Code with Jason
Code with Jason
286 - Darwin, Science and Programming with Kate Holterhoff
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In this episode I talk with Kate Holterhoff, senior analyst at RedMonk, about her PhD research on Darwin's methods, speculation in science, and how 19th century evolutionary thinking influenced literature. We discuss epistemology, conjecture and criticism, and how these ideas connect to programming.
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Hey, it's Jason, host of the Code with Jason podcast. You're a developer. You like to listen to podcasts. You're listening to one right now. Maybe you like to read blogs and subscribe to email newsletters and stuff like that. Keep in touch. Email newsletters are a really nice way to keep on top of what's going on in the programming world. Except they're actually not. I don't know about you, but the last thing that I want to do after a long day of staring at the screen is sit there and stare at the screen some more. That's why I started a different kind of newsletter. It's a snail mail programming newsletter. That's right, I send an actual envelope in the mail containing a paper newsletter that you can hold in your hands. You can read it on your living room couch, at your kitchen table, in your bed, or in someone else's bed. And when they say, What are you doing in my bed? You can say, I'm reading Jason's newsletter. What does it look like? You might wonder what you might find in this snail mail programming newsletter. You can read about all kinds of programming topics like object-oriented programming, testing, DevOps, AI. Most of it's pretty technology agnostic. You can also read about other non-programming topics like philosophy, evolutionary theory, business, marketing, economics, psychology, music, cooking, history, geology, language, culture, robotics, and farming. The name of the newsletter is Nonsense Monthly. Here's what some of my readers are saying about it. Helmut Kobler from Los Angeles says thanks much for sending the newsletter. I got it about a week ago and read it on my sofa. It was a totally different experience than reading it on my computer or iPad. It felt more relaxed, more meaningful, something special and out of the ordinary. I'm sure that's what you were going for, so just wanted to let you know that you succeeded. Looking forward to more. Drew Bragg from Philadelphia says Nonsense Monthly is the only newsletter I deliberately set aside time to read. I read a lot of great newsletters, but there's just something about receiving a piece of mail, physically opening it, and sitting down to read it on paper that is just so awesome. Feels like a lost luxury. Chris Sonnier from Dickinson, Texas says just finished reading my first nonsense monthly snail mail newsletter and truly enjoyed it. Something about holding a physical piece of paper that just feels good. Thank you for this. Can't wait for the next one. Dear listener, if you would like to get letters in the mail from yours truly every month, you can go sign up at nonsensemonthly dot com. That's nonsensemonthly dot com. I'll say it one more time nonsense monthly dot com. And now without further ado, here is today's episode. Hey, today I'm here with Kate Holterhoff, senior analyst at Red Monk. Kate, welcome.
SPEAKER_02:It's so great to be here. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_00:So tell us about yourself.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Um, well, I work for uh a really cool analyst company called Red Monk. We're developer focused, uh, so I spent a lot of time talking to very interesting folks about what they're building. Um and in a former life, I was an academic, and after that I was a front-end engineer. So I I love the parts of my job that involve research and writing, uh, presenting, and um pretty much, you know, any anyone who's working at the top of the stack, really enjoy talking with them. Uh, the JavaScript ecosystem uh it's a lot of fun right now. Um AI code assistance, um, all of that is uh definitely in my wheelhouse. Um but at Red Monk World Generalist, we're we're kind of a small analyst um firm. So in the the the grand scheme of of you know that entire industry, um, you know, we tend to to you know pay attention to a little bit of everything. But yes, I I definitely my my the the products that I get the most excited about touch on the the design side, the interactive teams, the yeah, the front end.
