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Laurent Loison - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Lamarckism and epigenetic inheritance: a clarification
Biology and Philosophy, 2018Co-Authors: Laurent LoisonAbstract:Since the 1990s, the terms “Lamarckism” and “Lamarckian” have seen a significant resurgence in biological publications. The discovery of new molecular mechanisms (DNA methylation, histone modifications, RNA interference, etc.) have been interpreted as evidence supporting the reality and efficiency of the inheritance of acquired characters, and thus the revival of Lamarckism. The present paper aims at giving a critical evaluation of such interpretations. I argue that two types of arguments allow to draw a clear distinction between the genuine Lamarckian concept of inheritance of acquired characters and transgenerational epigenetic inheritance. The first concerns the explanandum of the processes under consideration: molecular mechanisms of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance are understood as evolved products of natural selection. This means that the kind of inheritance of acquired characters they might be responsible for is an obligatory emergent feature of evolution, whereas traditional Lamarckisms conceived the inheritance of acquired characters as a property inherent in living matter itself. The second argument concerns the explanans of the inheritance of acquired characters: in light of current knowledge, epigenetic mechanisms are not able to drive adaptive evolution by themselves. Emergent Lamarckian phenomena would be possible if and only if individual epigenetic variation allowed the inheritance of acquired characters to be a factor of unlimited change. This implies specific requirements for epigenetic variation, which I explicitly define and expand upon. I then show that given current knowledge, these requirements are not empirically grounded.
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The Contributions – and Collapse – of Lamarckian Heredity in Pasteurian Molecular Biology: 1. Lysogeny, 1900–1960
Journal of the History of Biology, 2017Co-Authors: Laurent Loison, Jean Gayon, Richard M. BurianAbstract:This article shows how Lamarckism was essential in the birth of the French school of molecular biology. We argue that the concept of inheritance of acquired characters positively shaped debates surrounding bacteriophagy and lysogeny in the Pasteurian tradition during the interwar period. During this period the typical Lamarckian account of heredity treated it as the continuation of protoplasmic physiology in daughter cells. Félix d’Hérelle applied this conception to argue that there was only one species of bacteriophage and Jules Bordet applied it to develop an account of bacteriophagy as a transmissible form of autolysis and to analyze the new phenomenon of lysogeny. In a long-standing controversy with Bordet, Eugène Wollman deployed a more morphological understanding of the inheritance of acquired characters, yielding a particulate, but still Lamarckian, account of lysogeny. We then turn to André Lwoff who, with several colleagues, completed Wollman’s research program from 1949 to 1953. We examine how he gradually set aside the Lamarckian background, finally removing inheritance of acquired characters from the resulting account of bacteriophagy and lysogeny. In the conclusion, we emphasize the complex dual role of Lamarckism as it moved from an assumed explanatory framework to a challenge that the nascent molecular biology had to overcome.
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the contributions and collapse of lamarckian heredity in pasteurian molecular biology 1 lysogeny 1900 1960
Journal of the History of Biology, 2017Co-Authors: Laurent Loison, Jean Gayon, Richard M. BurianAbstract:This article show how Lamarckism was essential in the birth of the French school of molecular biology. We argue that the concept of inheritance of acquired characters positively shaped debates surrounding bacteriophagy and lysogeny in the Pasteurian tradition during the interwar period. During this period the typical Lamarckian account of heredity treated it as the continuation of protoplasmic physiology in daughter cells. Felix d'Herelle applied this conception to argue that there was only one species of bacteriophage and Jules Bordet applied it to develop an account of bacteriophagy as a transmissible form of autolysis and to analyse the new phenomenon of lysogeny. In a long-standing controversy with Bordet, Eugene Wollman deployed a more morphological understanding of the inheritance of acquired characters, yielding a particulate, but still Lamarckian, account of lysogeny. We then turn to Andre Lwoff who, with several colleagues, completed Wollman's research program from 1949 to 1953. We examine how he gradually set aside the Lamarckian background, finally removing inheritance of acquired characters from the resulting account of bacteriophagy and lysogeny. In the conclusion, we emphasize the complex dual role of Lamarckism as it moved from an assumed explanatory framework to a challenge that the nascent molecular biology had to overcome.
