Subject: (urth) Lamarck, Wolfe and Exultants

From: Ryan Dunn <ryan at liftingfaces.com>
Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2010 04:52:58 +0000

Wolfe is quoted as thus...

"I didn't know that anybody was working in the Lamarckian area, today to be honest with you. I think somebody should be because I have never been convinced that Lamarck was wrong."

Lamarckism states that acquired traits are inherited.

This led me to a question that may have been covered...

Are exultants a product of Lamarckism? It could explain the lingering height as a physical character trait, and might take less time than Darwinian theology to see an affect.

If so, were the original exultants genetically modified to be taller, more idealized, and more hierogrammatesque, and their offspring through a few iterations thus took on some of those genetically mutated characteristics into their own genes?

...ryan

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2010 08:11:57 +0000

> Lamarckism states that acquired traits are inherited.

Yes, but "Lamarckism" is not a product of Lamarck himself. Inheritance 
of acquired characteristics is an ancient idea in one form or another, 
and Darwin allowed something like it in his idea that somatic tissues 
generated heritable "gemmules" in response to the development or disuse 
of various organs.

Wikipedia says Lamark's contributions were that inheritance of new 
traits is facilitated by an alchemical process that creates new 
complexity, and that existing traits could be adapted to the 
environment. This might be what Wolfe means when the BOTNS says that the 
continents shape new peoples into the form of the old.

> Are exultants a product of Lamarckism? It could explain the lingering height as a physical character trait, and might take less time than Darwinian theology to see an affect.

Exultant height seems to be a mixture of effects. Exultants' bastards 
are commonly believed to be taller than the common folk, which would be 
plausible if they were genetically modified "supermen". This prevents 
commoners from posing as exultants, and lets the bastards be readily 
identified for elimination or co-option before they are fully of age to 
make real trouble. Ultan is almost certainly one of these supermen, 
given his impressive mental, physical, and charismatic traits other than 
his blindness, and Thea and Thecla are likewise gifted with pleasing 
voices and faces, deep thinking, and quickness if not strength.

However, there is also talk of "royal jelly" being used to make them 
taller still, and this has been speculated to be growth hormones or even 
the actual glands taken from the khaibits, who don't have to be 
particularly tall to serve their purpose. This might mean that some of 
the exultant families were ennobled after the art of genetic 
modification was lost or banned or simply withheld, and have to resort 
to individual growth treatments as they have not yet intermarried enough 
with the older "supermen" stock. Vodalus may be an example of this kind, 
as he is described as very tall but slender, and only a little taller 
than Thea.

I've just now come across Master Gurloes' comment on Thecla's ancestry 
in SHADOW, Chapter VII that seems to confirm this: "'Not just an armiger 
family. High blood.'"

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
IEEE Student Chapter Blog at
< http://ieeetamut.org >

---

From: Jack Smith <jack.smith.1946 at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2010 10:22:20 +0000

Exultants could result from Darwinian evolution alone, without any genetic
engineering.   According to Wolfe, Severian is about 6' or 6'1", and Thecla
is a head taller (around 7' or 7'1").  Male exultants seem to be about 7'6"
to 8'.    Such heights are uncommon for us, but still within the range of
the possible.  The tallest NBA player is 7'6" and the tallest WNBA player is
7'2".

Imagine a planet colonized by NBA and WNBA players.  Given 10 or 20
generations and sexual selection in favor of height, you could get a
population where the average height could be 7' to 8'.

I used to live near David Robinson (7'1"), the center for the NBA Spurs.
Once I was walking past his house and he and his two sons (about 10 or 12
years old) were outside his gate.  The sons were taller than me.

On Thu, Aug 5, 2010 at 12:52 AM, Ryan Dunn <ryan at liftingfaces.com> wrote:

> "I didn't know that anybody was working in the Lamarckian area, today to be
> honest with you. I think somebody should be because I have never been
> convinced that Lamarck was wrong."
>
> Are exultants a product of Lamarckism? It could explain the lingering
> height as a physical character trait, and might take less time than
> Darwinian theology to see an affect.
>
> If so, were the original exultants genetically modified to be taller, more
> idealized, and more hierogrammatesque, and their offspring through a few
> iterations thus took on some of those genetically mutated characteristics
> into their own genes?
>
> ...ryan
> _______________________________________________
> Urth Mailing List
> To post, write urth at urth.net
> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
>

-- 
Best wishes,
Jack
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From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2010 14:15:54 +0000

>> "I didn't know that anybody was working in the Lamarckian area, today 
>> to be honest with you. I think somebody should be because I have 
>> never been convinced that Lamarck was wrong."
>>
> generated heritable "gemmules" in response to the development or 
> disuse of various organs.