SPEAKER_00:I was looking at your LinkedIn profile and I went down to the like uh education section and I found it interesting what you majored in in college. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
SPEAKER_02:Yes. Uh so in 2016 I got my PhD from Carnegie Mellon. Uh my degree is in literary and cultural studies, which means that I taught a lot of communication classes over the years. Uh it also means that I researched um the, well, uh my area of expertise was uh 19th century culture uh and the history of science in particular. So uh I actually just this year published my dissertation as a book, um, and it was on Darwin's methods and how they apply to uh a number of sort of proto-science fiction stories. So, like H.G. Wells, uh, I look at um, I don't know, Robert Lewis Stevenson, you know, a lot of authors that folks are probably sort of tangentially familiar with. Um the author that I spent a lot of time with is H. Writer Haggard, uh, and he invented like the Indiana Jones sort of prototype. Uh so I love that kind of adventure fiction. So, you know, even like um Legend of Zelda, you know, collecting all the different artifacts in ancient uh temples, you know, all of that is is a lot of fun. And I I I I tend to look at um Haggard's work uh for inspiration uh you know for that whole genre. And yeah, so I, you know, I spent a decade in that world. Um that's how I learned about programming. I I worked in the digital humanities, uh, and so that means that I had an archive and um, you know, learned a lot about metadata and um, you know, yeah, it uh is a Ruby on Rails app. It was on Heroku. It's since been taken down when Heroku got rid of the free tier, sadly. Uh, but you know, hey, I have I have big hopes of vibe coding a new one. So we'll we'll see how that goes.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, um, that's really interesting. And and that's like super up my alley regarding the um history of science stuff. I've been studying that a bit lately. Um the um studying like the Renaissance and the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution, which all kind of overlap with each other. Now I was talking to a friend of mine, you know, I guess, I guess it's easy for a person to develop the curse of knowledge where you don't realize what other people don't know. Because like I kind of I thought that everybody knew about the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution and stuff. Um, but like maybe I even like recently didn't really know about that stuff. Um But I was I was talking about the Scientific Revolution with a friend of mine, and I'm like, you know about the scientific revolution? And he's like, No. I'm like, oh shit. Um but I think it's it's like arguably the most important thing that has ever happened. Um because it's it's what took us and and by it I mean this whole uh enlightenment scientific revolution renaissance thing. Um because it took us from the pre-scientific era into the scientific and and since then everything has been different and better. Like we can do so much stuff that we couldn't do before. Um and so understanding how that happened and like how things were different before from the way they are now, I think is really important.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. I mean my uh my jam was evolutionary science. So Darwin, um I I yeah, I I I wrote up some articles on his theory of pangenesis, which was like before genetics were understood. So Darwin had thought that um instead of uh you know understanding like Mendelian genetics where you have these sort of particulate um pieces that come together in order to make the next generation, um, he thought it was blended inheritance. And so he had this interesting theory because that was sort of the missing piece of um uh you know of natural selection. And um yeah, so but to take a step back from that, you know, I could I could nerd out on that sort of thing for a while. Um, I was really interested in um the move. So the Enlightenment uh really focused a lot on empiricism and having to actually observe um, you know, the the things that you're studying, which is of course so important. It's Aristotelian, you know, all of this is extremely necessary and was, you're right, uh it got us to where we are today. However, in the 19th century, there was this realization that things that, in order to really understand the world, you couldn't observe all the things that were interesting. And so Darwin encountered this with natural selection, because of course you can't observe uh generations of change, you know, it takes millions and millions of years, deep time. Um, so you know, Hutonian geologic time. Uh, but also um if you look outside of that too, like um physics and um like the study of oxygen and uh all of these things that couldn't be uh studied empirically. Uh so my my book is call is called uh uh the Darwinian method and and and uh focuses on speculation. So in on the first page of The Origin of Species, he says, I speculate. And I love that idea because of course, uh, you know, speculation is wrong and bad, and we shouldn't speculate in science. But Darwin was saying, well, I do speculate, and it's it's actually important for us to have this imagination when we're studying forces that we don't understand.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so I'm gonna get your book right after this podcast episode um for real. Um because like, okay, if if we're starting to lose anybody, um I I wanna I wanna explain how this definitely relates to programming. Um so I just finished reading this book, I listened to it on audio and then I that I read it, um The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch. I've mentioned David Deutsch a bunch of times on the show, um, but this book talks about what he calls the four strands of reality. Um one is quantum physics, another is the theory of evolution, um, another is the theory of computation, and the fourth is epistemology, um, specifically Pauperian epistemology from Karl Popper. Um and he argues that these four strands of reality are deeply interconnected and related. Um so you know this maybe hopefully it'll become clear how this all is related to programming, but I I think one of the maybe the most fundamental of of those four is um is epistemology, because like epistemology is how is all about how we know what's true, and if you don't know what's true, then it kind of all bets are off for everything else. Um and you mentioned how the empiricists believed that we had to observe things and and kind of make inferences based on our observations, but that's not how knowledge creation actually works, because there's so much stuff that we can't observe. And David Deutsch makes the point in his books that like no no one has ever like been to a distant planet, but we can know things about other planets because we um we have theory that tells us we we have explanations that uh that that can tell us about these things that are not observable. Um our knowledge always starts as a guess and then we try to prove our guess wrong. And if we can't prove our guess wrong, um we don't know for an absolute fact that it's true. We can only know that it's survived rigorous attempts to to prove it untrue. And to me, you know, I've read like the first few pages of the origin of species, and then I like got distracted. Um but you say that it starts with uh I speculate, which to me totally tracks with that idea of conjecture first and then subject it to rigorous scrutiny.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's right. Um yeah, I I think The Origin of Species is a is a funny and actually kind of very readable book, although, yeah, I mean it's it's Victorian, so the sentences are rather long. Uh but I he it's a funny, I I don't know. I have so much so many thoughts on Darwin, but yeah, he uh I do enjoy reading his writing uh just because I I do he goes places I don't anticipate. Like there's a long section where he talks about how if grizzly bears just kept swimming uh with their mouths open, they might turn into whales. And uh just the vision of that in my head, I was like, where does where is he getting this from? You know? And you know, I heard about that. Okay, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, okay. So so by the way, on this podcast, nothing is off limits. Um, and and one of my hopes for this podcast is that I can help programmers become more well-rounded people and have a broader education. And like I said, I think all these things are connected to programming and it can help you become a better programmer. Um, and I I think everybody, programmer or no, should be educated on Darwinian evolution because it explains so much, like practical, everyday lessons. It might not seem like it applies to like everyday, like tactical living life kind of stuff, but it totally does. Um and also this epistemology stuff applies to like debugging and stuff like that, and so that has practical applications also. Um, it's it's not just some like uh uh airy fiss philosophical thing, it has practical applications that you can use on a daily basis. Um the the Darwin thing, I I forget exactly what the anecdote was uh with the bears swimming with their mouths open. Maybe it was some kind of reference to Lamarckism or something like that. Do you remember?
