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About Meta Capitalism

Passion for studying history, philosophy, science, and religion and everything in between.

Ukraine’s Road to Unfreedom

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Soviet Ukraine was the second most populous republic of the USSR, after Soviet Russia. In Soviet Ukraine’s western districts, which had been part of Poland before the Second World War, Ukrainian nationalists resisted the imposition of Soviet rule. In a series of deportations in the late 1940s and early 1950s, they and their families were sent by the hundreds of thousands to the Soviet concentration camp system, the Gulag. In just a few days in October 1947, for example, 76,192 Ukrainians were transported to the Gulag in what was known as Operation West. Most of those who were still alive at the time of Stalin’s death in 1953 were released by his successor, Nikita Khrushchev. In the 1960s and 1970s, Ukrainian communists joined their Russian comrades in governing the largest country in the world. During the cold war, southeastern Ukraine was a Soviet military heartland. Rockets were built in Dnipropetrovsk, not far from where the Cossacks once had their fortress. (Snyder, Timothy. The Road to Unfreedom (p. 120). Crown. Kindle Edition.)

Though Soviet policy had been lethal to Ukrainians, Soviet leaders never denied that Ukraine was a nation. The governing idea was that nations would achieve their full potential under Soviet rule, and then dissolve once communism was achieved. In the early decades of the Soviet Union, the existence of a Ukrainian nation was taken for granted, from the journalism of Joseph Roth to the statistics of the League of Nations. The famine of 1932–1933 was also a war against the Ukrainian nation, in that it wrecked the social cohesion of villages and coincided with a bloody purge of Ukrainian national activists. Yet the vague idea remained that a Ukrainian nation would have a socialist future. It was really only in the 1970s, under Brezhnev, that Soviet policy officially dropped this pretense. In his myth of the “Great Fatherland War,” Russians and Ukrainians were merged as soldiers against fascism. When Brezhnev abandoned utopia for “really existing socialism,” he implied that the development of non-Russian nations was complete. Brezhnev urged that Russian become the language of communication for all Soviet elites, and a client of his ran Ukrainian affairs. Schools were russified, and universities were to follow. In the 1970s, Ukrainian opponents of the Soviet regime risked prison and the psychiatric hospital to protest on behalf of Ukrainian culture. (Snyder, Timothy. The Road to Unfreedom (pp. 120-121). Crown. Kindle Edition.)

To be sure, Ukrainian communists joined wholeheartedly and in great numbers in the Soviet project, helping Russian communists to govern Asian regions of the USSR. After 1985, Gorbachev’s attempt to bypass the communist party alienated such people, while his policy of glasnost, or open discussion, encouraged Soviet citizens to air national grievances. In 1986, his silence after the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl discredited him among many Ukrainians. Millions of inhabitants of Soviet Ukraine were needlessly exposed to high doses of radiation. It was hard to forgive his specific order that a May Day parade go forward under a deadly cloud. The senseless poisoning of 1986 prompted Ukrainians to begin to speak of the senseless mass starvation of 1933. (Snyder, Timothy. The Road to Unfreedom (p. 121). Crown. Kindle Edition.)

In summer 1991, the failed coup against Gorbachev opened the way for Boris Yeltsin to lead Russia from the Soviet Union. Ukrainian communists and oppositionists alike agreed that Ukraine should follow suit. In a referendum, 92% of the inhabitants of Soviet Ukraine, including a majority in every Ukrainian region, voted for independence. (Snyder, Timothy. The Road to Unfreedom (pp. 121-122). Crown. Kindle Edition.)

Power to Choose the Mismeasure of Humanity

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If you push enough oats into a horse some will spill out and feed the sparrows.

— Horse and Sparrow Economic Theory

The rich man may feast on caviar and champagne, while the poor women starves at his gate. And she may not even take the crumbs from his table, if that would deprive him of his pleasure in feeding them to his birds.

— Gauthier 1986, 218, Morals by Agreement, Oxford University Press

If the rich could hire other people to die for them, the poor could make a wonderful living.

— Yiddish Proverb

The power to choose the measure of success

The successful campaign to eliminate distributional issues from the core of the economic discipline has its mirror image in the popularity of GDP as the measure of economic success of a nation. While the pioneer of national accounting (i.e., GDP), Simon Kusnetz, explicitly said that GDP should not be used as a measure of welfare, and few economists would explicitly advocate such use, it is also true that economists as a group have done precious little to counter the popular opinion that growth, in the sense of maximization of GDP, should be the main goal of economic policy.

GDP is the money value of final goods and services that an economy produces in a quarter or a year (i.e., not including those goods and services used as inputs in production of other goods and services). This definition makes it … a reasonable yardstick of how much money moved around in a quarter or a year, and therefore captures to some extent how much economic activity in money terms there was in that period. It is a poor measure of actual activity in absolute terms due to using money rather than physically measuring human activity or indicators of human activity (e.g., how many tons of material were moving around in a year, or how many bits of information were exchanged in a year). Some activity that commands a large premium in money terms for institutional reasons, like investment banking, even if it is only one powerful person doing a moderate amount of work, will count the same as activities of hundreds of factory workers and much more than the activity of millions of housewives. Societal changes like providing more institutional childcare or reigning in the market power of investment banks can make a huge difference in terms of measured GDP, without significantly changing the actual activities performed. Because of this reliance on using money valuations, GDP has severe issues with accurately measuring technological progress. (Häring et. al. 2012, 28-29)

This method of measuring economic activity has two things going for it. It makes the mathematics a lot easier than measuring in a sensible way. And it conforms with the implicit assumptions if mainstream economics that an extra dollar is worth the same to a poor person than it is to a rich person, just as it makes no differentiation between types of activity, for instance whether they are good (i.e., charitable work) or bad (i.e. criminal activity). If a hedge fund manager makes five billion dollars in a good year, as John Paulson reportedly did in 2010 (Burton and Kishan 2011), this is must as good in GDP terms as 13.7 million people living on a dollar a day doubling their incomes. (Häring et. al. 2012, 29)

Policies that treat human beings as social creatures and try to reach the best results in the most important dimensions of human goals cannot flag their success with equally prominent and simple statistical measures like a single number where higher is “better.” The rich and wealthy benefit most from this way of measuring the economic success of a nation, since it de-emphasizes the gains of the mass low-income people relative to those of a minority if rich people. As far as nations are concerned, it benefits nations that champion the policies favored by this approach, with the US being foremost among these. (Häring, Norbert and Douglas Nial. Economists and the Powerful [Convenient Theories, Distorted Facts, Ample Rewards]. New York: Anthem Press; 2012; pp. 28-29.)

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LET’S STOP PRETENDING UNEMPLOYMENT IS VOLUNTARY

Unless you have a PhD in economics, you probably think it uncontroversial to argue that we should be concerned about the unemployment rate. Those of you who lost a job, or who have struggled to find a job on leaving school, college, or a university, are well aware that unemployment is a painful and dehumanizing experience. You may be surprised to learn that, for the past thirty-five years, the models used by academic economists and central bankers to understand how the economy works have not included unemployment as a separate category. In almost every macroeconomic seminar I attended, from 1980 through 2007, it was accepted that all unemployment is voluntary. (Farmer 2017, 47)

In 1960, almost all macroeconomists talked about involuntary unemployment and they assumed, following Keynes, the quantity of labor demanded is not equal to the quantity of labor supplied. That view of economics was turned on its head, almost single-handedly, by Robert Lucas. Lucas persuaded macroeconomists that it makes no sense to talk about disequilibrium in any market and he initiated a revolution in macroeconomics that reformulated the discipline using pre-Keynesian classical assumptions. (Farmer 2017, 47)

The idea that all unemployment is voluntary is called the equilibrium approach to labor markets. Lucas wrote his first article on this idea in 1969 in a coauthored paper with Leonard Rapping. His ideas received a big boost during the 1980s when Finn Kydland, Edward C. Prescott, Charles Long, and Charles Plosser persuaded macroeconomists to use a mathematical approach, called the Ramsey growth model, as a new paradigm for business cycle theory. The theory of real business cycles, or RBCs, was born. According to this theory, we should think about consumption, investment, and employment “as if” they were the optimal choices of a single representative agent with superhuman perception of the probabilities of future events. (Farmer 2017, 47-48)

Toyohiko Kagawa (賀川 豊彦)

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The Knowledge of God

There are very many religions in the world to-day. There are religions of self-interest, of tradition or convention, of authority, of sex desire, religions which worship a given social organization, an so forth…. But the religion which Jesus taught was a Way of Life, which experiences God intuitively through life and love. For that reason the teachings of Jesus cannot be understood through theory alone. The God of Jesus is not a theoretical God of the philosopher — “The Absolute,” “The Infinite”; the God of Jesus is Himself very Life (John i. 1-4). (Kagawa 1931: 19)

The religion of Jesus is a religion of life. People who are fully alive, people who are living strongly, can understand it; but those who deny life, who do not want to live, cannot get its meaning. The God of Jesus is a God of Action. People who stay at home and read their Bibles and pray and meditate, and do nothing for the poor, who beg help before their very doors–such people will find the God of Jesus unintelligible. His God is One who is naturally reflected in a man’s heart when he has saved even one suffering human being, or lifted up one who has been oppressed. The loveless do not know God. Only when a man has plunged into the blindly struggling crowd and tried to save them from their sins and failures, can he know this God. Only through the active movement of love will he intuitively come to know the God of Action. (Kagawa 1931: 19-20)

It is important to bear in mind this distinction between the God of idea and the God of Action. Jesus thought that when the conscience is keen, God will naturally grow in the soul. It will not be out of place therefore to examine some of those attitudes of soul which Jesus pointed out to be necessary to the knowledge of God: (Kagawa 1931: 20)

(1) The Mind of the Child (Matt. xi. 25, Luke x, 21, Luke xviii, 17). There are some very difficult religions in the world. For instance, the religion of Theosophy, recently so popular, could not be understood by babies. But Christianity can be comprehended in a wonderful way even by babes in their mothers’ arms. A child a year and a half old can pray. Or again, the study of the Zen philosophy in Buddhism is unsuitable for children two or three years old. If we had to read Spinoza, Bergson, Paul Natorp, or Riechelt, in order to know God, only a few of the intelligentsia could hope to be saved. But Jesus declared that his God is intelligible to children rather than to philosophers. The revelation of God in a child’s heart shows that God naturally lives in the hearts of human beings. If God really exists, there must be no time from babyhood till death when He is not with us. (Kagawa 1931: 20-21)

