The roll of symbiosis in biology has seen significant revisions in the last several decades (I think Lynn Margulis deserves a Nobel, hope she gets one soon as she ain't getting younger), and it ties into the on going studies of evolutionary selection units that are higher than individual (group, species, ecosystem).
Ayn's views were pretty much restricted to "classic" Darwinism, i.e. natural selection at the individual level. Other ideas were around in her time, but she either was ignorant of them, or didn't like them, I don't know which.
Of course, even very knowledgeable people within biology make her same mistake. They build philosophies on particular aspects of current understanding, and try to extend those philosophies to other aspects or categories of life. Dawkins (whom I greatly admire) has more or less done that with the unit of selection being genes. Ayn did it at the unit of selection being individuals. Unfortunately, neither explains reality even within evolutionary biology, so trying to extent it to things like morality or economics, is BS, to put it kindly.
IMO, the more interesting current research these days is centered above the individual level, rather than below. What is kind of amusing is that certain fringe elements on the left (radical environmentalists, hippie nutcases) have made a philosophy out of the higher than individual selectionism (Gaianism) which just like Ayn or Dawkins, gets some things correct, but is rather missing the big picture. All these philosophies based on latching onto one piece of the puzzle, and thinking it contains all the answers! LOL! |
