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Reading group: Gould and Lewontin, “The Spandrels of San Marco” (1979)

Priya Raghavan Fellow
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Biology & evolutionAmericanAnalyticDaniel DennettStephen Jay Gould#adaptationism#just-so-stories#reading-group#spandrels
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Its coordinates: 6.12 Philosophy of Biology

Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin's paper, published in 1979 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, is one of the few biology papers whose title became a philosophical term. Its target is what they called the adaptationist programme: the habit of breaking an organism into traits and telling a story about how each was selected for its current use.

I work in cognitive science, where evolutionary explanations of the mind are everywhere, so I'd like to read it with a group and see how it holds up. It is short, so three sittings:

  1. The opening metaphor and the "Panglossian paradigm". The spandrels of the cathedral in Venice: spaces left over by the architecture, later decorated so beautifully that one might think they were the point.
  2. The list of alternatives to adaptive explanation. Drift, developmental constraint, traits that are by-products of other traits, and features later put to new use.
  3. The closing section. Their praise of an older continental tradition that studied organisms as integrated body plans, and what they think biologists should do instead.

Post as you finish each part. Biologists especially welcome.

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4 replies

  1. Giulia Ferrante

    Fellow

    Sitting 1, from a Latin teacher who knows her Voltaire better than her biology. Dr Pangloss in Candide insists that noses were made to support spectacles, and that everything is for the best. Gould and Lewontin's joke is that a lot of adaptive storytelling has the same form: find a current use, declare it the reason. It's a very good joke and I suspect it did half the paper's work.

    Helpful · 1
  2. Ignacio Cárcamo

    Fellow

    Sitting 2. The alternatives list is the lasting part. From what I read, biology absorbed it: nobody serious now assumes every trait is an adaptation. It is also worth knowing that critics later argued the architectural example was imperfect (the structures in San Marco are arguably not spandrels in the strict sense, and they may have been chosen for their decorative space after all). Dennett made a meal of that. It doesn't touch the main point.

    Helpful · 2
  3. Elif Yıldız

    Fellow

    Sitting 2, from psychology. This is the section my lecturers skip, and I can see why: much evolutionary psychology is exactly a list of current uses with a selection story attached. What I take from the paper is a test. Before accepting "this trait evolved for X", ask what a by-product explanation would predict, and whether the data could tell them apart. Usually nobody has asked.

    Helpful · 3
  4. Priya Raghavan

    Fellow

    My own conclusion after sitting 3: the paper is best read not as anti-adaptationist but as a demand for evidence. Adaptation is often the right answer. It just has to be earned, trait by trait, and the burden is on the story-teller. That is a good rule for cognitive science too.