Then we are agreement, because that is what I said before, even several times, also in this thread. But what I additionally said is that the other humans are also not or almost not a part of most selection in a Darwinistic sense. No other living being than the human being is capable of circumventing the Darwinistic selection principle.
Yes. But are they fit? 
Yes, I know.
So basically you are confirming my theses.
Does the Darwinism belong to the angel network, James? 
Oh gyahd … 
One should never study history until one has excelled in the study of propaganda, else one will only learn propaganda. One should never listen to a historian who hasn’t first studied propaganda, else one will hear only propaganda. Historians are infamous for being the mindless targets and puppets of propagandists.
Such decisions wouldn’t be mine to make, but I can’t see how the essential concept, most probably under a different name, wouldn’t be included. The fundamental idea is merely that what survives a given situation is what was suited to survive it. One can’t hardly argue with that. But as “Darwinism”, much more serious implications are promoted (propagandized).
Darwinian propaganda is that you only die out because you were too weak. Everything is your own fault and flaw. No one caused any harm to other peoples (unless specifically taught otherwise, such as white males causing all harm to all other peoples). The only reason anyone dies is because they were not fit enough. They did not listen well enough. They were not smart enough. They did not eat properly. They did not exercise properly. They simply did not live properly. And the harder we make life for all people, especially the strong ones, the better all life will become because the weaker will die out, as they should.
Darwinism and Nietzscheanism go hand in hand.
As usual, something simple, almost too simple to even mention, becomes a tool for ideological propaganda. Propaganda is NOT a part of the Angel Network, except as a study of the methods of deception given to everyone, thus strongly limiting their use.
If you put up your essays on Darwin I’d read them. Maybe they will spark an actual discussion. I’ve followed the thread and I agree with you on natural selection. Whatever ways human beings consider one another “fit” – whatever ways human beings consider themselves to be selecting agents – does not matter for natural selection. Evolutionary fitness is an independent category of “fitness.”
No. You are wrong. All mechanisms of the Darwinistic “selection principle” and all human’s „selections“ (for example the “social selection”) do not coincide. Humans are luxury beings. They are too wealthy; they are too rich; so they have their own “selection principle”; they have, for example, their “social selection”. Culture is embedded in nature; the “social selection” is embedded in the “natural selection”; culture fights nature; the “social selection” contradicts the “natural selection”.
No. Absoluetly no. Evolutionary fitness is not an independent category of “fitness”.
Just because you and the other current Darwinists want the “fittness” to be more than the fitness does not change anything of the facts.
Okay you might want to look at this one. Sorry the cut and paste does not preserve the footnotes.
The traditional view from science, presented to nearly every school-child who ever studied Evolution is one that presents a teleological view of the development and search for the underlying mechanisms of life on earth. This places Darwin as a genius who uncovered natural selection in the face of objections from the church, and against a background of the misconception of rival views of evolution. All he lacked was knowledge of genes. The story of Gregor Mendel, presented erroneously as the genius who discovered genetics, is presented with great irony, as it is also recorded that his work on sweet-peas was conducted some years before the publication of the Origin of Species, between 1854-5, but lay unnoticed until 1900. If only the two great minds had come together, Darwin’s theory would have been completely vindicated. The other irony is the apparent tardiness with which such ideas seemed to have reached their inevitable conclusions. Such are the needs of the production of a paideia for the instruction of the student in science; and by extension the general public. This reflects what Kuhn suggests is the “persistent tendency to make the history of science look linear or cumulative.”
A closer contextualist examination of the development of these events demonstrates: that such ironies are false and are little more than artefacts of the methodology of history employed to present science as linear and progressive. The complexities of that development were rational and complex. Far from being a simple story of awakening genius, it becomes a story of hard work and struggle; that competing theories had much to commend them and the idea that gemmules were some kind of proto-genes can be safely rejected.
