Brian Goodwin, How the Leopard Changed Its Spots (Princeton: Princeton University, 2001),
Reductionist biology is a powerful analytic tool, but the intrinsic complexities of life mean that the consequences of genetic and ecological manipulation are forever unpredictable (viii). It should be noted that genes play a significant but limited role in morphogenesis (xv). (Regulatory proteins, I submit, play a much more vital role in morphogenesis than do the genes alone). Strict Darwinism shortchanges our biological natures, as we are every bit as much altruistic as we are selfish, creative as we are destructive, and playful as we are repetitive (xvii). In recent years, organisms have disappeared as the fundamental units of life, to our demise in research endeavors (1). Genocentric biology is partly to blame for the lack of focus on organisms, and it has resulted in a sort of tunnel vision – the assumption that genetics can explain everything, the inability to recognize the limitations of genetics, and the reluctance to entertain other possibilities. Understanding genes and their activities is not enough to understand the properties of organisms. Organisms, then, cannot be reduced to the properties of their genes (3). Goodwin submits to the notion that biology should be organocentric rather than genocentric (3). Because genes can replicate themselves, and can organize themselves slightly into different arrangements is the reason – seemingly – why genes are seen to be the key to unlock the secrets of organisms. However, Sonneborn clearly demonstrated cytoplasmic inheritance in his experiments with Paramecium and their cilia (T.M. Sonneborn, “Gene Action in Development”, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London (B) 176 (1970): 347-366). The cytoplasm, it must be remembered, has within it a complex and intricate structure in the form of a network of protein polymers. So then, inheritance does not rely on genes alone. Goodwin posits that genes can select or stabilize one of the alternative forms available to organisms (16). Organisms are not molecular machines (197). Biology must assert the primacy of process over event, of relationship over entity, and of development over structure (205).
Darwin built upon previous notions of adaptation and inheritance and added his principle of natural selection. This natural selection accounted for extinction as well as the survival force that changed the frequencies of species within populations. Thomas Henry Huxley, one of his ablest supporters, possessed devastating debating skills (23). August Weismann resolved Darwin’s inconsistencies regarding heredity in proposing that the hereditary material found within germ cells directs the formation of the organism throughout development, whereas the soma (i.e. the adult organism) cannot influence the hereditary material within the germ cells. Neo-Darwinism can be characterized as the adventure of the genes (116). As Ernst Mayr, an eminent biologist has noted, there is no evidence for the gradual emergence of novelty by the gradual accumulation of small adaptive modifications along the evolutionary epic (Ernst Mayr, Toward a New Philosophy of Biology, Cambridge: Harvard University, 1988).
Dawkins summarizes Darwinian principles in the following manner in The Selfish Gene: 1) organisms are composed of genes that are programmed solely to leave copies of themselves, and hence they are inherently selfish; 2) the more successful selfish genes survive in the competition of fitness; 3) the struggle for maximal fitness within the environ is endless, hence there is a perpetual struggle; 4) humans can develop contradictive altruistic properties to offset the selfish nature of genes.
The proposition that “the collection of chromosomes in the fertilized egg constitutes the complete set of instructions for determining the timing and details of [everything biological]” (C. Delisi, :The Human Genome Project,” American Scientist 76, 1998, 488-493, 491), is not correct, despite the insistence of Macroevolutionists from Darwin to Dawkins might suggest otherwise. The morphology of organisms cannot be explained by their genes alone. In order for the derivation of complexity to occur, DNA first has to be enclosed within a cellular context.
Genetic programs can do no more than specify when and where particular proteins within the developing embryo are produced. Therefore, many properties of organisms and their parts can only be explained as the dynamic properties of excitable media. We should replace the phrase natural selection with the phrase dynamic stabilization, as this phrase more accurately depicts the process (53).
Morphogenesis refers to the complex process of developing an adult form of an organism through well-defined stages that begins with the zygote (80). During reproduction, each species produces gametes with genes defining parameters that specify what morphogenetic trajectory the zygote will follow. Out of complexity, nonlinear dynamics, robust order emerges (116). Underlying the diversity found within nature is an unexpected and startling degree of order.
Genes interact with one another, limiting thereby their domains of activity, also known as inhibitory interactions. Genes do not control development, it must be noted; instead, they cooperate in producing variations on generic themes. Genes are modifiers, not generators, of morphology.
Goodwin has some good info re: asymmetry. He, somewhat advocating the “evo-devo” school of thought within morphogenesis (i.e. that early mutations in development RADICALLY alter later developments), notes that development, by and large, is merely a sequence of symmetry breaking. At the beginning, nearly all cells are symmetrical along the anterior-posterior axis, only then to break symmetry and become specialized, usu. under the direction of the HOX gene family. Goodwin notes that the ‘drivers’ of evolution, then, are those regulatory genes that alter symmetry patterns (Goodwin, 1994, 148-150).