Re: Darlington's evolution of genetic systems
- From: "John Edser" <edser@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 01:28:23 -0400 (EDT)
joe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Joe Felsenstein)
> JF:-
> Darlington was the ultimate hereditarian and racist, writing long
> arguments
> about the dominant role of genetic changes in explaining every twist
and
> turn
> of human history. He worked his way through human history,
"explaining"
> events
> by positing genetic changes (bursts of gene flow here, selection
there)
> for traits whose genetic basis was unknown. He thus came across as a
> first
> class crank. As his (important) cytological work was all
nonmolecular,
> and
> as he did not take up any molecular work, he came to be regarded by
> younger
> generations as just some old geezer who had wierd, unverifiable ideas
> and who was just gassing off self-importantly. That is, to the extent
> that
> younger generations were aware of him at all.
>
> There is a recent biography of him:
>
> Harman, Oren S. 2004. The Man Who Invented the Chromosome: A Life of
> Cyril
> Darlington. xii + 329 pp. Harvard University Press.
>
> I haven't read it but here is a recent review, accessible to non-
> subscribers:
>
>
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/BookReviewTypeDetail/assetid/3
72
> 08
JE:-
It seems to me that a double standard exists within the Neo Darwinian
establishment. Fisher, a founding father of today's population genetics
(which dominates evolutionary theory) was also a racist bigot.
http://instruct.uwo.ca/zoology/441a/hist3.html
It can be argued that basing population genetics on the deletion of gene
fitness epistasis (when all gene fitnesses within nature are actually
epistatic) has become destructive to evolutionary theory when it is
misused. Fisher's fitness assumption allowed each genomic gene to have
an independent fitness when in biological reality they remain fitness
dependent. It is this argument that sits at the heart of the use/misuse
of population genetics heuristics but it is this argument that is
remains avoided. It has allowed racism to become based on the worth of
single genes because a Darwinian heritable genome fitness context has
been deleted. Race based on populations of single genotypes has become a
basic of modern population genetics. Here a bad gene can remain a bad
gene because it was provided with a heuristic independent gene fitness.
Empirically no independent gene fitnesses exist within nature. All of
them, without exception, are epistatic. Apparently it is OK for a
powerful Neo Darwinian establishment to allow Fisher's dictate when it
suits them to do so but disallow when it does not.
Regards,
John Edser
Independent Researcher
PO Box 266
Church Pt
NSW 2105
Australia
edser@xxxxxxxxxx
.
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