However, a purist contextualism is so concerned with the historicism of the past that it pretends to ignore the lessons and the interests of the present and offer a congealed past that is disinterested by loss of relevance to the present. This essay, whilst hoping to preserve the historical context, also hopes to be present-sensitive without being anachronistic. Some present-centred approaches can provide some interesting philosophical insights, as it is only with hind-sight that some things are made possible to identify. Although on the face of it Stanford seems to blame Darwin for a failure to use what he calls, “unconceived alternatives”, as this tendancy is a “clear and present danger to scientific realism.” He uses this idea to call into question whether or not at anytime can science rely on not making the same mistake in the present. Such “… inferences are capable of reaching true conclusions only when the truth is among the possible alternatives under consideration or the candidate explanations for a set of phenomena with which they begin.” Surely this is of great significance to science in general, and valuable to the contextual historian who seeks to explain, in political and social terms, the persistence of scientific beliefs that subsequently are rejected.
The Paradigm of the Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics
If Kuhn’s idea of that an established paradigm resists change there is no better example than the notion that inheritable characteristics can be acquired during the life-time of the parent and passed on to the progeny. This notion, usually attributed to Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829), know variously as the heritability of acquired characteristics, or soft inheritance; and its practical analogue pangenesis has been shown to have a very deep history. Inheritance of acquired characteristics (IAC) asserts that: “4. All that has been acquired or altered in the organization of individuals during their life is preserved by generation, and transmitted to new individuals which proceed from those which have undergone these changes;” whereas pangenesis, attributable mainly to Darwin, describes the process whereby such characteristics are transferred from each of the organs and parts of the body to the seed (or seed and egg where the role of the woman in reproduction is given any credit). Conway Zirkle has mapped the history of both these ideas, showing that they originate as far back as the Old Testament and Socratic Greece. It is clear that some of his examples ought to be taken with some caution. Any search for an idea can lead to the attribution of similar-sounding notions being attributed to it erroneously. Such hind-sight can produce connections are not without possible error. This is especially true when dealing with long dead languages and civilisations. Thus from the Old Testament: “In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have eaten a sour grape and the children’s teeth are set on edge,” can be interpreted in various ways that would not include inheritance at all. However when we move to Hippocrates the notion that he shared the notion that characteristics may be acquired is highly compelling; “For the seed comes from all parts of the body, healthy seed from healthy parts, diseased seed from diseased parts. If therefore, bald parents for the most part beget bald children, grey-eyed grey- eyed parents, grey-eyed children, squinting parents squinting children, and so on with other physical peculiarities, what prevents a long-headed parent having a long-headed child? At the present time long-headedness is less common than it was, for owing to intercourse with other men the custom [of mutilation] is less prevalent.” This is clearly a description of IAC, but also hints at pangenesis. Kirkle’s work is extensive and remarkable. He points to numerous thinkers through the medieval period and deals with the 16th to 19th centuries in more detail. The types of characteristic that can be acquired are various, but include traits both harmful and useful, but also mutilations. Kirle’s enquiry identifies around 50 or so commentaries on these phenomena, which include Pierre Gassendi, Immanuel Kant, Buffon, Marquise De Condorcet. Notable of these is Darwin’s own grandfather Erasmus, who has been erroneously called a ‘Lamarckian’, anticipated Lamarck by eight years, and is quoted as saying; “From their first rudiment, or primordium, to the termination of their lives, all animals undergo perpetual transformations; which are in part produced by their own exertions in consequence of their desires and aversions, of their pleasures and their pains, or of irritations, or of associations; and many of these acquired forms or propensities are transmitted to their posterity.” Thus, IAC is for Darwin an endemic assumption, which only requires the details of pangenesis to be proven to accommodate the needs of a deterministic and materialistic