{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/781", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 781, "subject": "Wolfe's Lamarckism", "messages": 3, "voices": 2, "first": "1998-06-14T13:58:33+00:00", "last": "1998-06-15T12:12:02+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "adam louis stephanides", "address": "astephan at students.uiuc.edu" }, "date": "1998-06-14T13:58:33+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Wolfe's Lamarckism", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "On Fri, 5 Jun 1998 Craig Christensen wrote:\nMaybe you can explain why Wolfe defends Lamarckism (explicitly\nand implicitly), but never really explains why." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "and, I've read the same thing elsewhere in the archives. Could you point \nme to some examples of this? I'd like to read those over." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "A couple of examples I've recently come across:\n\nIn CASTLE OF DAYS, p. 225, he explicitly states his belief in Lamarckism.\n\nIn URTH OF THE NEW SUN there's a brief passage that seems most easily\nexplained Lamarckially (Lamarckianally?): \"On Urth, the mystes know that\neach continent has its own pattern for mankind, so that if people from one\nshift their abode to another, they will in a short time--fifty generations\nor so--come to resemble the original inhabitants.\" (73 of hardcover)\n\n--Adam" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "m.driussi", "address": "m.driussi at genie.com" }, "date": "1998-06-14T19:46:00+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Wolfe's Lamarckism", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "So attempts to link \"racial\" characteristics to geographical details\n(\"Caucasians are pale because they lived in caves and/or dark\nforests\"; \"Asians have a yellowish skin because of the yellow sands\nof the Gobi Desert\"; \"Tropical people are dark skinned in response to\ngreater influx of sunlight year round\") amounts to Lamarckism? Hmmm.\n\nAs opposed to something like, \"The pale mutant by chance wandered off\nthat way, into Europe by way of Central Asia, the reddish mutant went\nthat way, into the Americas by way of Alaska, the yellowish mutant\nwent . . . etc.\"? Is this form (a sort of Neo-Noah scenario) then\n\"Darwinism\"? (No, I'm not trying to open the debate on \"single\nhuman/hominid genesis\" versus \"multiple location human/hominid\ngenesis\"!)\n\nBut I thought that the English moths of Industrial England were\nalways cited as textbook examples of evolutionary process? That is,\nwhen the environment changed (through sooty pollution, in this case),\nsome moths had camouflage and some moths didn't--those that did,\nsurvived, until all remaining population (or majority, at least) had\nthe same advantage. Then when pollution was reduced, the process\nreversed itself.\n\n=mantis=" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "adam louis stephanides", "address": "astephan at students.uiuc.edu" }, "date": "1998-06-15T12:12:02+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Wolfe's Lamarckism", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Sun, 14 Jun 1998 mantis wrote:\nSo attempts to link \"racial\" characteristics to geographical details\n(\"Caucasians are pale because they lived in caves and/or dark\nforests\"; \"Asians have a yellowish skin because of the yellow sands\nof the Gobi Desert\"; \"Tropical people are dark skinned in response to\ngreater influx of sunlight year round\") amounts to Lamarckism? Hmmm." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "No, saying that the process would be complete within fifty generations\nseems to me most easily explained by Lamarckism. I don't believe that\nnatural selection alone would operate that quickly in this case." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "But I thought that the English moths of Industrial England were\nalways cited as textbook examples of evolutionary process? That is,\nwhen the environment changed (through sooty pollution, in this case),\nsome moths had camouflage and some moths didn't--those that did,\nsurvived, until all remaining population (or majority, at least) had\nthe same advantage. Then when pollution was reduced, the process\nreversed itself." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "But in the case of the moths, the selection pressures were a lot\nstronger--those who didn't have camouflage got eaten--so the changeover\nwas much more rapid.\n\n--Adam" } ] } ] }