Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id GAA07295 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 8 Aug 2001 06:23:33 +0100 From: <joedees@bellsouth.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2001 00:24:35 -0500 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: MR Evidence Message-ID: <3B7086C3.22835.75A9BA@localhost> In-reply-to: <002101c11f77$62cc25c0$f188b2d1@teddace> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c) Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
On 7 Aug 2001, at 12:30, Dace wrote:
I believe Bill Spight has adequately addressed these wishful
interpretations.
>
> > > From: <joedees@bellsouth.net>
> > > > > Genes determine eye color. This is a well-established fact.
> > > > > What's *not* established is that they determine the structure
> > > > > and functions of the eye. In neo-Darwinian biology, genes play
> > > > > very much the same role as the ether in Newtonian astronomy.
> > > > > Rather than accept the existence of action-at-a-distance,
> > > > > astronomers posited an ether across which waves of gravity
> > > > > could propagate like waves on the ocean. Now the same thing
> > > > > has happened in biology. We have trouble accepting the
> > > > > possibility that influences are exerted over a distance (in
> > > > > this case across time instead of space). So we invent a
> > > > > germ-plasm which mechanically induces the formation of the
> > > > > body. While genes do indeed play an important role in the
> > > > > activities of the organism, the genetic program is as mythical
> > > > > as the lumineferous ether.
> > > > >
> > > > Actually, the mythical thing is the idea that there is a cold
> > > > morphic resonential wind blowing through the halls of history
> > > > that contains the shape of things to come. The argument ad
> > > > ignorantium (we haven't proven the exact linkage of genes with
> > > > ocular structure in every particular yet, so it must be due to
> > > > something else someone dreamed up) was listed as a logical
> > > > fallacy by the greeks 2500 years ago, and the passage of time
> > > > has not led to any successful re-evaluation of its status as a
> > > > logical error.
> > >
> > > It's not just that the "exact linkage of genes with ocular
> > > structure" hasn't yet been worked out but that no linkage
> > > whatsoever has been worked out. Nobody has the slightest idea how
> > > genes could produce eyes or any other organic structure all the
> > > way down to protein.
> > >
> > > That's not to say that the argument for resonance-based memory is
> > > based entirely on a critique of gene-based memory.
> > >
> > Actually, since there is no evidence that one can present that
> > unequivocally corroborates MR, its proponents have been reduced to
> > impotently attacking all other alternatives, especially those for
> > which reams of corroborative evidence exists.
>
> Let's begin with the rats.
>
> In 1920 William McDougall of Harvard began training rats to learn to
> escape from a water maze by choosing the correct exit. While the
> brightly lit exit would give them an electric shock, when they picked
> the dimly-lit exit, they got out undisturbed. McDougall found that
> the first generation of rats had to endure 165 shocks before getting
> the message. But by the 30th generation, only 20 transgressions were
> necessary to persuade the rats of the error in their way. (McDougall,
> 1938. British Journal of Psychology 28:321-345.)
>
> McDougall assumed the rats were passing on acquired characteristics.
> Wishing to disprove this "Lamarckian" (and Darwinian) interpretation
> of the data, F. A. E. Crew replicated the experiment in Edinburgh.
> Right from the get-go, Crew's rats needed only 25 errors to learn
> their lesson, as if picking up where the Harvard rats had left off.
> (Crew, 1936. Journal of Genetics 33:61-101.)
>
> In Melbourne, W. E. Agar found the same effect. His trials went on
> for over twenty years, and even when he tested control subjects that
> weren't descended from trained rats, they still showed improvement
> over the performance of previous generations. So it couldn't have
> been coming from their parents. (Agar, 1954. Journal of Experimental
> Biology 31:307-321.)
>
> Acquired traits have often been observed to pass
> throughout a species with no known means of direct transfer from
> individual to individual. For instance, in England in the 20s a small
> bird known as the blue tit learned to open milk bottles at doorsteps.
> When one bird learned the trick, others in the area learned it by
> simple imitation. But the blue tit doesn't fly more than a few miles,
> and this habit spread to several widely disparate areas in England by
> 1935 and continued popping up in faraway places throughout the
> forties, including Scandinavia and Holland. The habit appeared
> independently at least 89 times in the British Isles, and the spread
> of the habit accelerated as time went on. (Fisher and Hinde, 1949.
> British Birds 42:347-357.) Milk bottles practically disappeared in
> Holland during the war, and by the time they returned all the birds
> that had been opening them before the war could not have survived to
> see their return. Yet the habit rapidly returned when the bottles
> were re-introduced in 1947. According to Sheldrake's model, the more
> a new trait is practiced by the members of a given species, the more
> likely other individuals will pick it up through resonance.
>
> Arden Mahlberg, a psychologist, carried out a test of the ability to
> learn Morse Code. He had one group of subjects learn actual Morse
> Code, while another had to learn a newly-invented code that closely
> resembled it. He found that subjects were able to learn the actual
> code far more rapidly than the alternative, and he interpreted this as
> evidence that the subjects were resonating with the millions of people
> who had already learned Morse code. Each time he replicated the
> experiment, he found that the difference in learning time between
> Morse code and the new one progressively decreased. This might mean
> that the initial results were false. But the fact that the decrease
> was progressive suggests that the morphic resonance of the new code
> was becoming progressively stronger as more and more students learned
> it. (Mahlberg, 1987. Journal of Analytical Psychology 32:23-34.)
>
> Countless people have learned to type on the QWERTY keyboard. If
> morphic resonance is real, we should expect people to learn this
> layout more readily than random layouts. This is indeed the case.
> Even the alphabetical layout, which should be easier to learn, is
> often harder to learn, though in a few experiments it was equally easy
> to learn as the QWERTY layout. (Norman and Fisher, 1982. Human Factors
> 24:509-519.) (Hirsch, 1970. Journal of Applied Psychology
> 54:484-490.)
>
> This is just a small sampling. There's a lot more, including an
> experiment Sheldrake conducted recently demonstrating that crossword
> puzzles are easier to solve when lots of other people have already
> solved them. Many more experiments on the drawing board could easily
> be carried out with a little funding.
>
> Ted Dace
>
>
>
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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
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