(music plays)
[Richard Dawkins] Well PZ, or can I call you P Zed?
[PZ Myers] Yes (laughter)
[Dawkins] I think you and I both have a
reputation for being, I don't know, ranting
and shrill and strident and things. But I think we're
[Dawkins] both rather sort of gentle, civilized people.
[Myers] Oh, yeah.
[Myers] Every time I meet people they
tell me I'm just a teddy bear so yeah
I know exactly what you mean. I think there's
a difference between, they are confusing
personal demeanor with being forthright and
out front and being bold about stating what we believe.
[Dawkins] Yes. I think there is even a sense in which
being clear sounds aggressive. There is a
certain kind of mind to whom clarity is,
if not offensive kind of threatening.
[Myers] Right especially if you are talking about religion.
[Dawkins] Now religion is a very special case because
religion has become accustom to being
treated as a kind of privileged
favored child who never gets scolded. Never has to
stand up to the sort of ordinary criticism
that any other field like politics does.
[Myers] Or science. (laughter) Right.
[Dawkins] Or indeed science. Yeah.
[Dawkins] Because in science we have disagreements
and we have controversies and we can
sometimes get quite passionate about it.
And there's none of this sort of wearing kid
gloves which religion seems to expect.
And the consequence of it is is when someone uses
even quite mild language to criticize religion,
it's heard as though it was strident and shrill and ranting.
[Myers] Right. Yeah and, you know,
I've had some experiences in science that,
that really influenced me as a graduate student.
I recall seeing, I went to a conference
and one of the senior scientists there
was a fellow named Graham Hoyle who was
a well know neuroscientist at the time.
And I vividly remember, in the middle of one talk
he stood on his chair and he yelled at the
speaker to tell him this was all wrong.
And you know, they had a good loud argument.
And that argument was one of the most informative
things I have run into, is hearing people
argue about things where they don't pull any punches.
They say ok this is what I believe.
The other person says this is what I believe,
these are our differences. They settle
the differences. That is how you advance an idea.
[Dawkins] Presumably in science we pay lip service
to the idea that if you got a really
vociferous disagreement of that sort, it's
because all the evidence isn't in.
Or are there other reasons for it do you think?
[Myers] Well, there's always personality clashes.
[Dawkins] Yeah
[Myers] But ultimately those arguments are
always settled by the evidence. What happens is,
if things are fuzzy, if they are ambiguous
and they have this ground that they're
arguing over, what they will do is yell at
each other for a while and then they'll
go to their labs. They will dispatch their
graduate students, get to work and test these
interpretations. And you will get an answer
out of it. That's the way it 
should be in anything.
[Dawkins] Yes. What about semantic arguments?
What about arguments that don't depend upon
evidence but depend upon words 
or misunderstandings of words
redefinitions of words, that kind of thing.
[Myers] Oh, yeah, well, what can we do with those?
I mean, all we can do again is try to be as
clear as we can about what we mean.
[Dawkins] Exactly. I mean one thing that comes
to mind, a subject which which our own
field of biology has been controversial is,
is controversial is group selection.
And my feeling about it is that
group selection was thoroughly destroyed
in the 1960s and 70s, but there have been
attempts to revive it which in my view are
semantic because they are simply
redefining something else which never used to be
called groups selection as group selection.
Which is perfectly respectable. Which I would for
example, call kin selection. And a consequence
of that is that there is great confusion sewn.
[Myers] Yeah well on the other hand though
I see some things where there are some
interesting glimmerings. Now it may be that,
given time, this is another of those cases
where the scientists are rushing to their labs
and doing experiments and doing analyses
to see if they can resolve, maybe there will
be some phenomena we can observe there.
For instance there is a lot of talk right now
about evolution of evolvability for instance.
Which is obviously you can't regard that as a
property operating at the level of the individual.
That's groups with, you know, a suite of
different traits in their population that
have an advantage over a different group.
I think it's still an open question whether
that's a valid way to think about evolution or not.
[Dawkins] I am fascinated by it. I,
I got a theory that I actually coined the phrase
evolution of evolvability. It depends when,
when do you think it first appeared?
[Myers] I have no idea. (laughs)
[Dawkins] Well ok I don't know whether I did or not.
But my meaning of it is that there are
certain, I think I would call it embryologies actually,
certain embryologies which lend themselves
to future evolution. When say,
the insect body plan was invented,
or the mammal body plan...
maybe those particular examples
aren't right but when a certain
embryological pattern is established,
some of them are highly evolvable.
[Myers] Yes
[Dawkins] Let's say the arthropod body plan
with its segmentation where you have the
possibility for segments to differentiate,
but it's a modular system with rather like
trucks in a train going from front to back,
and they all have the same structure but they
can be modified in all sorts of ways. Something
like that you can regard as an evolvable
embryology. An embryology which opens
floodgates of possibility for future evolution.
And I can see that that could be thought of
as a kind of group selection. Nothing to do
with the group selection that Wynne-Edwards was
talking about, about the evolution of...
[Myers] But can you avoid calling it group selection
because what you are talking about now is that
certain clades are going to be selected.
[Dawkins] Well I could call it clade selection
which is actually what George Williams,
in his second big book, The Natural Selection,
coined the phrase clade selection, which I
think is rather good actually. I mean I think
certain clades have what it takes to flower
and branch and rebranch and adaptively radiate.
Whereas others don't have that quality.
And that is kind of heresy to a died in the wool
neo Darwinian like me but nevertheless I
think it is plausible and very interesting.
Is that what you mean by 
evolution of evolvability?
[Myers] That's what I mean by 
evolution of evolvability.
But of course you can have clades at all levels.
It doesn't have to be at the phyletic level.
It could be a particular genus has
got some advantage over another.
Yeah, what we see over time is that the lineages
that succeed best are those that can leave
the most diverse collection of descendants.
[Dawkins] Yes, okay. I think that's fine. I would
hesitate though to call that a Darwinian process.
It's a kind of selection but I think it's
probably confusing to even use the same word,
natural selection, for it. Because I think it's really
helpful to use natural selection for selection
among individuals within populations.
Perhaps I would say genes within gene pools which
can be made equivalent. And something like clade
selection I think it's very important but I think
it's confusing. It's confusing in the same kind
of way, it's confusing of Einstein to use the work God
for his kind of pantheistic, as long as you're
bright enough to understand, it's ok,
but you are likely to mislead people.
[Myers] Right. So what term would you use
instead of selection? We've got the clade part.
[Myers] But now we need... (laughter)
[Dawkins] Well I don't mind, ok call it selection,
but clade selection not group selection.
It isn't group selection is it? I mean it's...
[Myers] But, wait, why isn't it?
Dawkins: Well group selection 
in the Wynne-Edwards sense
meant selection among a sort of meta population
of groups within a species for group
properties such as not overfishing the food
supply or not over reproducing or indeed altruism.
[Myers] Right.
[Dawkins] I think that is sufficiently different from
clade selection but you are saying something like the
whole of the echinoderms has a certain property.