When the theory of Evolution was first introduced, people concluded that Evolution had conducted the funeral of God. When Rationalism was popular, people relied on reason and dispensed with God. But more recently, since religious psychology has been studied seriously, it has become clear that religion is deeply rooted in the heart of both the individual and the race…. Some say, “Karl Marx is enough for men. I have no use for religion.” However it may be for others, for me, since my birth, I could not help but be religious…. I was made in such a fashion that I could not help but worship God. I cannot possibly be satisfied with Materialism. A desire to believe God inevitably springs up in my heart, and I cannot help but seek Him. (Kagawa 1931: 21)

Religion is like one of the senses. It is the power of the perfect human being to perceive the ultimate values…. The experience of God is a growing as well as an intuitive one; Jesus pointed to the heart of a child, when speaking of how to know God…. God reveals Himself only in an innocent heart. (Kagawa 1931: 22)

(2) The Pure in Heart. (Matt. v. 8). This is but another description of the heart of the child. To see God, one’s heart must be clear. (Kagawa 1931: 23)

(3) The Heart of the Publicans and Sinners (Matt. xxi. 31). There is a special beauty in the return of a man who, confessing his sin in his wandering life, comes back to God. (Kagawa 1931: 24)

Christianity possesses three essential elements, different from those of other religions: (1) Life, (2) Self (personality, character), and (3) Salvation. It is a characteristic of the religion of Jesus that through it people who have lost their personality through living an aimless life are once more able to share in the life with God. It is for this reason the religion of Jesus is called a religion of salvation. (Kagawa 1931: 24)

Unless a man recognizes his need, that there is something lacking in himself, and longs to have that lack made up, no matter how much he reads his Bible and hears preaching, he will not understand Christianity. (Kagawa 1931: 24)

Faith acquired through reason only is liable to run away like water from an open sluice-pipe. (Kagawa 1931: 24)

But there is something strong and courageous in the man who comes straight back to God from a wandering life. Therefore Jesus said that traitors and prostitutes are quicker to enter the Kingdom of God. There is a deep meaning in the words of Jesus that the healthy do not desire a physician, but the sick. (Kagawa 1931: 25)

It [Jesus’ own religion] is not a one-way natural religion, it is a religion of salvation which makes a man right-about-face and be reborn again. Jesus pointed to himself as a revelation of this God of Salvation. As has been said already, Jesus thought of God as Spirit or Life. (Kagawa 1931: 25)

Again, Jesus said that God is One (Matt. xxiii. 9). (Kagawa 1931: 25)

God is our Father. Jesus felt intuitively that God is our Father. Jesus did not call God, as some Christian’s to-day do, “The Absolute” or “The Infinite.” He simply called Him the Father, or Holy Father, or Righteous Father. I do not know whether the Father is Absolute or not, but I do believe this Father. Christianity is a “Papa” religion, one that even children can understand. If God were a supplementary God, added on afterwards, He might be the Absolute and the Infinite; but since He is inborn, the God who grows in the very soul, He is “Abba Father.” Just as the baby calls his father, so Jesus called Him affectionately, “Abba, Father.” (Kagawa 1931: 25-26)

The God of Jesus is transcendent…. To sum up, the God of Jesus is the God who can be seen intuitively in life and love and conscience [service]. Unless there is a God of life and love there can be no religion of action. (Kagawa 1931: 26)

If we fully experience such a God, happiness such as we have never known before springs up in our hearts, or at least should do. Nevertheless, some people after they have become Christians are still pessimistic…. Such people know only the Cross of Jesus by not His Resurrection [more importantly, his life]. (Kagawa 1931: 28)

… many … know nothing about the powers of life and resurrection, they wander about seeking outside stimuli. But if you restore the freedom of God within, and the inner life springs up within you, outside stimuli become entirely unnecessary. Is there any stronger impetus in the world than that which we feel when our inner light shines out and the reviving power springs up from the bottom of our heart. (Kagawa 1931: 28)

There are two sides to religious experience: the one is man’s experience of God, the other God’s experience of man. (Kagawa 1931: 31)

To-day there are many theories as to the purpose of human life. Pater says that the purpose of human life is the aesthetic life. Epicurus said the real pleasure exists in pain. But, on the other hand, the Stoics asserted that the purpose of human life is self-denial. Still others say that the life of evolution is the true life. The Neo-Hegelian, Green, expounded the doctrine of perfection. It is not easy to read the hundreds of pages of his book of ethics. (Kagawa 1931: 31)

But Jesus taught us the doctrine of perfection long before Greed did. He taught us God as our ideal. “Be ye therefore perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect.” Without referring to the works of Spencer and to Green, I find this teaching entirely sufficient. (Kagawa 1931: 32)

This ideal can be reached through prayer. God requires our prayer. “Ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for everyone that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.” (Kagawa 1931: 32)

All religions can be divided into two classes: those which emphasize abstract meditation, and those which emphasize prayer. Examples of the first class are Zen, and medieval mysticism. Christianity from the first has been a religion of prayer…. The reason is that our God, that is, Life itself, works from within, through our personality. If we live within God, our prayers must be answered. (Kagawa 1931: 32)

Ask from your heart, through your personality, through all your life, and you will certainly get what you desire. It is never a mistake to ask of God. Therefore, if we pray from the bottom of our hearts for the reconstruction of mankind, our prayer will be heard…. But without reconstruction in the inner man society cannot be saved…. Social reconstruction is useless without the love of God. (Kagawa 1931: 33)

Bertrand Russell, in the last part of his book, Roads to Freedom, says that after all the various reforms have been carried out there will still remain a problem. That is, “even when Socialism or Communism is established, there are bound to be some people who revolt against society. It is a problem as to how to deal with such people.” The final problem of social reconstruction, and the one that is hardest to solve, is the problem of sin. The religion which cannot furnish a solution for this problem is useless to the human race. The God experienced through Jesus Christ is a God Who has power to solve this final problem of sin. (Kagawa 1931: 33-34)

But our religious experience through Jesus does not cease here…. There is another side to our religious experience; it is God’s experience as Man. (Kagawa 1931: 34)

A religion is not true which regards God simply as an ideal, towards whom we are pulled as by a cord. True religion says that God Himself possesses us. God Himself seeks man. There must be not only the experience of man going to God, but also of something coming back to man from God. The definition of religion has been rewritten by Jesus. It is not merely a question of man relying on God; it is also of God coming down to earth and experiencing man’s way of living. That is, God as Jesus, entered into man’s experience. God does not remain merely a god; He works inside man’s heart as the life of God. If this be true, then the Incarnation represents an event without parallel in human history. God’s incarnation in the body of Jesus–this is the supreme religious experience. When one thinks that God gave up His Throne and came down to live with man as Jesus, a labourer of Nazareth, for us to go and live in the slums is no great sacrifice. (Kagawa 1931: 34)

That is the sphere where God and man melt together. One is free to live either God’s life or man’s life. It is a life of the highest freedom. If we are taken hold of by God, we can go anywhere…. I have never been unsteady in my faith: this is not due to my holding on to God, but because God has possessed me. We must experience the “Abide with me” God, that is, the sphere where God and man melt together. (Kagawa 1931: 35)

If through the experience of Jesus we come to live the life of oneness between God and man, how can we thereafter, degenerate? We have entered the sphere of the deepest religious experience, in which we reflect God’s image in our hearts and make our hearts communicate with the heart of God. Such religious life naturally becomes a matter of the inner life, and refuses all petrified formalism, though it may make use of symbolism…. Jesus relentlessly rejected all religious conventions which were obstacles in the way of genuine religious life. (Kagawa 1931: 35)

Fasting itself may not be bad…. But when fasting becomes only a religious form, with God absent from it, then it is a hindrance to religion. In the time of Jesus, some Pharisees observed this convention. Jesus mercilessly criticized their formalism. He made a point of eating with the common people without distinction, even though they called Him a gluttonous man for doing so…. But the religion of Jesus was concerned with the commonest of common things; in it God experienced man’s life, and purified the whole of daily life. Some may say that for a religious person to take part in a social movement is to cheapen religion, but we participate in it because we are disciples of Jesus…. It is the same with regard to prayer; it must not be a mere formality…. Jesus absolutely rejected such forms. (Kagawa 1931: 35-37)

Sometimes the Sabbath day becomes a convention, and dries up the real life of religion. The Pharisees of Jesus’ time had forty prohibitions about the Sabbath day. Some of those came from the Law of Moses and others were added by themselves. These latter mostly related to work. They thought it was sinful for tailors to use needles and for clerks to use pens after dark on Friday evenings; women were not allowed to look in a mirror lest they become guilty of pulling out their grey hairs, that would be work! (Kagawa 1931: 37)

… to value the seventh day and get together once a week to worship God. It was begun because people needed a regular stimulus for the development of their souls. It is in this that there is to be found the importance of Sundays. But to think of Sunday superstitiously or idolatrously is another thing. Jesus endeavored to break down such idolizing of time. He strenuously rejected convention and taught people to worship God with their whole selves. (Kagawa 1931: 37-38)

Some live only a busy, superficial life, others live only in books, and there is no real life in it. But if you dig down hundreds of feet, the water under the ground will spring up unceasingly and with tremendous power. If the ship is caught in the Gulf Stream, it will go all the faster, the speed of the current plus that of the ship. Unless we move with the stream of God springing up in our hearts, we have not yet reached true salvation. Push out into the deep! Go with the tide! Why do you everlastingly bustle about daily business, digging a narrow ditch for yourself, while God’s great Gulf Stream is trying to move you? (Kagawa 1931: 38)

Jesus and Men’s Failures

The ministry of Jesus had one peculiar feature: He limited His religious mission to the sick, the weak, the poor, the wanderers and the sinners. That is, Jesus penetrated into the essence of the universe from the pathological aspect. In this chapter we will consider how Jesus and the God of Jesus strive to remedy the failure and weakness of mankind. (Kagawa 1931: 39)

What then, is failure; and what is success? It is important to know the meaning of these words…. What definition did Jesus give to “success”? He said that true success is to complete one’s life. It is to attain to eternal life; all else is failure. (Kagawa 1931: 41)

When we lack faith, our enterprises often fail. The great achievements of the world’s history have almost always started from some great faith…. The first people who talked of Socialism, beginning with Saint-Simon, were all imbued with the religious spirit. In particular the disciples of Saint-Simon were deeply religious. And among them Enfantin especially thought that religion and science must be harmonized, and the ideal life is one in which this has been achieved. (Kagawa 1931: 41-42)

