Re: Darwin, Human Nature, & a Short Text

On Mar 8, 12:42=A0pm, John Edser <ed...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Paleontology <robr...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
<brandon.hendrick...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I'm teaching a philosophy class at a high school, and have started a
multi-stage debate over human nature. =3DA0The class has divided itsel=
f
into two groups ("nature" vs. "nurture", of course!), and is aping the
arguments made in historical texts to help advance their own theses.

Today we did John Locke's "blank slate" theory. =3DA0For our next text=
,
I'd like to provide them with a biologically- (hopefully
evolutionary-) based text from the 18th to mid 20th century.
(Following that is going to be an "anti-human nature" anthropology
work, followed by Stephen Pinker.)

I was thinking of doing some early eugenicists (of the non-Hitlerian
perspective), but thought that Darwin might be even better. =3DA0But I
still haven't gotten around to reading "Origin" and "Descent", and so
am not aware where I might find a short (hopefully easy-to-read; Locke
was tough for the kids) excerpt.

Does anyone happen to know of one?

- brandon
This sounds like an interesting class. I would recomend you take a
look at a NOVA documentary on recent findings in epigenetics called
Ghost in Your Genes. It may well be appropriate for your class and
raise some very interesting questions.

JE;-
I Agree with "Paleontology". I would add that there is no simple
additive fitness association between genes, i.e. what remains heritable
as a proposed fitness cannot be meaningfully expressed as, for example,
30% inherited and 70% learned. In fact most additive associations
expressed as just simple additive percentages are just uncorrected
oversimplifications _which can be misused_.

Regards,

John Edser
Independent Researcher

ed...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Thanks John,

I am new to this online newsgroup stuff, and I accidently set my
nickname to "Paleontology." Guess that gives my age away, eh? ;-)

If it is not too much trouble, I am interested in learning more about
TDF, and could use a few good references to start with if you would be
so kind.

Is the concept of TDF related to issues being discussed within the
field of evo-devo and its criticism of the overly simplistic
mathematical models of population genetics:

"These assumptions may be useful when studying simple univariate
traits and, in fact, many artificial selection studies show that there
is abundant, small, cumulative, heritable variation for these traits
(Weber 1992, Bronikowski et al. 2004). However, when morphology is
decribed [i.e., in real-world situations] by several measurements, the
variation observed is neither isotropic nor possible for all trait
combinations. For some trait value combinations, there is no variation
(the traits are highly correlated) while for others, there is
variation. (Minelli and Fusco 2008: 34)

"There is no evidence that the relationship between phenotype and
genotype is simple. In fact, one of the few general perceptions
acquired from the study of development, and already claimed before teh
advent of modern developmental biology, is that this relationship is
anything but simple (Horder 1993). Most genes affect serveral traits
in a way that depends on the environment and/or the rest of the
genotype. Some small genetic changes can give rise to dramatic
phenotypic effects (Kangas et al. 2004) whereas sometimes relatively
large genetic changes (such as gene deletions) can produce no obvious
phenotypic changes in laboratory conditions (Wilkins 2001). Moreover,
the same new phenotype can be produced by different genetic changes
(Alberch 1980, Horder 1989). As such, even when the question is only
about the kinetics of replacement between morphological variants,
developmental dynamics cannot be ignored. In other words, the adaptive
landscape where each genotype has a fitness according to the
morphology it produces is often complex because the mapping between
genotype and morphology is often complex." (Minelli and Fusco 2008:
34)

Reference List

1. Minelli, Alessandro and Fusco Giuseppe, eds. Evolving Pathways [Key
Themes in Evolutionary Developmental Biology]. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press; 2008.




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