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[…]
Mutations were known, in Darwin´s time, as Sports, or “large variations” or “saltations” (Jumps), and Darwin believed that they were not important in evolution. The Origin has 4 quotations of the Latin aphorism “natura non facit saltum”, stressing its validity. It was Huxley the one who believed in saltations. In November 23, 1859, he wrote to Darwin: “You have loaded yourself with an unnecessary difficulty in adopting Natura non facit saltum so unreservedly.”, and wrote in the Westminster Review: “We believe that Nature does make jumps.” In a letter to William Bateson (Feb. 20, 1894) he says: “I see you are inclined to advocate the possibility of considerable saltus on the part of Dame Nature in her variations. I always took the same view, much to Mr. Darwin´s disgust, and we used often to debate it.”
In the Recapitulation of the Origin we can see Darwin’s views on evolution: “(it) has been effected chiefly through the natural selection of numerous, successive, slight, favorable variations; aide in an important manner by the inherited effects of the use and disuse of parts, and in an unimportant manner, that is in relation to adaptive structures..by variations which seem to us to arise spontaneously.”
When we go back to what Darwin actually wrote, rather than what he is said to have written, we can see the monstrous misrepresentation that was done in order to adapt Darwin´s original theory to the present day “Darwinism”. Julian Huxley wrote: “Darwin anticipated modern evolutionary genetics...of course, his views have often had to be modified in detail...since in his day the mechanisms of genetics and mutation were completely unknown...(His)theory has been bitterly attacked, and has had to be modified in various particulars, (but) with this, Darwinism took on a new lease of life.”
[…]
But it can be easily shown that the Inheritance of Habits was the first theory of Darwin, which was born even before his second theory, the Natural Selection. In his Notebooks, started 9 months after returning home from his 5 year trip, at the age of 28, he wrote:
Notebook I: “In course of generation even mind and instinct becomes influenced...to adapt the race to changing world... F. Cuvier says: “But we could only produce domestic individuals and not races, without the occurrence of one of the most general laws of life –the transmission of a fortuitous modification into a durable form, of a fugitive want into a fundamental propensity, of an accidental habit into an instinct.”...Similar habits produce similar structure...Species may be good ones and differ scarcely in any external character... My theory very distinct from Lamarck’s.... Lamarck’s willing doctrine absurd...My theory would lead to study of instincts, heredity and mind heredity..Any change suddenly acquired is with difficulty permanently transmitted ...production of varieties is not per saltum...
Notebook II: “Changes in species must be very slow owing to physical changes.. Instinct goes before structure...All structures either direct effect of habit, or hereditary & combined effect of habit, perhaps in process of change...Once..grant that one instinct to be acquired, (if this be granted!!) and whole fabric totters and falls. Gould seems to doubt how far structure & habits go together. This must be profoundly considered. Structure may be obliterating, whilst habits are changing, or structure may be obtaining, whilst habits slightly preceded them.”
“ Gould I see quite recognizes habits in making out classification of birds...habits heredetary whilst species have changed..The ground parrot is an instance of habit going before structure.. In each division Gould thinks he can trace structure for (eating) insects & structure for vegetation... Lamarck.. so bold &.. such profound judgment that he foreseeing consequence was endowed with what may be called the prophetic spirit in science. The highest endowment of lofty genius...”
“It is of the utmost importance to show that habits sometimes go before structure..thus Tyrannus sulphureus if compelled solely to fish, structure would alter...hereditary journey (of) wild ducks lose as well as gain instincts. Wild and tame rabbit good instance. Instincts of many dogs clearly applicable to formation of instincts in wild animals. Changes in structure being necessarily excessively slow.. we see structure gained by habit...Hereditary tameness as well as wildness.. In dogs love of man gained & hereditary, problem solved.. habits become important because structure has tendency to follow it.”
“Reflect much over my view of particular instinct being memory transmitted without consciousness...An action becomes habitual is probably first stage, & an habitual action implies want of consciousness & will & therefore may be called instinctive. –But why do some actions become hereditary & instinctive & no others? –We even see they must be done often to be habitual or of great importance to cause memory, -structure is only gained slowly. Therefore it can only be those actions which many successive generations are impelled to do in same way. My view of instinct explains its loss? If it explains its acquirement.. a bird can swim without being web footed... According to my views, habits give structure, habits precede structure, habitual instincts precede structure... Habit-instinct gained during life...Animals could only exist by habit...seeing passions acquired and hereditary...according to my view because actions are constant they are instincts...Species may have had their infancies, when habits much more firmly impressed..”
Notebook. III: “Mine is a bold theory, which attempts to explain, or asserts to be explicable, every instinct in animals...the perfection consists in being able to reproduce...nature leaves vestiges of what she does –does not move per saltum- yet does nothing in vain... every organ is modified by use...every abortive organ must have been once changed ..that function which experience shows us it was for..Seeing what Von Bush, Humboldt, St. Hilaire & Lamarck have written I pretend to no originality of idea (Though I arrived at them quite independently and have used them since). Proof & reducing facts to law only merit if merit there be...One can perceive that natural varieties or species, all the structure of which is adaptation to habits (& habit second nature) may be more in constitutional,- more conformable to the structure which has been adapted to former changes than a mere monstrosity propagated by art”
Just few days after he wrote down that he couldn’t pretend the “originality of idea” he read Malthus on population (Oct 3, 1838) and was only after reading his book that he exclaimed (Autobiography): “I had at last a theory by which to work!” I think what he meant was that he had at last a theory of his own, because before that time he had an idea that he, for many times, kept mentioning as “My theory.”
