Subject
Re: great novelist (Lolita, Pale Fire, Pnin) ...
Date
Body
On Jul 17, 2008, at 9:01 PM, b.boyd@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ wrote:
> I would reply to the Discovery Institute were it really interested
> in open debate and facts rather than a priori convictions that (as I
> have pointed out elsewhere) Nabokov's assumption that mimicry
> exceeds predators' powers of deception has been falsified.
>
> Brian Boyd
>
Well, that's what some neo-Darwinists say, but it's not exactly true.
See below an excerpt from my article on Nabokov's views on Darwinism
below. I cite studies that support Nabokov. HOWEVER, the Discovery
Institute article is extremely misleading. Nabokov's views support a
branch of research known as neutral evolutionary theory, which
supplements but does not overturn the theory of natural selection.
Nabokov believed in natural selection (I cite proof of this in my
paper). He just thought (and, I argue, he was right) there were other
mechanisms at work in the production of mimicry.
Victoria
http://www.dactyl.org/directors/vna/papers/Alexander_full.pdf
"Neutral Evolution and Aesthetics: Vladimir Nabokov and Insect
Mimicry," Working Papers Series 01-10-057 (Santa Fe: Santa Fe
Institute, 2001).
"Nabokov, Teleology, and Insect Mimicry," Nabokov Studies 7 (2003).
According to Batesian mimicry, the fact that the viceroy looks like the
unpalatable monarch makes it less likely to be preyed on by birds that
have sampled
monarchs. Therefore, a resemblance might be reproductively
advantageous to
viceroy butterflies as they would be preferentially selected. Nabokov
tasted both the
viceroy and monarch himself and reported that they both were unpalatable
(Nabokov's Butterflies 535). Credulous Darwinists continued to believe
the Batesian
mimicry story without testing it themselves. Finally years later, a
study by Lincoln
Brower and David Ritland (using birds to do the taste test) found that
indeed the
viceroy is also "bitter," and they concluded that "the viceroy
butterfly is not a Batesian
mimic" (497). After Brower and Ritland discredited the Batesian theory
as an
explanation for the viceroy-monarch relation, the Müllerian theory of
mimicry took its
place.[18] According to this theory, different species of butterflies,
each unpalatable,
mutually reinforce the association between appearance and bitter
taste. But as R. I.
Vane-Wright notes, "Because, in addition to sharing the same warning
signal, all
members of a Müllerian group are well-protected, it has been argued
that no
deception is involved and, therefore, they are not really mimics at
all" (460).
There is more to this mimicry mystery. A 1984 study by J. R. G. Turner
provides
some support for Nabokov's argument (in "Father's Butterflies," see
below)
that natural selection may not have gradually and painstakingly shaped
resemblances between different species of butterflies, such as the
viceroy and
monarch. Turner concludes that Müllerian mimics and their models have
not traveled
long and unique pathways. Turner shows that because butterflies share
a common
toolbox (e.g., laws guiding reaction-diffusion processes) for forming
patterns, a single
mutation leads to a large change in appearance, bringing one species
reasonably
close to another. Turner's findings are consistent with Nabokov's view
of pattern
formation. Nabokov supposed that the resemblance between similar
species was the
product of similar mechanistic, temporal, or chemical constraints.
Nabokov never
denied that functionality might help stabilize the resemblance between
"mimics" once
it is already in existence, but the initial cause of the resemblance
must be sought in
some ahistorical limiting principles, such as the ground plan
constraints, which have
nothing to do with survival or increased reproduction. One can still
argue against
Brower, Ritland, Van-Wright, and Turner if one likes (as Boyd insists,
Nabokov's
"position [on mimicry] has proved to be wrong"), but there is no
denying that
Nabokov's comments against viceroy-monarch mimicry receive compelling
support
from these scientists.
On Jul 17, 2008, at 9:01 PM, b.boyd@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ wrote:
> I would reply to the Discovery Institute were it really interested
> in open debate and facts rather than a priori convictions that (as I
> have pointed out elsewhere) Nabokov's assumption that mimicry
> exceeds predators' powers of deception has been falsified.
>
> Brian Boyd
>
> From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU] On
> Behalf Of Sandy P. Klein
> Sent: Friday, 18 July 2008 9:06 a.m.
> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
> Subject: [NABOKV-L] great novelist (Lolita, Pale Fire, Pnin) ...
>
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> Complete article at the following URL:
> http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008/07/vladimir_nabokov_furious_darwi.html
>
> Vladimir Nabokov, "Furious" Darwin Doubter
>
> So was Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) secretly a fundamentalist
> Christian, a mad man, or just plain ignorant? The great novelist
> (Lolita, Pale Fire, Pnin) was, in his own telling, a "furious"
> critic of Darwinian theory. He based the judgment not on religion,
> to which biographer Brian Boyd writes that he was "profoundly
> indifferent," but on decades of his scientific study of butterflies,
> including at Harvard and the American Museum of Natural History. Of
> course, this was all before the culture-wide sclerosis of Darwinian
> orthodoxy set in.
>
> As Boyd notes in Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years, "He could not
> accept that the undirected randomness of natural selection would
> ever explain the elaborateness of nature's designs, especially in
> the most complex cases of mimicry where the design appears to exceed
> any predator’s powers of apprehension."
> Boyd summarized the artist's scientific bona fides in an
> appreciation in Natural History.
> For most of the 1940s, he served as de facto curator of lepidoptera
> at Harvard University’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, and became
> the authority on the little-studied blue butterflies (Polyommatini)
> of North and South America. He was also a pioneer in the study of
> butterflies' microscopic anatomy, distinguishing otherwise almost
> identical blues by differences in their genital parts.
> Later employed at Harvard as a research fellow in entomology while
> teaching comp lit at Wellesley, Nabokov published scientific journal
> articles in The Entomologist, The Bulletin of the Museum of
> Comparative Zoology, The Lepidopterists' News, and Psyche: A Journal
> of Entomology.
>
> [ ... ]
>
> Comforting! But Singh misses the point of Nabokov's question. It's
> not the perfection of the pattern that needs an explanation. The
> novelist/lepidopterist asked, if a particular artistic subtlety in
> that perfection is beyond the ability of a predator to perceive, how
> did nature select it?
>
>
> Posted by David Klinghoffer on July 17, 2008 8:14 AM
>
>
>
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