Essay from the book of essays "Avni Mirma in Marrakesh" by Steven J. Gold, which was published in Hebrew by Dvir and translated by Michal Ron. In this short essay, the author formulates, in his special style, some ideas and reflections on various topics, such as the dichotomy between the influence of heredity and the influence of the environment and its meaning
Stephen J. Gould
There is nothing more ephemeral or capricious than fashion. So what will a scientist, committed to objective description and analysis, do with such a target whose movement is so random? Similar to the common advice to prevent the spread of some bad factor ("kill it when it's small"), a scientist can say, "count it before it disappears".
Francis Galton, Charles Darwin's charming, eccentric and brilliant cousin and the father of the science of statistics, must have brought this order to his attention. Once Gemar says to measure the geographical patterns of female beauty. He therefore attached a piece of paper to a small wooden cross that he could carry in his pocket without being noticed. He held the end of the cross in his palm, and as a needle stuck between his toe and his finger, he poked holes in the other arms of the cross (on both sides and above).
Later, Galton classified every woman who passed him on the street into one of three categories: beautiful, average, or fair-skinned (according to his subjective preferences, of course) - and pierced the cross with the pin to indicate this classification. The dressmaker of Scotland concluded that beauty goes from north to south: the highest proportion of fair-skinned women was measured in Aberdeen, while beauties were infinitely more common in London.
Some fads (tattooing, maybe?) flourish and disappear. Forever, I hope. Others move out of fashion and into it, as if attached to some kind of pendulum. Two weaknesses in man greatly promote this swinging fashion. First, our need to create order in a complex world gives rise to the worst of our mental habits: dichotomy, or our tendency to reduce any tangled array of shades and shades and turn it into a choice between two diametrically opposed alternatives (each with its own moral justification, and as such it is ripe for philandering and condescension, if not for a war of really):
Religion versus science, liberals versus conservatives, simple versus fancy, the Beetles versus Beethoven. And secondly, there are indeed no answers to many weighty questions regarding our loves and our way of life, and regarding the fate of the nations - and therefore we circle the circles of the supposed alternatives of our dichotomies, one after another, forever hoping that this time we will find the non-existent key to the elusive solution.
Among the oscillating fashions in which the movement of our social pendulum mainly dominates, according to the biologist of evolution, there is no issue that can claim primacy or reveal greater affinity to a broad spectrum of political questions than the issue of the genetic versus environmental origin of man's abilities and ways of behaving.
As any reasonable person understands, classifying this issue as a dichotomy borders on nonsense. Both heredity and the environment - their influence is decisive. Furthermore, it is impossible to separate an adult person, who grew as a result of an interaction between these (and other) factors, into separate components indicated in percentages. Still, a fashionable preference for nature or the environment swings like a pendulum here and there, just as political moods blow and just as breakthroughs in science give importance to this or that characteristic in a bid to expand the vital effects.
For example, a combination of political and scientific factors preferred to emphasize the environmental factor when discussing the years that followed World War II: the understanding that the fears of Hitler's days were intellectually trained through stupid genetic theories about inferior races; and the culmination of behaviorism in psychology.
Genetic explanations are now in vogue, and have been accelerated by a similar confluence of social and scientific influences: a shift to the right of the political pendulum (and a cynical circulation of the phrase "you can't change them, that's how they're built" as an artificial argument used to reduce government investments in social programs) and an overextension of all possibilities The behavior that has really exciting results in identifying the genetic basis of certain diseases, both physical and mental.
Unfortunately, in the heat of the moment, we often make the mistake of mistaking eternal enlightenment for fleeting fashion. Thus, by way of analogy, many people assume that the current popularity of genetic determinism is an expression of an absolute truth that eventually won out from the clutches of the defeated environmentalists of yesteryear. But the lessons of history show that the pendulum will swing again.
Since both nature and environmental influence can teach us a lot - and since the entirety of our behavior and thinking express an inseparable complex combination of these and other factors - there is no doubt that the current emphasis on the contribution of nature will lead in the future to admiration for the power of the environment as we move towards an improved understanding by moving from one side to the other in our search for Fulfilling the Socratic order: "Know thyself".
In my gluttonous desire to measure the range of current attraction to genetic explanations (before the pendulum swings back and I miss the opportunity), I hasten to raise two recent issues that are very worthy of a headline in the news. The issues may seem unrelated - Dolly the cloned sheep, and Frank Salloway's book on the influence of birth order on human behavior, but these two stories have a common and intriguing feature that provides an amazing insight into the current preference for genetic explanations.
In short, the accounts of both stories made almost complete use of genetic terms, but both cry out (at least to me) for entirely different readings as evidence of strong environmental influences. However, it seems to me that no one drew (or even noticed) these completely clear conclusions. I cannot imagine that anything other than the current fashion favoring genetic arguments can explain this awkward silence.