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Lamarckian Research Programs in French Biology (1900–1970)
The Darwinian Tradition in Context, 2017Co-Authors: Laurent Loison, Emily HerringAbstract:The situation of biology in France in the twentieth century has always been considered something of an oddity. The theories of the Darwinian Modern Synthesis and of population genetics were not included in standardized university curricula and the main research programs until the 1970s. Against the Darwinian picture that was developing abroad, French life scientists promoted various forms of Lamarckism. The aim of this chapter is to produce a general picture of these different twentieth century Lamarckian research programs which deeply structured various fields of the French life sciences, like morphology, zoology, paleontology but also microbiology and virology. We first recall the failure of the first Lamarckian program, based on a mechanistic understanding of life, and which aimed at explaining evolution in terms of cumulative adaptation through the inheritance of acquired characters. We show that during the interwar period, French Lamarckians were no longer unified in their understanding of the evolutionary process but instead defended a heterogeneous array of concepts. In particular, we examine philosopher Henri Bergson’s legacy, which was pivotal in the setting up of a second Lamarckian program that started to develop in the 1940s with the work of zoologists Albert Vandel and Pierre-Paul Grassé. While it is true that the various forms of Lamarckism delayed the reception of Darwinism and, to a lesser extent, genetics, we assess their impact on the way the Modern Synthesis and molecular biology were conceived and developed in France by non-Lamarckian biologists like Georges Teissier, Philippe L’Héritier, André Lwoff, or Jacques Monod.
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The Contribution - and Collapse - of Lamarckian Heredity in Pastorian Microbiology: 1. Lysogeny, 1900-1960
Journal of the History of Biology, 2017Co-Authors: Laurent Loison, Jean Gayon, Richard M. BurianAbstract:This article show how Lamarckism was essential in the birth of the French school of molecular biology. We argue that the concept of inheritance of acquired characters positively shaped debates surrounding bacteriophagy and lysogeny in the Pasteurian tradition during the interwar period. During this period the typical Lamarckian account of heredity treated it as the continuation of protoplasmic physiology in daughter cells. Félix d'Hérelle applied this conception to argue that there was only one species of bacteriophage and Jules Bordet applied it to develop an account of bacteriophagy as a transmissible form of autolysis and to analyse the new phenomenon of lysogeny. In a long-standing controversy with Bordet, Eugène Wollman deployed a more morphological understanding of the inheritance of acquired characters, yielding a particulate, but still Lamarckian, account of lysogeny. We then turn to André Lwoff who, with several colleagues, completed Wollman's research program from 1949 to 1953. We examine how he gradually set aside the Lamarckian background, finally removing inheritance of acquired characters from the resulting account of bacteriophagy and lysogeny. In the conclusion, we emphasize the complex dual role of Lamarckism as it moved from an assumed explanatory framework to a challenge that the nascent molecular biology had to overcome.
Eliza Slavet - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Freud’s Lamarckism’ and the Politics of Racial Science
Journal of the History of Biology, 2008Co-Authors: Eliza SlavetAbstract:This article re-contextualizes Sigmund Freud’s interest in the idea of the inheritance of acquired characteristics in terms of the socio-political connotations of Lamarckism and Darwinism in the 1930s and 1950s. Many scholars have speculated as to why Freud continued to insist on a supposedly outmoded theory of evolution in the 1930s even as he was aware that it was no longer tenable. While Freud’s initial interest in the inheritance of phylogenetic memory was not necessarily politically motivated, his refusal to abandon this theory in the 1930s must be understood in terms of wider debates, especially regarding the position of the Jewish people in Germany and Austria. Freud became uneasy about the inheritance of memory not because it was scientifically disproven, but because it had become politically charged and suspiciously regarded by the Nazis as Bolshevik and Jewish. Where Freud seemed to use the idea of inherited memory as a way of universalizing his theory beyond the individual cultural milieu of his mostly Jewish patients, such a notion of universal science itself became politically charged and identified as particularly Jewish. The vexed and speculative interpretations of Freud’s Lamarckism are situated as part of a larger post-War cultural reaction against Communism on the one hand (particularly in the 1950s when Lamarckism was associated with the failures of Lysenko), and on the other hand, against any scientific concepts of race in the wake of World War II.
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Freud's 'Lamarckism' and the politics of racial science.
