Gould And Lewontin Summary

To Whom It May Concern, Stephen Gould and Richard Lewontin’s article called The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme shows the consistent religious aspect in most evolutionary writing. An article must meet these three criteria to be worth of publication. Firstly, it must have a persuasive argument. Secondly, it must have an authoritative voice, as if talking with the read instead of at the reader. Lastly, the article must contain an accurate ideas. This article has a great authoritative voice by talking to the reader instead of at them. Although Gould and Lewontin’s article has several attributes, it has some falsehoods included as well. For instance, one critique of their spandrels

They suggest adaptationists “atomize” organism's traits to natural selection and can be viewed as a separate adaptation to act as a non-mutually exclusive function (Gould and Lewontin, p. 585). Gould and Lewontin say instead, that natural selection works on organisms as a whole and not trait-by-trait. In other words, natural selection does not look at individual traits; rather it actually focuses only on the total organism, which Gould and Lewontin were correct about. Additionally, all that natural selection focuses on is an organism’s fitness. Fitness is also relative to other individuals of the population; therefore, there is no direct number for ‘good’ fitness. Natural selection indirectly affects other trait because the genes are correlated. Lastly, the authors provide a great authoritative voice by stating “In natural history, all possible things happen sometimes; you general not support your favored phenomenon by declaring rivals impossible in theory” (Gould and Lewontin, p. 585). This shows a talking with attitude instead of a talking at attitude in this

Ironically, Gould & Lewontin never explained how the growth in complexity of biological functions, which alludes to organisms that exist today, could show these developmental body constraints and allometry. Furthermore, Gould and Lewontin discuss these other forces, as developmental constraints, which are alternatives to natural selection; however, we know now that these forces have some relationship to natural selection. For example, developmental variation has fitness cost, like reproduction and survival, so developmental systems are subject to selection as well. This part of the article left me with a question. How do developmental constraints go through evolution or change? Gould and Lewontin ignored answering this question because it would mean contradicting themselves and supporting adaptationists. Although this a flaw in their work, it does not damage the work as a whole. I believe this because, even though they contradict themselves, if you look at one side you can agree that not everything in nature does need or has an explanation. For example, the meaning of life, which is a philosophical question about the purpose of existence, cannot be explain through just passing on genes, especially pertaining to humans. However, this does not take away from their other