workers to adopt her, and to kill their own queen. How is it possible that natural sdection Richard Dawkins did not act against such incredible deception and manipulation, which must have been going By Frans Roes, Lauriergracht 127-II, 1016 on for millions of years? RK Amsterdam, The Netherlands In any kind of arms race, it is possible for one Richard Dawkins is a zoologist and Professor of . side in the arms race to lose consistently. Public. Understanding of Science at Oxford Monomorium santschii is a very rare species. If University. Of his best-selling books, The you look back in the ancestry of the victim- Selfish Gene (1976) probably did most in species over many millions of years, many of bringing the evolutionary message home to both their ancestors may never have encountered a professional and a general readership. The Monomorium. But the Monomorium's ancestors following interview took place in Oxford 13 all had to succeed in killing their victim- December 1996. queens. So there is an asymmetry in selection pressure. I think the easiest way to put it is to You mention in The Extended Phenotype the say that many victim-nests survived in spite of slave-making habit in some species of ants. The not having countermeasures, because they never slave-making ants go to the nest of another ant met aM0 nom 0 r i u m. But not a single species to steal pupae, which are carried back. Monomorium gene survived if it failed. So the The work done in the slave-makers' nest by the cost of failure is much higher on one side of the slaves that hatch from these pupae is arms race than the other. 2 Is it possible that a similar kind of asymmetry to understand, I am against it. exists between human individuals? If two individuals or groups disagree, let's say I think that when you have arms races within evolutionists and religious people, then is it not a species, and I don't know why you shouldn't, an old wisdom that the truth should be say between male and female or somewhere in the middle? between parent and offspring, it is possible that the cost of failure is asymmetrical. [This] I have always resisted the idea that when two means that one side is disproportionately opposing points of view are being equally effective. I have not really thought it through, strongly expressed, the truth lies in the middle. but I do not see why in principle that shouldn't The truth can very easily lie on one side or the happen. other. One side can simply be wrong. You wrote with Krebs in 1978 that cooperative But is it not a sign of bad manners to claim that signals tend to be muted and economical, while you have it totally right, while the other side manipulative signals tend to be conspicuous and has it totally wrong? repetitive. No, it is bad manners to swear at people and be When there is a conflict of interest, there is an insulting to them in a personal way, but it is not arms race between the manipulator (or signal bad manners to say, "I think you are wrong for sender) and the victim (or signal receiver). The this or this reason." There may be people who signal sender is, over evolutionary time, think that having strong opinions is necessarily evolving ever more powerful manipulative negative, and I think it might be negative if it stimuli, and the signal receiver is constantly meant: He has strong opinions which he cannot raising the barriers to whatever the stimulus back up. is. And as the victim raises these barriers to the stimuli, whether these are sounds or You wrote in The Blind Watchmaker with chemicals or colours or whatever, this puts capitals: COPERNICUS WRONG. FLAT pressure on the signal sender to send a stronger EARTH THEORY VINDICATED. What did and stronger signal. So you would expect to get you mean? very powerful signals in those cases where victim resistance is high, If you have a detailed argument within but in those cases where the signal sender and evolutionary theory, where two scientist receiver are cooperating, where the disagree about something quite abstruse and communication is in both their interests, theoretically sophisticated, then creationists then it is not necessary to shout. A human come along and say, "Oh, evolutionists example of that would be a couple ata dinner disagree; therefore the whole of evolution must party who want to signal to each other that it be wrong." What I wrote was that it would be is time to go. They do it in very subtle ways, equivalent to say that when people discovered like a little look at the door, or a little motion that the earth is not a perfect sphere, but a as if to stand up. So a very subtle signal is a slightly flattened spheroid, instead of saying result of de-escalation. "Oh, there was this minor thing wrong," you have headlines saying: COPERNICUS WRONG. FLAT EARTH THEORY VINDICATED. You said on BBC-Television that religion teaches people to be satisfied with not George Bernard Shaw wrote that "there is a understanding. What is wrong with not hideous fatalism about Darwinism." Why do understanding? People have not understood people often think evolutionary theory is evolution for millions of years. pessimistic, depressive? No, that is right, you can survive without I am not an authority on Bernard Shaw's understanding. I think it is a value judgement on psychology. Shaw is reacting emotionally to a my part, I think it is virtue, a good thing, to scientific theory. He is saying: I couldn't bear it understand, and therefore if there is an if this were true; it would be horrible if it were ideology which actively discourages the desire true, as though that meant that it waS not true. 3 But of course something horrible can be true, evolutionary theory, telling us what we should something unbearable can be true. And, well, do politically or morally? there are horrible aspects of it. There is an awful lot of suffering. Natural selection does No. The only message coming from evolutionary mean death of a lot of individuals.--parasites theory is what eating you in bits from inside, predators actually happens in nature. Now, in nature it is devouring you frpm outside. So the force that true that, to some extent, the strong and the has shaped the evolution of living creatures most selfish survive. But that is with all their beauty and elegance is a whole no message for what we should do. We have to lot of rather unpleasant deaths. I could get our 'shoulds' imagine finding that emotionally upsetting. and our 'oughts' from some other source, not from But what I cannot imagine is saying: It is Darwinism. emotionally upsetting and therefore it cannot be true. Some well-known evolutionists are, or used to be, radical leftists, and you are yourself are On the other hand, some people favoured reported to vote leftist. Yet sociobiology is Darwinism because it appeared .to support a often associated with right-wing sentiments. political idea. Why? Yes, Darwinism has been misused politically in Because the opponents of sociobiology are too this century, by Hitler and by others. Social stupid to understand the distinction between Darwinism flourished at the end of the last whaf one says about the way the world is, century and the beginning of this century with sCientifically, and the way it ought to be people like Herbert Spencer and John D. politically. They look at what we say about Rockefeller. Rockefeller, an immensely rich Darwinian natural selection, as a scientifi.c and powerful man, had imported a form of theory for what is, and they assume that Social Darwinism into his political beliefs. He anybody who says that so and so is the case, really felt that the weakest should go to the must therefore be advocating that it ought to be war, and the strongest should survive, it was the case in human politics. They cannot see right in business, it was right in capitalism that it is possible to separate one's scientific that the economically strongest and most beliefs about what is the case in nature from ruthless should prevail. one's political beliefs about what ought to be in human society. Is evolutionary theory telling us this? No! It is telling us this only if you say that what is going on there in nature ought to be true in human political and social life.