From Michael Brooks at New Statesman:
According to a growing number of researchers, the standard story of the influence of genes is overblown. So many other factors influence how we turn out as individuals and how we evolve as a species that the fundamentals of biology need a rewrite. “This is no storm in an academic tearoom,” a group of biologists wrote in the journal Nature in October. “It is a struggle for the very soul of the discipline.”
An organism’s environment is another complicating factor. Shape, for instance, is supposed to be genetically determined in fish. However, a trip to Lake Malawi has shown how shallow that idea can be. The lake’s cichlid fish are genetically unique, yet some species look a lot like those in the nearby Lake Tanganyika. Their big, pouting lips and protruding foreheads seem to be a result of environmental pressures and developmental pathways and not genetic instructions.
The shape of a sycamore leaf, too, is determined only in part by genetics. The chemistry of the soil the tree is growing in, even just its wetness, affects the outcome. And wetness matters to commodore butterflies: they emerge from the chrysalis orange in the dry season and blue in the rains.
So, life is complicated. More.
Yes.
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News,
Is this the paper referred to by the quoted New Statesman article?
http://www.nature.com/news/doe.....nk-1.16080
Of related note:
podcast – Richard Sternberg – On Human Origins: Is Our Genome Full of Junk DNA? Part 2.
http://www.discovery.org/multi.....-dna-pt-2/
here is part 1 for those who missed it:
http://www.discovery.org/multi.....-junk-dna/
Yes, the standard story of the influence of genes is overblown. From “Features of the Universe and of Living Things” section of theory:
OT: Jonathan M, who has posted on UD before, had a debate on Unbelievable Christian radio today:
Unbelievable? Scientific evidence versus religious belief – Jonathan McLatchie & Elliot George debate – Saturday 15th November 2014
http://www.premierchristianrad.....rge-debate
as to this comment from the article in the OP,,,
,,,here is a related study,,,
Dr. Arthur Jones, who did his Ph.D. thesis in biology on cichlids, comments on “cichlidness”
Moreover, explaining the ‘shape’ of an organism is far more devastating to neo-Darwinian, ‘gene-centric’, explanations than he let on in the article: Neo-Darwinian evolution, which is predicated on reductive materialism, cannot explain the ‘form’ of DNA and proteins themselves much less can it explain the ‘form’ of an entire organism.
supplemental notes: