Fodor, Jerry. "Why Pigs Don’t Have Wings." LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS October 18, 2007.

In fact, an appreciable number of perfectly reasonable biologists are coming to think that the theory of natural selection can no longer be taken for granted. This is, so far, mostly straws in the wind; but it’s not out of the question that a scientific revolution – no less than a major revision of evolutionary theory – is in the offing. Unlike the story about our minds being anachronistic adaptations, this new twist doesn’t seem to have been widely noticed outside professional circles. The ironic upshot is that at a time when the theory of natural selection has become an article of pop culture, it is faced with what may be the most serious challenge it has had so far. Darwinists have been known to say that adaptationism is the best idea that anybody has ever had. It would be a good joke if the best idea that anybody has ever had turned out not to be true. A lot of the history of science consists of the world playing that sort of joke on our most cherished theories.

Two kinds of consideration now threaten to displace natural selection from its position at the centre of evolutionary theory; one is more or less conceptual, the other is more or less empirical.

Read the rest here: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n20/jerry-fodor/why-pigs-dont-have-wings.

Godfrey-Smith, Peter. "It Got Eaten." LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS July 8, 2010.

In 1959 the psychological doctrine known as ‘behaviourism’ was at the peak of its influence. Pioneered in the early 20th century by Edward Lee Thorndike, Clark Hull and J.B. Watson, behaviourism rejected explanations of action in terms of mysterious inner processes such as ‘thought’ and tried to explain behaviour purely in terms of the organism’s conditioning by experience. By the middle of the century, the behaviourist approach had been developed in a detailed and radical form by B.F. Skinner. Skinner explained learning in terms of reinforcement: organisms produce novel behaviours spontaneously, and those that are positively reinforced are more likely to occur in similar circumstances in the future. This view, developed in work on rats and pigeons, was extended to cover human language in Skinner’s 1957 book Verbal Behaviour. A young linguist, Noam Chomsky, published a review of Verbal Behaviour two years later. It was perhaps the most devastating book review ever written.

Chomsky argued that Skinner’s theoretical vocabulary could be applied to human linguistic behaviour only in an empty, post hoc way. He also thought that Skinner’s behaviourism had a simple architectural flaw: it held that external factors – especially experiences of reinforcement – were of ‘overwhelming importance’ in the explanation of behaviour. Hardly any role was given to what Chomsky referred to simply as ‘the internal structure of the organism’. It is unusual to do serious damage to a scientific research programme with a set of general arguments – not by citing experimental or mathematical results, but by looking at the basic ideas and revealing a crack in the foundations. Though the impact of the review itself is sometimes exaggerated, this is the effect Chomsky had on the behaviourist study of humans.

Jerry Fodor now hopes to do something similar to Darwinism in biology. Fodor has been making sceptical remarks about Darwinian ideas for decades. Three years ago he wrote a direct attack on Darwinian evolutionary theory in the LRB,* and he has now published What Darwin Got Wrong, along with Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini. Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini believe that they can replicate Chomsky’s demolition job on Skinner because ‘Skinner’s account of learning and Darwin’s account of evolution are identical in all but name.’ As we shall see, ‘identical’ is quite a stretch, but there is a real analogy. First, both theories draw on an externalist or ‘outside-in’ pattern of explanation, in which the structure or behaviour of living things is seen as a consequence of their environments. Second, both rely on a process that can be described loosely as ‘trial and error’. New variations are produced in a spontaneous and unintelligent way, and a few successful variants are kept while others are discarded. This resemblance between the theories was recognised by Skinner himself, who saw Darwinism and behaviourism as dovetailing together. And Chomsky, the great critic of behaviourism, shows no enthusiasm for mainstream evolutionary theory, especially when applied to psychological traits.

Opposing attitudes towards externalist explanations point to a fissure running through the history of science and philosophy. This is part of what distinguishes the ‘empiricist’ from the ‘rationalist’ tradition, with the former (Locke, for example) explaining the contents of the mind in terms of what is given in experience, and the latter (Leibniz) insisting on the self-propelled power of thought. Which side of the divide one places oneself on is partly a matter of intellectual temperament; but Skinnerian behaviourism and Darwinism are still scientific theories, answerable to empirical evidence. The partial similarity in pattern does not mean they must stand or fall together. They are about different things; one may be right and the other wrong. . . .

Read the rest here: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n13/peter-godfrey-smith/it-got-eaten.

Malik, Kenan. "Pigs Won't Fly." LITERARY REVIEW (March 2010).

Fodor, Jerry, and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini. What Darwin Got Wrong. New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2010.

Evolution is weird - far weirder than Darwin ever imagined. But does that mean that Darwinism itself should go the way of the dinosaur and the dodo? That's the question that Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini pose in What Darwin Got Wrong. Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection rests on three elements: the existence of variation in a trait; the differential effects of such variation upon reproductive success; and a mechanism by which the trait is inherited. Little was known in Darwin's time of the principles underlying heredity and variation. It was the Austrian monk Gregor Mendel who started unravelling the story of genetic inheritance. His ideas were eventually fused with those of Darwin to create the 'Modern Synthesis', the foundation stone of contemporary evolutionary theory. Only over the last twenty years, however, have we begun to understand in greater detail what genes are, how they express themselves and how variation in the genotype relates to variation in the phenotype (observable characteristic). Most biologists working within the Modern Synthesis had assumed that an organism was a straightforward reflection of its component genes. Specific genetic mutations, they believed, gave rise to specific changes in bodily structure or behaviour. Recent research has revealed a far more complex story of how genes make organisms. Some genes have multiple functions while others act as 'master genes' helping to switch bits of DNA on and off. Master genes seem not to recognise species boundaries. The same master genes for eye development can be found in sea urchins (in which they remain unexpressed), fruit flies and humans. The implication is that major differences between species may be less about the evolution of new genes than about the same genes being regulated and expressed in new ways. According to Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini, these discoveries reveal not just the complexity of the evolutionary process but also the wrongness of Darwinian theory. Biologists such as Richard Lewontin and the late Stephen Jay Gould have in recent years challenged what they call 'ultra-Darwinism', insisting that adaptation is only one of a number of evolutionary mechanisms. All, however, have accepted adaptation as important and real. Not so Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini. Fodor is a leading philosopher of mind. Piattelli-Palmarini is a distinguished cognitive scientist. What Darwin Got Wrong is a trenchant, entertaining assault on the very basis of contemporary evolutionary theory. There are two halves to the argument. . . . .

Read the rest here: http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/malik_03_10.html.