SPEAKER_02:I think he's just saying that it, you know, if it but yeah, I don't I don't know. I actually do talk about it in the book though, so I would I would probably have to get it in front of me. But um, yeah. Well I mean he he would not have been saying that it's you know uh tied to Lamarck. You know, he would be talking about the natural selection part. So I suspect he is just using it as an illustration of uh, you know, the just the implications of I I think just the the plasticity of species.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. Okay. I vaguely remember now. I'm gonna move on because I don't remember it well enough to to say anything smart about it. Um yeah, okay, so your book is about Darwin's methods. So, like how did he figure out what he figured out? Is it is that the idea?
SPEAKER_02:Well, the idea is that a lot of folks who study 19th century literature have said, hey, all of these authors were influenced by natural selection. Great. You know, they talk about apes, you know, there's the missing link in a lot of science fiction, things like that. Okay, great. But what I argue in the book is that it's not just the fact that science fiction exists, but also his that the epistemology behind his how he got there is also important to it. So the idea that he speculated as part of his reasoning method, uh, the fact that he used um what he called imaginary illustrations, uh, which are basically thought experiments, uh, which was something that Galileo did, you know, this is not unheard of, but he used them in a particular way. And a lot of authors would kind of tie it together with um evolutionary science. So to me, that suggests that they were influenced not only by the fact that, yes, okay, natural selection exists and it's true, um, but that, you know, the way that we understand it is also part of that method. And of course, there's a lot of 19th-century scientists who, you know, would model those sort of uh methods as well. And so, you know, I talk about his um experiments at downhouse. Um so Darwin was always experimenting. And so he had, and he called them like little experiments and and wild, you know, but he had all these sort of um ways of of uh putting himself down about the fact that he used them. And there's jokes about how, you know, his wife was like, you know, the the there the the hallway was covered with like frog eggs and and flower pots filled with earthworms, um, that you know he stored in the billiard room. So things like that. And they just took up all the corners of Downhouse. And he would um, you know, he had a greenhouse where he worked on um, you know, botany. And so and so I I like that idea of it taking up his entire life and the fact that he experimented. So again, it kind of gets back to that, you know, just being an armchair um philosopher and just you know, speculating about things, but also doing things with your hands. Uh, and so, like Punch, for instance, uh had a cartoon of Darwin in the dirt next to an earthworm in the shape of a question mark. And that's not a very genteel version of a scientist, right? Like he's got his hands very dirty. Um, you know, he's sitting with uh earthworms. And so it just I think people have always poked fun at Darwin for his methods. And his methods were do the experiments, try it out, see how it works, throw, you know, throw some hypothetical spaghetti at the wall and see what's next, right? This is uh what he's known for, and not just, you know, his sort of austere persona. I mean, so I think that that's what was so important, and that is what translated to a lot of uh things that came out of 19th century culture that we still see today. And so that's what the book really gets into. And is every chapter is focusing on a different sort of speculative part of his methodology. So instead of like grand experiments, we're digging in the dirt, we're doing little experiments, you know, we're we're we're having these imaginary illustrations that are um beyond belief. And and all of these, you know, folks who were uh creating the you know, the entertainment of the day absorbed that and they understood it. And Darwin is is in large part to thank for that.
SPEAKER_00:Interesting. Um do you know like how Darwin first got interested in answering this question of how do species originate?