Actually, aspects of Larmarckism are making a comeback with the 
understanding that our bodies are determined by more than our DNA 
blueprints. The following is a link to an abstract of a study that 
argues that your longevity is significantly determined by whether your 
grandparents experienced famine in their childhood.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/x61m87x016213823/

Obviously, if a trait can be acquired across generations based on 
experiences occurring before the second generation was even conceived, 
this could --over time-- have an evolutionary effect.

u+16b9

---

From: Ryan Dunn <ryan at liftingfaces.com>
Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2010 14:42:57 +0000

Does this mean that common folk should be notably shorter then? Severian's height, were he on our planet, in most Western cultures, wouldn't raise an eyebrow high enough to stir thoughts of exulted blood.

I know his high cheekbones also indicates he may be some sort of Urthian bastard royalty, but I still wonder about the size of non exultant people of the Commonwealth.

...ryan

On Aug 5, 2010, at 6:22 AM, Jack Smith <jack.smith.1946 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Exultants could result from Darwinian evolution alone, without any genetic engineering.   According to Wolfe, Severian is about 6' or 6'1", and Thecla is a head taller (around 7' or 7'1").  Male exultants seem to be about 7'6" to 8'.    Such heights are uncommon for us, but still within the range of the possible.  The tallest NBA player is 7'6" and the tallest WNBA player is 7'2".

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2010 15:22:17 +0000

> this could --over time-- have an evolutionary effect.

This may or may not be an "acquired" trait so much as a flexible
phenotype. There's also jazz like epigenetics and reversion that can
effectively undo the adaptation in a small number of generations; we need
many generations to be sure. But this may not have been available to the
author at the time of writing.

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2010 15:35:31 +0000

> Does this mean that common folk should be notably shorter then? Severian's
> height, were he on our planet, in most Western cultures, wouldn't raise an
> eyebrow high enough to stir thoughts of exulted blood.

The Commonwealth has poor nutrition and health care by our standards, and
Master Gurloes remarks on how this affects the growth of the apprentices
in SHADOW.

> I know his high cheekbones also indicates he may be some sort of Urthian
> bastard royalty, but I still wonder about the size of non exultant people
> of the Commonwealth.

The autocthons (natives) have even worse prospects and are described as
small in several places. Apparently, this allows Father Inire to pass as a
really old shaman with rickets or something.

---

From: Lane Haygood <lhaygood at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2010 15:38:27 +0000

Lamarckism is making a comeback in the pseudoscience of evolutionary
psychology.

It's still just as much crap as Lamarckism is, but the spectre of
heritable acquired traits just will not die from the popular
consciousness, probably because the ideas of "corruption of blood" and
the "sins of the father" are so prevalent within our mythologies.  It
breaks down along the same inscrutable fault lines as the "nature
versus nurture" debate about how we, and other organisms, learn our
behavior.  How much is instinct?  How much is conditioned?

As best I can tell, the answer is "a mix of both" in unknown ratios
because the kinds of experiments needed to falsify a Lamarckian
hypothesis are deeply, deeply unethical.  The way one feels toward
evolutionary psychology (and related doctrines) tends to have more to
do with how one feels about a range of philosophical issues, from
one's stance on the mind, to the metaphysics of souls, to base
factionalism.  So I recognize my own rejection of it as calumny
reflects my own particular biases against such concepts as "human
nature," a materialist account of consciousness, or phenotypic
properties being causally-linked to genetic properties.

But I think I have darn good reasons to find such concepts
objectionable, so via the transitive property of bad ideas, modern
Lamarckisms are vile calumny.

LH

---

From: Jack Smith <jack.smith.1946 at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2010 15:43:12 +0000

I believe there are a number of references to Severian being tall,  and he's
around 6' and his mother is probably an exultant.  I think Urth's common
folk are shorter than people today.  But you only have to go back two
hundred years or so to have average heights 6 or 8 inches less than today.
 This is mostly due to better nutrition.  On Urth with its dying sun and
spent resources, we would expect nutrition levels to be worse and people to
be shorter.

On Thu, Aug 5, 2010 at 10:42 AM, Ryan Dunn <ryan at liftingfaces.com> wrote:

> bastard royalty, but I still wonder about the size of non exultant people of
> the Commonwealth.
>
> ...ryan
>
> > Exultants could result from Darwinian evolution alone, without any
> genetic engineering.   According to Wolfe, Severian is about 6' or 6'1", and
> Thecla is a head taller (around 7' or 7'1").  Male exultants seem to be
> about 7'6" to 8'.    Such heights are uncommon for us, but still within the
> range of the possible.  The tallest NBA player is 7'6" and the tallest WNBA
> player is 7'2".

-- 
Best wishes,
Jack
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From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2010 15:51:43 +0000

On 8/5/2010 5:22 AM, Jack Smith wrote:
> genetic engineering.   According to Wolfe, Severian is about 6' or 6'1",
> and Thecla is a head taller (around 7' or 7'1").  Male exultants seem to
> be about 7'6" to 8'.    Such heights are uncommon for us, but still
> within the range of the possible.  The tallest NBA player is 7'6" and
> the tallest WNBA player is 7'2".
>

The initial population would involve such extreme artificial selection 
from across a huge pool that I would hesitate to call it Darwinian 
evolution alone. you'd also need genetic screening at the least to make 
a go of it to avoid reinforcing the pathological sources of height, and 
it would need to be a pretty hospitable world to make sure big appetites 
did not have trouble being fed long enough to reach sexual maturity and 
survive mate selection.

