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Darwin Was Wrong…
…and Lamarck was right.
Well, maybe. Of the two major theories of human evolution developed in the 19th century, Darwin believed in natural selection — that human traits are passed along through DNA and not through environmental factors — and Lamarck believed that parents can transmit environmentally acquired traits.
Darwin won the sweepstakes, but Lamarck may not have been entirely wrong. From ArsTechnica:
…scientists exposed male mice to six weeks of alternating stressors like 36 hours of constant light, a 15-minute exposure to fox odor, exposure to a novel object (marbles) overnight, 15 minutes of restraint in a 50 mL conical tube, multiple cage changes, white noise all night long, or saturated bedding.
Poor little guys.
Then the scientists allowed the mice to breed. Adult offspring of these chronically stressed dads had reduced hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal stress axis reactivity; when they themselves were restrained for 15 minutes, they did not make as much corticosterone as mice sired by relaxed dads. This is relevant, and problematic, because blunted stress responses in humans are associated with neuropsychiatric disorders like depression, schizophrenia, and autism.
In other words, dads better learn to relax a bit:
The researchers found that stressed dads have increased levels of nine microRNAs in their sperm. The scientists obviously hypothesized that these miRNAs were responsible for the reduced corticosterone response in the kids, and they set out to test it by injecting a similar cocktail of RNA into single-cell mouse zygotes. After these zygotes divided into two cells, one of the cells was allowed to develop into a full-grown mouse and the other was taken for genetic analysis. The mice that got these miRNAs looked exactly the same as those born to the stressed dads; as adults, they had the same blunted stress response and transcriptional changes in their brains. So the miRNAs are responsible for transmitting this effect.
On the other hand, let me ask the dads out there: seeing the world the way it is these days, isn’t being totally stressed out the most rational way to be?
Published in Science & Technology
I think it is wrong to thing of evolution as having a benefit or even a goal. It is a consequence of the dynamics of reproduction of metabolic systems. With respect to evolution individuals do not matter. Individual organisms do not evolve, populations evolve. Therefore evolution can only be observed at the level of population. It is just that the sub-units of population are individuals.
Think in economic terms. The economy isn’t any one store or worker. It is the sum of all workers and stores. How does an economy change? It is through the actions of the individuals made without thought to the larger economy. In a similar manner the species can be thought of as the sum of all these related genomes. The species evolves as this population of genomes changes, through mutation. Genomes that can replicate faster or withstand external pressures better will come to dominate the population in time the same way businesses that expand or can survive economic disasters come do dominate markets.
Its not a perfect analogy by all means.
From my understanding of this whole issue it comes down to the idea of agency and purpose. If we are the product of these naturalistic forces we are the product of chance and therefore deprived of purpose. This is theologically unacceptable to many theists. Furthermore to some atheists the possibility that we are the product of naturalistic forces provides them with arguments against the need for religion or God as an explanatory force in the universe. Thus to some theists it is necessary to find the hand of the creator in our own creation, and to refute the challenges of atheists.
Basically it really boils down to a debate about God and his role in the universe, and the belief that the element of chance is incompatible with a conception of an all powerful, creative God. To quote Einstein “God does not play dice.” Though he said that about quantum mechanics I think many think about it with respect to evolution.
To the discussion participants with various belief systems: theists, atheists, agnostics and materialist/reductionists (this is a belief system). Each has its predispositions and biases. As a secular skeptic I renew my invitation in item #22 of this thread to carefully read “Darwin’s Doubt.” It thoroughly and scientifically analyses every objection raised here (and many more) to the absence of evidence of common ancestors. It makes inference to best explanation (and gives ample evidence against other explanations) – the exact method Darwin used and other historical scientists use to understand unique historical events – a tried an true scientific method and provides, as well, the intellectual underpinnings of this method. It will be well worth the time invested, even if you disagree in the end. It is a clarifying analysis. “Similarly Signature in the Cell.”
Sounds Malthusian to me… ;)
Actually, I’d go beyond that and say it’s the exact same process, not just an analogy.
This is why the early Progressives labeled the classical Liberals Social Darwinists, although the term was perverted later.
Of course Einstein was proven wrong…
Does there have to be a benefit?
Imagine a really large checkers board. You have a large amount of black and red checkers on there, placed randomly. A computer moves one side, then the other side, making legal moves, but random.
Now suppose the red checkers get the power to jump two spaces, as long as either has a black checker in it. Over the course of many moves there will be more red checkers and less black checkers.
There’s no benefit to the red checkers for winning. There’s no agency involved in choosing their own fate, much less a new rule. A total victory for red is as completely pointless as one for black would be, and a hunk of plastic cares not at all for any of that.
Evolution just gives a way for people to describe this sort of shift in population. To the extent that such descriptions involve an organism’s desire for survival or the survival of the species it’s due to sloppy language. The algorithmic march works if the animal in question has any or no desire at all.
Well it is. I think we on the right give Malthus too hard a time. His ideas have their limits but they also have their uses. Resources are limited and growth forces organisms into competition for these resources and depletes them. We see population booms and bust in numerous areas of the environment. With respect to evolution the pressure for resources creates the opportunity for change. Without Malthus you would not have Darwin or any evolutionary theory.
Well and so too I think have the intelligent designers. Clearly God has no problems with a probabilistic universe. At least at a certain level. Which is why I think much of the sense of need among the religious for ID comes from bad theology. I really think so much hinges in peoples minds on the paradox of chance being the will of God.
Indeed it is hard for people to accept the idea that things can happen without agency, much less that complex order can happen without agency. But the order is the byproduct of impartial forces acting in concert and in a dynamic setting. Evolution is the consequence of the physical laws of the universe acting on organism that reproduce.
Think of it this way stones in a river become smooth and round. Is it because the river wants to make them so? No it is a consequence of the actions of the river. Why not square? Because the physical properties of flowing water is chipping away at the stone, and sharp angles are removed faster because they expose more area and create more drag so they suffer more force. The rock will round out in time and slowly be washed away.
Because the fundamental core of natural selection is a tautology.
Survival of the fittest, the fittest defined by those who survive to reproduce.
There is absolutely no goal, purpose, or intent in neo-Darwinism. Every single selection event is independent, and if a beneficial trait is wiped out by a freak accident, that’s that. There is no real way to predict the path of evolution over the long term. A seemingly beneficial trait could be harmful in specific circumstances that lead to it vanishing.
If you ran a duplicate Earth through history, you would have no reason to expect life to resemble what it does today.
Yeah, I agree. I finally got around to reading Malthus and was quite pleasantly surprised by what he actually wrote, as opposed to the caricatures of it.
Although in fairness to the Right, most of those who object to him are objecting to what those on the Left have done with his logic, twisting it into a justification for totalitarianism.