SPEAKER_02:Well, um his grandfather uh you know was basically a sort of Lamarcan. So it was always, you know, he understood that this was something that folks believed, but he So um, you know, he did a lot of work on geology and so he came to his views that uh in a he knew so he knew about the idea of the transmutation of species as an as a concept from I would say from the time he was a child but he worked his way up to his theory of natural selection in a very deliberate way thanks to his travels um you know in South America and uh you know on the Beagle which were of course are of course very famous right the Galapagos Islands studying the finches and he wrote up I think in 1844 or something a um a like basically a a a smaller abstract so the origin of species is known as an abstract right so um a smaller version of his theory and he hid it you know for years and then he kind of brought it back out when um Wallace uh another um biologist came and said hey I've I've had this idea of of basically of natural selection and so they worked together and co-presented it and um so it was kind of a zeitgeist situation where when there's a good idea a lot of people are thinking about it. But Darwin did the legwork. Yeah he he was uh he'd been mulling it over for a long time and much like you were saying that you know you want to try to gather as much evidence as possible because you can't prove or disprove it, right? It's it the the um the length of time is too long. So all you can do is gather as many examples that could be true, that could uh suggest what you're saying, um, that it you know eventually makes it it seem likely. Um I mean another funny example is he he was very interested in how species could travel geogra geolog uh geographically, right? And so he was studying whether um eggs could adhere to the the uh webbed feet of ducks. And so he had these uh you know feet in his office and he would like put a you know submerge them and take them out. He also would dissect uh birds that had seeds in their stomachs and see if they would gestate. So he would he would or I'm sorry germinate. So he would he would do all of these smaller uh experiments again to say not necessarily that you know that it is true but that it could you can't falsify it like hey if this bird ate a seed of something you know on the mainland could it make it over to uh this island uh and you know what when it died or when it you know um crapped out the seed would it uh you know could it live right um and so I think that this has been you know a lot of people have studied this right is it are are animals going from continent to continent floating on logs right this is this is kind of well trod territory by now but this these are the sort of questions that Darwin was trying to answer uh with I don't know with the with the benefit of a lot of time behind him like he was not in a hurry uh to get the idea out because it had been out like the idea that species change over time is not was not new uh it just couldn't be he argued it in the most compelling way that like his evidence was the most um convincing and also he had some parts of you know his theory that that were um uh that hadn't really been suggested but but there were other things that he never could prove one way or the other like even though uh Gregor Mendel was a um a contemporary of Darwin he was um uh they you know he was uh not in England so they they never met and Gregor's um uh research was published in a husbandry journal and so there's actually research done on whether or not Darwin would have encountered it. Um and he might have but he didn't it didn't demonstrate to him the the possibilities. So in any event all that is to say that Darwin you know there there were a lot of um there were many people who pointed out that that Darwin's you know that there were some parts of natural selection that he couldn't prove like that that and that weren't convincing. And you know and some of them were were the ones that everyone looked at like you know the that fact that um creationists or you know they they were always arguing against natural selection. But but there were some scientific minds who also said hey you know this aspect of your theory doesn't hold water and so we you know we don't believe it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah and I understand he was mistaken about some things naturally and I think that has been used to kind of try to discredit him entirely um but I don't think that makes a lot of sense because the vast majority of I mean the essence of his theory still holds up. And then of course Richard Dawkins discovered um gene-centered evolution and he published the selfish gene in like 1973 or four or whatever it was um and so now now scientists refer to uh neo-darwism which is kind of like the the the corrected version where they took dar the the essence of Darwin's um explanation and then made these certain corrections um what was I gonna say um oh yeah one thing I wanted to touch on was um what came before Darwin's explanations um you know there was there was Lamarckism maybe we can touch on what that is and then there's one that I find really entertaining which is um spontaneous uh generation um can can you tell us about Lamarckism uh yeah well so um there is uh thought that uh by you that you can acquire traits within the span of your lifetime and then pass them on to the next generation uh and that was the crux of you know what we think of as Lamarckism.
SPEAKER_02:And there's some nuance there but you know broad strokes you know the idea that uh the the typical image is of a a giraffe reaching up towards the leaves and his neck gets longer and longer. And uh Darwin went against that. And he also um said that there isn't uh necessarily design in what happens that there's a lot of chance that there's chance you know that there's going to be as many uh poorly adapted uh characters that come out of a generation as well you know well adapted ones and so but the the more well adapted uh characters that come out through just uh uh pure chance those are those individuals are going are more likely to uh survive and reproduce for the next generation um and actually the crux of one of the major complaints against him which came from Fleming Jenkin who it's called the swamping argument.
