HL Mencken & Units of Selection

[James Brody]

Darwin and Dawkins have a problem with "unit" of selection. That is, what is it that fitness characterizes? Genes (Dawkins) tend to scatter, sometimes you see them and sometime not. Organisms (Gould) in an absolute sense often don't last more than a generation.

HL Mencken, the great skeptic and columnist of the Baltimore Sun, stumbled across this problem in 1922 in his collection of essays, "In Defense of Women." One of them, "The Lure of Beauty" finds handsome men to be oafs that fool themselves but never fool women.

Mencken tried to be fair-minded:

"Viewed from the side, a woman presents an exaggerated S bisected by an imperfect straight line, and so she inevitably suggests a drunken dollar mark." (p124-125).

He also observed the compartmented outcomes from hox genes:

"The average woman, until art comes to her aid, is ungraceful, misshapen, badly calved and crudely articulated, even for a woman. If she has a good torso, she is almost sure to be bow-legged. If she has good legs, she is almost sure to have bad hair. If she has good hair, she is almost sure to have scrawny hands, or muddy eyes, or no chin. A woman who meets fair tests all round is so uncommon that she becomes a sort of marvel, and usually gains a livelihood by exhibiting herself as such, either on the stage, in the half-world, or as the private jewel of some wealthy connoisseur." (p. 124)

In regard to hox building blocks and the problem of a unit of selection, sounds like HL & I look at the same females but he said it better...

References:
Brody, J. (2005) Hox Genes: Mall Chicks
Jacob, F. (1998) Of Flies, Mice, and Men. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Mencken, H. L. (1990) The lure of beauty. In A. Cooke (Ed.) The Vintage Mencken. NY: Vintage, pp. 122-126.
Raff, Rudolf (1996) The Shape of Life. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Copyright, James Brody, 2006, all rights reserved.