The author, Graeme Donald Snooks, is an economics professor at the Australian National University (Australia's top university). He has lots of initials after his name, and is the Director of the Global Dynamics Centre in their Research School of Social Sciences.
I did't bother reading the book, but the Preface is a fine example of the arrogance of academic non-biologists towards biology. He claims that
"a great chasm is opening up between the appearances and the reality of the Darwinian tradition in evolutionary biology. It is the purpose of this book not only to explain the inevitable collapse of Darwinism but to provide an alternative theory of life that, unlike Darwinism, emerges from a systematic analysis of reality. This new realist theory of life is called the dynamic-strategy theory.He then goes on to explain that Darwin was wrong about the mechanism of inheritance ('"Lamarckism, heresy, blah blah") and to claim that what needs to be understood is not organismal replication but how dynamic systems operate.
What are my credentials for this daunting task? While I am not a geneticist, neither was Charles Darwin.
And then, two paragraphs down
"The most critical test for any theory of life -- a test that Darwinists of all descriptions consistently fail -- is whether it can explain the dynamics of human society."I think I should write an economics book. I'll claim that modern economics theory is rubbish because it's all about money and goods, whereas what's really neeeded is an understanding of microbiology.
What worries me is finding this book in the biomedical library of a major research university. I wonder if I should talk to whoever is responsible for book-buying.
2 comments:
As you should know economics and evolutionary theory have a long and intertwined history going back at least to Thomas Malthus whose theory of political economy is the very core of Darwin's theory of evolution - as Snooks points out in this book.
Having read the book, there are a few points that are worth making: 1) Snooks is anti-neo-Darwinism not anti-evolution and the criticism of Dawkins and Wilson in particular are spot on to my mind 2) there are some novel and interesting points that Snooks makes about evolution that are interesting for their own sake whether or not you agree with the macro points Snooks makes 3) while it does not surprise me that some readers see arrogance in this work (which is Snooks' most vitrolic work) I think that a careful reading of the work will show no arrogance at all - what Snooks is doing is demonstrating the flaws in neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory and building an alternative model based on his earlier work.
What I find more useful than attacking a work without having read it (which suggests some arrogance itself) is instead to read the work even if I disagree with it and attempt to demonstrate how it is wrong. If I can't put holes in the arguments then it is best not to treat them with disdain.
Okay, so first off, because I know I sound dim, I'd like to tell you I'm young.
Second, my dad and I were discussing the darwinism theory and he said it was busted because of the finding of ardi. Is this true?
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