philosophy. The discovery of natural selection, described in The Origin of Species should then only be seen as adding another mechanism by which inheritance occurs and serves only to answer such deficiencies that made Lamarck’s conception untenable on its own. Sure enough, a close reading of Origin reveals several entries that assume and confirm Darwin’s acceptance of IAC. “If we suppose any habitual action to become inherited—and I think it can be shown that this does sometimes happen—then the resemblance between what originally was a habit and an instinct becomes so close as not to be distinguished.” p209 also “…that domestic instincts have been acquired and natural instincts have been lost partly by habit, and partly by man selecting and accumulating during successive generations…” p216. It is worth pointing out that Darwin uses the word ‘sometimes’ to describe the frequency and importance of IAC. Clearly attention to these acquired characteristics is limited, as Darwin‘s chief interest here is not to re-hash an old assumption but to press home his new discovery. But why would Darwin not choose to simply replace IAC with natural selection? Is it that such a move would have been problematic? It is arguable that Darwin thought that natural selection could simply not stand alone? In the absence of a ‘genetic’ theory there is a serious problem for the generation of change and of novelty. If it is true that the seeds and eggs remain unmodified during the life-time of an organism this can only lead to a situation where a continuing decrease in variation due to natural selection would occur as favoured traits are selected and re-selected by nature, and as other less useful traits are abandoned. Where, then would such novelties and improvements that give rise to new forms and new species arise? Natural selection would have to rely on fortuitous and tiny mutations alone, for which no account was known. There are admitted “Difficulties On Theory” laid out carefully in chapter six of Origin, but this problem is not there – nor need it be –inheritable change is understood to be the result of both IAC and natural selection combined. Thus, in the absence of an understanding of genetic recombination and mutation (as we understand it today), if inheritability moves from parent to progeny alone there will be little or no prospect for generation of novel forms except against the dictum natura non facit saltum which Darwin did not wish challenge. This explains, in part, his retention of acquired characteristics as a viable means to alter the inheritability of evolving forms against natural selection whose reliance on the removal of unfavourable traits by death would lead to the diminution of variability.
Darwin justifies his addition of natural selection to IAC in his critique of Lamarck by pointing out a significant deficiency, which cannot account for neuter insects. “For no amount of exercise, or habit, or volition, in the utterly sterile members of a community could possibly have affected the structure or instincts of the fertile members, which alone leave descendants. I am surprised that no one has advanced this demonstrative case of neuter insects, against the well-known doctrine of Lamarck.” Here Darwin justifies the need for more than just IAC alone, but subordinates it in favour of natural selection perhaps sensing the difficulties alone with the defence of the new theory and wishing to avoid the criticisms already in place against Lamarck from the most eminent natural philosophers such as Charles Lyell who in 1832 rubbished his IAC for lack of evidence: “We point out to the reader this important chasm in the chain of the evidence, because he might otherwise imagine that we had merely omitted the illustrations for the sake of brevity, but the plain truth is, that there were no examples to be found; and when Lamarck talks ‘of the efforts of internal sentiment,’ ‘the influence of subtle fluids,’ and the ‘acts of organization,’ as causes whereby animals and plants may acquire new organs, he gives us names for things, and with a disregard to the strict rules of induction, resorts to fictions, as ideal as the ‘plastic virtue,’ and other phantoms of the middle ages.” Lyell rejected the idea of acquired characteristics on the grounds that Lamarck had to employ unsubstantiated and metaphysical propositions. Clearly what was at stake was the failure of Lamarck to correctly identify a mechanism by which any such theory should be able to be seen to work. In the absence of physical evidence, all anedotes of how the appearance of characteristic might have been preserved in the progeny, need to be saved by a rigorous theory backed up by experimental evidence. So, whilst Darwin avoided the problems of IAC by suggesting a new mechanism, he also set the scene for a further examination into acquired characteristics for the future. In a sense he kept this item in his tool-box against future objections.
