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The Dance Sourcebook The Dance Sourcebook This sourcebook is modelled on the Music of Life Sourcebook in collating articles that respond to the wish from readers to have more detail on the sources of the ideas and observations that form the basis of the book. First, though, what is the argument about? Why replace Neo-Darwinism? 1 Why replace NEO -­‐Darwinism? The debate in a nutshell The books on the musicoflife.website, The Music of Life (2006) and Dance to the Tune of Life (2016), deconstruct standard evolutionary bioloGy, which is usually referred Neo to as -­‐Darwinism or the Modern Synthesis. The books propose inteGrated an synthesis instead. Why is that necessary? -­‐ Isn’t Neo Darwinism simply Darwin’s Origin of Species updated by 20th and 21st century discoveries in ? Genetics Isn’t it obvious that his central idea of Natural Selection must be correct: successful orGanisms transmit their characteristics to the next generation? In fact it is almost a tautology. What succeeds must succeed. From portrait harles of C Darwin in The Royal Society. Well, yes. But Darwin was -­‐ not a Neo Darwinist. In fact he got two other contrary ideas largely correct: • He acknowledGed that Natural Selection was not the only process involved. He realised that organisms actively select other organisms, as for sexual example in selection, and in doing so must partially direct their evolution. 2 • Second, he agreed with Lamarck on the inheritance of acquired characteristics and even proposed a theory of Pangenesis on how it could is work. H idea is almost identical ern with mod experimental findings on exosomes and transmission of RNAs and DNA to the germline from the soma. Neo-­‐Darwinism opposes or downplays these processes. In many evolutionary biology textbooks you will not even find them referred to. Moreover, Lamarck is usually presented in very deroGatory lanGuaGe. By contrast, Darwin praised Lamarck as a “justly celebrated naturalist …. who upholds the doctrine that all species, including man, are descended from other face species.” (Pre to fourth edition of The Origin of ). Species Neo-­‐Darwinism was originally formulated to expunge these Darwinian ideas from evolutionary bioloGy. The central problems are • Neo-­‐Darwinist ideas favour gene -­‐centric views of biology, which Gets causation in biology the wrong way round. DNA is a completely passive molecule until it is activated by the organism to enable RNAs to be produced that in turn form templates for the production of proteins. DNA cannot even be transmitted faithfully until massively corrected by the organism. It is not therefore ‘immortal the replicator’. See articles in this sourcebook: Evolution viewed from Physics, Physiology and Medicine and Central Dogma or Central Debate? • Neo-­‐Darwinists have problems with the idea ms that organis are agents with purposive behaviour. Yet, agency is central to understanding life. It has to be central to the process of evolution. See article in this sourcebook: Was the Watchmaker Blind? • Neo-­‐Darwinism misunderstands the role of biological stochasticity, which is Given primacy in the oriGin of variation. In fact, stochasticity is actively harnessed by organisms to create novelty. See articles in this sourcebook: Evolution viewed from Physics, Physiology and Medicine, Was the Watchmaker Blind? and Harnessing stochasticity: How do organisms make choices? 3 Some evolutionary biologists redefine Neo-­‐Darwinism to avoid these problems, but if a theory is redefined to mean e the precise opposit of what it was intended to achieve, it is quite simply no lonGer different from the Darwinism it opposed. SUMMARY DIAGRAM How do Darwinism, the Modern Synthesis and the InteGrated Synthesis relate to each other? The diagram represents the fact that Darwin’s view of inheritance included the inheritance uired of acq characteristics, which was excluded by neo-­‐Darwinism. Darwin’s concept of inheritance is therefore shown as beinG partly outside -­‐ the neo Darwinist modern synthesis. So also are his ideas on sexual selection. The diagram also represents the features that lie outside the range -­‐ of neo Darwinism as defined by Weismann and Wallace. The features of that theory were excluded are shown as correspondinG -­‐ bold face items. The highlighted items on the far left correspond with the highlighted items at the far riGht (from the article in this sourcebook: Exosomes, Gemmules, Pangenesis and Darwin). 