I am convinced that if the exact same information had been published twenty years ago in an atmosphere that favors explanations based on the growing environment, it would have raised completely different interpretations. The background to our world, in which man's guilt and wickedness slows him down, is pitch black. Isn't it better if we let both beacons shine the whole time?
Dolly is indeed the most famous sheep since John the Baptist called Jesus "the Lamb of God who bears the sin of the earth". There is no doubt that her publication as the most famous mammal at the moment surpasses that of the Pope, the President, Madonna and Michael Jordan, and all that fuss over a carbon copy, like photocopying! I don't intend to pour a coat of cold words on this little sheep, who was cloned from the cell of her adult mother, but I am not sure that she deserves all the excitement and fear that her unusual birth caused.
When reading the professional article describing Dolly's production (A. Wilmot, A. A. Schneike, C. McQuire, A. J. Kind and K. H. Campbell, "Living Offspring Formed from Embryonic and Adult Cells of Mammals", Nature , February 27, 1997, pages 810-813), there is no escaping a certain disappointment, in the smokescreens and exaggerations of so many public reactions, and to wonder if Dolly's story tells less than meets the eye.
I'm not trying to dismiss or downplay the ethical issues raised by Dolly's birth (I'll return to this topic in a moment), but we're not about to face an army of Hitlers, not even a derby game where all the players are genetically identical competitors (a true test of coaching skills!) First, Dolly is not opening a new field in biology, because it has been known in principle for twenty years how to reproduce animals, even if no techniques have yet been developed to utilize the full genetic potential of adult cells that have already differentiated.
(However, I admit that the technological solution can be just as practical and ethically valid as the theoretical breakthrough. I suppose one could also argue that the first atomic bomb merely realized a known possibility.)
Second, it's been a few years since my colleagues have been able to reproduce animals from embryonic cells. Dolly is therefore not the first reproduction of a mammal, but the first reproduction from an adult cell. Ian Wilmot and his colleagues also replicated sheep from nine-day-old and twenty-six-day-old embryo cells - with greater success.
They achieved 15 pregnancies (although not all came to term) out of 23 ewes that participated in the experiment (that is, mothers carrying the transplanted fertilized cells), and five pregnancies out of 16 ewes in which embryonic cells were transplanted, but only Dolly (one pregnancy out of 13 attempts) was the result of cell transplantation graduates A repeat experiment is requested to confirm the results of this experiment. (With this, in my opinion, the difficulties of the present will surely be overcome, and replication from adult cells, if it is at all possible, will undoubtedly be achieved more routinely as the techniques improve and knowledge of the subject).
Third, and this time more seriously, I'm still not convinced that we should see the cell from which Dolly was cloned as a mature cell by any means. Dolly was created from a cell taken from the "mammary gland of a six-year-old sheep, in the last trimester of her pregnancy" (to quote the professional article by Wilmot and his colleagues). Since the breasts of conceived mammals grow considerably in the latter stages of pregnancy, some of the breast cells, which are normally mature, may remain abnormally underdeveloped and even "embryonic cell-like", thus multiplying rapidly to form new breast tissue at the appropriate stage of pregnancy.
As a result, it may be possible to replicate only from abnormal adult cells with effective embryonic potential, and not from any cheek cells, hair or drop of blood that randomly fell into the hands of a crazy replicator. Wilmot and his colleagues acknowledge this possibility in a sentence written in the bluntness typical of routine scientific prose, and therefore almost all journalists did not give it their attention: "We cannot rule out the possibility that only a small percentage of cells that have hardly differentiated are capable of allowing the renewal of the mammary gland during pregnancy."
But even though I was not that impressed by the achievements achieved so far, I do not completely reject the impressive ethical issues that have been raised in view of the possibility of replicating adult cells. It is true that for decades we have been reproducing fruit trees in the usual process of cutting - without any moral outcry arising. And it is possible that we will not face the evolutionary dangers of the genetic uniformity of plants and animals raised for food, because I believe that plant and animal breeders are not stupid enough to destroy all types except for one genotype of the species.
Therefore, an active pool of genetic variation will always remain in stock (as is the way of plant breeders at this time). (However, we should not underestimate the potential human failures - and some disaster could destroy a local stock, while genetic variation that spreads throughout the entire species allows for maximum evolutionary resilience).
However, even though those concerns that are discussed at length seem exaggerated to me, I am still very concerned about the potential negative uses of human cloning, and I encourage an open and in-depth discussion of these issues. Everyone can see in their mind's eye a borrowed scenario. For some reason I do not give my opinion to a future Hitler who produces an army of ten million identical automatic killers - because if society ever reaches a situation where someone in a position of power can actually implement it, because then we are utterly lost.
