Talk:Orthogenesis
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Couldn't Prigogine's Thermodynamics offer a mechanism for Orthogenesis? A subtle force pushing systems toward greater entropy production which has culminated in the massive energy flow rate of the human brain?
[edit] about the comparison
I think it have a few errors. I´ll make a different version here, the main differences are bold:
| Darwinism | Orthogenesis | Lamarckism | |
| Mechanism | Short-sighted Natural Selection sorting variation. Selected traits are adaptive, i.e. have some survival value. At first, inheritance of acquired characteristics was accepted as a source of variation, but that was later replaced by mendelian genetics.' | Intrinsic drive towards perfection; natural selection unimportant. Characters produced may be totally non-adaptive, i.e. have no survival value. | Intrinsic drive towards perfection and inheritance of acquired characteristics. |
| Common descent | Yes, new species coming into existence by speciation events. | No, speciation rejected or considered unimportant in long term trends; spontaneous generation of new species resulting in parallel evolution. | Depends upon source quoted. Signs that species shared a common ancestor were detected before Darwin, but in absence of a mechanism some still rejected the idea. |
| Status | Prevailing in modified form as modern evolutionary synthesis. | Nearly totally abandoned, in favour of natural selection. | Declined after the Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, though the inheritance mechanism was not replaced until the mendelian genetics. With the Modern Synthesis was established that epigenetic inheritance has no great importance on evolution. |
Summarizing what I´ve changed here:
- As Darwin accepted the idea of pangenesis, ie, his own theory of inheritance of acquired traits, variation under natural selection was not necessarily random, as previously stated. I also think that the term "genetic" came later, or at least, the term now has much more association with the current meaning;
- removed that inheritance of acquired traits was a "Lamarckian principle", I think it was widelly accepted, but not first proposed by Lamarck, although generally associated with him nowadays
- What prevails today is not neo darwinism, but the modern synthesis. The latter acknowledges drift, natural selection and etc, while neo darwinism accepted only natural selection as relevant and denied everything else.
And maybe one or other thing that may not need a more exetense explanation... --Extremophile 06:37, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
