Re: Lamarckian Darwinist Speculation?"

On Fri, 30 Dec 2005 15:03:47 +1000, John Wilkins <john@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

>Brett Aubrey wrote:
>> "Mitchell Coffey" <m.coffey@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>> news:1135899351.524446.55060@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>
>>>Brett Aubrey wrote:
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>>>Everyone's understanding of Lamarck is faulty. One wouldn't be
>>>surprised if Lamarck was misunderstood by his mother.
>>>
>>>While Lamarckism is now synonymous with inheritance of acquired
>>>characteristics, that mechanism wasn't particular to Lamarck. Through
>>>most of the 19th century it was a belief generally held by most people
>>>who thought about such things, not to mention by most people. It
>>>remained a contender among certain rather sad biologists into the
>>>1920s.
>>>
>>>What was particular to Lamarck's theories was a system of teleology
>>>characterized as a will for creatures to evolve in certain directions.
>>>Inheritance of acquired characteristics was the mechanism by which
>>>these acts of evolutionary will got passed on to the kids.
>>>
>>>Darwin, we see, thought inheritance of acquired characteristics was one
>>>mechanism of inheritance. It shows up even in the first edition of On
>>>the Origin of Species. He did not think it was a particularly strong
>>>mechanism, and as far as I know, no one serious, including Lamarck,
>>>thought every, or even most, acquired characteristic was passed on.
>>>
>>>Mitchell Coffey
>>
>>
>> Cheers.
>>
>It's also worth noting that Darwin held to the idea of Use and Disuse - any
>previously existing trait that was used was more likely to be inherited
>strongly than one that was not used. Arguably this can be interpreted to mean,
>as Weismann and Wallace held, that selection maintains traits at their local
>optimum, and if they are not used then mutation and other factors will tend to
>degrade them, like cave fish eyes. But properly, Darwin was just mistaken,
>when he accepted a widely held belief.

An issue of interest regarding the above would be the reasons Darwin
came to the mistaken conclusion. Was that conclusion based on his
interpretation of observations of the action of mutation on use vs.
unused traits, or did he arrive at it for some other reason? Since
science is about process, I think it's important to note when
scientists are wrong for the right reasons, or just wrong.

Darwin also believed that the inheritance behavior of certain traits
may be correlated, if I'm not being vague. That is, one trait changes
with inheritance, and the other one may as well, or be more likely to.
He goes on and on about this in Origin, discussing experiments as well
as observations regarding this concept, as I recall.

The reason it's is interesting is that his theory was that the traits
in question may be entirely dissimilar, and the nature of the
correlated changes may be completely unrelated -- though Darwin went
on about the subject, I'll be damned if I can remember an example. To
invent one, lets say that when a blue-eyed person is born with rather
wider knee caps than anyone in his family, he or she tend to grow
somewhat lighter-colored hair on the tops of their feet.

The point of all this is that Darwin had an inadequate model of
inheritance, despite collecting vast amounts of information on the
subject. He knew something was wrong with it, and that what was wrong
with it had to do with (1), regularities in the way a trait may be
inherited in one instance, while being inherited differently in
another; and (2), the fact that traits would jump the track between
generations occasionally, and spontaneously change in ways outside the
usual regularities.

It's not clear to me that knowledge of Mendel's work would have made a
heck of a lot of difference for Darwin at that time. Noting the
probable regularities that Mendel had found might have resulted in an
Archimedes moment, but it would have ended in frustration, when he'd
discover it didn't work so simply for many organisms other than
domestic peas. I'm not even sure they had the math at the time to
fathom out the more complex Mendelian relationships.

In any case, Darwin didn't have a good model of inheritance, so he was
reduced, as we see above, to just adding more epicenters and seeing if
that plugs a few hole.


To jump to a related issue of politicized historiography, am I just
tedious, or does it make a difference that most of those late-19th c.
German biology guys were Lamarckians in the true sense of the word,
while Prof. Weikart (of From Darwin to Hitler Infamy) says they're all
Darwinians, because Darwin believed in inheritance of acquired
characteristics just like Lamar ck, case closed. So he goes on about
people he calls "Darwinist," and you never know who really was a
Darwinist.

It has become an influential book. The general misunderstanding of
the difference between Darwinist and Lamarckian mechanisms is having
political consequences.

Mitchell

.

Relevant Pages

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