SPEAKER_00:So yeah anyways but to answer your question yeah the the idea that and Lamarck was French so of course you know you get some uh you know if we're thinking about uh cultural differences here there's certainly some uh complaints about about um uh or or what um nationalism uh involved in that but um yeah so uh so acquired traits though it's interesting Darwin actually did believe in some acquired traits even though and I think that's kind of what the the neo-Darwinism uh that you're mentioning um but yeah what whether or not uh a an individual can be changed within the course of their lifetime and that change affects their reproductive um you know the the next generation that is very much up for debate um yeah it's it's interesting because like obviously like Lamarckism is false but then there there's an area that I still need to learn about myself because I don't understand how it reconciles with Lamarckism being false which is epigenetics which is which is kind of like um you know uh characteristics gained during an organism's an individual's lifetime being passed on to offspring which sounds a lot like Lamarckism um but it's it's actually true as I understand it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah yeah yeah yeah I I know and that's why I'm saying it's it's complicated and so I can I think we can speak in you know broad terms about this and and certainly there's uh I think what always interested me is how a culture interprets this information rather than the veracity of it. So yes I mean obviously I I believe in natural selection this is not a problem but uh but yeah I I think it's it's the scientific community that does these you know very you know staid uh studies you know in the laboratory that are controlled that have you know everything um you know make make sure that they clean off all their equipment all of all of this um that's what's going to tell us the better information rather than just trying to say you know Darwin was right Lamarck was wrong uh you know Fleming Jenkin he was he was off base here whatever because there's uh it's so nuanced and um and we still there's a lot we don't know I mean with our ability so so we now are able to we have better microscopes uh we have better uh telescopes we're able to to see more than they were in the 19th century when a lot of these fundamental theories were sort of put out there but um and and so we're able to watch uh the flu uh you know change every year and so we know that yes it's evolving fine and we can observe that but there's still a lot of things that we don't understand. And so I I think that you know that uh what what I've always kind of honed in on is the ways that imagination has come into play with that. And and what interests me is like the ways of thinking like trying to figure out how how it was that Darwin said, you know, hey I'm going to you know create this experiment and um you know there's just this whole sort of mythology around him that has seeped into our culture and some of it happened back then and some of it exists today. And it's I don't know it's it's it's very much an alive idea. And I I that's what just really fascinates me. And I yeah so I spent a lot of time thinking about that. I mean a decade right that's how long that's that's how long it takes to get a PhD. So I yeah and and then yeah it took me several years to to get it published because one of the things that is very true about the discipline is that everybody has an opinion about Darwin and so if you try to publish something about him you're gonna take a lot of people off. It is uh it is not easy. Well yes uh yeah everybody has an opinion about what he you know what his theories mean uh and and so if you try to you know do any sort of research on it you know it's it's um it tends to be controversial and I I don't know so I I I my angle was through the cultural studies lens uh but I could have come at it from a history of science lens but I always tried to kind of stay in my lane because there are folks who like historians view this information very differently than folks coming out of the humanities um or you know literary studies and I I was always very aware of that and so even I think it was like in 2014 I published an article in the journal The History of Biology as an attempt to understand that that domain better because I was I was very cognizant of the fact that I'm uh you know I'm treading in areas that I I don't necessarily belong. Um and as much as I I I love to be capacious with my studies, I recognize that they they know a lot and they've spent a lot of time in the weeds and I I you know so I've talked to those folks and I'm uh and and that article I sent to folks who are in history of science departments and just to to make sure that I'm you know not misrepresenting something because there's so much there. I mean my goodness it's it's uh gosh I mean I'm I can tell you one thing from that I don't know if it was from that particular article but I uh the way that like the the Latin scientific names of uh all the you know animals so anytime you like go into a Wikipedia page to look up an animal maybe that you you learn about on a on the Discovery channel or something, you know, they've got the that sort of scientific name there. I didn't realize that some of those had changed over the years. And so I had written uh one of the the names of uh of an animal that wasn't it wouldn't have been that during the 19th century. And it just didn't occur to me that there's like this whole compendium that that uh you know shows you the evolution of um you know the phylums and and so that was that was very interesting to me. And um and I wouldn't have known that if I hadn't reached out to experts who are in the history of science because I just was coming at it blithely like, oh yes, well I'm talking about this particular animal so I should just you know I can just use the Wikipedia page to to use its scientific uh name. But no that was very wrong of me and and I was uh and I changed it unluckily before it you know it was published and that is the the beauty of uh well if that that one was um I I had sent it to a friend but I you know ideally that's what peer reviewed should be doing is is catching uh folks like me who are wandering into historical landmines that they don't always know about.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah you're subjecting your work to scrutiny and criticism which again I think is um is an idea that applies to programming um um not just for um like poll PR reviews and stuff like that but for um bigger ideas of like I don't know automated testing for example let's let's subject that idea to scrutiny and and have productive arguments about it and stuff like that. You said something which I want to dig deeper into which was you were looking at this uh tell me if I get this right or wrong but like you're looking at it through a lens of how society responds to these ideas and stuff like that. I'm curious to hear more about that.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah well that's why I came at it from a literary perspective. I think it would be much like saying you know if you're listen if you're interested in the conversations around AI and large language models, you're probably interested in watching episodes of Black Mir. So I'm basically doing the equivalent where I say I'm interested in Darwin, but not just what Darwin says, some of which is has been demonstrated and some of which is a little out there but also I mean yeah well so I I think an easy way of of talking about that is like social Darwinism which has some really reprehensible um abhorrent aspects to it. And um so you know it's interesting that Darwin didn't include um a lot of the the social Darwinist um you know um uh survival of the fittest terminology until like the sixth edition. And that's it.
