Aside: I recall _Goedel, Escher and Bach_ as a load of New Age crap. As for Lamarckism and cultural evolution, I'm wary of such metaphorical thinking. Lewontin's response is unclear. More on this later.
Another aside: In 1975, I attended a guest lecture by Lewontic on heritability, as part of a course on scientific racism. At 02:51 PM 3/29/2010, c b wrote: >I finally found my letter exchange with Lewontin as reported to this >list in December 2005. Will look for the articles discussed. > >Charles > >http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/2005-December/019560.html > >Marxism-Thaxis] Response from Lewontin >Charles Brown cbrown at michiganlegal.org >Mon Dec 12 14:54:34 MST 2005 > >Previous message: [Marxism-Thaxis] Logical Empiricism (reformatted) >Next message: [Marxism-Thaxis] Jean-Baptiste Lamarck >Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] > >-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > >Back in October I sent a fax ( my email didn't get through to him) to >Richard Lewontin with interjection comments on his article New York Review . >He sent me a letter back. I called him and asked him if I could send his >letter to the list. He said ok. I'll copy my original note to him below. > >Dear Mr. Brown: > >Thanks very much for your thoughtful comments on the recent article in The >New York Review. I was particularly struck by your point that culture, if >modeled on an evolutionary process, definitely has a Lamarckian inheritance. >What is not always appreciated by scientists is that once one has a >Lamarckian form of inheritance, the strictness of Mendel's Laws no longer >applies, of course, and almost anything is possible. A very interesting book >showing the implications of forms of passage from one individual to another >without any particular fixed rule of inheritance is the book on cultural >inheritance by Feldman and Cavalli. What they show is that the moment you >get away form strict genetic segregation and allow an arbitrary probability >of the passage of a trait from one individual to another, the whole question >of selection fades. Let us say, a trait can spread not because it is >selected but because the rule of transmission strongly favors it. If >everybody who ever heard a particular word that had been invented now used >it ,it would spread very rapidly through the population, even though it >could not be said to have some particular selective advantage. In a sense, >the distinction between the rules of inheritance and the rules of selection >disappear once one allows a free possibility for transmission rate. > >I am delighted that you read the article so critically and that you saw one >of the most important points about cultural inheritance. > >Thanks again for having written me. > >Yours sincerely, > >R.C. Lewontin _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