The search for the evidence of that mechanism; pangenesis, forms an important element of the remainder Darwin’s career. The survival of the idea of natural selection and IAC rested on many considerations as to their validity to the scientific community. What are the atoms of heredity? To what extent is there a blending, and can this blending dilute hard won adaptations? How are adaptations transmitted, if not by IAC then what is the source of variation; what stores the information that gives rise to the uniqueness of individual species, and their variants? If Darwin’s evolutionary theory depended on random unsolicited novelties then the shortness of the age of the earth, as determined by Kelvin, was a serious problem, especially since any fortuitous novelties could become ‘swamped’ as pointed out by Fleeming Jenkin. To the modern eye, it is asserted, that the answers to these problems rest in out understanding of DNA (and its structure, re-combination, mutability,) that has enhanced the science of genetics. For scientists in Darwin’s time, no such structures as genes were known, but analogs were the result of logical considerations of what was known and continually investigated as to the facts of inheritance. For Darwin these analogs were gemmules. But we should not be carried away with the idea that they were genes by another name. Their similarity is only in their functional significance, but the motivating need to establish the reality of the missing units of inheritability, by more than just the metaphysical propositions of Lamarck, would have to be material enough to face the objections to IAC that Lyell had already raised (above). However, whilst it is clear why Darwin thought it important to retain IAC and prove pangenesis; what cannot be so easily explained is why in the face of considerable evidence and opposition Darwin refused for so long to abandon it until his short note to Galton in from Feb 11th 1877, which reads, “I shall never work on inheritance again.” A provisional answer to Darwin’s persistence of his claim will be address in the conclusion.
Meanwhile: Gregor Mendel
Before the essay swings towards the narrative of the search for gemmules, it is worth taking a short digression to look at the case of Gregor Mendel. The traditional picture’s view that the ‘true’ answer had already been found, but lay dormant, in his paper on inheritance. Gregor Mendel in the traditional teleological view is credited with the discovery of genes. He has even been called the father of genetics. But what Mendel discovered was not genes, per se. Mendel identified a mathematical relationship that exists between inheritable characteristics that implied a unit of inheritability. However he was not searching for a ‘genetic model’ which would make his work significant, but was aiming at “the hybridists’ efforts to transmutate different species.” The understanding of dominance to recessive traits that yields a ration of 3:1, which every school-boy biologist has to swat, was not even a novel discovery of Mendel according to Zirkle and appears 11 years earlier than Mendel. Interestingly enough Darwin also uncovered a similar ratio (88:37) in his own breeding experiments with Antirrhinums in his work The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication. Volume 2. Interesting though Mendel’s discovery was to later eyes, contemporary paradigms and research aims concerned with inheritability in the 1860s were not conducive to the significance of his work. It is not so much that the importance of the work went unnoticed because Mendel’s work was obscure, but more the fact was that its significance was obscured by current paradigms that led to the work going relatively unnoticed. The change in the importance of the paper had to wait for its relevance to emerge.
Although there is a myth that Mendel may have visited Down House (completely unsubstantiated), it is more probably true that Darwin had never heard of Mendel, though an uncut copy of Mendel’s paper is said to have been present in Darwin’s effects. It is certainly the case, however, that Mendel was well aware of Darwin, has his own copy of Variation, translated into German is heavily underlined where it is suggested that gemmules may become “contaminated.” In his paper de Beer uses the word contaminated, but Darwin is talking about the mutability or ‘reversion’ of gemmules, which Mendel’s work showed to be not the case. Mendel’s contribution showed cases in which inheritability would ‘breed true’ implying an ‘atom’ of inheritance, beyond which no dilution or division could take place. This is, in essence, why he is credited with the discovery of genes: an arithmetical proof that such a thing exists implied from his ‘Laws of Segregation and of Independent Assortment.’ In practice inheritability is very complex and there are so few examples of simple dominance and recessiveness of gene pairs that demonstrate a single characteristic that this discovery would have to wait for its true significance to be known. It is argued effectively by de Beer that Darwin would not have understood its future importance any more than did Mendel. This should not detract from the hard work and keen interpretation by Mendel of his results; his conclusions were faithful to his investigation.
The Design of Pangenesis
Further study and experimentation in the wake of Origin failed to promote natural selection as a complete solution to the understanding of the facts of inheritance. Perhaps, then, it was with some courage, in 1868 with the publication of The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication. Volume 2, Darwin finally nailed his thesis to the door of acquired characteristics and gave his ‘provisional hypothesis’ for pangenesis, which states: “I have been led, or rather forced, to form a view which to a certain extent connects these facts by a tangible method… I venture to advance the hypothesis of Pangenesis, which implies that the whole organisation, in the sense of every separate atom or unit, reproduces itself.” The aim is to answer the many and various aspects of observable inheritability of a range of organisms, and their ability to regenerate limbs and reconstitute their structure after being cut into pieces.
