Happy birthday to Theodosius Dobzhansky, a Ukrainian who first said Nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution! Dobbie is one of the major founders of the Neo-Darwinian consensus, being the first to examine evolution in terms of Mendelian genetics, and who came up with the modern scientific definition of natural selection evolution as a change in the frequency of an allele within a gene pool. Dobzhanskys work was instrumental in spreading the idea that it is through mutations in genes that natural selection takes place. Dobzhansky rejected the theory of independent origin of identical mutations, and expressed the theory that all sapiens-alleles existed at a low frequency in all erectus-populations, and that the statistical composition of the gene pool shifted from erectus to sapiens in multiple populations independently. An example of this would be the emergence of two populations within the Erectus gene-pool, the originals, and a minor variant of those who could be described as having an alertness deficit (not a disorder. Thats pharmacological propaganda) or alternatively called, attentives. Small numbers of attentives were useful among the attention deficits or alerts, the original pop that hunted and gathered, as attentives are more able to perform the repetitive tasks of weaving or knapping, tho less able to notice lions about to pounce on them as they weave or knap, but the transition from hunting to the mind numbing repetitious labour of farming gave the attentives a comparative advantage over the alerts in the miserable conditions of slavery, and thus, quickly became the majority as alerts were castrated into docility. Note, this could happen in independent populations as they responded to the independent development of agriculture. Well I find that still insightful, I must comment that Dobbie is in bad company on this day, and I suspect his Neo-Darwinian consensus will someday join the other discarded theories in the dust heap of history. Dobzhansky also was a contributor to The Race Question, the first of four UNESCO statements about issues of race. It was issued on 18 July 1950 following World War II and Nazi racism. The statement was an attempt to clarify what was scientifically known about race and a moral condemnation of racism. A last oddity by the standards of the Dawkinites. Ernst Mayr stated: On the other hand, famous evolutionists such as Dobzhansky were firm believers in a personal God. Dobzhansky himself spoke of God as creating through evolution, and considered himself a communicant of the Eastern Orthodox Church. https://youtube/watch?v=xk_DBxbq4dk
Posted on: Sun, 25 Jan 2015 02:21:12 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015