4 As of July 2019, the sourcebook contains 10 articles: Noble, D. (2017) Evolution viewed from physics, and physioloGy medicine. Interface Focus, 7, 20160159. Introduces the fact that organisms harness stochasticity to generate functionality. Random variations have more siGnificance than they are Given in neo-­‐Darwinism. Noble, R. & Noble, D. (2017) Was the watchmaker blind? Or was she one-­‐eyed? Biology, 6, 47. OrGanisms and their interactinG populations lved have evo mechanisms by which they can harness ty blind stochastici and so Generate rapid functional responses to environmental challenGes. They can achieve this by re-­‐organising their genomes and/or their regulatory networks. Evolution does therefore have partial direction. The direction is by organisms themselves. Noble, D. (2018) Central DoGma or Physiology Central Debate? , 33, 246-­‐249. The Central Dogma of molecular biology has been widely misinterpreted o t be a modern version of the Weismann Barrier. This confuses -­‐ cellular level inheritance with DNA inheritance and is therefore incorrect. Noble, D. (2018) Lost in – Translation a second letter from Lamarck. Physiology News, 111, 6-­‐7. Lamarck is represented in standard evolutionary biology textbooks as favourinG a ladder of life, as contrasted with Darwin’s tree of life. In fact, Lamarck retracted of his ladder life idea and formulated a very clear tree of life well before Darwin. 5 Noble, R. & D. Noble, (2018) Harnessing stochasticity: How do organisms make choices? Chaos , 28, 106309. Harnessing stochasticity is the way in which orGanisms become free aGents. A free choice is both unpredictable in prospect and rational in retrospect. Neuman, Y, e, Nobl D. & Cohen, Y. 2018. Is the whole different from the sum of its parts? A proposed procedure for measurinG divergence from additivity. International Journal of General . Systems 7, 665-­‐678. That the whole is greater than its parts is a central assumption of integrative -­‐ multi level interpretations of bioloGy. Demonstrating this mathematically is a big challenge. This article shows how category theory can be used to develop an approach to the problem. Jablonka, E. & Noble, D. (2019) Systemic of inteGration inheritance systems. Current Opinion in Systems , Biology 13, 52-­‐58. An inheritable trait can be described as an attractor in a developmental landscape constructed by networks of inputs at underlying and overlying levels of organization. This approach could enable the development of a systemic, dynamic and predictive model of inheritance Noble, D. (2019) Exosomes, Gemmules, Pangenesis and Darwin. In Exosomes in Health and Disease, Elsevier Lamarck and Darwin both produced theories to explain how acquired characteristics could be inherited. They realized that somethinG would need to transmit information from the soma to the Germ cells. Their theories were very similar, i.e. that minute particles or fluids could be ody transported by b fluids. Lamarck called them ‘suble fluids’; Darwin called them ‘gemmules’. Today they have been discovered and we call them exosomes. Exosomes and body fluids can transmit both RNA and DNA to the germline. 6 Noble, R. & Noble, A-­‐ D. (2019) merGence of bioloGical systems. In Handbook of the Philosophy of Emergence RoutledGe, 387-­‐399. There is therefore no privileged direction of emergence, the upper levels constrain the events at the lower levels just as much as the lower levels are necessary r for those uppe level constraints to exist. To emphasise this point, we introduce the concept of a-­‐merGence, which expresses the lack of causal directionality. We illustrate these points with a major test case: Schrödinger’s distinction between physics and biology in which he proposed that physics is the generation of order from molecular disorder, while bioloGy is the f Generation o order from molecular order. This characterization of bioloGy is physically impossible. Modern biology has confirmed both that this is impossible and that, on the contrary, organisms harness stochasticity at low levels to Generate their functionality. Noble, R, Tasaki, K, Noble, PJ, & BioloGical Noble, D (2019) Relativity Requires Circular Causality but Not Symmetry o, of Causation: S Where, What and re When A the Boundaries? Frontiers in Physiology, 10, 827. The principle of Biological v Relati ity is that r the e is no privileged level of causation in organisms. There must therefore be boundaries between the levels of organization across which the levels influence each other. This is the first article to systematically answer the question how the forms of causation between the levels differ. It also reviews the evidence for downward causation in a variety of physioloGical examples. 7 Downloaded from http://rsfs.royalsocietypublishing.org/ on October 28, 2017 Evolution viewed from physics, physiology and medicine rsfs.royalsocietypublishing.org Denis Noble Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, University of Oxford, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PT, UK DN, 0000-0002-3013-3694 Review Stochasticity is harnessed by organisms to generate functionality. Random- ness does not, therefore,
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