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My views reflect Darwin's. Is he scientific enough for you? May we not suspect that the vague but very real fears of children, which are quite independent of

by swamp40 13y ago

My views reflect Darwin's. Is he scientific enough for you? May we not suspect that the vague but very real fears of children, which are quite independent of experience, are the inherited effects of real dangers and abject superstitions during ancient savage times? - Charles Darwin, A Biographical Sketch of an Infant (1877)

chc 13y ago
Darwin has the "Instincts are inherited" part, but not the "This is because memories are inherited" part, which is what I was questioning.
tristanj 13y ago
The quote you picked doesn't fully support your view - if you read the full quote, Darwin suggests that such inherited effects start to appear at one point in one's life and disappear afterwards. If instincts were truly passed on as memories, then they should be present throughout life and not appear when such evolutionary adaption is needed. This conflicts with evolutionary developmental psychological theory, which suggests that people face different survival adaptive problems at various points of their lifetime. For example, problems of survival as an infant must occur before problems of mating. Mating must predictably occur before parenting, and likewise before grand-parenting. From this, we expect certain "instincts" to appear and disappear as adaptive problems change. This is known to be true in infants: two examples are an infant's ability to swim (which disappears after 6 months) and also the Moro reflex, a potentially lifesaving reflex that occurs while falling. If these were "memories" and not instincts, then they would not appear so rapidly nor so consistently. There's quite a few examples of similar instincts listed on Wikipedia [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_reflexes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_reflexes
saalweachter 13y ago
1. Darwin was pre-DNA. His guesses on the mechanisms of evolution aren't very relevant to the modern understanding. 2. Darwin was not infallible. We pick our scientific heroes because of their ability to advance science, to see farther than others, and be remarkably right given the information they had. Our heroes were still wrong about a lot of things, both outside there areas of expertise and inside their areas of expertise. For instance, Newton was the foremost expert on light of the day, and advanced our understanding of optics greatly, but he thought it was a particle. He was wrong, and we do him no honor by believing it a particle in his name.
- pedrocr 13y ago
  >He was wrong, and we do him no honor by believing it a particle in his name. Do you mean he's wrong because light is a particle and a wave[1]? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave%E2%80%93particle_duality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave%E2%80%93particle_duality
  - saalweachter 13y ago
    Yes. It would probably be better to say "just a particle and not a also a wave".
- swamp40 13y ago
  I'm fairly certain that there is a lot about DNA that we do not yet fully understand. Plenty of room for spider fears and bird songs. Apparently the word "memory" is unsettling to some, but it still seems appropriate to me. If DNA can grow 10,000 different regions of a brain, why is it unreasonable to think that it could also pre-populate some of those regions with patterns that we can access as memory?
saraid216 13y ago
> Is he scientific enough for you? saalweacher has started to cover why, but I'd like to emphasize a request: never ask this question sincerely again. Darwin is a reasonably valid authority, but it's not because he's "scientific". People are not scientific. Processes are scientific. People who enact scientific processes are scientists. Conclusions drawn from scientific processes are science. "Scientific" should never refer to people. I think you and Darwin are probably right. That's a long, long, long way from being proven right, though, and it's a huge mistake to assume so from a bit of poetry that Darwin speculated with.
- swamp40 13y ago
  You are right, of course.
dragonwriter 13y ago
> My views reflect Darwin's. Is he scientific enough for you? An opinion doesn't turn into a scientific proposition because it matches the speculation of someone who also did significant scientific work. The whole point of science is that it is method, independent of who is doing it.
- swamp40 13y ago
  Yes, I concur. It was a poorly constructed sentence, as well as baiting.

by swamp40 13y ago

chc 13y ago

Darwin has the "Instincts are inherited" part, but not the "This is because memories are inherited" part, which is what I was questioning.

tristanj 13y ago

The quote you picked doesn't fully support your view - if you read the full quote, Darwin suggests that such inherited effects start to appear at one point in one's life and disappear afterwards. If instincts were truly passed on as memories, then they should be present throughout life and not appear when such evolutionary adaption is needed. This conflicts with evolutionary developmental psychological theory, which suggests that people face different survival adaptive problems at various points of their lifetime. For example, problems of survival as an infant must occur before problems of mating. Mating must predictably occur before parenting, and likewise before grand-parenting. From this, we expect certain "instincts" to appear and disappear as adaptive problems change. This is known to be true in infants: two examples are an infant's ability to swim (which disappears after 6 months) and also the Moro reflex, a potentially lifesaving reflex that occurs while falling. If these were "memories" and not instincts, then they would not appear so rapidly nor so consistently. There's quite a few examples of similar instincts listed on Wikipedia [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_reflexes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_reflexes

saalweachter 13y ago

1. Darwin was pre-DNA. His guesses on the mechanisms of evolution aren't very relevant to the modern understanding. 2. Darwin was not infallible. We pick our scientific heroes because of their ability to advance science, to see farther than others, and be remarkably right given the information they had. Our heroes were still wrong about a lot of things, both outside there areas of expertise and inside their areas of expertise. For instance, Newton was the foremost expert on light of the day, and advanced our understanding of optics greatly, but he thought it was a particle. He was wrong, and we do him no honor by believing it a particle in his name.

pedrocr 13y ago
>He was wrong, and we do him no honor by believing it a particle in his name. Do you mean he's wrong because light is a particle and a wave[1]? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave%E2%80%93particle_duality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave%E2%80%93particle_duality
- saalweachter 13y ago
  Yes. It would probably be better to say "just a particle and not a also a wave".
swamp40 13y ago
I'm fairly certain that there is a lot about DNA that we do not yet fully understand. Plenty of room for spider fears and bird songs. Apparently the word "memory" is unsettling to some, but it still seems appropriate to me. If DNA can grow 10,000 different regions of a brain, why is it unreasonable to think that it could also pre-populate some of those regions with patterns that we can access as memory?

saraid216 13y ago

> Is he scientific enough for you? saalweacher has started to cover why, but I'd like to emphasize a request: never ask this question sincerely again. Darwin is a reasonably valid authority, but it's not because he's "scientific". People are not scientific. Processes are scientific. People who enact scientific processes are scientists. Conclusions drawn from scientific processes are science. "Scientific" should never refer to people. I think you and Darwin are probably right. That's a long, long, long way from being proven right, though, and it's a huge mistake to assume so from a bit of poetry that Darwin speculated with.

swamp40 13y ago
You are right, of course.

dragonwriter 13y ago

> My views reflect Darwin's. Is he scientific enough for you? An opinion doesn't turn into a scientific proposition because it matches the speculation of someone who also did significant scientific work. The whole point of science is that it is method, independent of who is doing it.

swamp40 13y ago
Yes, I concur. It was a poorly constructed sentence, as well as baiting.