Lamarck gets the last laugh

[MahrinSkel]

Most people don't know that there was an alternative to Darwin's theory of evolution, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck proposed an alternative where parents passed on *acquired* properties, Giraffes had long necks because of generations of straining for leaves at the top of trees, rather than because taller giraffes had more surviving offspring, and so on.  One of the reasons Soviet medical science was such a joke was that for ideological reasons Marx and most of his first generation of followers believed (based on Lamarck's theory) that by forcing people to behave in a proper Communist manner, the minds of their children would become pre-programmed for communism.

It didn't work, and Lamarckism was completely discredited after the discovery of DNA.

Or was it?  Geneticists have discovered two modified forms of the DNA nucelotides, one of them (5-methylcytocine, the normal Cytocine gene marker with a methyl group bound to it) has been shown to be used as a way to mark genes as having come from the mother or the father, and it turns out quite a few genes are expressed differently depending on which parent they were inherited from.

Now it turns out that methylization does not stop at conception, how a rat is treated while it is maturing can cause additional methylization events, changing the expression of genes, and those changes can be inherited.  They've also found an even further modified Cytocine nucleotide, hydroxymethylcytocine, they have no idea what it does or exactly how it is formed, or if it can change the expression of genes in descendants.

Some regional DNA methylation occurs in the earliest stages of life, influencing differentiation of embryonic stem cells into the different cell types that constitute the diverse organs, tissues and systems of the body. Recent research has shown, however, that environmental factors and experiences, such as the type of care a rat pup receives from its mother, can also result in methylation patterns and corresponding behaviors that are heritable for several generations. Thousands upon thousands of scientific papers have focused on the role of 5-methylcytosine in development.

--Dave

[Ironwood]

Most people don't know that there was an alternative to Darwin's theory of evolution,

They do over here, it's taught as part of the whole Darwin thing.  Lamarck actually isn't the clown to amuse us as much as you think.  He's treated with some respect.

[Mosesandstick]

Since I guess all the biologists will read this thread. Anyone have any recommendations for books to do with evolution? Especially from an evolutionary psychology kinda viewpoint, that's the kinda stuff that really interests me as a layman.

[lac]

Matt Ridley's The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature comes to mind.

[Falconeer]

that by forcing people to behave in a proper Communist manner, the minds of their children would become pre-programmed for communism.

Pfft...
Way to read Marx.

[NowhereMan]

I knew a professor who found it really weird that the big focus nowadays when looking at Marx was the reaction of the church and religion in general because the scientific debate at the time was pretty much entirely between Darwin and Lamarck (or those who followed them somewhat more). There was absolutely no mention of scientific debate involving biblical literalism or anything like that, that debate was entirely a PR thing.

[Sir T]

Pfft...
Way to read Marx.

What does Marx have to do with Communism?  

[Stormwaltz]

Most people don't know that there was an alternative to Darwin's theory of evolution

I find this worrisome. I was taught about Lamarck in high school.

Catholic high school.

Without ID getting equal time. Or any time at all, really.

I was also taught about the superseded "pudding" model of the atom. Does no one teach how science develops anymore?

[Ironwood]

We, as a people, are getting more stupid.

Fact.

[Pennilenko]

We, as a people, are getting more stupid.

Fact.

This can be proven by going to any Walmart in the united states.

Also the other day i was in McDonald's. It had been months since i had any fast food. I was getting lunch for my crew and i was excited about a big mac. I went to pay with partial cash and the rest with my debit card, when i was promptly informed by the cashier and then the manager that they can no longer use split payment options and that it was a nationwide corporate policy.WTF! Since when is it hard to apply cash to the total and then put the rest on a debit card?

[Nebu]

I was also taught about the superseded "pudding" model of the atom. Does no one teach how science develops anymore?

Scientific knowledge is increasing at a rate that is impossible to keep pace with given the limited amount of time we have to teach students.  That being the case, some topics have to be omitted in order to focus on other points.  The subjects that I teach at the college level have changed quite a bit over the past 20 years as I have been forced to "hit the highlights" rather than be all inclusive.  I'm sure this is the case in many areas.  

On the topic: I find this area of science very interesting.  Methyl capping has been the focus of many genetic processes including those mentioned above.  I had the opportunity to study methyl capping and the use of methyltransferase in genetic splicing during a postdoc over 10 years ago.  It's amazing how much we've learned since then... all driven by cheap graduate student and postdoc labor!

[Teleku]

We were taught about Lemarck in my biology class as well.  However, I'd completely forgotten about him until this thread was brought up, just because he's never mentioned in any sort of public/media discourse...

We, as a people, are getting more stupid.

Fact.

This can be proven by going to any Walmart in the united states.

Also the other day i was in McDonald's. It had been months since i had any fast food. I was getting lunch for my crew and i was excited about a big mac. I went to pay with partial cash and the rest with my debit card, when i was promptly informed by the cashier and then the manager that they can no longer use split payment options and that it was a nationwide corporate policy.WTF! Since when is it hard to apply cash to the total and then put the rest on a debit card?