Paul taught us Christian omnipotence: “I can do all things through Christ Who strengtheneth me.” We must learn faith-omnipotence. We must not too quickly accept “character-determinism.” …. Faith is a lever…. While we have this faith, we need have no fear of failure. But some people who have faith lack patience. Man’s works always needs time. Therefore we need patience. (Kagawa 1931: 42-43)

The Christian faith cannot be fully tasted in one or two years. Even a husband and wife, if they live together twenty or thirty years, and endure each other, will have a least a pleasant taste to one another. Justin Martyr was once called before Caesar in Rome and required to burn incense before an idol. He was an old man and almost dying, but he refused to do it. “What matter!” he cried, “I have believed in Jesus for a long time. How can I throw away my faith? I will follow Him to the end.” “Follow Him to the end!” Anyone who keeps his faith the end will surely be saved. (Kagawa 1931: 43-44)

Jesus Christ was crucified as a failure, and His disciples all ran away from Him. But, nevertheless, Jesus Christ did not call Himself defeated. Jesus was a success, though apparently a failure. There are many who think themselves successful, and do not realize that actually they are failures. (Kagawa 1931: 45)

Once I visited the home of a shipping millionaire with the chief editor of the Osaka Nichi Nichi newspaper. This house, a villa at Suma, was larger than a palace. It was said that the owner spent £600,000 to build this house in the style of Momoyama. It was a grand mansion, built of ancient cryptomeria wood. When I went to the house, I asked the editor, “What will the owner do with this house?” He replied, “He will confine himself in it!” At that time I was living in a house six feet square and found it quite comfortable. When Kropotkin was in prison, he walked five miles a day in his cell. This was because, in St. Petersburg, the air is damp, and he would run the risk of rheumatism if he took no exercise. When I was put in the Tachibana prison in Kobe, I followed Kropotkin’s example. My cell was about six feet square, and I could walk about six steps. I walked I the cell for about two miles every day. Thus I could think of my residence as being two miles wide! The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews could say, “Be content with such things as ye have; for He hath said, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee”; while St. Paul from prison wrote, “I have learned in whatever state I am therewith to be content.” (Kagawa 1931: 45-46)

Jesus Christ spent his life in destitution and had nothing to the last moment. But nevertheless the Crucified One was the most successful man who ever lived. True success is to succeed in, to inherit, life. The truly successful man is the one who can enjoy the life of God. (Kagawa 1931: 46)

When Japanese Christians become dead in earnest enough to sell off even their house-mats for the sake of their religion, Christianity will have power. (Kagawa 1931: 46)

Man’s life comes from the very origin of life. (Kagawa 1931: 49)

Jesus pointed to the perfection of the Heavenly Father as our ideal of perfection. If I ought to climb up to a hundred feet high, and stop at thirty, I am a sinner to the degree of the difference. Anyone who is meant to be a king, and stops at being a village headman, I losing as much value as a king minus a village head. Jesus Christ said a tremendous thing. If the omnipotent God is our Father, and the perfection of the Heavenly Father is our ideal standard, we must not stupidly stop half-way. (Kagawa 1931: 52)

When God is loved, for the first time Nature seems to us a lovable thing. When God and man are fused together, then man can be fused to Nature. For people who live the life of perfection, and love God, sickness, persecution, imprisonment and any other things will never be irritating, because theirs is the life which lays hold on the power which controls all Nature. (Kagawa 1931: 52)

Everything is mine! The mountains, rivers, stars–all of them–the Centaurus, the constellation nearest the earth, is mine also…. This is much more progressive than Communism. Instead of Kyosan-shugi, common-possession-ism (=Communism), I call this Shinsanshugi, “God-possession-ism.” (Kagawa 1931: 52-53)

But if we have all these riches in God, at the same time we need to remember that human personality is by no means completed. “God is the one perfect Personality” (Lotze)…. It is difficult for an imperfect personality or a faulty personality to understand the personality of God. Since God is a perfect, completed personality, we can only indistinctly see Him through our broken personalities. In proportion to the completion of our personalities He is revealed to us. Our personalities are extremely imperfect. (Kagawa 1931: 53)

We have to learn that since we ourselves have faults we must also forgive one another. (Kagawa 1931: 53)

Many people do not see each other’s good points, but only their weak points, and speak ill of them saying, “But So-and-so has such-and-such faults.” The very word “but” is often used with this criticizing meaning in Japan. They think that unkind gossip is valuable criticism…. We must always be forgiving each other’s sins. This is the best way for the completion of personality. (Kagawa 1931: 54)

Whole generations often go astray. And if in such an age we do not have the revelation of God, the consciousness of the true way to live, and of sin, will become blurred. In such a time we must fix our eyes upon some pure personality and imitate it…. [A]nd people look to Jesus as the only personality Who never wandered, and as the revealed God, then the age is bound to be revived. Through imitation of Christ our way of life will once more return to the right track. (Kagawa 1931: 55)

We cannot see how far we are degenerated at present because we do not look to Jesus as our criterion. An insane person is one who does not recognize the condition of his own mind; he cannot do so until he has recovered from it. But many people to-day do not recognize how far they have gone astray from God, and think themselves to be righteous. It is the present condition of mankind to be terribly unconscious of their sins. (Kagawa 1931: 55-56)

Jesus and Prayer

Jesus Christ prayed very often. Some people think that strong persons need not pray; but Jesus at all events felt the necessity. As has been said above, the religions of the world can be divided psychologically into two kinds: the religion of meditation, and the religion of prayer. (Kagawa 1931: 60)

We can have religious experience most in prayer. In Jesus’ experience, prayer and meditation were always one. Jesus usually prayed in a lonely place. This seems to have been His habit…. Jesus was not at all lonely when He was alone, but prayed always. We are strongest when we pray. We can know how earnest Jesus was in His attitude toward prayer through what He prayed about everything–and in every circumstance. (Kagawa 1931: 61)

We cannot be really religious until we have made our daily life and the problem of bread religious. Religious life is not something extraordinary, lie growing wings in order to fly up to heaven; it is simply to reveal God in our daily life, in the very problem of bread…. It is to be hoped that at our dinner tables there is always a deep religious atmosphere. (Kagawa 1931: 65)

… [I]f you eat in the mood of prayer, even though your meal is nothing but a rice-ball, you can eat pleasantly…. We cannot be said to be complete in religion until we come to handle even the problem of bread religiously in our daily life. Jesus often ate with His disciples. He made eating one of the religious rituals and added the problem of bread to the Lord’s Prayer. We need to remember this very clearly. (Kagawa 1931: 65)

On another occasion when the seventy disciples returned from their successful mission, Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said, “I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth” (Luke x. 21-22). Jesus prayed when he was glad. (Kagawa 1931: 66)

We want to be those who pray at all times. True prayer is conversation with God. We must have more of this conversation and more praise of God in our prayer…. If we have contact with children in the spirit of prayer and bless them with our whole hearts, the children will grow up to be great persons. (Kagawa 1931: 68)

Jesus … did not teach a form of prayer, but in compliance with the request of the disciples He showed them a model prayer. That is the Lord’s Prayer. It was originally given by Jesus to His disciples in order to educate them. Tolstoi went so far as to say about it, “Our prayer must not be more than this. It is selfish to pray beyond the limits of this prayer.” From whatever aspect it is viewed, the Lord’s Prayer is a model prayer: “Our Father in heaven, enable us to worship you; let the ideal kingdom come, and make your will completely accomplished.” If prayer be such a thing as this, how can it be called superstitious or contrary to reason? If we always had such a beautiful religious spirit, the purified spirit of prayer, we should never make a mistake. (Kagawa 1931: 69)

Again, Jesus knew the defects of mankind, and so in the next place He prayed that we might forgive one another. He did not forget to pray that in horizontal contacts–that is, socially–we should forgive one another’s sins; nor did He forget to pray that in vertical contacts–that is, in our relation to God–our daily lives might be protected from mistakes. (Kagawa 1931: 70)

“Thy will be done.” Do your very best, but after that leave the matter entirely to God. (Kagawa 1931: 71)

Prayer is a part of man’s original nature. He can never be satisfied with merely meditative religion, and naturally and involuntarily inclines to move on to the religion of prayer. For example, the Shin sect of Buddhism forbids prayer, but when the Emperor Meiji was dying, we saw that their formula of invocation was changed to prayer. Indeed this very formula, which they have to repeat countless times daily, already shows a transition from the religion of meditation to that of prayer. (Kagawa 1931: 73)

… if we think of prayer as the expression of our aspiration for God, we give up vain repetitions or forms…. Our prayers should be simple and to the purpose. Jesus warned the scribes who made long prayers for a show. Another feature of Jesus’ prayer in this connexion is that He used the simplest language. (Kagawa 1931: 74)

The important thing is that our daily life itself should become religious, and all religious life be woven into daily life. It is kind of malady that to-day our daily life is disunited into two or three compartments, and in some that there is not a religious compartment at all. In our life there ought not to be any such distinction as “the religious life,” “the artistic life,” etc. (Kagawa 1931: 74-75)

Some may think that unless a thing is difficult it is not deep; and so they may feel grateful for the Kegon Sutra, which common people cannot understand. But the deepest religion must be that which has most contact with our daily life, and is in closest touch with reality. The religion which is rooted in our original desire, and grows up from out of it, is the only real one. To pray we need not use artificial words. There is nothing wrong if we pray in our ordinary everyday language. (Kagawa 1931: 75-76)

But there are some folks who say they prefer a difficult religion. Religions of the world may be divided into two groups: religions centering round a person, and impersonal religions. In the former the emphasis is on God, but in impersonal religion the emphasis is on Law or Reason. Impersonal religion does not recognize personality or will, therefore it makes man’s desire itself an illusion and would destroy it. (Kagawa 1931: 76)

In India there originated a religion which emphasized the thought of nothingness. Many people are interested in it because their desires are not granted. In Japan there are many Nihilists to-day. From the view-point of “Mu no shisô” — Nothingness Idea — such a religion might be more interesting than the religion which starts from personality and self. This form of religion in its most purified form becomes pantheism. (Kagawa 1931: 76)

But the religion of personality starts first from myself, from me. Incidentally this is the most natural scientific method. It discovers the existence of psychological law in the universe where God and man, also man and man, stand face to face. A poet, Shiki Masaoka, left as his last poem one called “The Autumn Wind.” In it occurs the line:

