Post by Ron Dean"A new wave of scientists argues that mainstream evolutionary theory
needs an urgent overhaul. Their opponents have dismissed them as
misguided careerists – and the conflict may determine the future of
biology....Strange as it sounds, scientists still do not know the
answers to some of the most basic questions about how life on Earth
evolved. Take eyes, for instance. Where do they come from, exactly? The
usual explanation of how we got these stupendously complex organs rests.
"https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jun/28/do-we-need-a-new-theory-of-evolution
DOES EVOLUTION THEORY NEED A RETHINK?
https://www.nature.com/articles/514161a
Seriously…how would YOU know?
Laland’s been at this a while. I recall reading stuff by Jablonka in the
late 90s. I have Jablonka and Lamb’s _Evolution in Four Dimensions_ from
2006. Almost 20 years ago published it was. Laland and Brown’s _Sense and
Nonsense_ which was a pretty good book giving overviews on various fields
like ev psych, memetics, and gene-culture coevolution was from 2002.
Some of the stuff they push now is interesting, especially niche
construction, but does it warrant rethinking evolution? Maybe the blinkered
approach of old school Dawkins. But even his goofball redheaded stepchild
memetics is in the mix with this EES polemics it seems.
Gene-culture coevolution may be important in species having culture…humans.
Lactase persistence in dairying cultures is a popular notion, but hardly a
generalizable sort of thing for non-dairying species. Blessed are the
cheesemakers.
From your Nature link:
“The number of biologists calling for change in how evolution is
conceptualized is growing rapidly. Strong support comes from allied
disciplines, particularly developmental biology, but also genomics,
epigenetics, ecology and social science1,2.”. How broad a scope has social
science compared to Hoxology? I guess social science could apply at least
tangentially to viral evolution in humans.
“In the decades since, evolutionary biology has incorporated developments
consistent with the tenets of the modern synthesis. One such is ‘neutral
theory’, which emphasizes random events in evolution. However, standard
evolutionary theory (SET) largely retains the same assumptions as the
original modern synthesis, which continues to channel how people think
about evolution.”
Yeah the uptake of neutral theory seems low to nil given the bullshit Larry
Moran often contends with on his blog. So SET adaptationism seems quite
allergic to it still.
Developmental bias may have something going for it. Extragenetic
inheritance seems to include as a subset stuff applying to cultural
organisms (like humans) or where behavior is passed via a separate learning
channel. Another subset called epigenetics is interesting but oversold. The
effects (methylation or chromatin markers) are transient.
I will grant “…also encompasses those structures and altered conditions
that organisms leave to their descendants through their niche construction
— from beavers’ dams to worm-processed soils.”
But as far as behavioral driven evolution, say the first lobe-finned fish
exploiting prey outside the water for instance, Jean Piaget was already
thinking about that stuff long ago, though in terms put forth by James Mark
Baldwin and Conrad Waddington. He got a little speculative with the
possibilities the discovery of reverse transcription opened up. From his
_Behavior and Evolution_: “As for the question of interactions between
epigenesis and the genome, where I have endeavoured to stay within the
bounds of a caution dictated by our ignorance, it remains to be seen
whether or not the findings of Temin or others can lend support to the
general orientation of my thesis.”
Or: “Behaviour's role in the formative mechanisms of evolution was
naturally re-interpreted in a more comprehensive fashion once it was
realized that biological causality is never linear or atomistic in form,
but always implies the operation of feedback systems as defined by the
cyberneticians. The postulation of this mode of operation not only
conferred a causal or mechanical character on teleology—it also meant that
interactions had to be taken into consideration everywhere one-way
causality had formerly been deemed an adequate explanatory model. But for a
long time there was one case to which this general rethinking was not
applied—namely, the process whereby DNA becomes RNA. For some reason,
nobody questioned the idea that this process was unidirectional and
irreversible. We know enough now, however, thanks to the work of Temin and
others, to say that it may be reversed on occasion.”