Journal of the history of biology, 2007Co-Authors: Eliza SlavetAbstract:This article re-contextualizes Sigmund Freud’s interest in the idea of the inheritance of acquired characteristics in terms of the socio-political connotations of Lamarckism and Darwinism in the 1930s and 1950s. Many scholars have speculated as to why Freud continued to insist on a supposedly outmoded theory of evolution in the 1930s even as he was aware that it was no longer tenable. While Freud’s initial interest in the inheritance of phylogenetic memory was not necessarily politically motivated, his refusal to abandon this theory in the 1930s must be understood in terms of wider debates, especially regarding the position of the Jewish people in Germany and Austria. Freud became uneasy about the inheritance of memory not because it was scientifically disproven, but because it had become politically charged and suspiciously regarded by the Nazis as Bolshevik and Jewish. Where Freud seemed to use the idea of inherited memory as a way of universalizing his theory beyond the individual cultural milieu of his mostly Jewish patients, such a notion of universal science itself became politically charged and identified as particularly Jewish. The vexed and speculative interpretations of Freud’s Lamarckism are situated as part of a larger post-War cultural reaction against Communism on the one hand (particularly in the 1950s when Lamarckism was associated with the failures of Lysenko), and on the other hand, against any scientific concepts of race in the wake of World War II.
Oliver Hill-andrews - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Lamarckism by Other Means: Interpreting Pavlov’s Conditioned Reflexes in Twentieth-Century Britain
Journal of the History of Biology, 2019Co-Authors: Oliver Hill-andrewsAbstract:This essay examines the reception of Ivan Pavlov’s work on conditioned reflexes in early to mid-twentieth century Britain. Recent work on the political interpretation of biology has shown that the nineteenth-century strategy of “making socialists” was undermined by August Weismann’s attacks on the inheritance of acquired characters. I argue that Pavlov’s research reinvigorated socialist hopes of transforming society and the people in it. I highlight the work of Pavlov’s interpreters, notably the scientific journalist J. G. Crowther, the biologist Lancelot Hogben, and the science writer H. G. Wells, who made Pavlov’s work accessible to a British audience and embraced the socialist implications of his research – especially the idea that people could be persuaded to become socialists through science writing for a nonspecialist audience and through use of a simplified language such as Basic English. They saw, in the followers of National Socialism, how Pavlovian conditioning could create a national movement, and believed that this could be used for their own more democratic form of socialism. In the final part of the essay, I suggest that this broad socio-cultural movement to reshape humanity proved controversial, especially in the post-war period and in light of Soviet use of brainwashing. The likes of Aldous Huxley and F. A. Hayek feared that conditioning could only lead to totalitarianism, while the historian E. P. Thompson put forward a socialist humanism that left room for human agency.
Oliver Hillandrews - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Lamarckism by other means interpreting pavlov s conditioned reflexes in twentieth century britain
Journal of the History of Biology, 2019Co-Authors: Oliver HillandrewsAbstract:This essay examines the reception of Ivan Pavlov’s work on conditioned reflexes in early to mid-twentieth century Britain. Recent work on the political interpretation of biology has shown that the nineteenth-century strategy of “making socialists” was undermined by August Weismann’s attacks on the inheritance of acquired characters. I argue that Pavlov’s research reinvigorated socialist hopes of transforming society and the people in it. I highlight the work of Pavlov’s interpreters, notably the scientific journalist J. G. Crowther, the biologist Lancelot Hogben, and the science writer H. G. Wells, who made Pavlov’s work accessible to a British audience and embraced the socialist implications of his research – especially the idea that people could be persuaded to become socialists through science writing for a nonspecialist audience and through use of a simplified language such as Basic English. They saw, in the followers of National Socialism, how Pavlovian conditioning could create a national movement, and believed that this could be used for their own more democratic form of socialism. In the final part of the essay, I suggest that this broad socio-cultural movement to reshape humanity proved controversial, especially in the post-war period and in light of Soviet use of brainwashing. The likes of Aldous Huxley and F. A. Hayek feared that conditioning could only lead to totalitarianism, while the historian E. P. Thompson put forward a socialist humanism that left room for human agency.
John Allett - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Crowd Psychology and the Theory of Democratic Elitism: The Contribution of William McDougall
Political Psychology, 1996Co-Authors: John AllettAbstract:The social psychology of William McDougall (1871-1938) was once widely influential but now is little referenced, his own writings being eclipsed especially by Freud's few pages of commentary in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1922). Indeed, in some respects his work is best forgotten. This applies particularly to his advocacy of "Nordic" superiority, but also probably extends to certain less incendiary issues like his Lamarckism and his several attempts to provide an exhaustive listing of human instincts, which now seems little more than an inventive ad hocary. At least one aspect of his work, however, the importance of which was never fully appreciated, deserves to be recalled. McDougall is entitled to be considered afounding theorist of the modem doctrine of democratic elitism. In this distinct regard, McDougall's work cannot be dismissed as antiquated. Rather, it contributes to what is still the dominant view of contemporary democracy.
