[Marxism-Thaxis] Reevaluating Lysenko
Neoevolutionism Neoevolutionism is a social theory that tries to explain the evolution of societies by drawing on Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and discarding some dogmas of the previous social evolutionism. Neoevolutionism is concerned with long-term, directional, evolutionary social change and with the regular patterns of development that may be seen in unrelated, widely separated cultures. Neoevolutionism emerged in the 1930s. It developed extensively in the period after the Second World War -- and was incorporated into anthropology as well as sociology in the 1960s. Its theories are based on empirical evidence from fields such as archeology, paleontology, and historiography. Proponents say neoevolutionism is objective and simply descriptive, eliminating any references to a moral or cultural system of values. While the 19th century evolutionism explained how culture develops by giving general principles of its evolutionary process, it was dismissed by Historical Particularism as unscientific in the early 20th century. It was the neoevolutionary thinkers who brought back evolutionary thought and developed it to be acceptable to contemporary anthropology. The neoevolutionism discards many ideas of classical social evolutionism, namely that of social progress, so dominant in previous sociology evolution-related theories. Then neoevolutionism discards the determinism argument and introduces probability, arguing that accidents and free will have much impact on the process of social evolution. It also supports the counterfactual history - asking 'what if' and considering different possible paths that social evolution may (or might have) taken, and thus allows for the fact that various cultures may develop in different ways, some skipping entire stages others have passed through. The neoevolutionism stresses the importance of empirical evidence. While 19th century evolutionism used value judgment and assumptions for interpreting data, the neoevolutionism relied on measurable information for analyzing the process of cultural evolution. Neoevolutionism important thinkers include: Ferdinand Tönnies. While not strictly a neoevolutionist himself, Tönnies' work is often viewed as the foundation of neo-evolutionism. He was one of the first sociologists to claim that the evolution of society is not necessarily going in the right direction, that the social progress is not perfect, it can even be called a regress as the newer, more evolved societies are obtained only after paying a high costs, resulting in decreasing satisfaction of individuals making up that society. Leslie A. White (1900-1975), author of The Evolution of Culture: The Development of Civilization to the Fall of Rome (1959). Publication of this book rekindled interest in the evolutionism among sociologists and anthropologists. White attempted to create a theory explaining the entire history of humanity. The most important factor in his theory is technology: Social systems are determined by technological systems, wrote White in his book, echoing the earlier theory of Lewis Henry Morgan. As a measure of society advancement he proposed the measure energy consumption of given society (thus his theory is known as the energy theory of cultural evolution). He differentiates between five stages of human development. In the first, people use energy of their own muscles. In the second, they use energy of domesticated animals. In the third, they use the energy of plants (so White refers to agricultural revolution here). In the fourth, they learn to use the energy of natural resources: coal, oil, gas. In the fifth, they harness the nuclear energy. White introduced a formula C=E*T, where E is a measure of energy consumed, and T is the measure of efficiency of technical factors utilising the energy. This theory is similar to the later theory of Kardashev scale of Russian astronom, Nikolai Kardashev. Julian Steward, author of Theory of Culture Change: The Methodology of Multilinear Evolution (1955, reprinted 1979), created the theory of multilinear evolution which examined the way in which societies adapted to their environment. This approach was more nuanced than White's theory of unilinear evolution. He questioned the possibility of creation of a social theory encompassing the entire evolution of humanity, however he argued that anthropologists are not limited to descriptions of specific, existing cultures. He believed it is possible to create theories analysing typical, common culture, representative of specific eras or regions. As the decisive factors determining the development of given culture he pointed to technology and economics, and noted there are secondary factors, like political systems, ideologies and religion. All those factors push the evolution of a given society in several directions at the same time, thus this is the multilinearity of his theory of evolution. Marshall Sahlins, author of Evolution and Culture (1960). He divided the
[Marxism-Thaxis] Reevaluating Lysenko
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/2001-February/017071.html [Marxism-Thaxis] LYSENKO, VIEWS OF NATURE AND SOCIETY Charles Brown CharlesB at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Fri Feb 16 08:54:44 MST 2001 Previous message: [Marxism-Thaxis] LYSENKO, VIEWS OF NATURE AND SOCIETY Next message: [Marxism-Thaxis] Nepal, Maoism gathers strength Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] cburford at gn.apc.org 02/16/01 02:05AM At 09:00 15/02/01 -0800, you wrote: Heh, Charles, sometimes I still look for loons far, far to your left. Have a chuckle. ;-) http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Atrium/1091/lysenkotable.html However my impression is that Lysenko actually was not so completely wrong as he was made out to be in the west. Of course there were some very good aspects to Soviet Science: Luria was far ahead of the west, in emphasising neuronal circuits rather than individual loci as the organising unit for mental processes. ) Charles B:This site and an earlier one that Michael sent raise an interesting