Working for a software company that makes payment/record keeping software for various business's, I can say its a bigger pain in the ass than you think.  I'd have banned it as well.

Be a man and choose one or the other asshole!  None of this pussy half and half shit!   

[Pennilenko]

We were taught about Lemarck in my biology class as well.  However, I'd completely forgotten about him until this thread was brought up, just because he's never mentioned in any sort of public/media discourse...

We, as a people, are getting more stupid.

Fact.

This can be proven by going to any Walmart in the united states.

Also the other day i was in McDonald's. It had been months since i had any fast food. I was getting lunch for my crew and i was excited about a big mac. I went to pay with partial cash and the rest with my debit card, when i was promptly informed by the cashier and then the manager that they can no longer use split payment options and that it was a nationwide corporate policy.WTF! Since when is it hard to apply cash to the total and then put the rest on a debit card?

Working for a software company that makes payment/record keeping software for various business's, I can say its a bigger pain in the ass than you think.  I'd have banned it as well.

Be a man and choose one or the other asshole!  None of this pussy half and half shit!   

I call bullshit, they did it because their employees are morons. Its a non issue at any other retailer of any sort. McDonald's enemy is their recruiting standards.

[Teleku]

Yes, employee error is the main reason its a problem, but its happens all over the place.  A large amount of our support calls involve having to fix the fuckups caused by employees attempting this and doing it wrong.  It's not just a McDonalds thing, they just decided it wasn't worth the extra hassle.  I wish all of the business's we deal with would ban the practice, just so I'd have less work to do  .

Though in the employe's defense, most of the retail type software I've seen (ours included) doesn't make it easy.  It's not intuitive at all.

[trias_e]

  Now it turns out that methylization does not stop at conception, how a rat is treated while it is maturing can cause additional methylization events, changing the expression of genes, and those changes can be inherited.  They've also found an even further modified Cytocine nucleotide, hydroxymethylcytocine, they have no idea what it does or exactly how it is formed, or if it can change the expression of genes in descendants.

I recall this was just gaining some steam when I was taking a philosophy of biology course a few years ago.  Epigenetics clearly has a big impact on what we should consider 'genes' and the old debate on genetic determinism.  If these changes are inheritable it extends the issue even further.

Since I guess all the biologists will read this thread. Anyone have any recommendations for books to do with evolution? Especially from an evolutionary psychology kinda viewpoint, that's the kinda stuff that really interests me as a layman.

Here's something new.  Haven't read it yet but if it opposed to Gould it's probably pretty good. 

http://www.amazon.com/000-Year-Explosion-Civilization-Accelerated/dp/0465002218

[Soln]

Actually one of the biggest problems with Soviet Science was because of the power Lysenko had and the fact that he was fucking liar and madman.  He was the one demanding people follow Lamarskism, which Stalin and co liked.

[UnSub]

Since I guess all the biologists will read this thread. Anyone have any recommendations for books to do with evolution? Especially from an evolutionary psychology kinda viewpoint, that's the kinda stuff that really interests me as a layman.

Heh - I've got to write a paper for a conference and my accepted topic has been evolutionary psychology and emotions. I'm trying to do something functional with it, so am working on basing it on Plutchik's theory of basic emotions. Of course, the book has been out of print for years and I can't find a copy locally, so I'm working off whatever internet sources I can locate things, [ur=http://www.fractal.org/Bewustzijns-Besturings-Model/Plutchikfig6.gifl]like pictures[/url].

Currently I'm reading through Joseph LeDoux's The Emotional Brain which has provided a fantastic background to the whole development of our understanding of emotion (and includes Plutchik's theories).

Any suggestions or sources people can post up will be appreciated - I've got over a month to get my first draft together but need to do a lot of reading in that time. Also, I'm basing it on Plutchik's framework since that appears to be the broadest and deepest (some evolutionary psychology emotion frameworks are very limited imo) but if there is a newer one that does things better I'll be very interested in finding out about it. I'll have to look into The Red Queen since if there is any feeling that Plutchik doesn't cover it is lust / sexual attraction.

[MahrinSkel]

Any suggestions or sources people can post up will be appreciated - I've got over a month to get my first draft together but need to do a lot of reading in that time. Also, I'm basing it on Plutchik's framework since that appears to be the broadest and deepest (some evolutionary psychology emotion frameworks are very limited imo) but if there is a newer one that does things better I'll be very interested in finding out about it. I'll have to look into The Red Queen since if there is any feeling that Plutchik doesn't cover it is lust / sexual attraction.

Try "The Blank Slate" and "The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind".  Both are focused on cognition rather than emotion per se, but the common thread to both of them is that emotion-free rationality may not exist.  Jaynes in particular should be intriguing for you if you're fond of Plutchik.

