The Mutationism Myth, 1. The Monk's Lost Code and The Great Confusion
Posted Sat, 03/27/2010 - 20:30 by arlin
The Curious Disconnect
The Curious Disconnect is the blog of evolutionary biologist Arlin Stoltzfus, available at www.molevol.org/cdblog. An updated version of the post below will be maintained at www.molevol.org/cdblog/mutationism_myth1 (Arlin Stoltzfus, ©2010). The views expressed here are my own and do not reflect the views of my employer nor of any other entity.
The "Mutationism" Myth, 1. The Monk's Lost Code and the Great Confusion
Our journey to explore The Curious Disconnect-- the gap between how we think about evolution and how we might think if we were freed from historical baggage-- begins with the Mutationism Myth. In this, the first of four parts, we are not going to confront any tough scientific or conceptual issues. Instead, we are just going to review an odd story about our intellectual history.
The Mutationism Story
While "myth" has the connotation of falsehood, the story that a myth tells isn't necessarily a false one. The mutationism myth, at least, is anchored in historical events.1
The mutationism myth tells the story of how, just over a century ago, the scientific community responded to the discovery of Mendelian genetics by discarding Darwinism, and how Darwinism subsequently was restored. The villains of the story are the influential early geneticists or "Mendelians" who saw genetics as a refutation of Darwinism; the heroes are first, the founders of population genetics, theoreticians who sorted everything out in favor of Darwinism by about 1930, and second, the architects of the Modern Synthesis, activists who popularized and institutionalized what we're calling "Darwinism 2.0".
This story has been re-told in secondary sources for nearly 50 years, though I sense that the frequency is decreasing as this episode passes into ancient history. To find examples, try looking up "mutationism" (sometimes "Mendelism" or even "saltationism") in the index of a book about evolution.
I encourage you to consult whatever sources you have and to share the stories that you find. Note that you won't always be successful. A quick survey of several dozen contemporary books on my shelf reveals that most don't address this episode specifically (a notable absence, in some cases 2); some tell the mutationism myth with varying degrees of panache; and a fewprovide a historical account rather than a myth. The few historical accounts that I found were in Gould's 2002 The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, Strickberger's 1990 textbook Evolution, and the Wikipedia entry on "Mutationism" (much of which I wrote).
Sample stories
Lets look at a few examples of the mutationism story. Readers who want to check out a freely available online source from the scholarly literature may refer to Ayala and Fitch, 1997 (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9223250?dopt=Citation). One example that really caught my eye is not from scientific literature, but from the 2005 obituary for Ernst Mayr in The Economist:
It was not that biologists had given up on evolution by the 1940s-quite the contrary. But they had got very confused about its mechanism. . . . The geneticists of the early 20th century did not help. They rediscovered the laws of inheritance first developed 40 years earlier by Gregor Mendel, an unsung Moravian monk. They also discovered the idea of genetic mutation. But instead of linking these things to natural selection, they came up with the idea of "saltation"-in other words, sudden mutational shifts from one well-adapted species to another. Nor, the geneticists complained, had there been enough time for natural selection to do its work, given what they had discovered about the rate at which mutations occur, and the fact that most mutations are deleterious. It was all a bit of a mess. . .Mr Mayr's advantage over the laboratory-bound biologists who had hijacked and diluted Darwin's legacy was that, like Darwin, he was a naturalist-and a good one. (anonymous, 2005)
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NOTA CAUSTICANTE DESTE BLOGGER:
A empáfia da Nomenklatura científica sobre o fato, Fato, FATO da evolução é extremamente ridícula: desde 1859 Darwin 1.0 não fecha as contas no contexto de justificação teórica. A cada upgrade epistêmico fica uma brecha fundamental sobre como explicar a transmutação de um Australopithecus afarensis em Antropólogo amazonense: Darwin 2.0 já foi pro limbo heurístico desde 1980 (obrigado Stephen Jay Gould pela sua coragem e honestidade -- artigos em falta em muitos membros da comunidade científica contemporânea): uma teoria científica morta entre os cientistas, mas que posa até hoje (2010) como ortodoxia científica nos livros didáticos de biologia do ensino médio aprovados despudoradamente pelo MEC/SEMTEC/PNLEM.
Por essas e outras montanhas de evidências contrariando as posições teóricas fundamentais da Síntese Evolutiva Moderna, é que o upgrade Darwin 3.0 será lançado, e não pode ser selecionista. Mas, durma-se com um barulho desses, os agentes da KGB da Nomenklatura científica somente irão liberar a SÍNTESE EVOLUTIVA AMPLIADA em 2020. Pra que isso? Gente, é só dizer: na questão macroevolutiva o referencial teórico darwiniano simplesmente quebrou. NOTA BENE: Quebrou! Kaput!!!
Enquanto isso, a ciência, que odeia o vácuo epistemológico, não sei como, vai continuar fazendo biologia evolucionária nos laboratórios e nas salas de aulas de ciência, sem um referencial teórico a guiar as pesquisas e o ensino da evolução. Como isso é possível? Quando a questão é Darwin, existem teorias científicas iguais que são mais iguais do que as outras no tratamento dispensado carinhosamente pela Nomenklatura científica. Isso não é ciência, é a defesa de uma ideologia!!!
Fui, nem sei por que, pensando: por que a Nomenklatura científica e a Grande Mídia são covardes de lidar publicamente sobre esta questão de grande importância educacional? Ora, não é esta a teoria científica tão corroborada como a lei da gravidade? Assim como a Terra gira em torno do Sol?
Senhores, não dá mais para se tapar o Sol das evidências negativas contra as especulações transformistas de Darwin com uma peneira de teorias ad hoc (verdadeiras notas promissórias teóricas nunca resgatadas no contexto de justificação teórica).
P.S.: Arlin Stoltzfus é evolucionista e nada simpático às teses do Design Inteligente.
