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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3>Dear Howard,</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><?xml:namespace prefix = o ns =
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3> </FONT></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3>Steve in a recent posting pointed to Dr. Bruce Lipton’s work and book on
the <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Biology of Belie</I>f. And Stephen is
right in judging this an important development. I have not read the book, but
opened up Lipton’s website, read an essay and heard an interview, and I think I
understand what Lipton is all about. Three cheers for his emerging – however, I
found absolutely nothing new in principle, only in particular. He is in a line
of brilliant “epigenetisits” to emerge, and he has apparently gotten much the
same treatment eminent epigenticists before him have received. And that is what
I want to deal with first. </FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><o:p><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3> </FONT></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3>I was disappointed looking into his list of readings that none of these
eminent men were cited be they Richard Goldschmidt, C. H. Waddington (who coined
the word epigenetics over half a century ago) or more recently Soren Lovtrup.
All challenged the conventional wisdom that heredity is deterministic, all
challenged the conventional Neo-Darwinian wisdom – most shamelessly championed
currently by Richard Dawkins - and all suffered severe rejection by Evolution’s
elite, none more than Richard Goldschmidt (1942). <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>When I looked for that book, having heard
all along how terribly mistaken Goldschmidt was, I could not find it in my
universities library. I discovered that his books had been systematically
removed. That this should happen to one of the centuries truly great
cytogeneticists, was puzzling. At that time I suddenly ran into a fresh edition
of Goldschmidt’s book, reprinted at the behest of Stephen J. Gould. It is highly
instructive to read from his pen just how the great Richard Goldschmidt was
suddenly shunned. It boils down to three young turks going after him and
destroying him: Ernst Mayr, George Gaylord Simpson and Bernhard Rensch. The
means of destruction was ridicule using phrases out of context. There was little
attention paid to the possibility that a great mind using his enormously rich
experience and background at the end of a long life and prolific publication
record was struggling trying to tell us something that he considers vitally
important, but which clashes with conventional wisdom. To expedite matters:
Goldschmidt’s denigration robbed all but a few of us of the idea of flexible
gene expression controlled by environment as fundamental to understanding
speciation and thus evolution. And without that, there is no way that flexible
environmentally controlled gene expression could enter into other fields – such
as medicine! </FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><o:p><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3> </FONT></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3>Next in line to be denigrated was the great embryologist, scholar of
evolution and during WWII father of operations research on behalf of the British
defense establishment C. H. Waddington. That’s the father of Epigenetics. Note
the title of one of his books: 1957 <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">The
Strategy of the Genes</I>. If my memory serves me right, he was haughty and did
not mince words and was openly contemptuous of Neo-Darwinism where Goldschmidt
tried to be polite.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>When during a
conversation with Enst Mayr<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I
mentioned Waddington, Mayr became irritated, in fact noticeably so and dismissed
Waddington as someone who would not fit in. That is remarkable as Mayr cites
Waddington repeatedly in his own magnum opus, but in a remarkably limited way.
The huge irony is that Mayr then writes in one of his last books on the Great
Synthesis that, tragically, the embryologists have been left out of this great
evolutionary synthesis. Having read Waddington, Ernst Mayr, a mind not to be
trifled with – but also Dawkins and Stephen J. Gould could not see what
Waddington saw, namely that phenotype plasticity was profoundly important to
explain much of evolution that neo-Darwinism did not. I am totally puzzled by
that conceptual blindness.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><o:p><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3> </FONT></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT
face="Times New Roman"><FONT size=3>Next in line is the great Swedish
epigeneticist Soren Lovtrup. He wrote 1974 <I>Epigenetics: A Treatise on
Theoretical Biology</I> and <I>The Phylogeny of Vertebrata</I>(1977), and<B>
</B><I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><SPAN
style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold">Darwinism: The Refutation of a
Myth</SPAN></I><B>, </B></FONT><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">(Sören Lövtrup,
Soren Lovtrup) </SPAN></FONT><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>1987 Croom
Helm<BR>ISBN 0-7099-4153-6, 469 pages. He is a vociferous, but highly
substantive opponent of Neo-Darwinism, and it totally ignored! I had the
pleasure of meeting him a number of times and spending together nearly a
fortnight in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns =
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"
/><st1:country-region><st1:place>South Africa</st1:place></st1:country-region>
and <st1:country-region><st1:place>Botswana</st1:place></st1:country-region>’s
Okavango Delta. He has given up trying to communicate with the older generation,
pinning his hope on the younger – which is also ignoring his excellent
scholarship – see Bruce Lipton! Unfortunately, Lovtrup is not the best
communicator, as well as being a very angry old man. However, taking time and
effort to read him is rewarding. </FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><o:p><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3> </FONT></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3>Lipton is a re-discoverer of epigenetics, as was
<st1:place>I.</st1:place> He is dead on, but his discoveries are in principle
not new and it’s a pity he does not integrate his discoveries with earlier
findings, strengthening his case and given due credit where credit is due. As I
age I see again and again the same wheels being reinvented under different names
- and Lipton is a case in point. I was delighted to hear that he in the are of
health identified some of the same processes that I did and reported on in my
1978 <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Life Strategies</I>.. book. After
all the subtitle of that book is: <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Towards
a biological theory of health</I>. Independent re-discovery greatly strengthens
the case for epigenetics, as this concept is played out with different facts.
And I am delighted that Lipton pulled this concept into the area of health. In
short: bring epigenetics into our understanding of Paleopsychology and quality
of life.</FONT></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=HowlBloom@aol.com
href="mailto:HowlBloom@aol.com">HowlBloom@aol.com</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=paul.werbos@verizon.net
href="mailto:paul.werbos@verizon.net">paul.werbos@verizon.net</A> ; <A
title=paleopsych@paleopsych.org
href="mailto:paleopsych@paleopsych.org">paleopsych@paleopsych.org</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Saturday, May 21, 2005 9:51
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> [Paleopsych] Paul--is this
yours?</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV><FONT id=role_document face=Arial color=#000000 size=2>
<DIV>I ran across the following today while doing research for a national
radio show--Coast to Coast--I'm about to do in 70 minutes (2am to 5am EST the
night of 5/21 and morning of 5/22). It's exciting and sounds like the
space-borne solar array you were talking about in an email several days
ago.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Is it one of the projects you've helped along? Howard</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Arial Unicode MS'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">Modules
of the <B>USC</B> School of Engineering's Information Sciences Institute (ISI)
proposed half-mile-long<B> Space Solar Power System satellite self
assemble</B> with what the researchers call "hormonal" software,.funded <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>by a consortium including NASA, the
NSF, and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI)</SPAN></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>
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<P></P>_______________________________________________<BR>paleopsych mailing
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