It seems clear from his concluding remarks in Variation that Darwin’s attitude to the role of pangenesis, thought to be of minimal significance in Origin, is now taking centre stage to explain the development of useful characteristics through increased lived activity, and the diminution and eventual destruction of useless parts through lack of use. These acquired characteristics rely on a mechanism by which each part of the body when exercised will communicate (via a sort of budding) that usage to the germ cells in the organs or reproduction such that the next generation can benefit from the training and exertion of their parents by promoting those characteristic in due proportion to their usage. This accelerates evolution and is effective at answering the problems of the age of the earth with the speed of change and as characteristics favourable to the organism are reinforced they cannot be so easily swamped.
Darwin’s design of pangenesis relied heavily on his own experience and microscopic investigations with marine invertebrates. Indeed the terminology of gemmules is still employed to describe features of the bryozoans. The bryozoans live colonially. “The life of such colonies is co-ordinate he concluded, by a ‘central living mass’ of con- tenuous growth; while the ‘gemmules’ often arise from prior ‘granular’ matter in the parent.” The idea that a macro-organism such as man was an analog to a colony of bryozoa, formed the notion that the communication of information across different areas of the body to for a new progeny, by the transmission of gemmules. This aided Darwin in the development of a theory of pangenesis as early as 1840-1, it is claimed (Hodge, 1989). “Darwin now saw, in the ontogenetic replacement of hermaphroditism by separate sexes, vestiges of the phylogenetic origins of the means necessary for the progress that had led to mammals and man.” Simply put, Darwin has recognized that from the simplicity of the forms of nature from which gemmules have arisen, have also developed sexual rather than asexual forms of reproduction that have given rise to the higher animals and thus the underlying structure of higher animals still potentially contain gemmules. In a sense each part of the body produced buds that generated the information for the next generation in the higher animals as it had in the remote past.
The Search for Gemmules
In the year following the publication of Variation, 1869, Darwin’s half cousin, Francis Galton, designed and implemented experiments in blood transfusion to demonstrate the hypothesis of pangenesis. In these, blood was collected from the cut throats of common wild rabbits and transfused into pure bred rabbits to attempt mongrelisation in the rabbits by ‘alienised’ blood thought to contain gemmules of the wild varieties. It is tempting to claim that Galton was basing his experiments on another example of an age-old paradigm of the idea of the blood-line, that notion common from time immemorial that inheritance and blood were synonymous. A more charitable assessment of Galton’s idea was simply that blood was the most likely means by which gemmules could reach the eggs and sperm cells for the next generation of progeny. This choice, however, brought his cousin to disagreement after the results proved negative. Whilst Galton was keen to prove pangenesis for the family honour, his negative results and their hasty publication caused problems.
The initial round of experiments had used defibrinized blood to avoid clotting. After proving negative, and informing Darwin that the gemmules might have been carried in the fibrine, the experiment was adapted to use partly defibrinized blood and then finally to an experiment which had the rabbits in an embrace so as to facilitate direct whole blood transfer direct from the carotid arteries of each rabbit. By use of a borrowed formula Galton was able to estimate the defibrinized blood experiments were able to yield 99 -98% transfusion rate after 48 injections; the direct rabbit to rabbit whole blood experiments were thought to have achieved around 50%. So to keep the rabbits alive and strong enough to breed, everything that was (in)humanly possible was done to achieve maximum success. Galton was keen to publish his negative results, but this attended the criticism of Darwin who considered his hypothesis slighted. His pithy response in Nature, pointed to Galton’s mis-interpretation, in that, blood was never mentioned in his description of pangenesis in Variation; pangenesis being based on the lowest animals that had no blood at all and Darwin cites examples where communication of substances through the tissues is otherwise known and was likely to be the mechanism by which the gemmules were actually transmitted. Galton’s response is no less pithy and rather sarcastic, accusing Darwin of ambiguous language that had sent him on a “false quest.” His response includes a semantic argument about the ambiguous meanings of “freely, “diffused” and “circulate,” that had appeared in Variation. He even compares the ambiguity to the difference between the growl of a ape-like animal in imitation of an hyena from “his leader” (Darwin). Despite the pith, Galton ends with “Viva Pangenesis.” It is interesting to see the difference with which Forrest and Gillham deal with this exchange. Gillham seems to see Galton’s response as a “gallant” apology, whilst Forrest, quoting it at length observes that it is typical of Galton’s character. This demonstrates the difficulties with the identification of authorial intentionality as neither seemed to notice the apparent sarcasm.