We can safely say that Darwin was some sort of a Lamarkist from mid-March, 1837 (when he got John Gould´s report on his “wrens”) until October 3, 1838. From that time on he had his own theory, and he no longer could be called a Lamarckist, because Lamarck did not know anything about natural selection. Darwin was now a Darwinist.
In The Voyage of the Beagle (1839) Darwin wrote: “Nature by making habit omnipotent, and its effects hereditary...” And he added: “In regard to the wildness of birds towards man, there is no way of accounting for it, except as an inherited habit...that it is not acquired by individual birds in a short time, even when much persecuted; but that in the course of successive generations it becomes hereditary. ”
In his Metaphysical Enquiries (1838-39) he says: “Dogs take pleasure when doing what they consider their duty..Shepherd dog has pleasure in following its instinct & pain if held..also when one is prevented performing hereditary habits one feels pain... Colt cantering in S. America capital instance of hereditary habit...Lamarck says: habits becoming heredetary form the instinct of animals. Almost identical with my theory... Sir J. Sebright has given the phrase “heredetary habits” very clearly. All I must do is to generalize it, & see whether applicable to all cases. -& analogize it with ordinary habits that is my new part of the view. let the proof of heredetariness in habits be considered as grand step if it can be generalized.. An habitual action must some way affect the brain in a manner which can be transmitted...instinct is heredetary knowledge of things which might be possibly acquired by habit...Now if memory of a tune & words can thus lie dormant, during a whole life time, quite unconsciously of it, surely memory from one generation to another, also without consciousness, as instincts are, is not so very wonderful.
“In his “Observations upon the Instinct of Animals”, 1836, John Sebright says: “No one can suppose that nature has given to these several varieties of the same species of dogs such very different instinctive propensities, and that each of these breeds should possess those that are best fitted for the uses to which they are respectively applied. It seems more probable that these breeds having been long treated as they now are, and applied to the same uses, should have acquired habits by experience and instruction, which in course of time have become hereditary.”.. I am led to conclude, that by far the greater part of the propensities that are generally supposed to be instinctive, are not implanted in animals by nature, but that they are the result of long experience, acquired and accumulated through many generations, so as in the course of time to assume the character of instinct... Also Lamarck, in his “Of the Origin of the Propensity Towards Repeating the Same Actions.”, says: “For the satisfaction of these needs the animals acquire various kinds of habits, which become transformed in them into so many propensities; these propensities they cannot resist nor change of their own accord. Hence the origin of their habitual actions and special inclinations, which receive the name of instinct.”... I think that this propensity of animals to the preservation of habits, and to the repetition of the resulting actions when once it has been acquired, is propagated to succeeding individuals by reproduction so as to preserve the new type of organisation and arrangement of the parts; thus the same propensity exists in new individuals, before they have ever begun to exert it. Hence it is that the same habits and instinct are handed on from generation to generation in the various species or races of animals, whitout any notable variation so long as no alteration occurs in their environment... Instincts certainly appear a sort of acquired memory...According to my theory, all instincts demand some explanation... It is probable that becomes instinctive which is repeated under many generations... And only that which is beneficial to race will have reoccurred.”
In his preliminary sketch of 1842, he says: “Introduce here contrast with Lamarck..in animals disposition, courage, sagacity, ill temper,&,..are inherited. Habits, as pointing and setting, taste for hunting and manner of doing so..vary and are inherited.-..their analogy with true instincts thus shown..sheep going back to place where born. It must be admitted that habits...often become inherited .. If this be admitted it will be found possibly that many of the strangest instincts may thus be acquired... An inherited habit or trick fulfils closely what we mean by instinct...Case of sheep in Spain..”
“Habit might lead old birds to vary taste and form, leaving their instinct of feeding their young with same food.. Although we can never hope to see the course revealed by which different instincts have been acquired..yet once grant the principle of habits, whether congenital or acquired by experience, being inherited and I can see no limit to the amount of habits-instincts thus acquired.”
In his Essay of 1844 he says: “Look at the willow-wrens, some of which skilful ornithologists can hardly distinguish from each other except by their nests...We see shades of expression, peculiar manners...being inherited...From these dispositions being inherited, of which the testimony is unanimous, breeds arise. Compare a wild rabbit with the extreme tameness of domestic breed.. Manners and even tricks..are inherited. The inheritance of shades of character is familiar to anyone. Tastes and pleasures undoubtedly are transmitted to their progeny. The “transandantes” sheep in Spain, which for some centuries have been yearly taken a journey of several hundred miles from one province to another, know when the time comes, and show the great restlessness (like migratory birds in confinement), and are prevented with difficulty from starting themselves, which they sometimes do, and find their own way. A case of a sheep which.. would return across a mountainous country to her own birth-place, although at other times of the year not of a rambling disposition. Her lambs inherited the same disposition, and would go to produce their young on the farm whence their parents came, and so troublesome was this habit that the whole family was destroyed.”
