Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id KAA24960 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Tue, 27 Jun 2000 10:39:06 +0100 To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2000 02:36:21 -0700 From: "Scott Chase" <hemidactylus@my-Deja.com> Message-ID: <IAKEIILKCOLGKBAA@my-deja.com> X-Sent-Mail: off X-Mailer: MailCity Service Subject: RE: Darwinism/Lamarck -- reply to question 2 X-Sender-Ip: 209.240.216.88 Organization: My Deja Email (http://www.my-deja.com:80) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Language: en Content-Length: 2947 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
--On Tue, 27 Jun 2000 01:10:35 Chris Lofting wrote: > (serious snippage for brevity sake) > >The recent studies of the human immune system, a biochemically dynamic >system, lean towards this area of study, the space in-between alien objects >and the defence network (T-lymphocyte developments etc). The immune system >is closer to a relational process than a structural process and so more >easily interpreted along 'Lamarckian' grounds). > > Is this a passing reference to Ted Steele and his colleagues work on possible retroviral shuttling of cDNA (or mRNA?) corresponding to re-arranged and hypermutated antibodies in somatically selected lymphocytes to the germ-line through Weismann's barrier? If this notion bears fruit, I still think it is confined to the immune system (mainly because of the peculiarity of immunogenetics in that the somatic configuration of immunoglobulin genes differs from the germ-line configuration due to re-arrangement events and hypermutation which generate antibody diversity and improved affinity for antigens). I'd also be quite tempted to stress the Darwinian aspects of the somatic selection itself (BTW wasn't it Wilhelm Roux who had some sort of intraselection notion toward the turn of the last century?). Dawkins happens to cover Steele's earlier ideas in _The Extended Phenotype_, but I have no idea whether Dawkins has looked at any of the more recent work. I've put this interesting topic on the backburner, but hopefully I can return to it sometime and tease out some threads which intrigued me before. Aside from Steele's ideas in themselves there are molecular evolutionary topics which stem from retrotransposons and processed pseudogenes. It's possible that the retrovectors are about as close to a Darwinian gemmule as anyone will ever see (that is of course given that Steele's theses are fruitful).
Of course maybe the gene feedback angle is at least neo-Lamarckian in itself taking us back also to Piaget and his views on phenocopies for possible comparison/contrast which I'm WAY too rusty to attempt any time soon :-( (Joe?) Nonetheless, from a memetics (or a history of ideas perspective) there are some possibly interesting areas for pursuit. Along not too dissimilar lines, a recent read of Ernst Haeckel's _The Riddle of the Universe_ and _The History of Creation_ got me kinda stoked on the theory of perigenesis and the supposed units of plastidules Haeckel envisoned and drew comparisons and contrasts to Darwin's ideas of pangenesis/gemmules. This ties into the whole organic memory analogy. Just 'cuz ideas have belly-flopped doesn't mean they aren't interesting from an historical perspective. BTW, noticing your discussion of Jung, are you aware of Haeckel's influence on him? OK, I've rambled enough :-)
BTW, Is meitosis a spelling of mitosis which I'm not familiar with?
Scott
--== Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ ==-- Before you buy.
=============================================================== This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing) see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Jun 27 2000 - 10:39:49 BST