It seems that the experiment was designed well to confirm pangenesis from a positive result but poor in design to conclude from a negative result that pangenesis could be invalidated. One has to point out that if gemmules were thought to attend the testes and eggs only immediately before breeding (such as the period of transfusion) then it would have been a good test. However, this leaves open the idea that the testes and eggs might be informed by the gemmules for a longer period prior to the period of transfusion or indeed that blood played no part in their transmission pointed out by Darwin. What must have irked Galton is Darwin’s failure to mention that blood might have not been significant considering all the trouble that Galton had gone to help his cousin establish the truth of his hypothesis. And this was his primary aim rather than to falsify it: Galton’s experimental design was a very good way to establish pangenesis, not a very good way of ruling it out. What it did disprove was the idea that blood and inheritance as understood for generations was unlikely. Despite their disagreement the tests continued under the closer scrutiny of Darwin, during the next two years, but no further results were written-up. According to Forrest, Galton’s further works in which this issue was mentioned; On Blood Relationship (1872) and A Theory of Heredity (1875), represent a “partial rejection” of pangenesis. Gilliam deals with these papers in more detail and points to Galton’s remark that “acquired modifications are barely, if at all, inherited, in the correct sense of the word”, and here we find for the first time the expression of what would become known as Weismann’s germ-line theory, that would establish the dominance of natural selection over acquired characteristics once and for all. On Nov 7th 1875, in a letter to Galton, Darwin’s own resistance to this paper is clear, and he attacks Galton’s language in a similar way to that which Galton had attacked Darwin’s theory of pangenesis (in May 4th 1871, Nature, p 5). Here Darwin points to ill defined ‘muddle-headed’ terms such as “stirp”, “germ”, “reside”, and others, and clearly continues in his defence of acquired characteristics. The similarity in tack seems to be no co-incidence. In February of the previous year (1874) Darwin in the preface of the Second edition of The Descent of Man, and despite experiments to the contrary, states clearly; “I may take this opportunity of remarking that my critics frequently assume that I attribute all changes of corporeal structure and mental power exclusively to the natural selection of such variations as are often called spontaneous; whereas, even in the first edition of the ‘Origin of Species,’ I distinctly stated that great weight must be attributed to the inherited effects of use and disuse, with respect both to the body and mind.” Darwin is being disingenuous: the “sometimes happens” of Origin has now transmuted to “great weight” in Descent.
Far from pulling back from pangenesis Darwin asserted it with even greater force than before. The Descent of Man is also a remarkable document for the way in which Darwin used descriptions of ‘lower races’ with sympathy unusual for his time. “Although the existing races of man differ in many respects, as in colour, hair, shape of skull, proportions of the body, &c., yet if their whole organisation be taken into consideration they are found to resemble each other closely in a multitude of points. Many of these points are of so unimportant or of so singular a nature, that it is extremely improbable that they should have been independently acquired by aboriginally distinct species or races… The same remark holds good with equal or greater force with respect to the numerous points of mental similarity between the most distinct races of man. The American aborigines, Negroes and Europeans differ as much from each other in mind as any three races that can be named; yet I was incessantly struck, whilst living with the Fuegians on board the “Beagle,” with the many little traits of character, shewing how similar their minds were to ours; and so it was with a full-blooded negro with whom I happened once to be intimate.” Darwin is making a plea for the unity of human kind by asserting the idea of monogenesis, against those that wanted to explain human differences by proposing separate instances of evolution. It can be argued that in trying to preserve a place for pangenesis, in Descent, he is attempting to empower the races of by minimising their differences. This is particular significance in the conclusion of this essay.