There could also be counter pressure from smaller colonists who were un 
chosen and get stuck mating with the poor and the equally short, unless 
  the cagers practice wasteful culling. Maybe you could get two groups 
of the few talls and the many shorties who avoid intermariage, presuming 
the talls retain some advantage they can leverage to offload their 
greater support requirements onto the shorties in the form of tribute.

But breeding for tallness and prettiness and good loud voices, without 
lots of residual variation, is hard to work out, esp when human sexual 
selection has always been bent in favor of wealth and power.

---

From: David Duffy <davidd at qimr.edu.au>
Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2010 23:49:08 +0000

> Lamarckism is making a comeback in the pseudoscience of evolutionary

No, this is not correct.  The basis for evolutionary psychology come 
from standard "neo-Darwinist" behaviour genetics and sociobiology.

> the "sins of the father" are so prevalent within our mythologies.

> It breaks down along the same inscrutable fault lines as the "nature 
> behavior.  How much is instinct?  How much is conditioned? As best I can 
> tell, the answer is "a mix of both" in unknown ratios

Sure, but able to be studied indirectly in a variety of observational 
designs

> hypothesis are deeply, deeply unethical.

I presume you are thinking about humans here.  There is plenty of evidence 
of epigenetic inheritance, including transmission of behaviours, in other 
species.  Furthermore, the mechanisms, eg genetic imprinting, are well 
understood mechanistically (sections of DNA are marked by addition of 
methyl groups to cytosines).

> The way one feels toward evolutionary psychology (and related 
> doctrines) tends to have more to do with how one feels about a range of 
> philosophical issues, from one's stance on the mind, to the metaphysics 
> of souls, to base factionalism.  So I recognize my own rejection of it 
> as calumny reflects my own particular biases against such concepts as 
> "human nature," a materialist account of consciousness, or phenotypic 

I think Wolfe has thought deeply about this, starting from _tFHoC_, 
_tDoDI_, to the chems, possession, and Horn-Pas-Silk.  Specifically, the 
chems have souls and an interest in right thought and action, but their 
*minds* can be completely controlled by others, and they are aware of 
this.  For "ordinary" humans, their actions are just as frequently 
controlled by society and exigency, even if they have more 
freedom of thought, so that practically they end up in the same boat. 
Many of his characters do as much good as they can within strong 
constraints. Those constraints can easily be genetic predispositions to 
particular behaviours.

Further, staying on Wolfe, he definitely believes in human nature, and 
that this will persist indefinitely, and will be seen in other species or 
in robots.  A la Lem, you will know when you have a true artificial 
intelligence when it demonstrates laziness, duplicity, self interest, and 
a tendency to do other things, such as contributing to news groups, when 
it should be working.

Cheers, David Duffy.

---

From: David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>
Date: Fri, 06 Aug 2010 01:53:04 +0000

This is what I thought, and it's a strong argument. But there's an 
equally strong argument that the exultants were modified.

Both together make more sense than either alone.

Jack Smith wrote:
> I believe there are a number of references to Severian being tall, 
>  and he's around 6' and his mother is probably an exultant.  I think 
> Urth's common folk are shorter than people today.  But you only have 
> to go back two hundred years or so to have average heights 6 or 8 
> inches less than today.  This is mostly due to better nutrition.  On 
> Urth with its dying sun and spent resources, we would expect nutrition 
> levels to be worse and people to be shorter.
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Aug 5, 2010 at 10:42 AM, Ryan Dunn <ryan at liftingfaces.com 
> <mailto:ryan at liftingfaces.com>> wrote:
>
>     Does this mean that common folk should be notably shorter then?
>     Severian's height, were he on our planet, in most Western
>     cultures, wouldn't raise an eyebrow high enough to stir thoughts
>     of exulted blood.
>
>     I know his high cheekbones also indicates he may be some sort of
>     Urthian bastard royalty, but I still wonder about the size of non
>     exultant people of the Commonwealth.
>
>     ...ryan
>
>     On Aug 5, 2010, at 6:22 AM, Jack Smith <jack.smith.1946 at gmail.com
>     <mailto:jack.smith.1946 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     > Exultants could result from Darwinian evolution alone, without
>     any genetic engineering.   According to Wolfe, Severian is about
>     6' or 6'1", and Thecla is a head taller (around 7' or 7'1").  Male
>     exultants seem to be about 7'6" to 8'.    Such heights are
>     uncommon for us, but still within the range of the possible.  The
>     tallest NBA player is 7'6" and the tallest WNBA player is 7'2".
>     To post, write urth at urth.net <mailto:urth at urth.net>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
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