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Pn 31 Letters to the Editor LETTERS TO THE EDITOR PN 31 On reading the amusing article the idea any more than Mr Darwin. nice if people might pause a little ‘Why I hate epigenetics’ (Physiology He never disagreed with me on and recognize that it is also the News 77, Winter 2009, p. 43) Denis this issue, since neither of us knew bicentenary of my main work, Noble dreamt that he was the Editor anything about the later discoveries Philosophie Zoologique. [DN: see and had received the following of genetics that seemed to exclude note 4] letter, which he then translated into it. He even introduced the idea English for the benefit of readers of of gemmules, particles that he Veuillez accepter, cher Monsieur Physiology News: imagined to flow through the blood l’éditeur, l’expression de mes stream to communicate acquired sentiments les plus distingués, Jardin des Plantes, characteristics to the reproductive Paris, le 21 novembre 2009 organs. Incidentally, your modern Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine ideas on micro-chimerism are not so de Monet, Chevalier de la Monsieur l’éditeur far from his idea of gemmules. It isn’t Marck just epigenetics that is resurrecting I had no idea that my scientific the idea of the inheritance of Notes by Denis Noble ideas were to become so politically acquired characteristics, nor would 1. In his introduction to Harvard’s sensitive, though I have been told Mr Darwin be surprised. I have republication in 1964 of The Origin of that the distinguished Edinburgh it on good authority that he was Species, Ernst Mayr wrote (pp. xxv–xxvi) professor of genetics and uncomfortable with the dogmatism “Curiously few evolutionists have noted developmental biology, Conrad of those who usurped his name by that, in addition to natural selection, Waddington, was ignored by his calling themselves neo-darwinists. Darwin admits use and disuse as an fellow American scientists during [DN: see note 2] important evolutionary mechanism. In the McCarthy inquisitions of the this he is perfectly clear. For instance,… mid-20th century because of possible No, the main issue on which Mr on page 137 he says that the reduced association with something called Darwin and I disagreed was whether size of the eyes in moles and other Communism, largely because he there was a direction to evolution, burrowing mammals is ‘probably due to gradual reduction from disuse, but aided invented the term ‘epigenetics’ what I called ‘le Pouvoir de la Vie’. perhaps by natural selection’. In the case and claimed to have shown that it This was not a mystical concept. In of cave animals, when speaking of the confirmed my ideas on inheritance. fact, I thought of it as derivable from loss of eyes he says, ‘I attribute their loss He called those ideas ‘lamarckism’ basic physical principles, and so a wholly to disuse’ (p. 137). On page 455 and was certainly not the first to perfectly natural phenomenon. Some he begins unequivocally, ‘At whatever do so. That damnable giraffe’s of your modern ideas on complexity period of life disuse or selection reduces neck (!) keeps returning to haunt are not far removed from what I an organ…’ The importance he gives me, whereas I thought I would be was thinking. Wouldn’t it be better to use or disuse is indicated by the remembered for having introduced therefore for me to be seen as having frequency with which he invokes this a new scientific subject, which I laid the firm foundations of evidence agent of evolution in the Origin. I find called biology (I was the first to for the transformation of species on references on pages 11, 43, 134, 135, 136, 137, 447, 454, 455, 472, 479, and do so), and for demonstrating the which your Mr Darwin was to build? I 480.” transformation of species and, hence, argued the case for evolution with all the basic truth of evolution. the powerful skeptics of my day. The 2. See Gabriel Dover’s book Dear Mr. highly influential Georges Cuvier [DN: Darwin: Letters on the Evolution of Life and I am deeply puzzled by the term see note 3] ridiculed me mercilessly, Human Nature (Phoenix books, 2001). ‘lamarckism’ for another reason also. even to the extent of gloating over 3. Cuvier argued that the fossil record Your brilliant Honorary Member, my body in its pauper’s grave. The showed sudden, not gradual, changes Charles Darwin, elected to that so-called eulogy that he delivered – an idea that Stephen Jay Gould later position on the foundation of your on my death was described by your espoused in his theory of punctuated equilibrium. Despite the similarity of esteemed Society in 1876, also distinguished evolutionary theorist, his ideas with those of Cuvier, he was espoused the idea that acquired Mr Stephen Jay Gould, as ‘one of characteristics could be inherited shocked by the dismissive tone of the most deprecatory and chillingly Cuvier’s ‘eulogy’ of Lamarck. [DN: see note 1]. In fact, like all partisan biographies I have ever biologists of our time, and even read.’ 4. Philosophie Zoologique is a much earlier, we absorbed this idea from better book than one might imagine, our predecessors. I am amused The fact is that I was reviled and given the low esteem in which Lamarck that an idea for which I was not the died desperately poor (for which is held today. He really did establish the transformation of species and, although inventor should have become so my family had to pay a heavy price) strongly associated with my name. he was not the first to develop the idea precisely because I had established of evolution, he was an indefatigable I may be a ‘demented gloating little the truth of, and argued strongly proponent of the idea at a time when troll’ – in fact, I died so poor that for, the idea of evolution. In this it was even more ridiculed than in they had to throw my body into year of 2009, when you are rightly Darwin’s day – recall that Lamarck died a common lime-pit – but I can’t celebrating the bicentenary of (1829) long before publication of The quite see why I am associated with Mr Darwin’s birth, it would be Origin of Species (1859). Physiology News | No. 78 | Spring 2010 | www.physoc.org.
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