Re: Fun new book coming out!

Fodor is well known for his over the top rhetoric and it looks like he was leading the charge here.  This book fails from a philosophical and scientific perspective.  What did Darwin get wrong?  Quite a few things, but he is no different that any scientistfrom 150 years ago.  It's funny that in one hand this group (curezone) calls science dogmatic and then turns around and yells 'GOTCHA'  whenever science improves upon old ideas.

Even Fodor's fellow philosophers don't think much of this book.  Simon Blackburn
Department of Philosophy, University of Cambridge writes:

My colleague Jerry Fodor has added his name to the list of those who have taken themselves to have ‘conceptual’ objections to the idea of adaptation by natural selection (LRB, 18 October). His problem is fortunately quite easily solved. He takes from Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin the question: if two traits occur together, how do we know which was ‘selected’ for without appeal to the mind of a designer? Fodor urges that when we take away the designer, the question is unanswerable, unless we make a metaphorical and flat-footed appeal to Mother Nature. But this is not so. Two traits may be found together in nature, but one can play a causal role in producing a reproductive advantage, when the other does not. It may be that all and only vertebrates with eyes weigh a little bit extra because they carry various proteins (crystallins) around that go to making up eyeballs. But the sensitivity to light is what gives the advantage, not the little bit of extra weight due to carrying crystallin. Otherwise flatfish might as well have eyes on their undersides, and we might have turned out blind, but with devices for holding crystallin in our armpits. Similarly Fodor triumphantly asks whether it is being white or being the same colour as the environment that is good for polar bears. A brief look at the life of polar bears, and other bears, and animals such as ptarmigan or mountain hares that change colour with the seasons, forces just one answer. Camouflage helps across the board; being white only helps when it coincides with it.