“These facts must lead to the conviction, justly wonderful as it is, that almost infinitely numerous shades of disposition, of tastes, of peculiar movements, and even of individual actions, can be modified or acquired by one individual and transmitted to its offspring. One is forced to admit that mental phenomena can be inherited. In the same manner as peculiarities of corporeal structure slowly acquired or lost during mature life..are transmitted, so it appears to be with the mind...temper and tameness may be modified in a breed by the treatment which the individuals receive...we have seen that.. young sheep inherited the migratory tendency to their particular birth-place. Ordinarily the acquired instincts..seem to require a certain degree of education (pointers and retrievers) to be perfectly developed...Lord Brougham insist strongly on ignorance of the end proposed being eminently characteristic of true instincts; and this appears to me to apply to many acquired hereditary habits...A horse that ambles instinctively, manifestly is ignorant that he performs that peculiar pace for the ease of man; and if man had never existed, he would never have ambled...with respect to the wildness of animals, that is fear directed particularly against man, which appears to be as true an instinct as the dread of a young mouse of a cat, we have excellent evidence that it is slowly acquired and becomes hereditary..In North and South America many birds slowly travel northward and southward, urged on by the food they find, as the seasons change; let them continue to do this, till, as in the case of the sheep in Spain, it has become an urgent instinctive desire, and they will gradually accelerate their journey. They would cross narrow rivers, and if these were converted by subsidence into narrow estuaries, and gradually during centuries to arms of the sea, still we may suppose their restless desire of traveling onwards would impel them to cross such an arm, even if it had become of great width beyond their span of vision...Elk and reindeer in N. America annually cross, as if they could marvelously smell or see at the distance of a hundred miles, a wide tract of absolute desert, to arrive at certain islands where there is a scanty supply of food...(it is) probable that this desert tract formerly supported some vegetation, and thus these quadrupeds might have been annually lead on, till they reached the more fertile spots, and acquired, like the sheep of Spain, their migratory powers.”
“Once grant that dispositions, tastes, actions or habits can be slightly modified... and that such modifications can be rendered inheritable, and it will be difficult to put any limit to the complexity and wonder of the tastes and habits which may possibly be thus acquired.”
All this was written before 1844. The Origin, with its 69 references to the importance of the inherited “use and disuse, that is, to the effects of habit”, was still 15 years distant in the future.
It looks like the insistence of Darwin on the importance of the inherited habits diminished as he got ready to publish the Origin. His close friend and mentor, Sir Charles Lyell, “had gained much fame by opposing Lamarck’s views.” (Darwin’s own words). Lyell`s backup had been essential for the position of Darwin as the champion of the doctrine. Being openly a lamarckist would have been like a betrayal to him. He also, after the Glen Roy affair, was getting very cautious and felt necessary “of being very sparing in introducing theory” and “only refer to the main agency of change: the selection.”
In fact many of his most strong arguments and clear cut cases in favor of the inheritance of habits were deleted from the Origin. In 1883 George Romanes published “parts of Mr. Darwin chapter on Instinct written for the Origin of Species, but afterwards suppressed for the shake of condensation.” In there it says: “It may be worth while to give a few, out of many cases, of occasional and curious habits, which cannot be considered as regular instincts, but which might, according to our views, give rise to such...In some cases our domestic animals have acquired an annual recurring impulse to travel, extremely like, if not identical with, a true migratory instinct.”
“I know of no reason to doubt the minute account given by Hogg of a family of sheep which had a hereditary propensity to return at the breeding season to a place ten miles off, whence the first of the lot had been brought; and after their lambs were old enough, they returned themselves to the place where they usually lived; so troublesome was this inherited propensity associated with the period of parturition, that the owner was compelled to sell the lot.”
“Still more interesting is the account given of certain sheep in Spain, which from ancient times have annually migrating during May from one part of the country to another distant four hundred miles: all the authors agree that “as soon as April comes the sheep express a strong desire to return to their summer habitations. The shepherds must then exert all their vigilance to prevent them escaping, for it is a known truth that they would go to the very place where they had been born.” Many cases have occurred of three or four sheep having started and performed the journey by themselves, though generally these wanderers are destroyed by the wolves. I Think there can hardly be a doubt that this “natural instinct”, as one author calls it, has been acquired during domestication. The whole case seems to me strictly parallel to the migration of wild animals.”
The Origin, being “An abstract of an abstract” (a hasty compilation of previous works due to the unexpected intrusion of Alfred Russell Wallace) was not the proper platform to propose the inheritance of habits. Darwin was a very systematic expositor and he had planned to devote a whole volume to this matter. After the “Origen” he published “The Variation of animals and plants under domestication”, which was supposed to be followed by “Variations under Nature”, a book that was never done. In the Origin he wrote: “As we sometimes see individuals following habits different from those proper to their species...we might expect that such individuals would occasionally give rise to new species, having anomalous habits, and with their structure either slightly or considerably modified from that of their type. And such instances occur in nature....I shall, unfortunately, be compelled to treat this subject far too briefly, as it can be treated properly only giving long catalogues of facts... I will (only) give two or three instances of...changed habits in the individuals of the same species..It would be easy for natural selection to adapt the structure of the organism to its changed habits... I can see no difficulty in natural selection making an occasional habit permanent, if of advantage to the species...occasional and strange habits in wild animals, if advantageous to the species, might have given rise, through natural selection, to new instincts. But I am well aware that these general statements, without the facts in detail, will produce but a feeble effect on the readers mind. I can only repeat my assurance, that I do not speak without good evidence.”
