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Books Seeing everything through Darwin's eyes Without Miracles: Universal Selection Theory and the Second Darwinian Revolution. Gary Cziko. (A Bradford Book.) The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1995 . 385 pp. $30.00 (ISBNO-262-03232-5 cloth), "Not another polemic against creationism!" I exclaimed on firsr seeing Without Miracles, whose dust jacket features a magician pulling a Darwin 's finch (perhaps not obvious to the layman) out of a hat. Fortunately I did get past the sornewhat deceptive title and the somewhar confusing subtitle, which seems to suggest that this book is a rejoinder to the various evolutionary schools positing alternatives to selection. This book is acrually about evolutionary epistemology; the "second Darwinian revolurion" refers not to biology but to the biologizing of . much of the rest of human knowledge. The book's aims are not modest. The term eoolutionary epistemology has been used in several senses. I will define ir simply as the idea that our sensory access to information about the world and our neural processing and integration of that information are products of our adaptive history. We do not see in the ultraviolet range of the sp ectr um as bees or butterflies do, or hear the whistles we use to call our dogs. The evolu tionary epistemologist infers that our aneestors did not have oceasion to evolve those particular sensory capabilities. Seen in this light, many traditional issues for philosophers lose their distinctness and becorne mere epiphenomena of biology-and producrs of historical eontingeney, at that. No wond er secular professional philosophers seem to fear Darwin and Darwinists almost as much as theists do! Evolutionary epistemology is about as popular in 872 US university philosophy depart- gence). Those people experienced menrs as sociobiology was in social with books by enrhusiasrs may alscience departrnents back when both ready smell trouble: No one is equally sides rook soeiobiology's claim to eompetent in , or conversant with primaey over the social sciences se- the literature of, so many fields. But riously. Philosophers will tell you Cziko's not bad, as these things go. In each realm he considers three that the most fervent adherents of evolutionary epistemology are philo- classes of explanations thar rnight sophieal .autodidacts-either biolo- be, or have been, proffered: provigists ar total iaies-and therein lies dential, instructional, and selective. the proof of its intellectual vacuity, Providential explanations include conscious design by a higher power QED! Educational psyehologist Gary but are not Jimired to that-a point Cziko is a bit of an aurodidact, or ar not obvious in chapter 2, in whieh least an amateur enthusiast-but he the three categories of explanation has been eounseled weil, particu- are introdueed. We learn later that larly by Donald Campbell, the most any explanation thar simply takes imporrant advocate of evolutionary the attribure in question as a given is epistemology in this country. Cziko by definition providential. Thus claims that selecrive retention pro- Noam Chomsky's innarist view of cesses-analogues of Darwinian linguistic tem plates, insofar as it pays natural selection-offer the only ten- no artention ro the question of why able "nonmiraculous" explanarion they exist, is providential in characfar the appearance of " fir" (design) ter. (Chomsky, for obscure reasons, in the biosphere: Not contenr to deal is antiselectionist, but neither does with adaptation in rhe conventional he embrace a deity.) Cz iko grounds instructional exDarwinian sense, he ranges over immunobiology, neuroscience, ethol- planations in Lamarckism, bur onee ogy,psychology,anthropology,edu- again the rreatment in chapter 2 caticn, linguistics, and computer breaks down on ce we move on to the science (including artificial intelli- human sciences. In chapter 12, on Bioscience Val. 46 No. 11 education, Cz ik o cires John Cornenius ([1623J 1896) as an exemplar of instructionalisrn, which he adrnits rernains the dominant paradigrn in his own field. But this instructionalisrn has nothing to do with Lamarck. It is merely the notion that Information can be transferred to the individual from outside irself. There is no requirernent that it be passed on, genetically oe culrurally. (Cziko himsclf likes rhe concept of education in which the "Iearner" is an active generaror of knowledge, not a passive recipient.) Bur things are muddled at multiple levels: rhe sense of instructionalism changes not only between biology and culture but within biology itself. What in common da the remodeling of bone, precopulatory behavior, and the workings of the immune systern display? But this is of lirrle import anyway, insofar as all instructionalist explanation is gravely flawed when it avoids the question of why the systern is appropriately responsive to instrucrion, Ability ro "learn" is taken as a given; thus instructionalist