Lamarck argued that giraffes had long necks because they stretched them for generations in an attempt to eat leaves that grew where shorter-necked giraffes could not munch. In short, Lamarck believed that habits were inheritable. But that famous experiment of cutting off the tails of mice demonstrated that he was wrong. Mice generations later still grew tails though their ancestors had theirs severed. Purposeful evolution is on the grandest scale of speciation an oxymoronic idea though variations in domesticated animals and plants are the product of human engineering. Randomness still plays a role though many like the Nazi eugenics practitioners who sought to form some perfect Aryan race were as misguided as the Soviet-Ukrainian botanist Lysenko who thought he could change how seeds responded to colder climatic conditions by exposing them to cold conditions--resulting, by the way, in failed wheat crops. *
Regardless of biological demonstrations to the contrary, Larmarckism and its followup Lysenkoism haven’t gone the way of phrenology. The idea that what you do today can be passed on to your descendants is alive and well. You can see this in Nobel prize-winner sperm banks, the progeny of which have never been shown to have any specially heritable genius characteristics. **
Yes, taller people tend to produce taller children and shorter people tend to produce shorter children. Pygmies and Watutsi (plural of Tutsi) are respectively shorter than average and taller than average. But a mix of humans, such as we have after millennia of migrations and conquests, has led to an “average” and a limited range of physical characteristics. In families composed of heritable tallness and shortness, some children are tall and some short, with the mix tending to average-out to a “norm.” And in a coupling of “geniuses” there can be a child with limited intellectual abilities—that old problem of nurture vs. nature arising.
I remember seeing as a kid This Island Earth, the 1955 science fiction film in which actor Jeff Morrow had a very large forehead, supposedly indicative of a greater frontal lobe and greater intelligence that evolved on his planet. And I recall an article in some magazine with a picture of “future humans” with large skulls much like so many fictional depictions of extraterrestrials. I suppose all such depictions and predictions are continuations of popular perceptions that from Australopithecus to Homo sapiens, heads have gotten larger in a neat progression of ever higher foreheads, though human species with bigger brains than ours have existed.***
Anyway, now comes an article by Chris Melore entitled “Humans may evolve to have deformed bodies, second eyelid from overusing technology.” **** The gist? Your offspring will have deformed “claw hands,” permanently bent elbows, and hunched backs because you use computers and cell phones. In short, like Lamarck’s giraffes, you, according to the hypothesis, will pass on your practices as physical manifestations. Lamarck and Lysenko are saying from their graves, “See, we were right.”
But again, evolution is random. Adaptations are random. It is only in retrospect that we can see a pattern. Yes, foreheads have gotten larger, but we do not know exactly why or how. But intelligence seems to be little different from what it was thousands of years ago if we judge by human behavior. We still war. We still gather in similar groups. We still make the mistakes our ancestors made. And we still look pretty much the way they looked.
The subtle changes evolution makes are not individuals. Species evolve, not individuals. All reproducing humans have the potential to alter our future appearance, but not one among them knows a foolproof way of making alterations. Note that for any genetic characteristic to be passed onto to future generations, it must survive premature death by disease, accident, or malicious intention. One persistent obstacle stands in the way of any intentional evolution: the penchant for humans to destroy that which is different. Thus, genocide persists as a motivation among many cultures and subcultures. Think Holocaust. Think today’s Uyghurs.
Regardless of the failures of intentional evolutionists, every generation will produce its followers of Lamarck and Lysenko. Every generation will produce a Margaret Sanger, an Adolf Hitler, or a Hutu determined to kill a Tutsi. Probably our only defense against such genetic purists is a continued homogenization of our species and a recognition of that homogenization.
*Lysenkoism, supported by Stalin, led to multiple crop failures.
**Many have the idea that Nobel peace prize winners are elite geniuses because they instituted understanding or previously unknown phenomena or made discoveries, but some of those discoveries were partly accidental, such as the discovery of the Microwave Background Radiation by Penzias and Wilson, and some discoveries were further developments of predecessor scientists and engineers, such as Cormack and Hounsfield’s tying computers to tomography. Although they have to my knowledge never participated in stocking a sperm bank, Teddy Roosevelt, Yassar Arafat, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, Barack Obama, all receiving the award, don’t seem to me as men possessed of either “genius” or—with the exception of Carter who arranged for a Middle East peace deal between Egypt and Israel and Roosevelt who arranged a peace between Japan and Russia—evidence of actually furthering peace. Arafat was a terrorist, Gore was and still is a wealthy manipulator of climate “science” who made predictions that failed to materialize, and Obama just gave a few talks like one to a concert crowd in Paris, but continued the Afghan war while in office and allowed ISIS to destroy, rape, torture, and kill thousands, dismissing their Caliphate as the “JV team.”