The only concession Darwin made was an adjustment in the following edition of Variation where he rejected pangenesis to exclude blood as a possible carrier of gemmules in a footnote that mentioned Galton. It was not until 1877 that a turning point had been reached and Darwin finished with the whole issue of inheritance. He continues to work until his death, and publishes The Life of Erasmus Darwin, The Movement of Plants, and Vegetable Mould and Earthworms. Whilst these are interesting and useful works, they do not attend to the vexed question of inheritance and the word pangenesis did not appear again.
Amongst other experiments in search of IAC, Weisman cut off the tails of 100s of rodents over 22 generations to see if mutilation could be an ‘acquired’ characteristic, to no avail. In any event by the 1892 reprint of Hereditary Genius, Galton whilst commending its explanatory power finally dismisses pangenesis in favour of natural selection. And both he and Weisman (as early as 1883) assert the independence of the germ line in explanations of inheritance. It was eventually Hugo de Vries who in his analysis of his own experiments in Intracellular Pangenesis (1899), rejected the transportation hypothesis in favour of his material unit hypothesis, and it was he also that finally gave due credit to Mendel’s work.
Concluding remarks
No one, not even a scientist, can be separated from his political beliefs and his political interests; Darwin was no exception. His retention of the possibility of pangenesis may have more than just practical scientific reasons. To examine this it is necessary to remove our perview from the history of science context and consider the context of Darwin’s political life. His stubborn insistence on retaining the hypothesis of pangenesis can be argued to be a resistance to the impact that natural selection had brought to the world. The major impact that Darwin’s ideas were having in the late nineteenth century outweighs any scientific discovery in history in terms of the deep impact on the possible social and political mores of the day. It had deep philosophical even psychological implication for the way the human race see ourselves in relation to nature. If the Copernican turn had shifted man from the centre of the universe then Darwin had robbed him of his special place in creation. But more than that he had robbed man of purpose in the natural world, a sense of purpose that had been part of the basic assumptions of the role of nature since Aristotle. As Dewey pointed out: for thousands of years, the concept of species, or eidoς a fixed and final cause was a central principle of nature; the assumption that nature relied on a progressive organisation which does not cease until a true and final term, teloς, was all to be completely overturned by the identification of a simple mechanism which robbed the universe of a unifying force even unto the consequences of lived experience to affect the improvement of one’s own seed. With natural selection evolution was not even a cause of change but was relegated to an effect: the cause of change was based on a contingency of death and survival alone. Pangenesis was an antidote to the cold hard reality of natural selection. Pangenesis was able to do at least this: give people the ability to enhance the biological prospect of their own progeny. They may have been robbed of a divine force and universal purpose but at least they could escape the bonds of birth and class by education, diligent hard work and the exercise of their vital functions. All that lower classes and races lacked were the appropriate opportunities. If the thesis of Desmond and Moore that Darwin was motivated by his hatred of slavery, and it was his ‘cause’ to expunge it, then the possible role of pangenesis provided for the lower classes, millions of slaves and subservient races the prospect of improvability which natural selection alone could never provide. Their liberty would be the opportunity with which to exercise their pangenic potential. Pangenesis preserved the Lockean dream of human improvability. For natural selection to be the only mechanism to improve their potential, they would have to rely on the death of the many and the survival of a few. Despite Darwin’s eventual abandonment of the search for the mechanism of human inheritance, and the problem of the survival of the hypotheses of pangenesis, Darwin never lost sight of the recognition of the depth of potential for all humans of every race; always asserting their unity; minimizing their differences and recognizing the unity of their mental powers as is shown in Descent of Man and The Expressions of the Emotions in Man and Animals.
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He studied “intellectual history” - as if “history” was not enough.