explanations reduce ro providential ones. This is why the arternpr to transfer structuralisrn from anthropology and linguistics to biology failed. Which leaves selection, Czik o clearly believes that selection explains just about anyrhing of any interest about the biosphere, and perhaps the universe. His enthusiasm is not uniformly convincing, however. He is at his best when arguing for evolutionary epistemology in the first sense of Wuketits (1990; as I defined the term earlier in this review). When he is using it in Wuketits' seeond sense-te deseribe the aceumulation of human knowledge-he (Iike Wuketits) is less persuasive. Oddly, he fails tO eite Wuketits, although his book is arguably the best exposition of the topic around. Coming from edueational psychol<Jgy but touching on so many areas of human thought, Cziko understandably miss es arguments, studies, and phenomena thatwould boost his case. In chapter 7, on the adaptive modification of behavior, I waited in vain for his discussion of food-aversion learning (the "Garcia eHect": Garcia and Koelling 1966, December 1996 Garcia et al. 1966). Feod-aversion learning was the first major erack in classical stirnulus-response learning theory. The notion rhar animals would associare eating a novel food with significantly de!ayed, subsequent illness was so outrageous thar journal reviewers found ir unbelievable. Yet had Garcia 's work been se nt to naruralists familiar with Batesian mimicry, they would have found ir vastly reassuring. Behaviorist dogma made the behavioral basis for Batesian mimicry impossible. The naturalists were right; rhe behaviorists were wrang; and the whole thing, in retrospect, was predictable on stricr selectionist grounds. Chapter 11, on human language, screams out for a discussion of the early work of Peter Marler on the acquisition of bird song to put rhe debate over Chomsky-Fodor "innatisrn" into conrexr. Bur it is not there. Nor does Cziko seize the opportuniry t o integrate George Lakoff's (1990) synthetic masrerpi ece on cognitive linguist ics, Women, Fire, an d Dangerous Things, inro his own synthesis. Given the book 's ambirious reach, orher quibbles are inevitable. On page 172, Cziko glosses over objections to Popper's falsifiability crirerion for delimiting science from nonscience, ignoring an emerging consensus thar no such straighrforward criterion can be found. On page 286 he accuses E. O. Wilson's sociobiology of being "innarist" (hence, insufficiently selecrionist)akin to accusing the Pope of being a schismatic. On page 319 he conflates the evolution of bird wings and inseet wings, referring ludicrously to the early avian wing as "stubby protuberances from the backs of protobirds. " Biologists may argue with his use of terms, but that is the only blatant biological error I noted in the book. As an enthusiast, Cziko overreaas to the charge that selection is purely negative and attributes too much crearivity to it-a common errOf. Paradoxically, he also fails to acknowledge that the opportunism of selection is bounded only by what is presented to it. He should, for example, realize that directed mutation would enhance fitness and thus if directed mutation could evolve, it would. The only reason to rail against ir (as on page 317) is an ideological commitment [0 "randorn" mutation, a notion now so fuzzy one could pla y tennis wirh it as the ball. It does not Follow logically that natural selection would aurornaticaUy favor selecrive rerention processes analogaus to itself when shaping behavior, cognition, immunobiology, and so forrh. Selection favors that which works and is available. If selective rerention proces ses are rhe best garne in town, they will win out; if not, not. One does not have to agree with everyrhing Cziko claims to appreciate this book. Ir is thar rare synthesis in which different fields, usually read in isolation from one another, are inrimately inrerpenetrated. For rhe biologisr, it puts Rowe's (1994) Tbeoretical Models in Biology in a much broader conrext. For the humanist or social scientist, it is a potential antidote to reflexive antiDarwinian turf-guarding. Without Miracles will broaden the horizons of anyone who reads ir. ARTHUR M. SHAPIRO Center for Population Biology llniuersity of California Dauis, CA 95616 References cited ComeniusJ. [162311896. The great dida cric. Loridon (UK): Adam and Charles Black. Garcia J, Koelling RA. 1966. A relation of elle to consequence in avoidance learning. Psychonomic Science 4: 123-124. Garda J, Erwin ER, Koelling RA. 1966 . Learning with prolonged delay of reinforcemem. Psychonomic Science 5: 121-122. Lakoff G. 1990 . Warnen, fire, and dangerous things. Chicago (TL): Universiey of Chicago Press. Rowe G. 1994. Theorerical models in biology : the origin of life, the immune system, and the brain. Oxford (UK ): Oxford Universiry Press. Wukerits FM. 1990. Evolueionary episremology and ies implicarions for hlJmank ind . Albany (NY): State University of New York Press. 873