<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML xmlns:o = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:st1 =
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.2900.2604" name=GENERATOR></HEAD>
<BODY id=role_body style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: #000000; FONT-FAMILY: Arial"
bottomMargin=7 leftMargin=7 topMargin=7 rightMargin=7><FONT id=role_document
face=Arial color=#000000 size=2><FONT id=role_document face=Arial color=#000000
size=2>
<DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV>This is wonderful material, Val.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Remember that I applied bacterial information and your concept of
maintenance and dispersal phenotypes to history and came up with five social
modes that reflected your phenotype model? Those were the fleeing,
fasting, feeding, questing, and conquering modes. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>When a society was under severe stress and had no sense that its leaders or
form of social organization provided hope for control over its persistently
catastrophic conditions, it went into the fleeing mode. Its members
scattered, ran, and become refugees in other cultures where they begged for
admittance. We saw this in Bosnia a few years ago.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>When a society was hit with persistent disaster, but still had faith in its
leaders, its beliefs, and its form of social organization--its way of life--it
hunkered down in something like the population biologist's k mode--the fasting
mode. It went into self-denial, making things like gluttony cardinal
sins. We saw this in the dark ages, when any form of pleasure or
consumption was a slap in the face of god. And it happened with the
Pacific Northwest's Yurok Indians, who lived on a tiny swatch of land and made
self-denial the primary stamp of virtue. Yurok babies, for example,
weren't breast fed whenever they cried. Instead they were given
tiny amounts of gruel on micro-spoons made of acorn shells. They were
taught to endure a state of perpetual hunger.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>When a society hit a new strategy that turned an old pile of junk into a
motherlode or when it ran into a motherlode of food or other resources that
yielded easily to the existing way of doing things, it focused on using the
fashionable means of the moment to mine the new resources for all they were
worth. It became conservative and stressed conformity to the
prosperity-producing mode of the day. This was the feeding period.
It happened in America in the 1950s. It happened in Athens after the end
of the wars with Persia in roughy 470 bc.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>But when the motherlode and its wealth was assured that it had lasted a
genration or two and seemed like it would go on forever, some of the kids of the
feeders became like Socrates. They challenged the old way of doing
things. They rebelled and raised questions. They hunted down new
meanings. They became questers.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Then came the stage I found hard to define. When a society was riding
high on an ascending pattern of prosperity whose acceleration seemed like it
would never stop, it became convinced that its way of life was god-given,
endorsed by history, deity, and the rain of riches as the one way of life that
should be imposed on everyone in sight, including on societies near and
far. This sort of conquering mode hit Athens in the generation
of Socrates pupils. Pericles had turned the defensive Athenian League
from a coalition into an Empire. Then on of Socrates' students, Alcibiades,
went off to conquer Syracuse.The conquering mode hit England in the days when it
grew rich from steam engine technologies and built the Victorian
Empire. Late in the 19th Century it hit Germany and the United States,
both of which experienced a rapid rise in wealth thanks to the railroad train,
new electrical technologies (think Thomas Edison and Seimens), and the new
chemical industries (think Bayer). Both nations caught a serious case
of manifest destiny--the sense that they, their race, and their culture should
rule the world. This is the conquering mode.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Your description of the generation-by-generation alteration in body type
helped trigger this entire conceptual framework. Your outline of it below
adds to the concept. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>All thanks--Howard</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>In a message dated 3/28/2005 10:40:27 A.M. Pacific Standard Time,
kendulf@shaw.ca writes:</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: blue 2px solid"><FONT
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000 size=2>
<DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Arial">Dear
Howard,<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Arial"> <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Arial">Eschel is right.
This is exciting stuff, especially if the RNA hypothesis holds. However, there
is something in mammals that relates to reverting to the grand-parental
genetic expression, or great- great parental genetic expression , or great-
great- great parental genetic expression - and <STRONG><U><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial">not</SPAN></U></STRONG> to the parental one! And we
have no clue about the mysterious mechanism. The phenomenon was dubbed - not
surprisingly - the "grand parent effect". It showed that he adaptive
expression of genes in individuals was not that to their immediate
environment, but to that of their grand or great-grand or great-great ..etc.
parents. How is it possible that the ova and sperm retain the environmental
memory of up to four generations past? Or is it something about the phenotype
incubating in gestation its progeny that affect it? We do not know! The
phenomenon was first discovered in the late 1930's by an exceedingly gifted
amateur biologist, though chemist by training, when he was experimenting with
red deer, trying to increase trophy size. Quite unexpectedly, the deer did not
respond fully to the luxury food he offered, rather they responded with
increases in body and antler size stepwise, each generation being larger in
size than the preceding one - for five generations! About 30 years later it
was re-discovered in mice and rats, showing that the nutrition experienced by
grand parents and earlier generation still affected the phenotype of the
now-generation. In short, genetic expression was based on phenotypic
experiences and was stored for several generations, and this
multi-generational gene-environment communication affected the offspring.
</SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Arial"></SPAN> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Arial">Now, there is a
wonderfully logical - <STRONG><U>adaptive </U></STRONG>- explanation for
this. Remember the <STRONG><U><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial">maintenance -
dispersal phenotype axis</SPAN></U></STRONG>? (or, if you prefer paedomorph -
hypermorph, efficiency - luxury etc). The norm in populations is
maintenance conditions that is of hunger, shortages, severe intra- and
inter-specific competition for resources etc., to which the maintenance,
paedomorph or efficiency phenotype is closely and effectively adapted.
However, nature's ecological vagaries are such that now and a gain a year or
two of abundance and luxury comes along. An individual conceived then -
clearly - must <STRONG><U><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial">not</SPAN></U></STRONG> be a dispersal, hypermorph
or luxury phenotype because it would be woefully maladaptive under the regular
conditions of shortages and severe competition for resources. The adaptive
thing to do is to wait and see and alter offspring towards dispersal,
hypermorph or luxury phenotypes only if luxury conditions continue to prevail.
That, however, is the signal for the very rare - excruciatingly rare, but
supremely important - case of vacant habitat being available where
the dispersal phenotype is highly adaptive to spread the parental genomes!
That's all in Chapter six of my 1978 <I
style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Lifestrategies </I>.. book entitled
"<U>How Genes Communicate with the Environment - the Biology of
Inequality</U>".<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Arial"> <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Arial">Coming back to
humans: it is possible that the phenomenon of <STRONG><U><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial">secular growth</SPAN></U></STRONG>, in which the
offspring generations over a long time span exceed the parent generation in
size, is part and parcel of this gene-environment communication, with old
environmental information stored for influencing the next generations
ontogeny. Secular growth can be predicted to come to a halt when we have
reached, on average, the body mass, size and development of our Upper
Paleolithic Ice Age ancestors. That is, it will stop when men average a bit
over six feet in height (and brain size exceeds our by about 20%) - and we are
some time off from that! Five- eight, so I understand, is the height of men
currently in </SPAN><st1:place><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Arial">North
America</SPAN></st1:place><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Arial">.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Secular growth has been going on since
the middle of the 19<SUP>th</SUP> century, the nadir having been reached
during the preceding industrial revolution. As stated befoer, there is no clue
as to mechanism!</SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Arial"></SPAN> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Arial">Sincerely.</SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Arial"></SPAN> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Arial">Val Geist</SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Arial">Professor Emeritus
of Environmental Science<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Arial"> <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><o:p><FONT
face="Times New Roman" size=3> </FONT></o:p></P></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=mailto:HowlBloom@aol.com
href="mailto:HowlBloom@aol.com">HowlBloom@aol.com</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A
title=mailto:paleopsych@paleopsych.org
href="mailto:paleopsych@paleopsych.org">paleopsych@paleopsych.org</A> ; <A
title=mailto:kurakin1970@yandex.ru
href="mailto:kurakin1970@yandex.ru">kurakin1970@yandex.ru</A> ; <A
title=mailto:ursus@earthlink.net
href="mailto:ursus@earthlink.net">ursus@earthlink.net</A> ; <A
title=mailto:paul.werbos@verizon.net
href="mailto:paul.werbos@verizon.net">paul.werbos@verizon.net</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Sunday, March 27, 2005 10:48
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> [Paleopsych] From Eshel--A
Glitch in Genetic-centrism</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#000000 size=2>
<DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV><!--StartFragment --> <A title=http://deinococcus.allbio.org/
href="http://deinococcus.allbio.org/">Deinococcus
<B>radiodurans</B></A> is able to withstand the shattering and
spattering force of radioactivity by keeping many apparently super-condensed
backup copies of its genome, then rebuilding whatever genomic sequences that
have been destroyed.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>If a genome is the most economical summation of a species past
possible, how can it be condensed into a backup copy? Is there, as
Joel Isaacson suggest, an Ur pattern, an implicit pattern from which a
mashed gene can be re-extracted? Does the deciphering of an ancient
pattern, an implicit pattern, an Ur-pattern, change as the context that
extracts it changes?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Is the context of the still-unfazed genome, of the cytoplasm, of the
cell membrane, and of the signals coming from neighboring and distant
cells an extractor capable of re-deducing the implicit healthy
gene when a mutated gene has gone off-track?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Can evolution take a step back to retrace its earlier moves?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Is the radiodurans backup mechanism an after-the-fact condensation of
the genome--a symbolic representation of the genome? Or is it a
remnant of something that preceded the genome?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Eshel, you speak of RNA as the possible backup mechanism.
