“RED IN TOOTH AND CLAW” vs. “GUIA THEORY”
So who is “right”, George C. Williams or Lynn Margulis?
Will Humans (as a whole) ever co-operate, or will there
“always” be “US against THEM”?
Are there “certain” Human Emotions that will “always”
ensure that there will be an Enemy?
Would anyone like to discuss the following three
Human Emotions, and how they relate with all the
above, and the War On Terrorism?
ENVY >>> MALLICE >>> SCHADENFREUDE
jesse,bm (biology major)
What the heck are you asking? Remember, specificity is your friend.
Thanks for your specified confusion. Which words
and context do you not understand?
friend,
jesse
Y’know, the OP reads sort of like a poem. I don’t think there actually is a propositional question as such; It’s more like performance art tapped into a keyboard.
Bravo. Excellent.
ENVY >>> MALLICE >>> SCHADENFREUDE
sorry, mispelled MALICE.
jesse
Let me guess, “RED IN TOOTH AND CLAW” vs. “GUIA THEORY” is your assigned term paper topic and you want us to supply info/discussion you can use?
Hmmm, maybe it is performance art.
I’m thinking that this should be titled
“PSYCHOLOGY THEORIES” and not “BIOLOGY THEORIES”.
What is Guava theory anyway? Something to do with this topic, I bet:
Do Mangos make sexual fluids taste better?
[sub]Seriously, you mean Gaia theory, don’t you?[/sub]
I’ll give a serious answer: “As if” selfishness at the genetic level does not preclude genuine cooperation between people or animals. We are not our genes, and even if our prosocial tendencies are indirectly survival strategies for our genes they are as real for us as anything else. Tennyson’s “red in tooth and claw” quote is misleading. There is no requirement that competition be gladiatorial. If an environmental niche can be filled by creatures who give and love and cooperate, then fine.
Competition vs cooperation at the economic level is IMHO a false dichotomy as competition between people is rarely “no holds barred” but takes place within a cooperative framework of laws and norms whose enforcement is too weak to explain the observed degree of compliance.
And I presume you mean “Gaia” theory, which is bunk.
And I will post a link to a primer on Gaia theory here, because I had to go look it up to remind myself what it was exactly, and Picmr is right, it’s bunk, but it’s FUN bunk, you gotta admit. “Daisyworlds” is way more fun than “spores from space”.
There are commies in the zoo???
Do you mean Gaia theory or guano theory or something else?
I had schadenfreude once, but i took some penicillin…
This was written in 1850, nine years prior to Darwin’s publishing of his theories. It may mean different things to different people, but it is commonly believed to be in memory of a recently deceased friend, not a treatise on evolution. The “red in tooth and claw” quote is more aptly decrying the natural order when one so loved can be taken from us before his time.
Darwin more specifically proposed survival of the fittest, where the ‘fittest’ is not always the creature with bigger teeth. Symbiosis, particularly apt given the OP, is a viable survival strategy under many circumstances.
“Survival of the fittest” is a phrase that Darwin didn’t invent, and he didn’t like it much (although he used it in some version of his works). You don’t see it used much in modern evolutiuonary biology. Evolution is about differences in reproductive success, and survival is only one factor (although obviously a key one) in reproductive success.
JonF: You are correct. That phrase only applies in the loosest of senses; taken literally it proliferates too many misconceptions such as mere survival being the goal (as you pointed out), and ‘fittest’ can be easily misconstrued (as I mentioned).
The phrase was coined by Herbert Spencer, though I do believe that Darwin used that exact wording, for better or worse, when discussing the relationship between extinction and natural selection. I don’t know that he had a particular dislike for it.
Darwin’s favorite phrase that conveyed the suvival of the fittest was the “struggle for existence.” The idea that this is a bloody struggle between animals tells only part of the story. There are many examples of animals cooperating to survive against a harsh natural environment.
The gladiator metaphor was popular in late-19th-century western Europe, but it was not shared universally. The Russians in particular favored the idea of collective struggle of animals. Reality is somewhere in between, I think.
He did use exactly that phrase as the subtitle of chapter 4 in later editions of “Origin of Species” (see Table of Contents (first edition) and Table of Contents (sixth edition)). It appears in chapter 3 of the sixth edition:
“I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term natural selection, in order to mark its relation to man’s power of selection. But the expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer, of the Survival of the Fittest, is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.”
The same phrase appears several times in chapter 4, once in chapter 5, twice in chapter 6, once in chapter 7, once in chapter 11, and once in chapter 15 (all in the sixth edition).
Wallace convinced him to make this change. I have often heard it claimed that Darwin did not like it because of its perversion by the eugenics movement, but I can’t find any on-line references. If it’s documented, it’s probably in his correspondence.
The sentences I quote above suggest that he liked the phrase when he revised for the sixth edition.
Look, cooperation vs competition is a false dichotomy. Organisms compete by cooperating and cooperate by competing. Think of total war, one country against the other. The epitome of competition, right? But the only way for the countries to fight each other is through intricate cooperation internally.
Natural selection is about differential reproduction of genes. Competition vs cooperation is a red herring.