Anthony Cerrato  wrote:-


> GH:-
> ....Consider, for example, that your body generates over 100
> million different
> antibodies at any one moment, given a genome with about
> 30,000 genes.  Of
> course the genome would have to encode everything else about
> the organism,
> too, if it were really a blueprint.your body generates over
> 100 million different
> antibodies at any one moment, given a genome with about
> 30,000 genes.

> Tony (TC):
> The "blueprint" is the information which tells the body how
> to _develop_ the organized information you speak of! It of
> course does not tell the body how to react to all
> contingencies, but provides the appropriate response
> programs to do so.
> I think you are entwined in a semantic black hole here--yes,
> there are self-organizing systems, but you seem to imply
> that they arise out of thin air. It even sounds as if they
> are, themselves, somewhat anthropomorphic. In fact, they are
> purely the results of physical laws.

JE:-
The entire plastic adaptation is indeed "inherited"
but not every response that such a plastic adaptation can 
make is regarded by populations genetics to be "heritable".
At the moment, using Fisher's dictum, each plastic response
is "inherited" but not "heritable" and thus "not
selectable".
Heritable is strictly defined as just _additive_ genetic 
epistasis (additive genomic gene associations).
C.H. Waddington, over 50 years ago, was aware of this anomaly
within population genetics. What it amounts to is the deletion
of genuine genetic epistasis. Population genetics fudges the
problem by redefining additive gene associations (these were
the only associations said by Fisher to be heritable) as "additive
epistasis". All this meant was zero epistasis because all
genuine epistasis is defined as non additive. The fact that
the human genome only has 30,000  or so genes yet millions
of "heritable" and thus "selectable" phenotypes exist then
_very_ clearly, deleting all genuine gene epistasis including
the most critical of them all: gene fitness epistasis (allowing
organism fitness altruism as measured by Hamilton' rule) leaves
the population genetics assumption of what is heritable
and selectable and what is not in the red by millions.

Waddington rewrote Fisher and Haldane's basic population
genetics equations to include one more variable: developed
in x. This critical change was based on a lifetimes work on 
genetic canalisation and assimilation, both of which are based on
the heritability and thus the selection of _non_ additive 
gene associations. His work was soundly ignored and remains 
so to this very day. It appears that the "only additive"
gene association school of heritability rules even in 2004
within population genetics. It also appears that this is 
the case because only this school allows organism 
fitness altruism to be selectable via heuristic _independent_
gene fitnesses. In order to preserve Hamilton's precious
view that fitness altruism can evolve within nature, it is
important to keep arguing that only additive epistasis
constitutes "heritable" epistasis even though the maths
is empirically out by the millions.

Regards,

John Edser
Independent Researcher

PO Box 266
Church Pt
NSW 2105
Australia

edser{at}tpg.com.au



 

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