Richard Charles "„thick "“Lewontin (* 29. March 1929 in New York town center) is an US-American evolution biologist, Genetiker and a social critic. As prominent developers of a mathematical basis of the population genetics and the evolution theory he occurred for the application of molecular-biological techniques such as gel electrophoresis on questions of the mutation and evolution. In two essays of 1966, which he published together with J.L. Hubby in the magazine Genetics, it put the basis for the modern molecular evolution.

Biography

Lewontin visited the Forest Hills High School and the Ecole Libre striking width unit of the Etudes in New York. 1951 he attained his BA in biology to the Harvard University and one year later its mA in mathematical statistics to the Columbia University, followed from a doctorate in Zoologie. He worked to the North Carolina State University, the University OF smelling ester and the University OF Chicago. 1973 he taught as a Alexander Agassiz professor of the Zoologie and until 1998 as a professor of biology in Harvard and was 2003 the Alexander Agassiz Research professor. Lewontin had large influence on many philosophers of biology such as William Wimsatt, which taught with him in Chicago, his study colleague Robert Brandon as well as Elliott Sober, Philip Kitcher and Peter Godfrey Smith. He loaded it often to the work in his laboratory invited.

Work

Lewontin and his deceased Harvard colleague Stephen Jay Gould introduced the word originating from architecture "„spandrel "“(Spandrille) to the evolutionary context. In its influential writing The spandrels OF San Marco and the Panglossion paradigm: A critique OF the adaptationist programs (1979) described themselves thereby a characteristic of an organism, which exists as necessary consequence from other characteristics and is not not selected. The relative frequency of in relation to adaptive characteristics in nature remains a controversial topic of evolution biology.

Lewontin was in its article The unit OF Selection in former times an advocate of a hierarchy of levels of the selection. In addition it proceeded from the historical nature of biological causality, as it wrote Capricious in Is Nature Probable or.

In Organism and Environment in Scientia and in more popular form in the last chapter of Biology as Ideology said Lewontin that one should regard the organism contrary to the traditional darwinistischen representation of the organism as a passive receiver of environmental influences as an active creator of the environment. Niches are not preformed, empty containers, into which the organisms are inserted, but by the organisms are defined and created. The relationship between organism and environment is reciprocal and dialectic. M.W. Feldman, K.N. Laland and F.J. Odling Smee have more detailed models from Lewontins concept developed.

Lewontin criticized for a long time the traditional neodarwinistischen opinions for adaptation. In its article adaptation in the Italian Encyclopedia a AUDI and a weakened version in Scientific American he stressed the necessity for a technical characterisation of the adaptation independently of the measurement of the descendant numbers, instead of assuming simply that organs and organisms were optimally adapted. Its more general technical criticism of the adaptationism results from the realization that the errors Soziobiologie reveal fundamentally wrong acceptance over the adaptability in the Neodarwinismus.

Together with other researchers such as Gould Lewontin criticized again and again some topics of the Neodarwinismus, in particular Soziobiologen and evolution psychologist such as Edward O. Wilson or Richard Dawkins, which tried, to explain animal behaviors and social structures with evolutionary progress or strategies. This was controversially discussed with application to humans, since some regard it as genetic Determinismus. Lewontin demanded nuancierteren view of the evolution, which according to its opinion a better understanding of the whole organism and the environment requires in its writings.

Such concerns over an allegedly exaggerated simplification of the genetics Lewontin compelled again and again to comments in debates and it held many lectures, in order to spread his opinions over evolution biology and science. In its books such as emergency in Our of gene (together with Steven rose and Leon J. Kamin) and numerous articles it placed the transmission of human behaviors and in IQ-tests of measured intelligence in question, as it is described for example in The Bell Curve of Charles Murray.

Some university graduates criticized Lewontin for his refusal of the Soziobiologie for not-scientific reasons. Some wrote this rejection to its political opinions too (Lewontin identified itself occasionally than Marxist or at least left oriented; see Wilson 1995). Other (like Kitcher 1985) it answered that Lewontins criticism on scientific concerns around the discipline been based and equates attacks on Lewontins of motives with a Argumentum ad hominem. Researchers such as Steven Pinker (2002) regard the affair scientifically, but believe nevertheless that Lewontin attacks a stooge version of the Soziobiologie (or its modern Inkarnation as evolutionary psychology) and thus the goal missed.

Lewontin was concerned also with the economics of the industriellen agriculture. It stated that hybrid grain was developed and was not publicised not because of its better quality, but because it permitted the companies, which farmers forced annually to the purchase again seeds, instead of planting seeds from the previous harvest. He stated during a unsuccessful process in California, which turned against the national financing of the research to the development of automatic Tomatenerntern, which preferred the profit of the industriellen agriculture in relation to the employment of farm workers.

Honors

• 1961: Fulbright Fellowship
• 1961: National Science Foundation senior Postdoctoral Fellow
• 1970er: Member that national Academy OF Sciences
• 1994: Sewall WRIGHT Award of the American Society OF Naturalists

Works

• Is Nature Probable or , Bio Science, volume. 16, (1966) 25-27.
• The unit OF Selection, Annual Reviews OF Ecology and Systematics, volume. 1 (1970) 1-18.
• The Apportionment OF human Diversity, Evolutionary Biology, volume. 6 (1972) pp. 391-398.
• The gene TIC basis OF Evolutionary CHANGE, Columbia University press, (1974) ISBN 0-231-03392-3
• Adattamento, Enciclopedia a AUDI, (1977) volume. 1, 198-214.
• Adaptation, Scientific American, volume. 239, (1978) 212-228.
• S.J. Gould and Richard Lewontin, The spandrels OF San Marco and the Panglossion paradigm: A critique OF the adaptationist programs, 1979, Proc R Soc Lond B, 205, P. 581-598
• Human Diversity, Scientific American LIBRARY (1982) 2d edn 1995 ISBN 0-716-76013-4
• The Organism as Subject and Object OF evolution, Scientia, volume. 188 (1983) 65-82.
• Emergency in Our of gene: Biology, Ideology and human Nature (with Steven rose and Leon J. Kamin) (1984) ISBN 0-394-72888-2
• The Dialectical bio logist (with Richard Levins), Harvard University press (1985) ISBN 0-674-20283-X
• Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine OF DNA (1991) ISBN 0-060-97519-9
• The tripolarizes Helix: Genes, Organism, and Environment, Harvard University press (2000) ISBN 0-674-00159-1

Literature

• Philip Kitcher: Vaulting ambition: Sociobiology and the Quest for human Nature, WITH press, 1985, ISBN 0262111098
• Steven Pinker: The blank Slate: The Denial OF human Nature in decaying Intellectual Life, Penguin press, 2002
• Rama S. Singh, Costas Krimbas, DIANE Paul and John Beattie: Thinking about evolution, Cambridge University presses, 2001 (one two-restrain anniversary publication for Lewontin with complete bibliography)
• Edward O. Wilson, Science and ideology, Academic Questions 8, 1995 on-line

Related links

• Lecture '' Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine OF DNA '' (1990) - RealAudio Stream
• Interview in Berkeley 2003
• Profile and bibliography
• Hitchcock lecture '' genes, Organism and Environment: Bath Metaphors and Good Biology '' (RealAudio Stream with UCTV)
• Hitchcock lecture '' The Concept OF Race: The Confusion OF Social and Biological Reality '' (RealAudio Stream with UCTV)

Articles in category "Richard Lewontin"

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