“To me, no god, no buddha.” (Kagawa 1931: 77)

This is not merely a nihilistic idea; it seems to me to be his realization that there is some religious idea even in the depth of the void. But the religion Jesus taught was a religious life where prayer grows in the warm contacts of personality with personality. Jesus taught us to pray together. Prayer has a social aspect. (Kagawa 1931: 77)

The world is opened by prayer. What one prays for is always accomplished. Prayer, at the very least, uplifts the heart of the one who prays, and develops high ideals in his mind…. His [Jesus’] daily life was worship…. We must take our gladness and sorrow and all of everything to God, and look into the world where God and man melt together. (Kagawa 1931: 77)

The Death of Jesus Its Before and After

The Apostle Paul said, “For those who are on the way to destruction the story of the Cross is nonsense, but to us who are being saved, it means all the power of God” (I Cor. i. 18). There have been few who express the issue so clearly. Nothing has been more discussed in the world than the problem of the Cross. There is a school of thought to-day which says that Christianity has become too doctrinal: that it has become a religion of the Cross — the worship of suffering: but this is not real Christianity: that real Christianity is the life of Jesus Himself: it is necessary therefore to emancipate Christianity from the religion of Paul, the religion of the Cross, and come back to Jesus Christ Himself. (Kagawa 1931: 78)

A religion which does not look at life, self and God squarely is easily corrupted by one or another of these forms of idolatry [space-idolatry or time-idolatry], and will never be thoroughly completed either in culture or in expression. (Kagawa 1931: 82)

The religion of Jesus is the religion of crucifixion, that is, of redemption. It is the religion of action which unites meditation and prayer. To walk in prayer, continually asking and receiving power from God, and again to transform this power into new actions of love, this was the religion of Jesus…. Jesus discovered this law and established the religion of redemption in which prayer and meditation are combined into one. (Kagawa 1931: 84-85)

The disciples of Jesus were blamed for picking ears of barley and rubbing them with their hands on the Sabbath, because it was the same as the labour of grinding them in a mill. Religion itself had become to that extent external and superficial. Jesus of course, strongly emphasized inward religion against such superficial and outward religion. (Kagawa 1931: 86)

It is undeniable that the disciples experienced something on this occasion. Ten or eleven different groups or disciples actually saw the risen Jesus. Some people criticize hastily, saying that such an extraordinary thing could not have happened; but Christianity is founded on this strange faith. The idea of resurrection has existed from the early days, but there have been no certain instances of resurrection except in the case of Christ. However people may deny the resurrection of Christ, they cannot deny the fact that by it the history of the world has been turned upside down…. Jesus was truly revived in the hearts of the disciples. (Kagawa 1931: 103)

Jesus’ disciples must be those who serve other people …. The true value of Christianity is shown in doing menial and subordinate work willingly. (Kagawa 1931: 116-117)

Jesus said, “Henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth. But I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard from the Father I have made known unto you.” (Kagawa 1931: 118)

Instead of having a special school building, He took His disciples to the mountains, to the beach, and to the park very frequently, and taught them while they were walking in the fields and mountains…. Moreover, Jesus’ school is a school of love. Modern schools teach us knowledge but not love. Jesus taught how to love people and how to serve community. (Kagawa 1931: 123)

It is not necessary to be intellectual, nor to practice self-mortification by going to the mountains or to the sea. Jesus’ religion is contained in the experience of the God of Action. “He that loveth not knoweth not God: for God is love.” Whoever lacks love lacks religious feeling. We must love people before we argue with them. In that loving, God Himself will be revealed. (Kagawa 1931: 125)

A blind man came to see Mr. Juji Ishii, the Christian philanthropist. He was illiterate and could not read anything, but he asked Mr. Ishii to let him learn Christianity. Mr. Ishii said to him, “If, when you practice massage, and are paid for it, you give that money to the blind men poorer than yourself, then you will see God.” So then this blind man, practicing massage every evening in Okayama City, used to go after one o’clock in the morning to the place where many blind men came together after their work, and put 2-sen pieces secretly into the long kimono sleeves of the poorest. He continued this every night, and gradually the heart of this man with sightless eyes was opened. After two weeks he cam again to Mr. Ishii and said, “Teacher, I have come to understand. God is love.” This man learned to know God by himself by loving men. God, who is unintelligible when thought of in a room or a library, will become known when one loves people. (Kagawa 1931: 125-126)

Uchimura Kanzō (内村 鑑三)

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Uchimura saw the origins of denominations … as reflections of secular history in the country concerned. He asked which of these teachings actually represented Jesus’ ideas as opposed to historical accretions of almost two millennia. (Howes 2005: 10)

To me, forms are not only not helps for worship, but positive hindrances. I worship God inwardly in spirit and serve him outwardly in ordinary human conduct. [This formless Christianity is called mukyokai-shugi-no-Kirisutokyo, Christianity of no-church principle.] It is not a negative faith but positive; else my countrymen would never have received it….

Faith and Thinking

Faith is not thinking; what a man thinks is not his faith. Faith is rather being; what a man is is his faith. Thinking is only part of being; rather a superficial part . The modern man thinks he can know God’s truth by thinking . [but] Faith is the soul in passive activity. It is the soul letting itself to be acted upon by the mighty power of God. Passive though faith is, it is intensely active because of the power that works in it. This is the paradox of faith . The Christian is a newly created soul which engenders special activity called faith. Faith is thus a Christian activity of far higher order than thinking. It is the whole soul in beneficent action. (Howes 2005: 336)

Christianity the enemy of Buddhism? Not so! Christianity is a sworn enemy of these warlike Westerners, and not of Buddha and his peace-loving disciples. To make Christianity represent the Warlike West, and make it an enemy of Buddhism, a religion of love and non-resistance, is the greatest possible misrepresentation that can be made of it. (Howes 2005: 337)

The Regulatory Genome

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THE SYSTEM OF HEREDITY AS A CONTROL SYSTEM
In a world dominated by thermodynamical forces of disorder and disintegration, all living systems, sooner or later, fall in disarray and succumb to those forces. However, living systems on Earth have survived and evolved for ~3 billion years. They succeeded in surviving because a. during their lifetime they are able to maintain the normal structure by compensating for the lost or disintegrated elements of that structure, and b. they produce offspring. The ability to maintain the normal structure, despite its continual erosion, indicates that living systems have information for their normal structure, can detect deviations from the “normalcy” and restore the normal structure. This implies the presence and functioning of a control system in living organisms. In unicellulars the control system, represented by the genome, the apparatus for gene expression and cell metabolism, functions as a system of heredity during reproduction. Homeostasis and other facts on the development of some organs and phenotypic characters in metazoans prove that a hierarchical control system, involving the CNS [Central Nervous System] and the neuroendocrine system, is also operational in this group. It is hypothesized that, in analogy with unicellulars, the control system in metazoans, in the process of their reproduction, serves as an epigenetic system of heredity.

— Nelson R. Cabej (2004, 11) Neural Control of Development: The Epigenetic Theory of Heredity

THE EPIGENETICS OF EVOLUTIONARY CHANGE
Under the influence of external/internal stimuli, the CNS may induce adaptive changes in morphological and life history characters without any changes in genes. Commonly, these changes are not heritable, i.e. they do not reappear in the offspring if the offspring is not exposed to the same stimuli. This is the case for the overwhelming majority of described examples of predatory-induced defenses, polyphenisms, and adaptive camouflage. But reproducible cases of transgenerational changes, without changes in genes, changes that are transmitted to the offspring for one or more generations, occur and are described. All the cases of non-genetic, inherited changes are determined by underlying neural mechanisms. Such changes may represent the “primed”, ready-made material of evolution. The evidence on the neurally induced transgenerational nongenetic changes cannot be overestimated in respect to possible evolutionary implications of the epigentic system of heredity. (Cabej 2004: 201)

— Nelson R. Cabej (2004, 201) Neural Control of Development: The Epigenetic Theory of Heredity

Indeed, epigenetic modifications of phenotypic expression are sometimes considered to be “Lamarckian” because they can be transmitted to subsequent generations after being acquired. Not surprisingly, then, it has taken decades for these molecular effects to be accepted as a part of mainstream genetics. Contemporary awareness of molecular epigenetics has expanded the neo-Darwinian view of DNA sequence as the fundamental mode of inherited developmental information (Jablonka and Lamb 2002; Mattick 2012), placing even the initial phase of gene expression squarely in a dynamic cellular, organismic, and environmental context. (Sultan 2015, 11)

At the mechanistic level, epigenetic modification shape gene expression by altering protein-gene interactions that determine the accessibility of DNA to the biochemical machinery of gene transcription. (….) Epigenetic mechanisms may also be a heretofore unrecognized source of selectively important phenotypic variation in natural populations.

It has become clear that heredity is mediated at the molecular level not purely by discrete, stably transmitted DNA sequence variants but also by multiple information-altering mechanisms that lend the process an unlooked-for flexibility. Qualitatively new modes of cross-generational gene regulation are continuing to be found, including several that show gene silencing and other epigenetic roles for noncoding RNA (Bernstein and Allis 2005; Mattick and Mehler 2008: Lenhard et. al. 2012; Ha and Kim 2014). (Sultan 2015, 12)

Many genomic sequences that were previously considered “junk” are now known to code for small or “micro” RNAs (and possibly long RNAs as well) that play a role, for instance by altering enzymatic access to the chromatin by binding to DNA (Koziol and Rinn 2010). … Interestingly, noncoding RNAs may carry environmentally induced effects on the phenotype form one generation to the next, including the neurobehavioral effects of social environment. In one recent study, traumatic, unpredictable, separation of newborn mice from their mothers altered several aspects of microRNA activity in the pups, including their hippocampi and other brain structures involved in stress responses. These epigenetic changes were associated with different behavioral responses to aversive conditions such as brightly illuminated maze compartments. When sperm RNA from traumatized males was injected into fertilized wild-type egg cells, these phenotypic effects were reproduced in the F2 generation; this result indicates that RNA can contribute to the transmission of stress-induced traits in mammals (Gapp et. al. 2014) (Sultan 2015, 12-13)

— Sonia E. Sultan (2015) Organism & Environment: Ecological Development, Niche Construction, and Adaptation