--Dave

[Salamok]

We were taught about Lemarck in my biology class as well.  However, I'd completely forgotten about him until this thread was brought up, just because he's never mentioned in any sort of public/media discourse...

We, as a people, are getting more stupid.

Fact.

This can be proven by going to any Walmart in the united states.

Also the other day i was in McDonald's. It had been months since i had any fast food. I was getting lunch for my crew and i was excited about a big mac. I went to pay with partial cash and the rest with my debit card, when i was promptly informed by the cashier and then the manager that they can no longer use split payment options and that it was a nationwide corporate policy.WTF! Since when is it hard to apply cash to the total and then put the rest on a debit card?

Working for a software company that makes payment/record keeping software for various business's, I can say its a bigger pain in the ass than you think.  I'd have banned it as well.

Be a man and choose one or the other asshole!  None of this pussy half and half shit!   

The only half and half shit going on here is the half assed software that doesn't allow you to split payment options, WTF do you expect people to do when trying to the entire balance of a prepaid visa or gift card?

[Merusk]

They expect you to eat the loss of $.50-$1.95 so the company makes that money while not selling shit.  Why the fuck do you think they're pushing gift cards so hard, and have the cashiers ask, "Theres only $.25 on here. Do you want me to just toss the card?"  No fucker, that's my quarter I'm going to spend it.


Oh right, Lamarck.  Nope, hadn't heard of him until now, primariliy because of the phenom Nebu mentions.   It's hard enough teaching science basics to the retarded masses and selling that to them.  Fuck, over half the country doesn't believe in evolution as it's presented, now you want to point out there's subtle alternative theories?  That will only lend weight to the, "see, they can't prove it" mouth breathers.

[Ingmar]

Lamarck was covered in my biology class as well, as a discredited competing theory. But I'm getting old.

[Sjofn]

Lamarck was covered in my biology class as well, as a discredited competing theory. But I'm getting old.

Mine too, although I mostly forgot about him afterwards, because he never comes up otherwise. Like I wouldn't have been able to tell you about him off the top of my head, but it came back to me as I read the original post.

[MahrinSkel]

Apparently this is spotty, I asked my kids and they don't remember hearing anything about Lamarck, and what I remember from school was one paragraph from the textbook in between Darwin/Mendel and Watson/Crick, then they started talking about the structure of DNA.

--Dave

[Trippy]

It probably depends a lot on the textbook they use/used. In my high school we typically used the same textbooks as the top Universities did since since our school is very "college prep" focused. In the case of Biology it was Helena Curtis' Biology and we learned about Lamarck from there.

[Righ]

Lamarck was covered in my biology class as well, as a discredited competing theory. But I'm getting old.

It wasn't really a competing theory. Mendel hadn't done his experiments in the monastery by the time Lamarck died, let alone had his work presented to scientific review, so nobody had a valid alternative view for a mechanism for inheritance. From Aristotle through to Darwin, the 'flawed' part of Lamarck's work was broadly accepted among scientists. But Lamarck wasn't working on the mechanism - he was regurgitating accepted thought on that matter. Lamarck's work was in describing an evolutionary framework that linked the species, and in explaining that incorporated the accepted wisdom of his time.

It wasn't until proponents of soft inheritance tried to resist the establishment of modern Mendelian genetics that he got a bad rap.

[Musashi]

Epigenome

Prepare for brainmelt.

[apocrypha]

Actually one of the biggest problems with Soviet Science was because of the power Lysenko had and the fact that he was fucking liar and madman.  He was the one demanding people follow Lamarskism, which Stalin and co liked.

I think the problem with Soviet science was that because the revolution was crushed when Stalin came to power it became just another tool in the state's arsenal of oppression - people like Lysenko were a product of this failure rather than a cause of it.

Since I guess all the biologists will read this thread. Anyone have any recommendations for books to do with evolution? Especially from an evolutionary psychology kinda viewpoint, that's the kinda stuff that really interests me as a layman.

I remember "Wonderful LIfe" by Stephen Jay Gould as being a very engaging and readable.

[Jherad]

Heh, after a discussion (of sorts) about morality in politics, I ended up ordering this from Amazon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0674356616

I'm not feeling flush though, so got it on the cheaper 'will arrive some time this year' delivery option. I'll let you know if it's a good read.

I did find these when I was hunting for more stuff - both interesting to me at least:

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~nesse/Articles/EmoDisordEvolPerspect-BrJMedPsychol-1998.pdf

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~nesse/Articles/Nesse-Ellsworth-EvolEmotions-AmPsychol-2009.pdf

[NowhereMan]

If you're looking at evolution and morality Richard Joyce's the Evolution of morality is a decent read. I could recommend some books on emotion but I'm afraid that I'm not really familiar with the evolutionary approach to emotions. I'm much more of a cognitive emotions person. Also if you're going to be looking at emotions and morality Jesse Prinz has a fairly new book out on that as well as a selection of papers on his site