***Read Big Brain: The Origins and Future of Human Intelligence by Gary Lynch and Richard Granger (St. Martin’s Griffin, New York, 2008).
****”Humans may evolve to have deformed bodies, second eyelid from overusing technology.” StudyFinds. November 2, 2022. https://studyfinds.org/humans-deformed-bodies-technology/ Accessed November 3, 2022.
Regardless of biological demonstrations to the contrary, Larmarckism and its followup Lysenkoism haven’t gone the way of phrenology. The idea that what you do today can be passed on to your descendants is alive and well. You can see this in Nobel prize-winner sperm banks, the progeny of which have never been shown to have any specially heritable genius characteristics. **
Yes, taller people tend to produce taller children and shorter people tend to produce shorter children. Pygmies and Watutsi (plural of Tutsi) are respectively shorter than average and taller than average. But a mix of humans, such as we have after millennia of migrations and conquests, has led to an “average” and a limited range of physical characteristics. In families composed of heritable tallness and shortness, some children are tall and some short, with the mix tending to average-out to a “norm.” And in a coupling of “geniuses” there can be a child with limited intellectual abilities—that old problem of nurture vs. nature arising.
I remember seeing as a kid This Island Earth, the 1955 science fiction film in which actor Jeff Morrow had a very large forehead, supposedly indicative of a greater frontal lobe and greater intelligence that evolved on his planet. And I recall an article in some magazine with a picture of “future humans” with large skulls much like so many fictional depictions of extraterrestrials. I suppose all such depictions and predictions are continuations of popular perceptions that from Australopithecus to Homo sapiens, heads have gotten larger in a neat progression of ever higher foreheads, though human species with bigger brains than ours have existed.***
Anyway, now comes an article by Chris Melore entitled “Humans may evolve to have deformed bodies, second eyelid from overusing technology.” **** The gist? Your offspring will have deformed “claw hands,” permanently bent elbows, and hunched backs because you use computers and cell phones. In short, like Lamarck’s giraffes, you, according to the hypothesis, will pass on your practices as physical manifestations. Lamarck and Lysenko are saying from their graves, “See, we were right.”
But again, evolution is random. Adaptations are random. It is only in retrospect that we can see a pattern. Yes, foreheads have gotten larger, but we do not know exactly why or how. But intelligence seems to be little different from what it was thousands of years ago if we judge by human behavior. We still war. We still gather in similar groups. We still make the mistakes our ancestors made. And we still look pretty much the way they looked.
The subtle changes evolution makes are not individuals. Species evolve, not individuals. All reproducing humans have the potential to alter our future appearance, but not one among them knows a foolproof way of making alterations. Note that for any genetic characteristic to be passed onto to future generations, it must survive premature death by disease, accident, or malicious intention. One persistent obstacle stands in the way of any intentional evolution: the penchant for humans to destroy that which is different. Thus, genocide persists as a motivation among many cultures and subcultures. Think Holocaust. Think today’s Uyghurs.
Regardless of the failures of intentional evolutionists, every generation will produce its followers of Lamarck and Lysenko. Every generation will produce a Margaret Sanger, an Adolf Hitler, or a Hutu determined to kill a Tutsi. Probably our only defense against such genetic purists is a continued homogenization of our species and a recognition of that homogenization.
*Lysenkoism, supported by Stalin, led to multiple crop failures.
**Many have the idea that Nobel peace prize winners are elite geniuses because they instituted understanding or previously unknown phenomena or made discoveries, but some of those discoveries were partly accidental, such as the discovery of the Microwave Background Radiation by Penzias and Wilson, and some discoveries were further developments of predecessor scientists and engineers, such as Cormack and Hounsfield’s tying computers to tomography. Although they have to my knowledge never participated in stocking a sperm bank, Teddy Roosevelt, Yassar Arafat, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, Barack Obama, all receiving the award, don’t seem to me as men possessed of either “genius” or—with the exception of Carter who arranged for a Middle East peace deal between Egypt and Israel and Roosevelt who arranged a peace between Japan and Russia—evidence of actually furthering peace. Arafat was a terrorist, Gore was and still is a wealthy manipulator of climate “science” who made predictions that failed to materialize, and Obama just gave a few talks like one to a concert crowd in Paris, but continued the Afghan war while in office and allowed ISIS to destroy, rape, torture, and kill thousands, dismissing their Caliphate as the “JV team.”
***Read Big Brain: The Origins and Future of Human Intelligence by Gary Lynch and Richard Granger (St. Martin’s Griffin, New York, 2008).
****”Humans may evolve to have deformed bodies, second eyelid from overusing technology.” StudyFinds. November 2, 2022. https://studyfinds.org/humans-deformed-bodies-technology/ Accessed November 3, 2022.
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