Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Lamarckism returns?

New information as explained in this Economist Briefing RNA - Really New Advances seems to discredit what I call the "Darwinist Triumphalists". That is, those scientists that believe we know all that there is to know about evolution and natural selection. That there is easily possible avenues for direct Lamarckian adaptation which doesn't depend on random mutations, to me, means that there almost certainly is. The competitive advantage of organisms directly mutating appropriately to environmental inputs would mean that organisms that don't would become extinct more often.

2 comments:

Dr Clam said...

Yes, it appears that the 'selfish gene' is not at play in a laissez-faire devil-take-the-hindmost free-for-all, but like any good 21st century small-businessperson is operating in a highly regulated environment! It is good to see your prescient assertion that 'an organism that could evolve so that it underwent Lamarckian evolution would have a big competitive advantage' possibly supported by observation...

Am I agreeing with you too much to get an interesting discussion going? Just let me know if this is the case and I will try to be more contrarian. :)

Marco Parigi said...

Go on, try me. You must be able to find something to nitpick! I was actually thinking KlausRohde would have a counter-opinion on this one!