[…] F. Hitching says: “The Genetical Theory of Evolution is under assault on many fronts.” Sir Ernst Chain: “To postulate that the evolution is entirely a consequence of chance mutations seems to me an hypothesis irreconcilable with the facts.” And what are those facts? Mutations can certainly explain the evolution of virus and bacteria, but when it comes to higher forms, the species produced are not true species, because they are not competitive in a state of nature. Those races, if taken back to the wild, they revert to its ancestral forms.
Darwin himself could have told them that: “One of the remarkable features in our domesticated races is that we see in them adaptation, not indeed to the animal´s own good, but to man´s use or fancy... Can we wonder, then, that Nature´s productions should be far “truer” in character than man´s productions; that they should be infinitely better adapted to the most complex forms of life, and should plainly bear the mark of a higher workmanship?...strongly marked domestic varieties could not possibly live in a wild state..(they,) when run wild, gradually but invariably revert in character to their aboriginal stocks.”
Wallace was even more emphatic on this: “Our short-legged sheep and poodle dogs could never have come into existence in a state of nature, because the very first step towards such inferior forms would have led to the rapid extinction of the race; still less could they now exist in competition with their wild allies...Domestic varieties, when turned wild, must return to something near the type of the original wild stock, or become altogether extinct. We see, then, that no inferences as to varieties in a state of nature can be deduced from the observations of those occurring among domestic animals.”
“The two are so much opposed to each other in every circumstance of their existence, that what applies to the one is almost sure not to apply to the other. Domestic animals are abnormal, irregular, artificial; they are subject to varieties which never occur and never can occur in a state of nature: their very existence depends altogether on human care; so far are many of them removed from that just proportion of faculties, that true balance of organization, by means of which alone an animal left to its own resources can preserve its existence and continue its race.”
[…]
The failure of the mutationist “recipe” to create new races has been blamed on Darwin. Pierre Grassé says: “No matter how numerous they might be, mutations do not produce any kind of evolution.” Ernst Mayr: “Darwin failed to solve the problem indicated by the title of his work.” George Simpson: “The book called The Origin of Species is not really on that subject.” Peter Saunders: “The thing about neo-Darwinism is that it provides a very simple explanation which is probably wrong and certainly insufficient. Almost the most surprising thing is that anyone takes it seriously at all.” Murray Eden, a mathematician, wrote a paper entitled: “The Inadequacy of Neo-Darwinian Evolution as a Scientific Theory.” Sir Karl Popper: “Darwinism is not a scientific theory.” J. P. Lehman: “Darwinism in its ancient form has broken down.”, T. H. Frazzeta: “With each passing year the once rather simplistic views on evolution continue to crumble.” G.R Taylor: “The dogma which has dominated most biological thinking for more than a century is collapsing.” F. Hitching: “Darwinism is under assault on many fronts.. It is an academic row of far-reaching (and entertaining) proportions- one of these times in science when suddenly a long-held idea is overthrown by the weight of contrary evidence and a new one takes its place. It happened when Darwinism itself initially triumphed. Darwin’s theory of how evolution had happened may now be equally vulnerable, and a concept even more profound waiting to come on stage.”
On the other hand, the disorganized opposition (without knowing that Darwin is on his side) is gaining momentum. In the National Geographic Magazine of April, 2005, Raoul Mulder found that, in a Madagascar bird, the males come in two different colors. He found no explanation to that. Darwin could have given him good advice: he is looking, actually, at two different species. The fact that the two races live in close proximity does not matter at all. Quammen says that in order to obtain new species isolation is needed:“with new species originating through the gradual accumulation of mutations in isolated populations”
But Darwin rejects isolation as an important factor: “I can by no means agree with (this)...that migration and isolation are necessary elements for the formation of new species...on the whole I am inclined to believe that largeness of the area is still more important, especially for the production of species which shall prove capable of enduring for a long period, and of spreading widely.. The fact of the productions of the smaller continent of Australia now yielding before of the larger Europe-Asiatic area... On a small island the race for life will have been less severe, and there will have been less modification and less extermination...The living fossils; that have endured to the present day, from having inhabited a confined area, and from having been exposed to less varied, and therefore less severe, competition.”
In Darwin´s times still the coelacanths were unknown, but this is another living fossil: 350 million years constant in its isolated depths, with the usual genetic variability, but with no competition at all. Competition puts the several habits on trial. Isolation fix them.