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A general character of genomic programs for development is that they progressively regulate their own readout, in contrast, for example, to the way architects’ programs (blueprints) are used in constructing buildings. All of the structural characters of an edifice, from its overall form to local aspects such as placement of wiring and windows, are prespecified in an architectural blueprint. At first glance the blueprints for a complex building might seem to provide a good metaphoric image for the developmental regulatory program that is encoded in the DNA. Just as in considering organismal diversity, it can be said that all the specificity is in the blueprints: A railway station and a cathedral can be built of the same stone, and what makes the difference in form is the architectural plan. Furthermore, in bilaterian development, as in an architectural blueprint, the outcome is hardwired, as each kind of organism generates only its own exactly predictable, species-specific body plan. But the metaphor is basically misleading, in the way the regulatory program is used in development, compared to how the blueprint is used in construction. In development it is as if the wall, once erected, must turn around and talk to the ceiling in order to place the windows in the right positions, and the ceiling must use the joint with the wall to decide where its wires will go, etc. The acts of development cannot all be prespecified at once, because animals are multicellular, and different cells do different things with the same encoded program, that is, the DNA regulatory genome. In development, it is only the potentialities for cis-regulatory information processing that are hardwired in the DNA sequence. These are utilized, conditionally, to respond in different ways to the diverse regulatory states encountered (in our metaphor that is actually the role of the human contractor, who uses something outside of the blueprint, his brain, to select the relevant subprogram at each step). The key, very unusual feature of the genomic regulatory program for development is that the inputs it specifies in the cis-regulatory sequences of its own regulatory and signaling genes suffice to determine the creation of new regulatory states. Throughout, the process of development is animated by internally generated inputs. “Internal” here means not only nonenvironmental — i.e., from within the animal rather than external to it but also, that the input must operate in the intranuclear compartments as a component of regulatory state, or else it will be irrelevant to the process of development. (Davidson 2006: 16-17)

(….) The link between the informational transactions that underlie development and the observed phenomena of development is “specification.” Developmental specification is defined phenomenologically as the process by which cells acquire the identities or fates that they and their progeny will adopt. But in terms of mechanism, specification is neither more nor less than that which results in the institution of new transcriptional regulatory states. Thereby specification results from differential expression of genes, the readout of particular genetic subprograms. For specification to occur, genes have to make decisions, depending on the new inputs they receive, and this brings us back to the information processing capacities of the cis-regulatory modules of the gene regulatory networks that make regulatory state. The point cannot be overemphasized that were it not for the ability of cis-regulatory elements to integrate spatial signaling inputs together with multiple inputs of intracellular origin, then specification, and thus development, could not occur. (Davidson 2006: 17)

Evolution by Natural Experiment

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Darwin has often been depicted as a radical selectionist at heart who invoked other mechanisms only in retreat, and only as a result of his age’s own lamented ignorance about the mechanisms of heredity. This view is false. Although Darwin regarded selection as the most important of evolutionary mechanisms (as do we), no argument from opponents angered him more than the common attempt to caricature and trivialize his theory by stating that it relied exclusively upon natural selection. In the last edition of the Origin, he wrote (1872, p. 395):

As my conclusions have lately been much misrepresented, and it has been stated that I attribute the modification of species exclusively to natural selection, I may be permitted to remark that in the first edition of this work, and subsequently, I placed in a most conspicuous position—namely at the close of the introduction—the following words: “I am convinced that natural selection has been the main, but not the exclusive means of modification.” This has been of no avail. Great is the power of steady misinterpretation.

Charles Darwin, Origin of Species (1872, p. 395)

— Gould, Stephen J., & Lewontin, Richard C. (1979) The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme. PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LONDON, SERIES B, VOL. 205, NO. 1161, PP. 581-598. [ See: Just So Stories and Hardened Adaptationism and Natural Selection as a Creative Force and The Evolution of the Genome ]

This is the age of the evolution of Evolution. All thoughts that the Evolutionist works with, all theories and generalizations, have themselves evolved and are now being evolved. Even were his theory perfected, its first lesson would be that it was itself but a phase of the Evolution of other opinion, no more fixed than a species, no more final than the theory which it displaced.

— Henry Drummond, 1883

Charles Darwin described The Origin of Species as “one long argument” for evolution by natural selection. Subsequently Ernst Mayr applied the expression to the continuing debate over Darwin’s ideas. My explanation of why the debate lingers is that although Darwin was right about the reality of evolution, his causal theory was fundamentally wrong, and its errors have been compounded by neo-Darwinism. In 1985 my book Evolutionary Theory: The Unfinished Synthesis was published. In it I discussed Darwinian problems that have never been solved, and the difficulties suffered historically by holistic approaches to evolutionary theory. The most important of these holistic treatments was “emergent evolution,” which enjoyed a brief moment of popularity about 80 years ago before being eclipsed when natural selection was mathematically formalized by theoretical population geneticists. I saw that the concept of biological emergence could provide a matrix for a reconstructed evolutionary theory that might displace selectionism. At that time, I naively thought that there was a momentum in favor of such a revision, and that there were enough open-minded, structuralistic evolutionists to displace the selectionist paradigm within a decade or so. Faint hope! (Robert G. B. Reid. Biological Emergences: Evolution by Natural Experiment (Vienna Series in Theoretical Biology) (Kindle Locations 31-37). Kindle Edition.)

Instead, the conventional “Modern Synthesis” produced extremer forms of selectionism. Although some theoreticians were dealing effectively with parts of the problem, I decided I should try again, from a more general biological perspective. This book is the result. (Reid 2007, Preface)

The main thrust of the book is an exploration of evolutionary innovation, after a critique of selectionism as a mechanistic explanation of evolution. Yet it is impossible to ignore the fact that the major periods of biological history were dominated by dynamic equilibria where selection theory does apply. But emergentism and selectionism cannot be synthesized within an evolutionary theory. A “biological synthesis” is necessary to contain the history of life. I hope that selectionists who feel that I have defiled their discipline might find some comfort in knowing that their calculations and predictions are relevant for most of the 3.5 billion years that living organisms have inhabited the Earth, and that they forgive me for arguing that those calculations and predictions have little to do with evolution. (Reid 2007, Preface)

Evolution is about change, especially complexifying change, not stasis. There are ways in which novel organisms can emerge with properties that are not only self-sufficient but more than enough to ensure their status as the founders of kingdoms, phyla, or orders. And they have enough generative potential to allow them to diversify into a multiplicity of new families, genera, and species. Some of these innovations are all-or-none saltations. Some of them emerge at thresholds in lines of gradual and continuous evolutionary change. Some of them are largely autonomous, coming from within the organism; some are largely imposed by the environment. Their adaptiveness comes with their generation, and their adaptability may guarantee success regardless of circumstances. Thus, the filtering, sorting, or eliminating functions of natural selection are theoretically redundant. (Reid 2007, Preface)

Therefore, evolutionary theory should focus on the natural, experimental generation of evolutionary changes, and should ask how they lead to greater complexity of living organisms. Such progressive innovations are often sudden, and have new properties arising from new internal and external relationships. They are emergent. In this book I place such evolutionary changes in causal arenas that I liken to a three-ring circus. For the sake of bringing order to many causes, I deal with the rings one at a time, while noting that the performances in each ring interact with each other in crucial ways. One ring contains symbioses and other kinds of biological association. In another, physiology and behavior perform. The third ring contains of developmental or epigenetic evolution. (Reid 2007, Preface)

After exploring the generative causes of evolution, I devote several chapters to subtheories that might arise from them, and consider how they might be integrated into a thesis of emergent evolution. In the last chapter I propose a biological synthesis. (Reid 2007, Preface)

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Introduction — Re-Invention of Natural Selection

I regard it as unfortunate that the theory of natural selection was first developed as an explanation for evolutionary change. It is much more important as an explanation for the maintenance of adaptation.
— George Williams, 1966

Natural selection cannot explain the origin of new variants and adaptations, only their spread.
— John Endler, 1986

We could, if we wished, simply replace the term natural selection with dynamic stabilization….
— Brian Goodwin, 1994

Nobody is going to re-invent natural selection….
— Nigel Hawkes, 1997

Ever since Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species, it has been widely believed that natural selection is the primary cause of evolution. However, while George Williams and John Endler take the trouble to distinguish between the causes of variation and what natural selection does with them; the latter is what matters to them. In contrast, Brian Goodwin does not regard natural selection as a major evolutionary force, but as a process that results in stable organisms, populations, and ecosystems. He would prefer to understand how evolutionary novelties are generated, a question that frustrated Darwin for all of his career. (Reid 2007)

During the twentieth century, Darwin’s followers eventually learned how chromosomal recombination and gene mutation could provide variation as fuel for natural selection. They also re-invented Darwinian evolutionary theory as neo-Darwinism by formalizing natural selection mathematically. Then they redefined it as differential survival and reproduction, which entrenched it as the universal cause of evolution. Nigel Hawkes’s remark that natural selection cannot be re-invented demonstrates its continued perception as an incorruptible principle. But is it even a minor cause of evolution? (Reid 2007)

Natural selection supposedly builds order from purely random accidents of nature by preserving the fit and discarding the unfit. On the face of it, that makes more than enough sense to justify its importance. Additionally, it avoids any suggestion that a supernatural creative hand has ever been at work. But it need not be the only mechanistic option. And the current concept of natural selection, which already has a history of re-invention, is not immune to further change. Indeed, if its present interpretation as the fundamental mechanism of evolution were successfully challenged, some of the controversies now swirling around the modern paradigm might be resolved. (Reid 2007)

A Paradigm in Crisis?

