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forsdyke
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 Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2008 5:53 am Post subject: Evolutionary Viewpoint of William Bateson |
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"Treasure Your Exceptions" The Science and Life of William Bateson, by
Alan G. Cock & Donald R. Forsdyke (Springer, New York, September 2008)
William Bateson brought the work of Mendel to the attention of the
English-speaking world and commanded the biological sciences in the
decades after the death of Charles Darwin in 1882. We owe to Bateson
words such as homozygote, heterozygote, epistasis and homeotic. He
suggested the name "Genetics" for the new science that had emerged
from the work of Mendel. Recent advances in evolutionary
bioinformatics have led to a reevaluation of the arguments Bateson
presented a century ago. For more information, please see Forsdyke>s
web-pages at http://post.queensu.ca/~forsdyke/book04.htm |
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NICHE541
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| Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2008 11:15 pm Post subject: Re: Evolutionary Viewpoint of William Bateson |
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On Oct 6, 12:53=A0am, forsdyke <forsd...@queensu.ca> wrote:
[quote]"Treasure Your Exceptions" The Science and Life of William Bateson, by
Alan G. Cock & Donald R. Forsdyke (Springer, New York, September 2008)
William Bateson brought the work of Mendel to the attention of the
English-speaking world and commanded the biological sciences in the
decades after the death of Charles Darwin in 1882. We owe to Bateson
words such as homozygote, heterozygote, epistasis and homeotic. He
suggested the name "Genetics" for the new science that had emerged
from the work of Mendel. Recent advances in evolutionary
bioinformatics have led to a reevaluation of the arguments Bateson
presented a century ago. For more information, please see Forsdyke>s
web-pages athttp://post.queensu.ca/~forsdyke/book04.htm
[/quote]
This is an area of the History of Science of which I am unaware. I
will read with enthusiasm! |
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John Wilkins
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| Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 6:08 pm Post subject: Re: Evolutionary Viewpoint of William Bateson |
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NICHE541 <oikos541@yahoo.com> wrote:
[quote]On Oct 6, 12:53=A0am, forsdyke <forsd...@queensu.ca> wrote:
"Treasure Your Exceptions" The Science and Life of William Bateson, by
Alan G. Cock & Donald R. Forsdyke (Springer, New York, September 2008)
William Bateson brought the work of Mendel to the attention of the
English-speaking world and commanded the biological sciences in the
decades after the death of Charles Darwin in 1882. We owe to Bateson
words such as homozygote, heterozygote, epistasis and homeotic. He
suggested the name "Genetics" for the new science that had emerged
from the work of Mendel. Recent advances in evolutionary
bioinformatics have led to a reevaluation of the arguments Bateson
presented a century ago. For more information, please see Forsdyke>s
web-pages athttp://post.queensu.ca/~forsdyke/book04.htm
This is an area of the History of Science of which I am unaware. I
will read with enthusiasm!
[/quote]
He also named the "species problem". Cool guy.
--
John S. Wilkins, Philosophy, University of Queensland
scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts
But al be that he was a philosophre,
Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre |
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Guest
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| Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2008 4:57 pm Post subject: Re: Evolutionary Viewpoint of William Bateson |
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On Oct 7, 11:08=A0am, j.wilki...@uq.edu.au (John Wilkins) wrote:
[quote]NICHE541 <oikos...@yahoo.com> wrote:
On Oct 6, 12:53=3DA0am, forsdyke <forsd...@queensu.ca> wrote:
"Treasure Your Exceptions" The Science and Life of William Bateson, b=
y
Alan G. Cock & Donald R. Forsdyke (Springer, New York, September 2008=
)
William Bateson brought the work of Mendel to the attention of the
English-speaking world and commanded the biological sciences in the
decades after the death of Charles Darwin in 1882. We owe to Bateson
words such as homozygote, heterozygote, epistasis and homeotic. He
suggested the name "Genetics" for the new science that had emerged
from the work of Mendel. Recent advances in evolutionary
bioinformatics have led to a reevaluation of the arguments Bateson
presented a century ago. For more information, please see Forsdyke>s
web-pages athttp://post.queensu.ca/~forsdyke/book04.htm
This is an area of the History of Science of which I am unaware. I
will read with enthusiasm!
He also named the "species problem". Cool guy.
[/quote]
I will be interested in seeing what Don Forsdyke has discovered about
Bateson. I am not sure I would say he "commanded the biological
sciences in the decades after the death of Charles Darwin" but he was
the single most notable geneticist in the period from 1900-1920 (maybe
from about 1890 on as well). He was critically important in bringing
to the attention of early geneticists the phenomenon of recombination,
which he discovered. However as I understand it he never could accept
that genes were located on chromosomes, and his support of mutation as
the main mechanism of evolution seemed to leave us without a mechanism
that could explain how the information that is embodied in adaptations
could come about. Did he really think that natural selection was not
building this information into the genome? His views were considered
outmoded by people like Fisher, Wright, Haldane, and Muller, and the
whole earlier debate between Mendelians and Biometricians (especially
the former friends Bateson and Weldon) now appears to be a wrongheaded
conflict between right and right.
What I have just written is based on very second- or third-hand
sources. It will be interesting to see whether Don Forsdyke finds a
different Bateson in looking at the primary sources. We can be
corrected by Don, here, ... or we can read his book.
----
Joe Felsenstein joe (at) removethispart.gs.washington.edu
Department of Genome Sciences and Department of Biology,
University of Washington, Box 355065, Seattle, WA 98195-5065 USA |
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