paradox: Lysenko ,the Stalinist ,was not the dogmatist in this argument. Lamarckian claims are against the central dogma of modern genetic theory. This article articulates the fundamentals of genetics in attacking them ( which is a timely clarification with the publishing of the human genome) For example, It received a molecular updating in 1957. Francis Crick, one of the co-discoverers of the importance of the genetic molecule DNA, called this hypothesis, the Central Dogma which : Stated that once information has passed into protein it cannot get out again. The transfer of information from nucleic acid to nucleic acid, or from nucleic acid to protein may be possible, but transfer from protein to protein, or from protein to nucleic acid is impossible. This is anti-LaMarckianism in DNA language (obviously). It helps as a mental notation in examing the genome project as to whether there is any new evidence there that might tickle the dogma's toes. MOLECULAR BIOLOGY: In the Beginning Was the Word A review by R. C. Lewontin* - Who Wrote the Book of Life? A History of the Genetic Code Lily E. Kay Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA 2000. 470 pp. $60, £45. ISBN 0-8047-3384-8. Paper, $24.95, £17.95. ISBN 0-8047-3417-8. - It seems impossible to do science without metaphors. Biology since the 17th century has been a working out of Descarte's original metaphor of the organism as machine. But the use of metaphor carries with it the consequence that we construct our view of the world, and formulate our methods for its analysis, as if the metaphor were the thing itself. The organism has long since ceased to be viewed like a machine and is said to be a machine. The ways in which the metaphors of biology have molded the concepts and experiments of the science have been a preoccupation of the historian of molecular biology Lily Kay. In Who Wrote the Book of Life? her most recent and unfortunately final book (she died of cancer in December), Kay asks how the view that DNA is information that is written in a language whose words are in code has driven the research program and claims of molecular biology. Kay's analysis of the history of molecular genetics is poststructuralist. That is, while not denying the objective reality of genes, proteins, and cellular elements, it is grounded in the conviction that once a commitment to a particular representation of life is made--material, discursive and social--it assumes a kind of agency that both enables and constrains the thoughts and actions of biologists. Unfortunately, the outline of this claim in the early part of the book makes a formulaic use of the special jargon of poststructuralist theory, a jargon that will be impenetrable to any biologist not possessed of a considerable education in literary theory. But the biologist should persist, because the central chapters on Genetic Codes in the 1950s and Writing Genetic Codes in the 1960s present a compelling case for the ways in which the purely theoretical analysis of DNA as a code led to the determinative experiments that demonstrated the mechanism by which amino acid sequences are specified and constructed. Many biologists in the late 1950s (I among them) regarded with a certain contemptuous hauteur the attempts of renegade physicists to illumine the relation between gene and protein by engaging in the sort of cryptanalysis that became so romantic as a result of the wartime triumphs of Bletchley Park. But Kay shows quite convincingly that, although these codebreaking techniques could not in themselves provide the right answer, the view of DNA as code and amino acid sequence as plaintext was absolutely essential in the very conception of the critical experiments at the
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Reevaluating Lysenko
Shouldn't we also take a look at the life and career of the Soviet geneticist Nikolai Vavilov, who was the leading Mendelian geneticist in the Soviet Union of his time and who suffered imprisonment, where he died, because of his opposition to Lysenkoism? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Vavilov Jim Farmelant http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant -- Original Message -- From: c b cb31...@gmail.com To: Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx and the thinkers he inspired marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Reevaluating Lysenko Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2010 10:32:33 -0400 http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/2001-February/017071.html [Marxism-Thaxis] LYSENKO, VIEWS OF NATURE AND SOCIETY Charles Brown CharlesB at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Fri Feb 16 08:54:44 MST 2001 Previous message: [Marxism-Thaxis] LYSENKO, VIEWS OF NATURE AND SOCIETY Next message: [Marxism-Thaxis] Nepal, Maoism gathers strength Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] cburford at gn.apc.org 02/16/01 02:05AM At 09:00 15/02/01 -0800, you wrote: Heh, Charles, sometimes I still look for loons far, far to your left. Have a chuckle. ;-) http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Atrium/1091/lysenkotable.html However my impression is that Lysenko actually was not so completely wrong as he was made out to be in the west. Of course there were some very good aspects to Soviet Science: Luria was far ahead of the west, in emphasising neuronal circuits rather than individual loci as the organising unit for mental processes. ) Charles B:This site and an earlier one that Michael sent raise an interesting paradox: Lysenko ,the Stalinist ,was not the dogmatist in this argument. Lamarckian claims are against the central dogma of modern genetic theory. This article articulates the fundamentals of genetics in attacking them ( which is a timely clarification with the publishing of the human genome) For example, Senior Assisted Living Put your loved ones in good hands with quality senior assisted living. Click now! http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/c?cp=El-0iK6RTIIPhIrIxAuBMQAAJ1AP8ttsZd_TbiVxkZxsC3mBAAYAAADNAAASUQA= ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