In that same time the common origin of South America and Africa (the two belonging to a single supercontinent, Pangaea, which was split starting from the south some 120 million years ago, before the age of mammals) was not known. But he was startled by the fact that the pampas, extended grasslands, were so scarce of hoofed mammals, which were so abundant in S. Africa. We know now that the pampas were secluded to mammals until very recently (3 million years ago) when North America (which kept contact with Asia for a long time) got in touch with it through a narrow isthmus, but still the pampas were kept isolated by high mountains and thick jungle.
Isolation was considered necessary by the mutationists to avoid –in a still not clearly explained manner- dilution of the abnormal characters. But isolation prevents competition, and the species –like the dodo- survive until another better suited competitor arrives.
Darwin describes the limited role of isolation in the creation of new species: in harsh environments (mountains, deserts) we usually can’t find transitional forms because species of the surrounding areas keep invading (when circumstances are most favourable) that territory and blend with species which try to become endemic there: “The reason why there is not perfect gradation of change in species as physical conditions changes are gradual, is this: if after isolation or separation by mountains chains the species have not been much altered they will cross...Why are species not formed, during ascent of mountain or approach of desert? Because the crossing of species less altered prevents the complete adaptation which would ensue.”
This quotation is from the 1st Notebook (1837). As the “blending” was mortal to the Mutation Theory (because if the accidental mutations are lost when facing normal characters they will not be available when needed) neo-Darwinists had to sustain that Darwin changed his mind in the Fifth Edition of the Origin (1869) and that only then he started to worry about the blending of characters.
Julian Huxley says: “The advance of genetics showed that large mutations were of far less biological importance than those of small extent, and that the evolutionary change..was brought about by the accumulation of numerous small, discontinuous mutations under the guidance of natural selection. Finally, R. Fisher in 1930 made it clear that the fact of heredity were particulate, and that most of the mutants are recessive, at once got rid of the major difficulties that beset Darwin, who accepted the current view of blending heredity- the view that characters and the entities that determine them were commingled into a single blend when crossed. This would imply that any new character would be progressively diluted by crossing in each generation, and would make its establishment in the stock difficult.”
“But a particulate genetic mechanism in which most mutants are recessive makes it possible for new mutants to be stored indefinitely in the constitution..ready to be utilized by selection when conditions are favourable...With this Darwinism took on a new lease of life... Darwin would have rejoiced to see how, even in the light of our enormously increased knowledge, it (and it alone) can account..for the varying and often puzzling facts of evolution.”
So the Huxleys’s theory first postulated the large mutations ( H. T. Huxley) and later the small mutations (Julian Huxley), “indefinitely stored in the constitution” in order to account for facts of evolution.
Your authors go even further in the same view, by pointing out that most of the genetically material has no known functions, so those badly needed recessive genes that could create (gathering together in a totally miraculously way), all of a sudden, a totally perfect adaptive organ, could be stored right there. His new idea is to postulate genes that “switch on and off” those hidden factors giving some use to that unused genes. But, who or what controls them?
I think the new-“Darwinism” leaves many things unexplained. At least from a scientific point of view. Because by giving all the control to the genes, which then will contain all the instructions needed to do everything, with no possible way of knowing how do they ever got that meaningful information, the whole theory sounds metaphysical.
[…]
Richard Dawkins has a most strange idea of the nature of instinct. He says that iinstincts are orders or commands that genes, the “immortal molecules”, send to the organisms that serve them just as vehicles, coverings or wrappings. Genes are the actual arrangement of certain molecules whose main characteristic are its ability to survive intact along the eons. Those molecules, born at the beginning of time, can predict the future and foresee every circumstance that will encounter the animals that serve them as covers, planning ahead every morphological change that his machines will need for surviving.
This a teleological point of view, very akin to the one held by the first Huxley of the line. H. T. believed in large variations, but guided not exactly by “chance”. Because to him chance simply didn´t exist:
“Mr. Darwin has been charged with attempting to reinstate the old pagan goddess, Chance. It is said that he supposes variations to come about “by chance”. But the man of science knows that here, as everywhere, perfect order is manifested. He knows that everything is a consequence of the ascertained laws of nature, and that with a sufficient knowledge we could account for, and indeed predict, every one of these “chance” events ”. The teleological equivalent of the scientific conception of order is Providence. It has been said that Mr. Darwin views abolish teleology. I accept that his doctrine is the most formidable opponent of all the commoner and coarser forms of Teleology. Nevertheless there is a wider teleology which is not touched by the doctrine. It is based on this fundamental proposition: that the whole world, living and not living, is the result of the mutual interaction of the forces possessed by the molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of the universe was composed. If this be true, it is no less certain that the existing world was potentially in that cosmic vapour, and that a sufficient intelligence could have predicted, say the state of the fauna of Britain in 1869. The teleological and the mechanical views of nature are not, necessarily, mutually exclusive. On the contrary, the more purely a mechanist the speculator is, the more firmly does he assume a primordial molecular arrangement of which all the phenomena of the universe are the consequences, and the more completely is he at the mercy of the teleologist. The acute champion of Teleology, Paley, saw no difficulty in admitting that the “production of things” may be the result of trains of mechanical disposition fixed beforehand by intelligent appointment. Having (with all this) got rid of the belief in chance and the disbelief in design...”
