Aubrey, a lot of your work has been on
behavioral genetics and, it is a very fascinating
subject. I often feel that people get confused
about behavioral genetics and behavior development.
And are they right to do so? And, obviously its not right to get confused but,
do see a clear distinction between genetics and
and development that some people miss? Manning: I mean,
there are numerous problems here. I've been struck -
my wife is a child psychotherapist
having done a PhD in ethology, really,
well, not really, she did a PhD in ethology. So she's that science background.
I've been fascinated and really rather alarmed to discover
amongst quite a few of her
extremely clever colleagues, they mix up,
they use the term evolution in a very loose kind of way,
and they don't make much distinction between phylogeny
and ontogeny, development. They really don't.
They talk about - of course,
you know The Journal of Genetic Psychology, I doubt if it still exists, is
about development. Dawkins: Yeah.
And there is considerably,
there's considerable confusion. We should, no we must
keep them - we must try to separate, what
information there will be there
in the genotype, from the way in which that gets expressed - Dawkins: Yes.
Manning: - during animals' development,
which is a matter infinite subtlety.
I always wince when people talk about a gene for aggression, or genes for
aggression, because
that really makes it seem utterly fatalistic: you've got this gene, you're
aggressive,
just like that. Whereas we know that
that nothing
- I was almost going to use that old phrase 'nothing is written'.
I mean, there are predispositions which you may -
there may be more great or less difficulty overcoming, but there's always
the ontogeny to link the way the animal is moving... Dawkins: Yes, when you think about what
geneticists actually study it is always individual differences and so
a gene for aggression could only ever mean a gene
that all, other things being equal, makes a difference between this individual
being aggressive and that individual not. Manning: That's true.
Dawkins: That's what geneticists study, they study individual differences.
Fortunately, natural selection studies individual differences
too, and no natural selection, by choosing phenotypic differences
in, say, aggression, will automatically have the effect of
choosing this gene rather than that gene, on the sort of
statistical basis, but that is terribly different from saying
'you've got a gene for X, you're inevitably bound to have X'.
Manning: That particular
aspect of behavior, aggression, of course, caused infinite trouble, didn't it?
I mean there was
Lorenz's very extreme views in that book "On Aggression", which had a good
deal a biological sense in it, but I mean the way in which he approached it was
very much a fatalistic thing, and then,
what was the name of that guy, Robert Audrey, wasn't it? Territorial Imperative,
the idea that we were evolved as aggressors, we're born as
aggressors, you know, and,
I mean, it flies in the face of facts. I always remember there was a
I think a Finnish woman who selected for
high aggressive and low aggressive lines of mice,
and, given the same kind of upbringing, it was quite striking, I mean the
aggressive mice would fly at another individual the instant it appeared,
you know, as the others would shrink away, and so on.
But, with just a little bit of environmental difference, you could
turn the aggressive ones into
abject cowards - Dawkins: Yes. Manning: and make the others aggressive,
entirely by the way you reared them. Dawkins: It is not a very difficult point to grasp, is it?
Absolutely not! You would think not,
but it still kicks around, doesn't it? Dawkins: Yes.
Is it possible to say what Niko has left you, not just in ethology
but other, I mean I know you've moved on towards all sorts of
other interests. Has Niko kind of fed into that at all?
Manning: I think, I'm sure we'd all agree that
he was a superb naturalist, and to be out
in the natural world with him, was
a wonderful kind of
inspiration really. I can remember one or two days when he was starting me off on my
project, he would take me up into Witham and
he would give a kind running commentary on the world. He saw,
he really saw, I think the cliche now is 'the web but life' which a much
overused term perhaps, but it is there nonetheless.
I think I, and I'm sure you, have a love of the
natural world before we became students of Tinbergen, I mean the one got in,
I got into biology through being a fanatical bird watcher, moving into the
country and becoming a bird watcher,
getting fascinated by insects and so on.
And that's never left me. I mean, Niko
showed how you could do good science yet nonetheless,
work with animals
in their own environment, and furthermore not just see them,
see the beauty of it really, the excitement,
the emotional response which you have, because
I think science is -
too few people recognize that science is a human activity which
involves emotions, creativity, despair,
Dawkins: Yes. Manning: - and all of those things! Dawkins: Yes, we murder to decept.
We're seen as though we are inhuman, cold. Manning: It's crap, isn't it?
It is, really. I mean, nobody who has done science would believe that for a minute.
There are good and bad scientists, some of whom use, you know, have good vibes about it,
some bad vibes. There are, alas, a few cheats who are
faking the whole thing, but they're a small minority.
And, most of us get great joy out of doing science. I think, and
out of understanding the world. And also, as your chair and your work
personify communicating it to people that science -
I don't know what you feel, I, I'm,
I very much like Lewis Wolpert and I admire him,
but I disagree with him profoundly on one thing: he's
quite often said
that some science is just too complicated to explain it to people.
It's just, it's too difficult. Now of course if we are thinking of the detail
that's going to be right,
isn't it? But the principle of what you're trying to do,
and why it's important, why it's exciting,
I think that's possible almost any branch of science, including recherche mathematics,
which I don't understand! Dawkins: Quantum physics? Manning: Quantum physics. Yes, I can even
get principal of what's - it's the principles of it, of these -
of course I can't explain it, but I,
what am I asking the quantum physicist to do - the physicists to do?
To explain to us why they're excited
by this, why...
they get into the uniqueness of this world, all of those things. Dawkins: Oh, they can do that all right, yes.
Some of the weirdness of it.
the sort of, you know, quanta going through -
Manning: I can't. No, I think there probably are
relatively few people who can't talk
on that kind of level, but I'm not quite sure that that's -
I think Louis was thinking a little more broadly than that,
Dawkins: Yes. Manning: some sort...
I mean, it can be complicated and you do need some background
to make a good judgment. But, I mean,
a topic that might seem to be very - I mean, molecular biology, very - molecular
genetics, very recherche subject, but the principles a very simple actually.
Dawkins: I like to think that there shouldn't be that great a separation between the
way we write for
our colleagues in our own narrow discipline and the way the wright for
laypeople and perhaps, or particularly, other scientists in
different disciplines. I think it's a pity
that a custom has grown-up to think that you
write one way your paper to Nature, which is pretty
unintelligible to any but a tiny minority of
people in the world, and then you have a news and views,
which is supposed to translate it for others. Manning: Yes. Dawkins: Why shouldn't you write it in an
intelligible way in the first place? I can see that there would be
difficulties in taking that too far, but I think we don't try
hard enough as scientists
on the whole. Manning: No.
Dawkins: To imagine writing for somebody who is not a specialist in the field. Manning: I think that's right.
I feel that those of us working in animal behavior
have had the relatively easy task in this. I always remember
teaching animal behavior, you could be quite sure -
you know, one would say this to students:
if you find my lectures difficult that's
my fault because the subject is not only
intrinsically quite straightforward, but it's also intrinsically attractive,
I mean, people love
animal behavior. Think all the films on the telly, and so on.
Colleagues in particle physics do have a slightly more difficult - Dawkins: It's a slightly more uphill struggle.
Manning: I always remember John Smith
in his -
wonderful television program, choosing as one of his seven wonders of the world,
Benham's top, I think it was. Dawkins: The teeter-totter.