Just what is the evolutionary paradigm that might be in crisis? It is sometimes called “the Modern Synthesis.” Fundamentally it comes down to a body of knowledge, interpretation, supposition, and extrapolation, integrated with the belief that natural selection is the all-sufficient cause of evolution—if it is assumed that variation is caused by gene mutations. The paradigm has built a strong relationship between ecology and evolution, and has stimulated a huge amount of research into population biology. It has also been the perennial survivor of crises that have ebbed and flowed in the tide of evolutionary ideas. Yet signs of discord are visible in the strong polarization of those who see the whole organism as a necessary component of evolution and those who want to reduce all of biology to the genes. Since neo-Darwinists are also hypersensitive to creationism, they treat any criticism of the current paradigm as a breach of the scientific worldview that will admit the fundamentalist hordes. Consequently, questions about how selection theory can claim to be the all-sufficient explanation of evolution go unanswered or ignored. Could most gene mutations be neutral, essentially invisible to natural selection, their distribution simply adrift? Did evolution follow a pattern of punctuated equilibrium, with sudden changes separated by long periods of stasis? Were all evolutionary innovations gene-determined? Are they all adaptive? Is complexity built by the accumulation of minor, selectively advantageous mutations? Are variations completely random, or can they be directed in some way? Is the generation of novelty not more important than its subsequent selection? (Reid 2007)

Long before Darwin, hunters, farmers, and naturalists were familiar with the process that he came to call “natural selection.” And they had not always associated it with evolution. It is recognized in the Bible, a Special Creation text. Lamarck had thought that evolution resulted from a universal progressive force of nature, not from natural selection. Organisms responded to adaptational needs demanded by their environments. The concept of adaptation led Lamarck’s rival, Georges Cuvier, to argue the opposite. If existing organisms were already perfectly adapted, change would be detrimental, and evolution impossible. Nevertheless, Cuvier knew that biogeography and the fossil record had been radically altered by natural catastrophes. These Darwin treated as minor aberrations during the long history of Earth. He wanted biological and geographical change to be gradual, so that natural selection would have time to make appropriate improvements. The process of re-inventing the events themselves to fit the putative mechanism of change was now under way. (Reid 2007)

Gradualism had already been brought to the fore when geologists realized that what was first interpreted as the effects of the sudden Biblical flood was instead the result of prolonged glaciation. Therefore, Darwin readily fell in with Charles Lyell’s belief that geological change had been uniformly slow. Now, more than a century later, catastrophism has been resurrected by confirmation of the K-T (Cretaceous-Tertiary) bolide impact that ended the Cretaceous and the dinosaurs. Such disasters are also linked to such putative events as the Cambrian “Big Bang of Biology,” when all of the major animal phyla seem to have appeared almost simultaneously.’ The luck of the draw has returned to evolutionary theory. Being in the right place at the right time during a cataclysm might have been the most important condition of survival and subsequent evolution. (Reid 2007)

Beyond the fringe of Darwinism, there are heretics who believe the neo-Lamarckist tenet that the environment directly shapes the organism in a way that can be passed on from one generation to the next. They argue that changes imposed by the environment, and by the behavior of the organism, are causally prior to natural selection. Nor is neo-Lamarckism the only alternative. Some evolutionary biologists, for example, think that the establishment of unique symbioses between different organisms constituted major evolutionary novelties. Developmental evolutionists are reviewing the concept that evolution was not gradual but saltatory (i.e., advancing in leaps to greater complexity). However, while they emphasize the generation of evolutionary novelty, they accommodate natural selection as the complementary and essential causal mechanism. (Reid 2007)

Notes on isms

Before proceeding further, I want to explain how I arbitrarily, but I hope consistently, use the names that refer to evolutionary movements and their originators. “Darwinian” and “Lamarckian” refer to any idea or interpretation that Darwin and Lamarck originated or strongly adhered to. Darwinism is the paradigm that rose from Darwinian concepts, and Lamarckism is the movement that followed Lamarck. They therefore include ideas that Darwin and Lamarck may not have thought of nor emphasized, but which were inspired by them and consistent with their thinking. Lamarck published La philosophie zoologique in 1809, and Lamarckism lasted for about 80 years until neo-Lamarckism developed. Darwinism occupied the time frame between the publication of The Origin of Species (1859) and the development of neo-Darwinism. The latter came in two waves. The first was led by August Weismann, who was out to purify evolutionary theory of Darwinian vacillation. The second wave, which arose in theoretical population genetics in the 1920s, quantified and redefined the basic tenets of Darwinism. Selectionism is the belief that natural selection is the primary cause of evolution. Its influence permeates the Modern Synthesis, which was originally intended to bring together all aspects of biology that bear upon evolution by natural selection. Niles Eldredge (1995) uses the expression “ultra-Darwinian” to signify an extremist position that makes natural selection an active causal evolutionary force. For grammatical consistency, I prefer “ultra-Darwinist,” which was used in the same sense by Pierre-Paul Grasse in 1973. (Reid 2007)

The Need for a More Comprehensive Theory

I have already hinted that the selectionist paradigm is either insufficient to explain evolution or simply dead wrong. Obviously, I want to find something better. Neo-Darwinists themselves concede that while directional selection can cause adaptational change, most natural selection is not innovative. Instead, it establishes equilibrium by removing extreme forms and preserving the status quo. John Endler, the neo-Darwinist quoted in one of this chapter’s epigraphs, is in good company when he says that novelty has to appear before natural selection can operate on it. But he is silent on how novelty comes into being, and how it affects the internal organization of the organism—questions much closer to the fundamental process of evolution. He is not being evasive; the issue is just irrelevant to the neo-Darwinist thesis. (Reid 2007)

Darwin knew that nature had to produce variations before natural selection could act, so he eventually co-opted Lamarckian mechanisms to make his theory more comprehensive. The problem had been caught by other evolutionists almost as soon as The Origin of Species was first published. Sir Charles Lyell saw it clearly in 1860, before he even became an evolutionist:

If we take the three attributes of the deity of the Hindoo Triad, the Creator, Brahmah, the preserver or sustainer, Vishnu, & the destroyer, Siva, Natural Selection will be a combination of the two last but without the first, or the creative power, we cannot conceive the others having any function.

Consider also the titles of two books: St. George Jackson Mivart’s On the Genesis of Species (1872) and Edward Cope’s Origin of the Fittest (1887). Their play on Darwin’s title emphasized the need for a complementary theory of how new biological phenomena came into being. Soon, William Bateson’s Materials for the Study of Variation Treated with Especial Regard to Discontinuity in the Origin of Species (1894) was to distinguish between the emergent origin of novel variations and the action of natural selection. (Reid 2007)

The present work resumes the perennial quest for explanations of evolutionary genesis and will demonstrate that the stock answer—point mutations and recombinations of the genes, acted upon by natural selection—does not suffice. There are many circumstances under which novelties emerge, and I allocate them to arenas of evolutionary causation that include association (symbiotic, cellular, sexual, and social), functional biology (physiology and behavior), and development and epigenetics. Think of them as three linked circus rings of evolutionary performance, under the “big top” of the environment. Natural selection is the conservative ringmaster who ensures that tried-and-true traditional acts come on time and again. It is the underlying syndrome that imposes dynamic stability—its hypostasis (a word that has the additional and appropriate meaning of “significant constancy”). (Reid 2007)

Selection as Hypostasis

The stasis that natural selection enforces is not unchanging inertia. Rather, it is a state of adaptational and neutral flux that involves alterations in the numerical proportions of particular alleles and types of organism, and even minor extinctions. It does not produce major progressive changes in organismal complexity. Instead, it tends to lead to adaptational specialization. Natural selection may not only thwart progress toward greater complexity, it may result in what Darwin called retrogression, whereby complex and adaptable organisms revert to simplified conditions of specialization. This is common among parasites, but not unique to them. For example, our need for ascorbic acid-vitamin C-results from the regression of a synthesis pathway that was functional in our mammalian ancestors. (Reid 2007)

On the positive side, it may be argued that dynamic stability, at any level of organization, ensures that the foundations from which novelties emerge are solid enough to support them on the rare occasions when they escape its hypostasis. A world devoid of the agents of natural selection might be populated with kludges-gimcrack organisms of the kind that might have been designed by Heath Robinson, Rube Goldberg, or Tim Burton. The enigmatic “bizarre and dream-like” Hallucigenia of the Burgess Shale springs to mind.’ Even so, if physical and embryonic factors constrain some of the extremest forms before they mature and reproduce, the benefits of natural selection are redundant. Novelty that is first and foremost integrative (i.e., allows the organism to operate better as a whole) has a quality that is resistant to the slings and arrows of selective fortune. (Reid 2007)

Natural selection has to do with relative differences in survival and reproduction and the numerical distribution of existent variations that have already evolved. In this form it requires no serious re-invention. But selectionism goes on to infer that natural selection creates complex novelty by saving adaptive features that can be further built upon. Such qualities need no saving by metaphorical forces. Having the fundamental property of persistence that characterizes life, they can look after themselves. As Ludwig von Bertalanffy remarked in 1967, “favored survival of `better’ precursors of life presupposes self-maintaining, complex, open systems which may compete; therefore natural selection cannot account for the origin of those symptoms.” These qualities were in the nature of the organisms that first emerged from non-living origins, and they are prior to any action of natural selection. Compared to them, ecological competitiveness is a trivial consequence. (Reid 2007)

But to many neo-Darwinists the only “real” evolution is just that: adaptation—the selection of random genetic changes that better fit the present environment. Adaptation is appealingly simple, and many good little examples crop up all the time. However, adaptation only reinforces the prevailing circumstances, and represents but a fragment of the big picture of evolution. Too often, genetically fixed adaptation is confused with adaptability—the self-modification of an individual organism that allows responsiveness to internal and external change. The logical burden of selectionism is compounded by the universally popular metaphor of selection pressure, which under some conditions of existence is supposed to force appropriate organismic responses to pop out spontaneously. How can a metaphor, however heuristic, be a biological cause? As a metaphor, it is at best is an inductive guide that must be used with caution. (Reid 2007)

Even although metaphors cannot be causes, their persuasive powers have given natural selection and selection pressure perennial dominance of evolutionary theory. It is hard enough to sideline them, so as to get to generative causes, far less to convince anyone that they are obstructive. Darwin went so far as to make this admission:

In the literal sense of the word, no doubt, natural selection is a false term…. It has been said that I speak of natural selection as an active power or Deity…. Everyone knows what is meant and is implied by such metaphorical expressions; and they are almost necessary for brevity…. With a little familiarity such superficial objections will be forgotten. [Darwin 1872, p. 60.]

Alas, in every subsequent generation of evolutionists, familiarity has bred contempt as well as forgetfulness for such “superficial” objections. (Reid 2007)

Are All Changes Adaptive?