It seems like new-Darwinism is just another name, one more scientific-wise, of the old Intelligent Design theist doctrine.
On the other hand, the theory of Darwin can cover, without recurring to metaphysical entities, the origin of instincts. He accepts the point of view –as Lamarck did before him- that instinct is just an inherited habit. It passes from one generation to the next as an “inherited propensity” associated with certain periods of the life of the animal. But, in order to be useful, that “hereditary propensity” has to find a proper way of manifesting itself. In other words, the propensity given by the inherited habits has to become a personal habit itself.
The animal has to identify, amongst its personal surroundings, a target suitable to fulfill the requisites of its instinctive program (the propensity). Konrad Lorenz, without knowing of the work of Darwin on that subject, found that there are “open windows” (imprintings) in the instinctive programs, periods during the life on an animal in which they are searching for a precise object that, once identified as the primary goal of the search, is fixed mnemonically “as is”, without any change , for the whole lifetime. Lorenz himself, by the sole fact of being around when his ducklings hatched, got to be taken as his real father. Darwin wrote about a “curious account of Titmouse feeding young of redstart & actually driving away parent birds.”
This abnormal targeting to the “inherited propensity” can itself become hereditary, as man being around dog puppies that take him as his father and end up loving him. But this abnormal affection towards man can become hereditary because he rears those dogs.
In the other hand the European cuckoo is a parasitic bird that kills its nest-brothers and leaves its parents without its own progeny. If the parasitation is intense, the affected bird species will disappear.
How does this hideous instinct of the cuckoo was formed? Darwin found that the American cuckoo has no such habits, but that he is a bad builder of nests, sometimes laying the eggs on the bare ground, or in another bird´s nest. And says: “I could also give several instances of various birds which have been known occasionally to lay their eggs in other bird´s nests. Now lets us suppose that the ancient progenitor of our European cuckoo had the habits of the American cuckoo and that she occasionally laid an egg in another bird´s nest. If the old bird profited by this occasional habit through being enabled to migrate earlier or through any other cause; or if the young were made more vigorous by advantage being taken of the mistaken instinct of another species than when reared by their own mother.. then the old birds or the fostered young will gain an advantage. And analogy would lead us to believe, that the young thus reared would be apt to follow by inheritance the occasional and aberrant habit of their mother, and in their turn would be apt to lay their eggs in other birds nests, and thus be more successful in rearing their young.”
We have to start from the fact that animals have no intelligence and are “as ignorant as we know they must be.” Then, how does the inherited propensity gets usually successful in finding its natural target? Darwin says that “Nature does nothing in vain”. If a very simple mechanism is good statistically to keep the numbers, there is no need for a more complex one: “Perfection consists in being able to reproduce.” If circumstances are stable, if usually the first thing a duckling sees moving around are its parents, there is no need for a more elaborated system for checking the authenticity of the targets.
Once the inherited propensity gets traduced into a thing that is actually present in the personal environment of the animal, every time the instinctive programs comes forth the image of the adopted target appears in its mind. If hunger arises the propensity will lead the animal to the proper food, the one that he by himself (in case of lower species, in which the propensity tends to be more specific that in higher species) had learned to be the more adequate, or the one that it learnt from his parents (in mammals) as being the proper one.
The case of the cuckoo tell us another thing. The animal´s memory –and hence the perception, which is based on memories- is very limited, and the “hereditary propensity” has to be simplified to a stimulus easy to be recognized. Niko Tinbergen (Nobel prize, jointly with Lorenz) found that a hyper-stimulus works better that a normal stimulus. A gull will sit better on a bigger egg than on a normal one, and the foster parent of the cuckoo will feed him more often than to his own kids because it calls stronger and opens more its mouth.
If we accept the fact that the propensity works only statistically; which is almost as saying that the impression that it carries is very vague, then we can understand that there are several circumstances that help to find and fix, for the first time, the target of the instincts.
Timing is very important, because when the program arises for the first time is when the window opens. Proximity and availability of the natural object are also important, al least in order to get a normal fixation. The identification of the proper object could be reduced, for the sake of simplicity, to the search of certain very notorious marks or characteristics which are typical of the target. Finally, once those “imprintings” have been established, if the object or target can show those marks that triggers the programs in a most repetitive, intense and most visible way, that would be the best way for succeeding.
With those things in mind lets check the explanation your authors give of Darwin´s Sexual Selection, because they seem to have big problems there. They say: “Darwin did not speculate much on why a female choose an ornamented male.” (Darwin’s book on Sexual Selection is 360 pages long. Isn`t that enough for speculation?)“One (answer) is simple fashion. When females are choosing gorgeous males other females must follow suit or risk having sons that do not attract females. The other is..that the tail of a peacock is an exhausting and dangerous thing to grow. It can only be done well by the healthiest males. So bright plumage constitutes what evolutionary biologists call an “honest indicator of fitness”. Substandard peacocks can`t fake it. And peahens, by instinctively picking the best males, unknowingly pass on the best genes to their offspring.” But, in his first explanation, they had to suppose that the females are intelligent enough to have trends or “fashions” and his second explanation is based on a thing that they are leaving totally –scientifically- unexplained (the instinct).
