Richard Goldschmidt: hopeful monsters and other 'heresies'

Richard Goldschmidt is remembered today as one of the most controversial biologists of the twentieth century. Although his work on sex determination and physiological genetics earned him accolades from his peers, his rejection of the classical gene and his unpopular theories about evolution significantly damaged his scientific reputation. This article reviews Goldschmidt's life and work, with an emphasis on his controversial views.     

Linking Stress,Catecholamine Autotoxicity,and Allostatic Load with Neurodegenerative Diseases: A Focused Review in Memory of Richard Kvetnansky

In this Focused Review, we provide an update about evolving concepts that may link chronic stress and catecholamine autotoxicity with neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s disease. Richard Kvetnansky’s contributions to the field of stress and catecholamine systems inspired some of the ideas presented here. We propose that coordination of catecholaminergic systems mediates adjustments maintaining health and that senescence-related disintegration of these systems leads to disorders of regulation and to neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s disease. Chronically repeated episodes of stress-related catecholamine release and reuptake, with attendant increases in formation of the toxic dopamine metabolite 3,4-dihydroxyphenylacetaldehyde, might accelerate this process.     

R. Goldschmidt and J. Huxley: creative parallelisms

The comparative analysis of scientific heritage of Richard Goldschmidt and Julian Huxley shows convincingly the resemblance of these two scientists' views over the core problems of evolutionary theory, genetics and development biology. They both contributed to developing a triad "genetics--development--evolution". The problem of a relative growth of animals was the central point in both Goldschmidt's and Huxley's works. Huxley developed a formula of the allometric growth (law of constant differential growth) while Goldschmidt was the first to draw up the broad interpretation of the consequences of that phenomenon. Both scientists belonged to initiators of development genetics and used the "non-morganian" genetics in their efforts of solving problems of macroevolution. Goldschmidt tended toward an idea of an important role of macromutation in the process of macroevolution, though Huxley adhered to more moderate views. But at the same time the concept of preadaptive mutations proposed by Huxley was close to Goldschmidt's idea of macromutants. It is shown that both scientists analyzed profoundly the changes in early stages of embryogenesis in respect to macroevolution. It is not likely to be reasonable to oppose firmly Goldschmidt's saltationism to the evolutionary synthesis of Huxley. They developed the larger biological problems in a similar way, and undoubtedly their works in the field helped to enrich the development of the views over genetics and evolution. The open-minded analysis of Goldschmidt's and Huxley's concepts leads to creating modern and up-to-date views over the theory of evolution where seemingly incompatible things go together rather well and supplement each other. Evo-Devo rediscovered Goldshmidt's Biology and Huxley's Synthesis.     

Richard H. Osborne: Richard H. Osborne,retiring editor: An appreciation, 1977

Secrets of the Savanna: Twenty‐Three Years in the African Wilderness Unraveling the Mysteries of Elephants and People. Mark and Delia Owens. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006     

Death,Biography, and the Mapuche Person

The amulpüllün biographical oratory which takes place at Mapuche funerals in southern Chile is said to ‘complete’ the person. Such a perspective challenges the assumption that mortuary practices necessarily constitute a form of analysis, a division of the component parts of the social person. In this paper I explore what it is about the Mapuche person which needs to be ‘completed,’ and how funeral oratory achieves this goal. Utilizing Bakhtin's concepts of consummation and transgredience, and Ricoeur's concepts of emplotment and narrative identity, I suggest that it is only from the position of outsidedness that the necessary totalization of the deceased's person can occur. These processes of synthesis and totalization cast light upon an apparent contradiction between the importance which Amerindians place upon biography as an oral form, and theoretical approaches which stress the instability and divisibility of an Amerindian personhood predicated upon the incorporation of the other. Rather than viewing the totalization which occurs in biography as a critique of such an approach, I see it as a solution to the ontological problem which such an approach describes.     

Reinventing Molecular Weismannism: Information in Evolution

Molecular Weismannism is the claim that: In the development of an individual, DNA causes the production both of DNA (genetic material) and of protein (somatic material). The reverse process never occurs. Protein is never a cause of DNA. This principle underpins both the idea that genes are the objects upon which natural selection operates and the idea that traits can be divided into those that are genetic and those that are not. Recent work in developmental biology and in philosophy of biology argues that an acceptance of Molecular Weismannism requires the tacit assumption that genetic causes are different in kind from other developmental causes. They argue that if this assumption proves to be unwarranted then we should abandon, not just gene selectionism and gene centred functional solutions to the units of selection problem, but also the very notion that there is any such thing as a genetic trait. A group of possible causal distinctions (proximity, ultimacy and specificity) are explored and found wanting. It is argued that an extended version of information theory, while not strong enough to support Molecular Weismannism, will support both the claim that traits can be divided into those that are genetic and those that are not as well as the claim that there is good reason to privilege genetic causes within evolutionary and developmental explanations. The outcome of this for the units of selection debate is explored.     

Memory blocking: Facts,problems, and models

The tip-of-the-tongue state, or memory blocking, is considered with regard to the feasibility of its neural network modeling. The results of psycholinguistic and neurobiological studies on memory blocking are reviewed, and basic problems that need be solved to comprehend this phenomenon are formulated. One such point is the dramatic discrepancy between the subjective assurance that an image is familiar and the inability to recollect it fully. To explain this discrepancy, we propose a biologically plausible neural network model of recognition, demonstrating cardinal superiority in the capacity of image recognition over its recollection.     

Familiarity with Interest Breeds Gossip: Contributions of Emotion,Expectation, and Reputation

Although gossip serves several important social functions, it has relatively infrequently been the topic of systematic investigation. In two experiments, we advance a cognitive-informational approach to gossip. Specifically, we sought to determine which informational components engender gossip. In Experiment 1, participants read brief passages about other people and indicated their likelihood to share this information. We manipulated target familiarity (celebrity, non-celebrity) and story interest (interesting, boring). While participants were more likely to gossip about celebrity than non-celebrity targets and interesting than boring stories, they were even more likely to gossip about celebrity targets embedded within interesting stories. In Experiment 2, we additionally probed participants'' reactions to the stories concerning emotion, expectation, and reputation information conveyed. Analyses showed that while such information partially mediated target familiarity and story interest effects, only expectation and reputation accounted for the interactive pattern of gossip behavior. Our findings provide novel insights into the essential components and processing mechanisms of gossip.