SPEAKER_00:Tell me about that. What is social Darwinism?
SPEAKER_02:Well it's the idea that um natural selection says that certain human beings are more well equipped to survive than um others and usually it was applied to like uh race uh and to um class so it said that the the poor that are dying because they don't have enough to eat should be allowed to die because uh you know they are not fitted to to uh exist and that is of course wrong and and needs to be expunged and anyone who studies Darwin gets their hackles certainly go up when they hear people sort of say that uh Darwin would have said any of that because he didn't. He said many things that are you know do not align with our um you know our our ethics today for sure but um but to blanket say that that was something that Darwin supported is is just false.
SPEAKER_00:And yeah yeah I think there's there's some there's a couple of really important things there. One is the survival of the fittest thing is actually a myth like um maybe you can maybe can tell us about that a little bit like it's it's not about it it's it's not that the individuals survive which are most fit to survive it's that the genes get replicated uh which are the best the most successful at replicating themselves.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yeah I mean what is interesting for folks who are interest who are studying um social Darwinism is to also study mutual aid because there was an equally loud group of folks who often identified as like socialists, um, which has a very different connotation again in the 19th century, but um who said that actually what Darwin said is that it is the the species that work the best together that survive. And so you need to we need to help one another because that demonstrates that we're the most evolved that we're you know going to be the most fit. And he studies uh bees in particular and so um there were a number of like Russian uh theorists who talk about um uh mutual aid and use that to as a counterpoint to um the well-known uh use of malthus so Thomas Malthus's uh theories um that you know population um is uh grows exponentially uh right and and and of course um what is it uh like resources are are geometric um and so you know the idea that there just isn't enough there aren't enough resources on earth to support everyone and therefore it is uh necessary for certain people to die uh the less fitted and uh yeah so Darwin he identifies malt Thomas Malthus by by name as someone who influenced his theory of natural selection but um but he did not necessarily he did not say that it's a moral imperative for us to allow anyone to die because of that especially um human beings right and Darwin was famously an animal lover um and so he raised pigeons he raised dogs and uh so he was not out there you know smiting his animals you know that this is not true um and actually this is the the fifth chapter of my book is about um utopias and how utopian writers were influenced by Darwin's theories and so I talk about not only the ideas of you know the you know the the um the the Huxleys and the um Herbert Spencers who were using um his theories as a way of saying like that well this this you know says that we we need to you know sad as it is that the poor have to die uh but also he was uh he inspired folks who were a little bit more influenced by uh the mutual aid type of evolutionists.
SPEAKER_00:By the way what is the title of your book? Ah it's a long one why don't I why don't I bring it up here and I can give I can send you the link okay and and while you're pulling that up um just to round out the uh survival of the fittest thing um there's an example in a Richard Dawkins book about uh how that goes because it's kind of unclear maybe it's it's like okay if it's not survival of the fittest then like what is it why would why would traits survive which which make a species Less fit for existence or for uh survival. Um and and the example is like imagine there's a certain kind of bird and they um they nest at at a certain time of year, let's say like April 1st or something like that. Um and they live on this particular island and there are better and worse nesting spots. And so obviously you want to try to be first and get the best spots. Um so they they start nesting on April 1st, but if for some reason there's there's some variation and in some individual uh nests on the last day of March instead of April 1st. March 31st? Yeah, March 31st. Um then that individual will get a better spot because they were earlier. Oh, and and crucially, April 1st in this example is the absolute best day to nest. Um so if you're if you're nesting on March 31st, that's a little bit worse than nesting on April 1st. Um and so this individual wins the race and beats all the other birds to this best spot. And since that gene that causes uh the bird to want to nest earlier, since that gene makes it uh uh that that gene makes the bird more successful at replicating itself because it picks the better nesting spot, that gene becomes prevalent in the population. And so now instead of the genes like programming the species to want to nest on April 1st, now everybody wants to nest on March 31st. But it can happen again, and there might be a mutation, and the gene instructs the birds to nest on March 30th, and this this whole cycle might repeat and repeat until the nesting reaches such an early date that it's no longer um adaptive to nest even earlier, and so you reach some kind of equilibrium. Um, and so you know let's say this goes all the way until March 10th or something like that. Now the species everybody's trying to nest on March 10th. They can't go any earlier because that's not adaptive anymore. So they're on March 10th. April 1st is the best day to nest. The entire species has like hurt itself because they're now all nesting on a on a worse day, but that's the way things evolved. So that was Richard Dawkins' uh explanation of how it could be that species evolve in a way that doesn't make them more fit.
