The Edge of Evolution by Edwards Ronald;

Author:Edwards, Ronald;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Published: 2016-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Notes

1.Eric Olson, “The Developmental Renaissance in Adaptationism,” Trends in Ecology and Evolution 27(5): 278–287, 2012, published by Elsevier Ltd.

2.Sherryl Vint’s points about anthropomorphism and theriomorphism in Animal Alterity (2013) are relevant here—we objectify nonhuman species’ features and status precisely as we do our own.

3.This construction of learning also applies to purely anatomical variables—in order for the limb bones of vertebrates to develop, they have to be utilized as the creature learns to walk. Genes don’t simply gift the creature with functional legs; instead, the process of learning to walk, the interaction of neurology, biomechanics, and gravity, helps to build the materials with which it’s done.

4.Cells’ mechanisms for recognition and signaling weren’t identified until the 1960s. Until then, developmental processes did seem almost supernaturally directed, and it’s no surprise that developmental mechanics had always been the sticking point concerning evolutionary processes. Once the cellular mechanisms had been exposed, however, both theory and experiments about development boomed.

5.With the term “recipe,” I am not referring to a single gene’s activity in protein synthesis, but rather to the activity of many genes at particular intensities and at different times, in the presence of specific raw materials and conditions, which results in a functioning physiological structure.

6.Phillip Karpowicz et al., “Developing Human-Nonhuman Chimeras in Human Stem Cell Research: Ethical Issues and Boundaries,” Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 55(2): 107–134, 2005, critiques the idea of human-nonhuman chimeras as an affront to human dignity at several levels. To my eyes, their reference to The Island of Doctor Moreau raises the interesting question of whether Moreau’s experiments would in fact “degrade human dignity” because no original human cells or tissue were employed.

7.It may clarify my point to explain my position regarding the Civil Rights Act of 1964, based on scholarship which holds that the Act itself was not instrumental in securing better circumstances for black Americans, and that in the areas most associated with the Ku Klux Klan and other murderous and humiliating practices, more credit is due to the Deacons of Defense and other armed security and resistance groups, at the very least in combination with the peace marches, boycotts, and the Act. The argument is that legislation is not the single most valuable solution or end-goal, but is at most a useful part of a multipronged, even decentralized, set of efforts. Useful texts include Lance Hill, The Deacons for Defense (2006) and Charles E. Cobb Jr., This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed (2014).

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