For some reason they insist on Herbert Spencer´s “Survival of the Fittest” theory. But the only “fittness” that Nature cares about is the ability of the animal to repoduce its type. And regarding the “survival” of the choosen ones, Nature cares very little for them, once the main goal, copulation, has been achieved. But there is a “Struggle for Existence”, which “implies not only the life of the individual, but success in leaving progeny. So (besides the fight to preserve its own life) there is a struggle of the males for the females. Even in the animals which pair there seems to be an excess of males, and in the polygamous animals we might expect..the severest struggle.”
If there is an excess of males then it will be a struggle for mating. If the selective pressure is high then the male could not afford any cumbersome ornament during courtship, and in that period he only can change its behaviour, keeping its usual utilitarian form. But if the selective pressure is low (as in birds, which can travel to safe places when moulting or during the breeding season) then the animal spares no time or effort to show its inherited tricks to win the battle.
But the only thing that the male is doing is showing, with all due intensity, duration and visibility, the imprinted marks that will arouse the female instinctive sexual program. The dance, the songs, display of colours, etc., are shown to maximum intensity and duration, in order to achieve that only goal. If a male succeeds in mating, his tricks, dances, songs, colours, etc.. will then pass to the next male.
Regarding the passive female, she chooses her mates from those which best arouse its programs. And again, the choosing depends on a habit: taste. Darwin says: “Sexual selection depends on taste... we may admit that taste is fluctuating, but it is not quite arbitrary. It depends much on habit... Singing is, in a certain extent an art, and is much improved by practice.. the loud voices of many male birds may be the result of the inherited effects of the continued use of the vocal cords when excited by the strong passions of love...but only smalls birds properly sing...and the best songsters are plain coloured...the brilliant birds of the tropics are hardly ever songsters. Hence bright colour and the power of song seem to replace each other...Can be said that animals (have) no notion of beauty..in birds singing of cocks settle point...bird fanciers match their birds to see which will sing longest, & they in evident rivalry sing against each other, till has been known one has killed itself...the colouring of the feathers in the male appears to have been admired by the female...many will declare that it is utterly incredible that a females bird should be able to appreciate fine shading and exquisite patterns...but toucans may owe the enormous size of their beaks to sexual selection, for the sake of displaying the diversified and vivid stripes of colour, with which those organs are ornamented ... the male argus pheasant is encumbered with plumes so long as to impede their flight...it acquired his beauty gradually, through the preference of the females during many generations for the more highly ornamented males; their aesthetic capacity of the females being advanced through exercise or habit, just as our own taste is gradually improved..”
From those females with a taste for highly ornamented males new females will be born with those same high standards of taste, whilst from those males which best stimulated the mating programs of the females will be born new males which inherit its dances, colours, songs, etc... At the end the inherited habits controls the courtship.
Habits, not isolation, is the main producer of new species. If the animal can’t think, if it is like a robot, in order to mate he has to perform a ritual (or program) step by step, in a given and inalterable sequence. That ritual is formed by habits, and habits can adapt themselves to circumstances, changing rapidly, breaking the species. Darwin said:“My definition of species..is simply an instinctive impulse to keep separated. Which no doubt (it could) be overcome, but until it is these animals are distinct species. The dislike of two species to each other is evidently an instinct, & this prevents breeding.”
Every visible mark, every stripe, every different colour, every distinctive shape, every change in songs, in rituals, etc. gets memorized by the animal. Its inheritance (in the form of a propensity for seeking the same marks) starts separating the species. Darwin said this clearly in his Notebooks: “Species may have had their infancies when habits much more firmly impressed.” The reason for this is that new habits create new niches, and avoid competition.
New habits adapt the individuals to its environment in every step of the change, and kept them isolated. For instance, the jackal and the African wild dog (Lycaon pictus) are clearly two different species. But in the forced conditions of captivity they cross and give fertile offspring. That means that they were kept isolated by their habits, and not by a genetic difference that made them incompatible.
In 1937, in Holland, Niko Tinbergen asked two of his students, Adriaanse and Baerends, to examine, independently, the habits of what he thought to be a single species of wasp. A and B, following different individuals, reported two very different habits. Then another student, Wilcke, found minimal but consistent anatomical differences between the two kind of wasps, first separated by their habits. The two species could even live in the same nest, but, when mating, the type A always mate with another A, and the B`s with another B.
In your issue of May, 1982, Dr. Gary L. Nuechterlein studying western grebes noticed that they were two kinds of them: one with dark feathers around the eyes and another with white feathers
above the eyes. They engaged in a very complex courtship, different for each kind, and they only mated with their own colour type: He also found that: “courting males ignored playback calls from females of contrasting feathering. Why, they were behaving almost like separate species! Yet their vocalizing differed only in the presence or absence of a mid-call gap. Indeed, by producing artificial gaps in my recordings of light-phase females, I could attract dark-phase males.”
Nuechterlein ask himself : “Are light- and dark-phase birds possibly distinct species?” Darwin would surely have answered that with a “yes!”. They are distinct species if they have different habits.