But it is no surprise that Darwinism is merely teached in history. Darwinism is mereely one of the religious parts of the modern (hi)story.
Allegedly he wrote his “essays” in 1992 and 1995, but there are some books as sources mentioned that were later published - namely 2001, 2004, 2006 - than he allegedly wrote his “essays” ( 
). Compare the bibliography of his “essays”.
Is that how historians work? No, it is just “first class”!
Forgive me the many smilies, because they might remind you of Platospuppy. But the story of those “essays” is just too funny!
Not only the historians.
One of the really good historians - Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886) - said once “The historian has to become old, because one can merely understand great changes, if one has personally experienced great changes” (loosely translated) …! Leopold von Ranke became very old …
And they go hand in hand with Marxism and Freudianism too.
For those who do not understand: I did not say that Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud went hand in hand. I am saying that Darwinism, Marxism, Nietzscheanism, and Freudianism go hand in hand.
Historically similar times produce culturally similar humans.
“Teached” ??? “Teached” ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING?
FFS
I did my BA in 1992-95, and my MA 2010.
If you had taken the trouble read you might has figured that out.
Yes, because “intellectual historians” are teached, all others are taught.
You seem to be very frustrated. Otherwise you would not use such silly and antisocial words. Studied and academic persons do not use those words you always use. You have never studied.
I do not beleive it, as I already said (see above).
Am I bothered?
The discriminating ability of a person who cannot spell “taught” is not worthy of me.
And for someone who, unlike Arminius, was raised speaking English, one would think on a collegiate essay he might learn better than to say, “All that lower classes and races lacked were the appropriate opportunities.” 
“Why can’t the English teach the English how to speak!?”
James wrote:
And generally with a kind of moral or aesthetic - this is better than what did not thrive.
If you thrive, say, in a corporate environment - pretend that things are good wiht you and your are thriving, compete always at root with others, kowtow to power figures, overwork and so on - than you are a better organism. If you thrive in modern society - which it seems to me includes high tolerance for shallow, meaningless stress - commuting, flood of information, distraction, lack of creativity, boredom, rigidity…- than you are more fit. The presumption is this society is the environment (and implicitly normal and given) and so we can judge the merit of organisms (individual citizens) by how well they thrive.
But if you actually look at the individuals, you will find that yes, sure, many who do not do well are fairly uninteresting or damaged organisms, but also that some of the most interesting, complicated, deep, creative individuals do not thrive in THAT PARTICULAR agar agar.
The society itself is not evaluated in terms of its overall health. It is taken as something like the amount of sunlight that strikes the earth in the various seasons, when in fact it is a highly cultured, particular, odd and potentially anti-life milieu. Long term effects - like dumbing down, extinction, elimination of culture with depth, punishment of creativity and the results of doing that long term, the creation of a simpler, more controllable species in general, the cattlelization of humans - are ignored.
The way the psychiatrists and pharma interact with citizens is one example, but there are many others. Sure, some people who are damaged may do better - in compromised form - through their model. But anyone with an ounce of real life in their bodies is suddenly diagnosible. IE viewed as damaged.
Because they are teached and not taught.
Because they are teached and not taught. What I meant was this: They are influenced by the propaganda without even realizing it. So they also do not realize that the Darwinistic selection principle is partly false. They are just teached, not taught.
That is the difference between “intellectuat historians” and real historians. “Intellectuat historians” will never realize how religious Darwinists are, because they are just teached, not taught. So it is also no surprise to me when “intellectuat historians” do not know the difference between “fit” and “unfit”, or the difference between “spelling”" and “conjugating”, or many other differences, because they are teached, not taught.
Arminius, can you define “fit”?
Yes. I can. And what about you, Phoneutria? Can you define “fit”?
Indeed I can!
high five
Would you define it in this thread, right here, again if you have already defined it before, for focus/emphasis?
Oh, this would refresh the discussion we already had. But okay, the following quotes refer to the term “fitness” I subscribe:
The following post refers to nothing else than to the human beings:
Are you satisfied, Phoneutria?
I can guarantee, that will never happen.