RNA is the evolutionary precursor of DNA if the RNA-world hypothesis is
true. Do you think that what was once derived from RNA can be derived
again? </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Is this pattern a sort of ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>And if the complexities and intricate forms and functions of
the present have been pulled from the implications of the past, what
even more elaborate futures will be extracted from the implications of
today? Howard</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>In a message dated 3/24/2005 10:07:42 A.M. Pacific Standard Time,
eshel@physics.ucsd.edu writes:</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: blue 2px solid"><FONT
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000 size=2>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Hi, Interestiing news, Eshel</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I sent yesterday the message below to several
people in the Weizmann following a paper in Nature that I think is a most
important discovery. personaly I feel very good as it supports my long
objection to the current Neo-darwinian paradigm. It also indicates that
the community in biology is now finally open to revolutionary ideas
related to evolution. </FONT><FONT face=Arial size=2>These discoveries
might also ilustrate one example of organisms learning not through the DNA
sequence.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>{Attached is a new paper that appear in
Nature. Being myself against the central paradigm I find the
discoveries potentially a mark of a new era. I might be dramatizing but
may be not. I am quite surprised and pleased that Nature let them publish
the paper and if you note the dates within 6 weeks from receiving it. Note
also the possible connection with microRNA . </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>It will be interesting if the media will
realise the revolutionary aspects or not. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>If they do, it will probably lead to a flood
of serious and "vitalistic" reactions.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>In this regard I also attached a paper
entitled "New biology for a new century"</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I apologize if I am carried away but felt
like sharing with you my excitement about these discoveries. There are
many open questions. The first one is if it is a special mechanism for
plants only or shared by animals as well (it is known that smallRNA have
different mechanisms in plant).</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Eshel</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Eshel Ben-Jacob.
<BR>
Home Page: <A title=http://star.tau.ac.il/~eshel/
href="http://star.tau.ac.il/~eshel/">http://star.tau.ac.il/~eshel/</A><BR>Professor
of Physics<BR>The Maguy-Glass
Professor
<BR>in Physics of Complex Systems <BR><A
title=mailto:eshel@tamar.tau.ac.il
href="mailto:eshel@tamar.tau.ac.il">eshel@tamar.tau.ac.il</A>
<A title=mailto:ebenjacob@ucsd.edu
href="mailto:ebenjacob@ucsd.edu">ebenjacob@ucsd.edu</A>
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Former President of the Israel Physical
Society (IPS)<BR>Head the scientific board of PhysicaPlus <A
title=http://physicaplus.org.il/
href="http://physicaplus.org.il/">http://physicaplus.org.il</A><BR>The IPS
Online Bi-lingual
Magazine
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>School of Physics and
Astronomy
10/2004
-10/2005
<BR>Tel Aviv University, 69978 Tel Aviv,
Israel Center for Theoretical Biological
Physics <BR>Tel 972-3-640 7845/7604 (Fax)
-6425787 University of California San
Diego
<BR>
La Jolla, CA 92093-0354 USA
<BR>
Tel (office) 1-858-534 0524 (Fax) -534
7697<BR> <BR></FONT></DIV></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV>
<DIV></DIV></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT lang=0 face=Arial size=2 PTSIZE="10"
FAMILY="SANSSERIF">----------<BR>Howard Bloom<BR>Author of The Lucifer
Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global
Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st
Century<BR>Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York
University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate
Institute<BR>www.howardbloom.net<BR>www.bigbangtango.net<BR>Founder:
International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of
Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The
Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American
Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society,
Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society,
International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member:
Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series.<BR>For
information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see:
www.paleopsych.org<BR>for two chapters from <BR>The Lucifer Principle: A
Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see
www.howardbloom.net/lucifer<BR>For information on Global Brain: The
Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see
www.howardbloom.net<BR></FONT></DIV></FONT>
<P>
<HR>
<P></P>_______________________________________________<BR>paleopsych mailing
list<BR>paleopsych@paleopsych.org<BR>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych<BR>
<P>
<HR>
<P></P>No virus found in this incoming message.<BR>Checked by AVG
Anti-Virus.<BR>Version: 7.0.308 / Virus Database: 266.8.4 - Release Date:
3/27/2005<BR></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>_______________________________________________<BR>paleopsych
mailing
list<BR>paleopsych@paleopsych.org<BR>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych<BR></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV>
<DIV></DIV></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT lang=0 face=Arial size=2 PTSIZE="10"
FAMILY="SANSSERIF">----------<BR>Howard Bloom<BR>Author of The Lucifer
Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain:
The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century<BR>Visiting
Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty
Member, The Graduate
Institute<BR>www.howardbloom.net<BR>www.bigbangtango.net<BR>Founder:
International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution
Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango
Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the
Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political
Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human
Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New
Paradigm book series.<BR>For information on The International Paleopsychology
Project, see: www.paleopsych.org<BR>for two chapters from <BR>The Lucifer
Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see
www.howardbloom.net/lucifer<BR>For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of
Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see
www.howardbloom.net<BR></FONT></DIV></FONT></FONT></BODY></HTML>