Also in your issue of September, 1991, Mark W. Moffett says,
about the Maevia spiders: “But how does a female choose a mate when males appear in two radically different forms and using different courting rituals?” Obviously Moffett is in the presence of two different species, with the females looking very similar and the males very different but, again, the habits of courtship keep them apart.
In your issue of April, 2005, Douglas H. Chadwick studied killer whales in Vancouver Island. He distinguished two kind of animals with very different habits, with no apparent anatomical difference. On of them feeds exclusively on fish, while the other does it solely on marine mammals. They emit different sounds and have distinctive playful activities. Another holder of your scholarship, Robert Pitman (November, 2006) found the same in the Antarctic Orca.
In your issue of October, 2008, a bird, Merops apiaster, have very different migrating habits, showing two different species.
In your issue of November, 2006, Greg Rouse studied several kind of Australian sea horses, many of which seemed very different but all they had the same DNA structure. Now we can complete Darwin´s aphorism: “habits change first, structure changes excessively slowly, and DNA changes even more slower that that.”
I think your field investigators are closer to the truth than your theoreticians, and that they are having problems for sticking to them.
In fact, two holders of your scholarship, Peter and Rosemary Grant, are just on the tracks of Darwin. They found that, in “the tiny Galapagos island of Daphne Major, the finches evolved from one year to the next, as conditions of the island swung from wet to dry and back again. (We can) watch evolution occur in real time. Darwin, who assumed that evolution plodded along at a glacially slow rate, observable only in fossil record, would be delighted...When severe drought struck the island in 1977 and small seeds became scarce, the medium finches were forced to switch to eating bigger, harder seeds. Those with larger beaks fared better and survived to pass on the trait to their offspring...by 1982 competition arrived: large finches, which also eats large, though seeds. Both species were abundant in 2002, but then drought struck, and by 2005 the remaining medium finches, instead of adjusting to the drought by eating bigger seeds as they had 28 years before, experienced a marked reduction in the size of their beaks, as in competition with their larger cousins they struggled to carve out a niche by surviving on very small seeds. A finch with a smaller beak is not a new species of finch, but Grant reckons it might take only such a few episodes before a new species is established that would not choose to reproduce with its parent species.”
We see by this account that is competition, not isolation, the main factor that produce evolutionary changes. And also that habit leads the way. Random variations (bigger or smaller beaks) are not adaptive important, for we can see the same species, facing similar circumstances (droughts), either increasing or decreasing the size of its beak depending on the food that was left behind by its larger cousins and that was, therefore, abundant. By doing so they carved out a niche in which they did not have to compete with their stronger cousins. It is the habit, the use they gave to its beak, the one that makes it to respond -as any organ does- to the use or disuse.
The reaction of the organ to the use is very fast, and we can see changes even in the life of a single individual, so in that way we can see rapid changes, sometimes in a single year, of the entire species.
In the other hand fortuitous variations (mutations), as they tend to be diluted by the more normal characteristics, and as they will represent a problem given the habits of the species, will never take control of the adaptive changes. We can see that easily: in 1977 the mutants with smaller beaks were destroyed, and in 2005 the suppressed ones were those that would had bigger beaks.
Darwin sustained that any spontaneous variation should be useful, not harmful, in order to be preserved. And the criteria for usefulness is if serves or not to the faster way of adaptation: habits.
Darwin wrote: “We should bear in mind that modifications in structure or constitution which do not serve to adapt an organism to its habits of life...cannot have been thus acquired (Through natural selection)... Habit implies that some benefit great or small is thus derived... We should keep in mind, as I have before insisted, that the inherited effects of increased use of parts.. will be strengthened by natural selection. For all spontaneous variations in the right direction will thus be preserved; as will those individuals which inherit in the highest degree the increase and beneficial use of any part...Natural Selection is the preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious variations... I can see no difficulty in natural selection making an occasional habit permanent, if of advantage to the species... We have seen that a species under new conditions of life may change its habits; or it may have diversified habits, with some very unlike those of its nearest congeners...I will now give two or three instances both of diversified and of changed habits in the individuals of the same species. In either case it would be easy for natural selection to adapt the structure of the animal to its changed habits, or exclusively to one of its several habits... Variations, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if they be in any degree profitable to the individuals of a species...will tend to the preservation of such individuals, and will generally be inherited by the offspring... On the other hand, we may feel sure that any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed.”
I will only add to all this that the inheritance of habits was experimentally proven in 1937 by William Mc. Dougall, testing the trials a rat needed in order to get out of a labyrinth, when exposed to it for the first time. With each new generation, the rats born from the trained animals needed less and less trials to get out of the labyrinth. A perfect instinct could be foreseeable at the generation number 30.
I myself did a little contribution to the theory in 1991, proposing a mechanism –totally along Darwinian lines- for the inheritance of habits. The original insight of Darwin is now complete. My book is at the disposal of whoever wants to examine it. Darwin once wrote: “Few things are more remarkable than the way this theory has been misunderstood... Great is the power of steady misrepresentation. But the history of science shows that fortunately this power does not long endure.” Maybe my own work could at least help by making that the authors that write about Darwin –now that the painstaking and worthy work of John Van Wyhe is on the web- get based more on facts than on myths.
Carlos Fuentes Samaniego M.D.
April 14, 2009