SPEAKER_02:Hmm. I like that. Yeah, I haven't heard that. That's interesting.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so the social Darwinism thing of survival of the fittest is like invalid because they're not um they're not analogizing from a true explanation. They're analogizing based on a misunderstanding of how it really works. The other thing I want to mention is people get so confused so much, and it frustrates me so much, between is and ought. Uh, you know, that people think that because somebody makes a statement about the way things are, that translates to a statement about the way things should be. Um and in the theory of evolution, you know, I'm separating it from Darwin now, just like the the truth of it, independent of who discovered what and stuff like that. Um the is, you can't derive any ought from from that is. Um so like these people who say, well, uh survival of the fittest in evolution, therefore uh it should be that we let poor people starve or whatever, that is an ought in in their mind. That's an ought, but you can't derive an ought from an is.
SPEAKER_02:Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's I 100% agree. All right. I I pulled up the book. Uh so I guess if you have show notes, you can link to it. But the the the title, which is a little long, is Speculation and the Darwinian Method in British Romance Fiction 1859 to 1914. And it's published from Ohio University Press, uh, and it came out this spring. Uh and just as a for for folks who aren't you know deep in in 19th century literature terms, romance fiction isn't like a romance novel today. It was a way of talking about um uh anything that uh is not like realism. And so it includes not only utopias, but also yeah, adventure fiction, um, proto-science fiction, uh which um H.G. Wells called scientific romance. Uh and so it's just kind of a more accurate way of talking about non-real uh literature. And so just just if anyone got scared when I said that, that is what romance fiction means.
SPEAKER_00:That's really interesting. Um yeah, I I much prefer, I don't like to say I like science fiction. I would much prefer to say I enjoy scientific romance.
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:That sounds much more sophisticated.
SPEAKER_02:Doesn't it? Yeah, I know. Um yes, well that's I know. And that's so the first chapter's on scientific romance, then we got metaphysical romance, anthropological romance, gothic romance, and then utopian romance. So all of these are kind of within that umbrella of what was known as romance, but now you know you say romance and it just has it has one connotation. And uh so it's um, I don't know. I I probably didn't do myself any marketing favors here, but this is again, it's an academic book. Uh, you know, it was my dissertation that I then completely rewrote. I I shouldn't even link it to my dissertation because I don't know. But but the seed of the idea, I I do think it's worth talking, you know, it's worth noting that I've been thinking about this forever, like just like 15 years. I just could not get over it. I of any book I read, I was like, well, where's Darwin? You know, like we gotta we gotta talk about how natural selection is as a part of this conversation. And and so even if it was the most unlikely uh piece of literature from that time period, I always I always kind of found him, or if I if he wasn't there, I at least you know extrapolated. So um anyway, but yes, that's interesting.
SPEAKER_00:So uh do you have any idea why that is that you kind of it seems to me based on what you've said, you kind of look at the world through a a Darwin lens in a sense. Um do you have any idea why you gravitate toward that?
SPEAKER_02:I don't. I you know, I mean part of it's just I've I've always loved science. And I guess the other part is I mean, finding patterns. But yeah, it it is funny that like of all the different domains of science, right? Like I I talk a little bit about physics and Maxwell and things like that in the book. But um for whatever reason, yeah, evolution has always just really appealed to me. I I I think maybe it's the messiness of biology. Um so yeah, I mean, something about I don't know, it's almost like Dr. Moreau, right? That maybe it's like that embodied horror quality. Uh like there's there's something about the squishiness of of uh of living things that I just find so uh troubling. Like I just uh I don't know. I I should probably, you know, uh sign up for therapy and and and talk it out. But I don't have to be a good thing.
