Waddington's Unfinished Critique of Neo-Darwinian Genetics

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Shaun Johnston:
In modern times we've made two revolutionary discoveries. One is, how changes in physical matter can be accounted for in terms of physical laws that can predict precisely what will happen next. Having given rise to science (how this can be studied) and industry (how it can be applied) this revolution is well under way.

The second revolution is, how emergence of species of living creatures can be accounted for in terms of them evolving from one another. This revolution, despite its promise of how much it could tell us about ourselves, remains stillborn through the mistaken application to it of principles coming out of the first revolution--reductive physicalism.

For this second revolution to advance it should be taken from under the wing of science and studied on its own terms. Tip: one recent product of evolution is creatures with minds. Minds are better studied through methods of the humanities than through those of science. Tell me, does this interest you?

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Waddington’s Unfinished Critique
of Neo-Darwinian Genetics: Then and Now
Adam S. Wilkins
Department of Zoology
University of Cambridge
Cambridge, UK
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http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/biot.2008.3.3.224

Abstract: C.H.Waddington is today remembered chiefly as a Drosophila developmental geneticist who developed the concepts of canalization and the epigenetic landscape. In his lifetime, however, he was widely perceived primarily as a critic of Neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory. His criticisms of Neo- Darwinian evolutionary theory were focused on what he saw as unrealistic, atomistic models of both gene selection and trait evolution. In particular, he felt that the Neo-Darwinians badly neglected the phenomenon of extensive gene interactions and that the randomness of mutational effects, posited in the theory, was a false postulate. This last criticism dealt with the phenomenon known today as developmental constraints. Although population genetics itself has evolved considerably from its form at mid-20th century, much of Waddington's critique, it is argued here, retains cogency. Yet, he did not attempt to develop a full-fledged alternative theory himself. Perhaps most surprisingly, in retrospect, is that he did not try to marry his work on gene interactions in development with his evolutionary interests, to create a theory of genetic networks and their evolution. Whether evolutionary genetics today will incorporate network thinking as a central element or whether there will be a general retreat to the more atomistic approach offered by genomics remains an open question.