Here is one of my not-so-superficial objections. The persuasiveness of the selection metaphor gets extra clout from its link with the vague but pervasive concept of adaptiveness, which can supposedly be both created and preserved by natural selection. For example, a book review insists that a particular piece of pedagogy be “required reading for non-Darwinist `evolutionists’ who are trying to make sense of the world without the relentless imperatives of natural selection and the adaptive trends it produces.” (Reid 2007)

Adaptiveness, as a quality of life that is “useful,” or competitively advantageous, can always be applied in ways that seem to make sense. Even where adaptiveness seems absent, there is confidence that adequate research will discover it. If equated with integrativeness, adaptiveness is even a necessity of existence. The other day, one of my students said to me: “If it exists, it must have been selected.” This has a pleasing parsimony and finality, just like “If it exists it must have been created.” But it infers that anything that exists must not only be adaptive but also must owe its existence to natural selection. I responded: “It doesn’t follow that selection caused its existence, and it might be truer to say ‘to be selected it must first exist.”‘ A more complete answer would have addressed the meaning of existence, but I avoid ontology during my physiology course office hours. (Reid 2007)

“Adaptive,” unassuming and uncontroversial as it seems, has become a “power word” that resists analysis while enforcing acceptance. Some selectionists compound their logical burden by defining adaptiveness in terms of allelic fitness. But there are sexually attractive features that expose their possessors to predation, and there are “Trojan genes” that increase reproductive success but reduce physiological adaptability. They may be the fittest in terms of their temporarily dominant numbers, but detrimental in terms of ultimate persistence. (Reid 2007)

It is more logical to start with the qualities of evolutionary changes. They may be detrimental or neutral. They may be generally advantageous (because they confer adaptability), or they may be locally advantageous, depending on ecological circumstances. Natural selection is a consequence of advantageous or “adaptive” qualities. Therefore, examination of the origin and nature of adaptive novelty comes closer to the fundamental evolutionary problem. It is, however, legitimate to add that once the novel adaptive feature comes into being, any variant that is more advantageous than other variants survives differentially—if under competition. Most biologists are Darwinists to that extent, but evolutionary novelty is still missing from the causal equation. Thus, with the reservation that some neutral or redundant qualities often persist in Darwin’s “struggle for existence,” selection theory seems to offer a reasonable way to look at what occurs after novelty has been generated—that is, after evolution has happened. (Reid 2007)

“Oh,” cry my student inquisitors, “but the novelty to which you refer would be meaningless if it were not for correlated and necessary novelties that natural selection had already preserved and maintained.” So again I reiterate first principles: Self-sustaining integrity, an ability to reproduce biologically, and hence evolvability were inherent qualities of the first living organisms, and were prior to differential survival and reproduction. They were not, even by the lights of extreme neo-Darwinists, created by natural selection. And their persistence is fundamental to their nature. To call such features adaptive, for the purpose of implying they were caused by natural selection, is sophistry as well as circumlocution. Sadly, many biologists find it persuasive. Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1952) lamented:

Like a Tibetan prayer wheel, Selection Theory murmurs untiringly: ‘everything is useful,’ but as to what actually happened and which lines evolution has actually followed, selection theory says nothing, for the evolution is the product of ‘chance,’ and therein obeys no ‘law. [Bertalanffy 1952, p. 92.]

In The Variation of Animals in Nature (1936), G. C. Robson and O. W. Richards examined all the major known examples of evolution by natural selection, concluding that none were sufficient to account for any significant taxonomic characters. Despite the subsequent political success of ecological genetics, some adherents to the Modern Synthesis are still puzzled by the fact that the defining characteristics of higher taxa seem to be adaptively neutral. For example, adult echinoderms such as sea urchins are radially symmetrical, i.e., they are round-bodied like sea anemones and jellyfish, and lack a head that might point them in a particular direction. This shape would seem to be less adaptive than the bilateral symmetry of most active marine animals, which are elongated and have heads at the front that seem to know where they want to go. Another puzzler: How is the six-leg body plan of insects, which existed before the acquisition of wings, more or less adaptive than that of eight-legged spiders or ten-legged legged lobsters? The distinguished neo-Darwinists Dobzhansky, Ayala, Stebbins, and Valentine (1977) write:

This view is a radical deviation from the theory that evolutionary changes are governed by natural selection. What is involved here is nothing less than one of the major unresolved problems of evolutionary biology. []

The problem exists only for selectionists, and so they happily settle for the first plausible selection pressure that occurs to them. But it could very well be that insect and echinoderm and jellyfish body plans were simply novel complexities that were consistent with organismal integrity—they worked. There is no logical need for an arbiter to judge them adaptive after the fact.

Some innovations result from coincidental interactions between formerly independent systems. Natural selection can take no credit for their origin, their co-existence, or their interaction. And some emergent novelties often involve redundant features that persisted despite the culling hand of nature. Indeed, life depends on redundancy to make evolutionary experiments. Initially selectionism strenuously denies the existence of such events. When faced with the inevitable, it downplays their importance in favor of selective adjustments necessary to make them more viable. Behavior is yet another function that emphasizes the importance of the whole organism, in contrast to whole populations. Consistent changes in behavior alter the impact of the environment on the organism, and affect physiology and development. In other words, the actions of plants or animals determine what are useful adaptations and what are not. This cannot even be conceived from the abstract population gene pools that neo-Darwinists emphasize.

If some evolutionists find it easier to understand the fate of evolutionary novelty through the circumlocution of metaphorical forces, so be it. But when they invent such creative forces to explain the origin of evolutionary change, they do no better than Special Creationists or the proponents of Intelligent Design. Thus, the latter find selectionists an easy target. Neo-Darwinist explanations, being predictive in demographic terms, are certainly “more scientific” than those of the creationists. But if those explanations are irrelevant to the fundamentals of evolution, their scientific predictiveness is of no account.

What we really need to discover is how novelties are generated, how they integrate with what already exists, and how new, more complex whole organisms can be greater than the sums of their parts. Evolutionists who might agree that these are desirable goals are only hindered by cant about the “relentless imperatives of natural selection and the adaptive trends it produces.”

(….) Reductionism

Reduction is a good, logical tool for solving organismal problems by going down to their molecular structure, or to physical properties. But reductionism is a philosophical stance that embraces the belief that physical or chemical explanations are somehow superior to biological ones. Molecular biologists are inclined to reduce the complexity of life to its simplest structures, and there abandon the quest. “Selfish genes” in their “gene pools” are taken to be more important than organisms. To compound the confusion, higher emergent functions such as intelligence and conscious altruism are simplistically defined in such a way as to make them apply to the lower levels. This is reminiscent of William Livant’s (1998) “cure for baldness”: You simply shrink the head to the degree necessary for the remaining hair to cover the entire pate—the brain has to be shrunk as well, of course. This “semantic reductionism” is rife in today’s ultra-Darwinism, a shrunken mindset that regards evolution as no more than the differential reproduction of genes.

Although reducing wholes to their parts can make them more understandable, fascination with the parts makes it too easy to forget that they are only subunits with no functional independence, whether in or out of the organism. It is their interactions with higher levels of organization that are important. Nevertheless, populations of individuals are commonly reduced to gene pools, meaning the totality of genes of the interbreeding organisms. Originating as a mathematical convenience, the gene pool acquired a life of its own, imbued with a higher reality than the organism. Because genes mutated to form different alleles that could be subjected to natural selection, it was the gene pool of the whole population that evolved. This argument was protected by polemic that decried any reference to the whole organism as essentialistic. Then came the notion that genes have a selfish nature. Even later, advances in molecular biology, and propaganda for the human genome project, have allowed the mistaken belief that there must be a gene for everything, and once the genes and their protein products have been identified that’s all we need to know. Instead, the completion of the genome project has clearly informed us that knowing the genes in their entirety tells us little about evolution. Yet biology still inhabits a genocentric universe, and most of its intellectual energy and material resources are sucked in by the black hole of reductionism at its center.

(….) Epigenetic Algorithms

Mechanical metaphors have appealed to many philosophers who sought materialist explanations of life. The definitive work on this subject is T. S. Hall’s Ideas of Life and Matter (1969). Descartes, though a dualist, thought of animal bodies as automata that obeyed mechanical rules. Julien de la Mettrie applied stricter mechanistic principles to humans in LʼHomme machine (1748). Clockwork and heat engine models were popular during the Industrial Revolution. Lamarck proposed hydraulic processes as causes of variation. In the late nineteenth century, the embryologists Wilhelm His and Wilhelm Roux theorized about developmental mechanics. However, as biochemical and then molecular biological information expanded, popular machine models were refuted, but it is not surprising that computers should have filled the gap. Algorithms that systematically provide instructions for a progressive sequence of events seem to be suitable analogues for epigenetic procedures.

A common error in applying this analogy is the belief that the genetic code, or at least the total complement of an organism’s DNA contains the program for its own differential expression. In the computer age it is easy to fall into that metaphysical trap. However, in the computer age we should also know that algorithms are the creations of programmers. As Charles Babbage (1838) and Robert Chambers (1844) tried to tell us, the analogy is more relevant to creationism than evolutionism. At the risk of offending the sophisticates who have indulged me so far, I want to state the problems in the most simple terms. To me, that is a major goal of theoretical biology, rather than the conversion of life to mathematics. (Robert G. B. Reid. Biological Emergences: Evolution by Natural Experiment (Vienna Series in Theoretical Biology) (p. 263). Kindle Edition.)

Story Telling in Economics

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A Question I Once Raised During a Conference

Many years ago, when I was attending a session at an economics conference, I heard a presentation by a professor about the relationship between economic growth and technology change. In his presentation he purported to show a high correlation between the number of new patients (registered with the US Patent and Trademark Office) and economic growth. This enabled him to conclude that there was a causal relationship between technological change (as reflected by patent counts) and economic growth. This finding, by the way, is the kind that is very often hailed by organizations that offer research grants to economic professors and to other scientists. This is because findings serve as evidence for the “social benefits of R&D” which these organizations can, and often do, use to drum up political support for their organizations. It is also highly appealing to many people—admittedly, myself included—who love science and loving thinking about how beneficial scientific and technological advancement can be when it is properly and responsibly managed. So I realized that the paper being presented would be music to many people’s ears, and that it would help him receive praise, perhaps a publication, and perhaps even grant money, for his research. (Payson 2017, 3)

Given my own background on the topic … I had a question about his stated findings, which I politely asked during the question-and-answer session. In asking my question I mentioned that I was familiar with a well-known change in patent laws that occurred at the beginning of the time span that he was analyzing. As many who are familiar with patents know, the vast majority of patents that are issued have no real value and are not in fact used by the company that holds the patent. What generally occurs is that a company acquires a very valuable patent and also createes dozens of other patents that are “close” (in their subject matter) to that valuable one. The reason for their doing this is to protect their valuable patent so that no company can produce a similar patent that competes with theirs. The change in patent laws, which I just referred to, had made it easier for companies to acquire similar patents to ones that already existed, which essentially created a need for companies issuing important patents to “surround” their main patent by more of these other unused “protective patents.” (Payson 2017, 3)

