
The People’s Scientist: Richard Levins’ emancipatory vision of science - ehudla
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/01/richard-levins-obituary-biological-determinism-dialectics/
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danharaj
Alexander Groethendieck's story is a parallel in mathematics. Groethendieck
was one of the most influential mathematicians of the previous century and he
was a militant leftist. He once lectured in Vietnam during the US's military
campaign and thought that mathematicians had moral and political obligations.

He was also extremely eccentric and erratic to the point where he withdrew
from society almost entirely and lived as a recluse in the south of France for
the last of his days.

~~~
dang
There is also Frank Lawvere:
[http://formandformalism.blogspot.com/2011/09/lawvere-on-
math...](http://formandformalism.blogspot.com/2011/09/lawvere-on-mathematics-
and-maoist.html).

~~~
danharaj
Yeah, Lawvere has attempted to formalize dialectics into category theory via
the theory of adjoint modalities. Whether or not that is a full and faithful
interpretation of Hegel isn't something i can determine or argue but the
notion leads to interesting synthetic mathematics.

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lambdaphagy
My condolences to Prof. Levins's family.

I wish, however, that Mehta had taken more space to discuss Levins's technical
contributions. Or, failing that, at least defended his ideological writings to
a point where the audience could seriously engage with them. For example,
consider:

> Thus, whether an organism is subject to something as universal and seemingly
> natural as the laws of gravity depends on its genes. In this way, they
> uprooted biological determinism’s intellectual foundation: the reductionist
> fallacy that it is possible to detach genes from environment.

I'm having a lot of trouble following Mehta here. If an organism's genetics
can determine its effective exposure to fundamental physical forces, isn't
that actually _quite a strong argument_ for "biological determinism"?

The more serious objection here is that "biological determinism" is a term of
derision applied to a group by its detractors. I suspect I am probably what
Mehta would call a "biological determinist", but I have no idea why I should
be chastened by the domination of gravitational force by thermal noise at the
microscopic scale. The example has a "checkmate, biodeterminist!" air to it
that makes me worry that at least one of us is missing something.

Things begin to clear up in the next paragraph:

> Levins’ scholarly critique of biological determinism was complemented by a
> deep commitment to radical scientific activism.

It's not precisely clear how Mehta understands this complementarity, but
should we take the suggestion that if Levins' "scholarly critique of
biological determinism" turned out to be false, then his "deep commitment to
radical scientific activism" might also be jeopardized? Might this help to
explain the attitudes of Levins and his colleagues (notably Lewontin and Rose)
towards their critics? The contributions of the "dialectical biologists" to
these debates were extremely disappointing, rarely rising above the level of
innuendo and deliberate misquotation. One gets the sense from these exchanges
that they perceived stakes in the debate that simply weren't there (I mean,
Trivers was a Black Panther for crying out loud) and consequently fought tooth
and nail for any point whose concession might jeopardize The Cause.

Later we have:

> In passages that were scientifically decades ahead of their time, the book
> outlines a holistic way of looking at nature and the world — an outlook now
> fully embraced by the new fields of systems biology and complex systems...

The point of The Dialectical Biologist was that Marxism is correct and current
biology is insufficiently Marxist but once it becomes more Marxist things will
turn out great. Putting aside the examples of _every other time we 've tried
that_, it's seriously tendentious to suggest that sys bio and complex systems
have "fully embraced" these viewpoints, any more than optimal foraging theory
vindicates the political economy of Jevons, Menger and Walras. Actually
there's a way _better_ case for the latter.

Levins's collaborator Lewontin sunk to scarcely believable depths of
intellectual dishonesty for such an accomplished scientist. I would have liked
to be pleasantly surprised about Levins, but I'm afraid this article doesn't
give me the means.

~~~
ehudla
> isn't that actually quite a strong argument for "biological determinism"

Good question! You should go read some philosophy of biology, if you are
interested in these issues, there's ton of stuff about this debate. The issue,
as you are right to sense, isn't about "biological" determinism; rather it is
about whether genes are special or unique compared to other cues that affect
the development of the organism (such as gravity). It's a complicated issue,
with various implications. I actually don't think Levins is particularly
important for this debate, by the way. A little bit about it can be gleaned
from this description:

[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/inheritance-
systems/#MonHo...](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/inheritance-
systems/#MonHolMulSysVie)

~~~
lambdaphagy
> You should go read some philosophy of biology

I mean... I have. The thing is that the issue really is "biological
determinism" for Mehta: it's even one of the most frequent bigrams in the
piece, between "of science" and "Levins was".

But for Mehta, "biological determinism’s intellectual foundation [is] the
reductionist fallacy that it is possible to detach genes from environment." If
Mehta thinks that any of Levins's opponents agreed with that (or any working
biologist, for that matter), then he's using the word "detach" in a very
curious way without warning.

And again, the only example given would actually seem to imply that genes are
_more powerful than fundamental physical forces_ in their effect on phenotype,
which doesn't sound to me like such a ringing endorsement of the role of
environment.

If I'm this confused as a scientist with training in philosophy, I can only
imagine how other readers are coping.

~~~
ehudla
Transcend the piece. Go read more nuanced accounts in the scholarly
literature. It might still be confusing, since the issues become rather subtle
when you delve in, but it will be rewarding I hope.

