Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id KAA04375 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Tue, 14 Aug 2001 10:39:19 +0100 Message-ID: <3B78F148.27762EC6@bioinf.man.ac.uk> Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2001 10:37:12 +0100 From: Chris Taylor <Christopher.Taylor@man.ac.uk> Organization: University of Manchester X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.77 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U) X-Accept-Language: en To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: Morphic fields References: <F223voXM7e0C9guA8M600004529@hotmail.com> <001b01c12485$e718d860$3b89b2d1@teddace> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Yeah but...
Although Goodwin goes on about phenotypic inheritance and info from
outside the genome (mitochondria, whatever thet funny little thing that
phenotypically inherited its pellicle was), these are direct and
measurable effects, passing info *directly* from one generation to the
next, contiguously. There is no need for an ancient referent there.
As for the 'biologists throw their hands up' snippet from the mag, I
think they're just acknowledging that the interactions between genes can
be wildly nonlinear (1) and that (2) we still don't know about all the
extended effects of all our genes. Using field theories in developmental
biology is fine, but those fields are (almost exclusively) made up of
concentration gradients of gene products, set up by diffusion or
frequently by cytoskeletal transport, and no (uh-oh) developmental
biologist would say otherwise.
Modellers do use fields as a shortcut (nothing wrong with that as any
mean-field-approximating physicist will attest) but these approximations
have no independent reality.
The whole thing (MF) still seems too elaborate really, I mean, doesn't
it imply that there are time bridges that are presumably exploitable?
Should we not be able to find out what dinosaurs really looked like if
we could tap into this etherial thing (I'm not ridiculing, just trying
to explore the scope of the implications - would be cool actually,
finally kill off 'walking with dinosaurs'[ack]).
Also, while you're here, I didn't get a good answer to the MF version of
descent with modification...
Cheers Ted, Chris.
(again, good solo scrap!)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chris Taylor (chris@bioinf.man.ac.uk)
http://bioinf.man.ac.uk/ »people»chris
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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