So, in my question to the presenter, I asked whether it might simply be possible that the increase in registered patents that his study observed was attributable to that change in patent laws, which was apparently occurring at the same time that GDP was growing fairly well. GDP was growing at that time due to a general upturn in the economy in which employment was on the rise and inflaction had been brought under control. In other words, perhaps it was simpl a coincidental that both patent counts and real GDP were rising during the same period, but there was no causal relationship between the two. I asked him, essentially, if he thought that such a coincidence might be an alternative explanation for why patents and GDP were rising at the same time. (Payson 2017, 3-4)

The presenter’s reaction, especially in terms of his facial expression, reflected a typical response that I must have seen hundreds of times in my 35 years as an economist. Upon hearing my question he condescendingly smiled from ear-to-ear, while constraining himself from laughing, and he replied in an artificially diplomatic and sarcastic tone, “Oh I know all that [about the patent law change.] But … that’s not my story“—the story that he wanted to tell—and he was thoroughly amused that someone in the audience would be naïve enough to actually think about whether his findings were scientifically valid. Scientific validity of one’s findings is not only rarely discussed during paper presentations at economics conferences, but when it is, it is, more often than not, a source of amusement by the presenters of the papers and their audiences than an actual concern that might lead to improving people’s work. (Payson 2017, 4)

The Profession’s Genuine Arrogance toward Concerns about Scientific Integrity

(….) [M]any academic economists respond with smug, arrogant dismissal or laughter when the topic of scientific integrity or professional ethics is brought before them. It might be surprising to those who are less familiar with the profession that such arrogance and frivolity is as observable as much among some of the most prominent economics professors as among those who are not prominent. In the documentary Inside Job, one can observe this kind of arrogance directly among high-ranking professors as they were being interviewed. (Payson 2017, 4)

As another example, Deirdre McCloskey, a former member of the board of directors of the American Economic Association (AEA) (which consists only of highly ranked professors), has told of how she was there when the board broke into laughter when a letter was read aloud at one of their meetings. The letter was someone who was simply asking whether the AEA would consider adopting a code of ethics for economists. (Payson 2017, 4)

Many economics professors do not laugh or make arrogant statements, but express conceit in an entirely different way, such as feeling sorry for those who are even thinking about scientific integrity or professional ethics—thinking to themselves how pathetically stupid, naïve, or childishly innocent those people must be. There is, in fact a substantial literature on the more scholarly problem of arrogance in the academic economics profession. This literature was written entirely by “insiders”—highly prominent professors themselves, some even Nobel laureates. (Payson 2017, 4-5)

(….) In the absence of the commitment to contributing to useful knowledge, the behavior of the work of academic economists have been dominated by two other major forces: (1) the mathematical games that are played for the sake of getting published and acquiring grant money, and (2) cronyism within the profession, which, in combination with the mathematical game playing, has dominated the reward system and incentive system of the profession. (Payson 2017, 10)

[T]o examine the validity of the claim that these are highly useful branches of knowledge [e.g., economics], let us ask what their contribution to mankind’s welfare is supposed to be. To judge by the cues from training courses and textbooks, the practical usefulness … consists of helping people to find their niche in society, to adapt themselves to it painlessly, and to dwell therein contentedly and in harmony with their companions. (Andreski 1973, 26, in Social Sciences as Sorcery)

— Andreski 1973, 26, in Social Sciences as Sorcery

Literature-Only Discourse and the Pretense of Scientific Merit

Regardless of all the various arguments made against most theoretical economics, “defenders of the faith” will continue to espouse the party line. That is, they will say that, regardless of the bad and unproductive habits of theoretical economics, good things—namely, genuine and extremely valuable discoveries in economic theory—do fall out of the chaos. They will continue to argue that these valuable discoveries, even though they may be rare, ultimately justify the chaos and the inefficiencies of the system. To get past this convenient, blind faith, I will argue that it is possible for us to identify what characteristics of most top-ranked, theoretical literature actually do prevent it from contributing to valuable knowledge. In this way, we may be able to filter it out from this point on, without removing any of the top-ranked literature that is truly valuable. (Payson 2017, 51)

Defining the Filter

Let us consider a subset of all published papers in economics that meet all of the following three criteria. If it meets any one of the criteria, the paper may still be considered as an acceptable contribution to useful knowledge. (Payson 2017, 51)

Criterion 1: The paper uses a model that has no “real application.” Along these lines, if the paper presents a model for the purpose of being persuasive on a particular policy position, but presents no real evidence in support of that position (and is only a model that essentially “rediscovers its assumptions”) then it would still meet this criterion of having no real application. (Payson 2017, 51)

Criterion 2: The paper relies on assumptions or data that cannot be verified, or the situation exists in which alternative assumptions or data can be reasonably found that would yield entirely different, conflicting results (as in the McCloskey’s A-Prime, C-Prime Theorem). (Payson 2017, 51-52)

Criterion 3: The methodology of the paper would only be understood, valued, and genuinely studied by a very small group of other economists with advanced expertise in that highly specific topic. (Payson 2017, 52)

Let us call a paper that meets all of these criteria a “literature-only paper”—its purpose is only for the career advancement of the author and for the production of literature to be read and actually understood by a very small audience. Similarly, let us call the work done by economists to produce literature-only papers “literature-only work” or “literature-only discourse.” To be clear, this chapter does not discuss top-ranked literature in general—only literature-only papers that meet all (every one) of the above-mentioned criteria. (Payson 2017, 52)

(….) The only thing that truly constitutes “scientific merit”—indeed, the only thing that really matters in science—is an honest and successful effort to learn how the world actually works—not an effort to create impressive systems of mathematical equations that only very smart and very educated people can proudly decipher. Many graduate students in economics, especially those with little interest or experience in natural science, are ignorant of this. They then go on to become economics professors where they remain ignorant, and pass on their ignorance to their graduate students, the cycle repeats with each generation. (Payson 2017, 52)

In response to this accusation, many theoretical economists will argue that, from looking at the work itself, we have no basis for distinguishing between valid, scientific economic theory, and invalid, unscientific economic theory. Nevertheless, I would like to propose a very simple test could enable us to make this distinction: We look at the assumptions made in the analysis, and ask, “Can an alternative set of equally defensible assumptions be made that will lead to very different conclusions?” If the answer is “Yes,” then conclusions of the research in question have no degree of certainty—implying that the research has not contributed to our understanding of how the real world works. If those conclusions are then used to provide a false understanding of how the real world works, then this is simply a deception, which may be harmful in various respects. (Payson 2017, 52-53)

Let us call economic theory that falls under this category “unscientific economic theory” to bring home the point that science plays no role in justifying the existence of such self-serving conceptual games…. So why has the problem not been solved? The answer is that this solution or anything like it, cannot be heard by unscientific theoretical economists—it falls on deaf ears. (Payson 2017, 53)

Selling New Terminology and Supposedly New Concepts

(….) In many cases new terminology is offered in literature-only discourse as the basis for a new theoretical model that appears to capture an important concept. In general, the important concept is already known and understood under different names. Nevertheless, when a prominent theoretical economist presents a new term that they promote as a “new concept,” and at the same time present a very elaborate and sophisticated model to supposedly “explain” the concept in mathematical terms, it may appear, especially to naïve observers, that their research has truly discovered something important. Many may have trouble distinguishing in their own minds the value of the new terminology from the value of the arbitrary assumptions that were used to create a sophisticated model to explain it. (Payson 2017, 60)

Prematurity in Scientific Discovery

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Scientists and historians can cite many cases of scientific and technological claims, hypotheses, and proposals that, viewed in retrospect, have apparently taken an unaccountably long time to be recognized, endorsed, or integrated into accepted knowledge and practice. Indeed, some have had to await independent formulation. (Hook 2002, 3)

(….) One may classify at least five grounds on which scientific claims or hypotheses—even those later achieving widespread recognition or endorsement—may be rejected at first offering. In addition to prematurity …, investigators may reject or choose to not follow up on a scientific report or hypothesis because (1) they are unaware of it, (2) having reviewed it, they judge it to be of no immediate relevance to their current work and therefore ignore it, (3) they harbor inappropriate prejudice against some aspect of the claim or its proponent, or (4) it appears to clash directly with their observation or experience. (Hook 2002, 4)

(….) Less readily overcome obstruction may stem from strong social forces—religious, ideological, political, and economic—that lead to challenge, rejection, or suppression. In practice, the only remedy may be to seek expression and circulation of the unrecognized, inhibited, or suppression ideas, proposals, and interventions in areas and social climates where the prohibitive factors do not reign. But in principle, in an enlightened society one may suggest some goals, some general social solutions to overcome the barriers. As obvious as they may be, I believe it worthwhile to list some of them: limitation of economic suppression of new inventions or useful technology, encouragement of ideological tolerance, opposition to implacable doctrinaire social forces, and most important tactically, attempts to disconnect the apparent implications of scientific discoveries from the feared ideological consequences. (Hook 2002, 6)

Factors related to but distinct from more global social forces concern resistance at the individual level. New scientific and technical discoveries may threaten not one’s economic welfare or ideological persuasion but rather the “psychic capital” invested in current scientific views—some involving one’s own work—challenged implicitly or explicitly by a new report. Of course the longer one has held views and invested energy in them, the more reluctant one may be to alter them. This inevitably results in conceptual inertia that some have associated with aging. And ranker reasons than those produced by hardening of cerebral arteries or of scientific beliefs may arise from prejudices of culture, nation, gender, ethnicity, or race. (Hook 2002, 6-7)

All these sources of resistance to discovery originate in what some have termed the “externalist” factors influencing science.[13] And for all the above factors, one may, in principle, suggest some types of science policies to address them. For instance, the review of work by referees without knowledge of its authors, as currently practiced by some journals, clearly diminishes effects of some types of prejudices that inappropriately inhibit publication. Editors close scrutiny of reviewers’ judgements may enable them to distinguish opinions based on wounded psychic capital from legitimate methodological objections. (Hook 2002, 7)

[13] For those not familiar with the term, it refers to factors extrinsic to the putative value-free application of the scientific method. Economic and/or social factors influencing scientific inquiry are externalist. This is opposed to an “internalist approach,” which focuses on those aspects of scientific inquiry seen traditionally as free of values except for the search for truth. The image most scientists have of the ideal working of science is of course the latter. Concern with issues of acceptance of a theory based on replication, falsification, and so on may be regarded as primarily internalist, and concern with those of class and economic factors as primarily externalist. But as has been pointed out on many occasions, it is really not possible to separate those absolutely. See, for example, Nagel 1950, esp. p. 22.