SPEAKER_00:No, I I think it's a virtue, not a weakness.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, well, thank you.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Um yeah, I find evolution really interesting also. Um and it started with I don't know how it started, but it's obviously one of the most important discoveries in all of science. Um and and I guess uh once I started learning about evolution, it made me more interested in science in general and how scientists know what they know and and how I can know what's true and real and not and stuff like that. Um and I think it's especially important. I hesitate to say this because I don't know if it's really accurate, but like especially important in these times with so many people being so out of touch with reality. But the reason I'm not sure I want to say that is because people at all times, you know, a large portion of the population at all times in history have been out of touch with reality. But what frust what frustrates me today, you know, I work in the tech industry, uh so do you. Um and so many people in the in the tech industry are uh they're of a political persuasion uh which makes them biology deniers. You know, at the at the extreme right and the extreme left of the political spectrum, you have biology denial. You know, on on the right, there's creationism and they just deny evolution entirely, which is nuts. Um and on the left, uh people, for example, don't believe that there are any differences between men and women, which is obviously nuts, also, because it it contradicts scientific fact and common sense. And it's like, how are you gonna defend that position? Um and and it also there's also this this um fallacious way of thinking where people conflate is with ought. And so people say things like, uh I don't know, women are not as interested in plumbing as men. Oh, so you think women should shouldn't be allowed to be plumbers? That's what you're saying? It's like, no, I'm just stating the the fact, which is independent of any uh ought or is or anything like that, that this is what has been found to be true. Um and so the these are very um these are very difficult discussions to have, and they often go south really quick. But if we all just had an understanding of evolution and biology, I feel like these conversations would be a little easier.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Well, uh I know some very smart people who uh work in gender studies and have studied this converse, you know, this idea very deeply. I don't feel quite qualified to dig in here. Um, but I yeah, I will say that any time you think critically about your own one's own what, I guess, preconceived notions, it is a worthwhile thing to do. Uh, you know, it is um you know, what is it? Uh uh living an examined life. Uh I I think that uh no one can do ill if they just spend a little time contemplating what it is that they know and why they think they they know it. And uh yeah, I think Darwin gives us his questioning and um his curiosity and creativity all make him someone that I like to focus on when I'm uh you know trying to figure out why I feel a certain way about a subject or why I um you know to to try to make sense of the world that I'm living in. And uh yeah, I agree that you know we're we're in some some dark times, so I I am certainly uh applying all of my my entire tool belt of uh um I guess yeah, ways of yeah, uh trying trying to grapple with um the world uh uh in a in a way that is, yeah, I guess scientific. I don't know. You know, uses critical thinking to the to the best of my understanding and and saying critical thinking in a critical way, like not just taking it for granted that everybody thinks the same way, but also that there's a lot of nuance there and that there's a lot of history and that uh you know the words that we're using are are uh are loaded in a lot of ways.
SPEAKER_00:So yeah. Yeah. Um when I find people who who disagree with me or I find their way of thinking incomprehensible, um most people's first reaction is just to like scoff and dismiss. Uh, but I like to try to understand where people are coming from. It's like when when when you see something, you're like, how could somebody possibly believe that? Uh I like to ask, well, how could somebody possibly believe that? And figure out how they got there. And so much of it goes back to, we haven't really talked about this, but it goes back to uh human psychology, which goes back to evolution. Like evolution to me is at the root of like everything. Um, and if you don't understand human psychology, then you like kind of don't understand life, and so and and if you don't understand evolution, you can't understand human psychology. So this is one of the reasons that I think it's so important for or it would be so advantageous for everybody to study evolution, um, because again, it applies to things that are so fundamental for everyday living.
SPEAKER_02:I agree, I agree, and I I hope that it's taught in most schools. Uh yeah, uh it it's uh it seems like again, what a way of uh common sense, right? Yeah, that it would be part of a biological uh a biology curriculum.
SPEAKER_00:So yes, I'm yeah, hopefully. Um anyway, um this has been a r a really fun uh discussion. Um I I uh I hope I didn't um well I immediately threw us really far off track. So I hope uh thank you for tolerating my um my indulgences there. Um do you want to maybe uh mention your your book title again and any other links you want to share people share with people and stuff like that?
SPEAKER_02:Uh sure, yeah. Well, um if you are interested in talking tech with me, feel free to reach out uh through Red Monk. Um I'm on all the socials, Blue Sky, Twitter, and uh frankly, I've been doing a lot uh of podcasting myself, so the monk cast is uh is what we call it, but you can just find any of the episodes on uh Red Monk's YouTube channel. And my book uh so I have two books, but my most recent book um is called Speculation and the Darwinian Method in British Romance Fiction, 1859 to 1914. And so if you're interested in in seeing the nexus between uh literature, uh non-real fiction, and um Darwin uh and and his methods specifically, you know, the way that he um came to uh demonstrate natural selection, then yeah, you you might find it interesting. Um I admit it's a little dry. It's an academic book. Uh so you know, if that's not your thing, don't don't feel obligated. But it's uh yeah, it was uh a labor of love for sure. It's something that uh was on my mind for a long time. Um yeah, but that's you know, I'm easy to find online. I think yeah, of course, LinkedIn is is another good one. And uh yeah, but I I I don't know. I tie everything back to that idea of the examined life and thinking through things in a scientific with the scientific lens, whatever that means. Uh so yeah, um, if if this is of interest, feel free to reach out anytime.
SPEAKER_00:All right. Well, we'll put all that stuff in the show notes. And Kate, thanks so much for coming on the show.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you.