My thoughts run towards a smaller moral tangle that we may indeed have to deal with in the coming years - for example, the biotechnological equivalent of lawyers chasing ambulances: a nimble company that scans the obituary notices and looks for death notices of small children, and then approaches the grieving parents and suggests: "We Sorry for your loss. By the way, did you keep a hair sample? For only fifty thousand dollars we have the power to produce a new child for you."
We will still remain in the ethical field, but this time I will refer to the main point that I want to point out regarding the ignoring of the social origins of the ways of human behavior. I believe that the scariest scenarios imaginable, and the most outrageous ethical debates on radio talk shows, have focused on a problem that does not exist, a problem that all human societies solved thousands of years ago. We ask: Isn't a duplicate a flesh and blood person? Does replication have a soul? Does the duplication created from my cell negate my unique personality?
In my opinion, these endless questions – all variations on the theme of the threat posed by replication to our traditional concept of individuality – have already been empirically answered, even though the public debate about Dolly is happy to ignore this obvious fact. Human clones have been known to us since the day we were aware of them. We call them identical twins - and they are infinitely successful clones of Dolly and Emma. Dolly and her genetic mother share only nuclear DNA - because only the nucleus of her mother's breast cell was inserted into a fertilized cell (from which the nucleus was removed) of a carrier mother, and then Dolly grew up in this mother's womb.
Identical twins have at least four other (and important) characteristics in common that distinguish them from Dolly and Emma. First, identical twins also carry the same mitochondrial genes. (Mitochondria, the "energy factories" of cells, contain a small number of genes. We get our mitochondria from the cytoplasm of the egg cell from which we are made, not from the nucleus formed by the union of sperm and egg. Dolly got her nucleus from her mother, but She received the egg cell's cytoplasm, and therefore its mitochondria, from her carrier mother).
Second, identical twins share the same set of maternal genes created in the fertilized egg. The genes do not become violators by themselves. The egg cells contain protein products of the maternal genes that play an important role in supervising the early development of the embryo. Dolly the fetus progressed using her mother's nuclear genes, with the carrier mother's genetic products found in the cytoplasm of her primary cells.
Third - and now we come to the obvious environmental factors - identical twins share one womb. Dolly and Emma were created in different places. Fourth, identical twins share one era and one culture (even they are part of that rare group, beloved by researchers, of relatives who were separated at birth, and grew up without knowing each other's existence, in distant families and different social classes). The replication of an adult cell grows in another world. Does anyone really believe that a copy of Beethoven, who would have grown up today, would one day sit down and write the Tenth Symphony in the style of his father who lived in the early nineteenth century?
Identical twins are therefore a strange duplicate - much more alike in every respect than Dolly and Emma. We know that the similarity between identical twins is indeed amazing, not only in their appearance, but also in many virtues and meticulous characters of the personality. Still, have we ever doubted that each person in this duo has their own personality? Of course not. We know that identical twins are separate people, despite their strange and wild imagination. We give them different names. They experience different experiences and different destinies in their lives. Their lives follow different paths of the whims of our complex world. They grow up as distinct individuals without a doubt, and with that they are infinitely more successful duplicates than Dolly and Emma.
Why have we ignored this central principle in our concerns regarding Dolly? Identical twins are clear evidence that inevitable differences during growth are a guarantee of individuality and a separate personality for each of the human clones. And since every future human Dolly will certainly be much different from her mother (both in terms of the nature of the mitochondria and the genetic products of the carrier mother, and also from the environmental aspect of other wombs and the cultures in which she will grow up) more than the difference between identical twins, why ask if Dolly has a soul or an independent life of her own at That we never doubted the personality and individuality of identical twins whose imagination is much greater?
Literature has always recognized this principle. The followers of Nazism who replicated Hitler in the movie The Boys from Brazil realized that the similarity should also be enhanced in the way they were raised. That is why these Hitler babies were given to families most similar to the dysfunctional family in which Hitler grew up - and none of them grew up to become the most terrifying monster in history. Life always makes sure that this principle will also be fulfilled.
Ang and Cheng, the original conjoined twins and the closest clones, have developed testy and independent personalities. One was a gloomy alcoholic, and the other remained good-natured and cheerful. We should not attribute too much individuality to sheep as a whole. After all, the brides still symbolize our blind following of the herd and the same way of acting as a skunk over fences - but Dolly will grow up and be as special and stubborn as any sheep is capable of being.
My friend Frank Salloway recently published a book on which he labored and toiled for more than twenty years. Ever since he started his studies, Frank and I discussed his theory. I thought (and suggested) that he should have published the results of his research 20 years ago. I still hold my opinion - although I cherish his book, and recognize that such a long maturation period allowed Frank to confirm his argument as he collected and processed additional data, but I also believe that he became overly committed to his central argument, and tried to extend his explanatory umbrella to a too wide range , aside from arguments that sometimes appear to be special cases or fruit of tortured logic.
Born to rebel documents the decisive influence of birth order on the shaping of a person's personality and thinking style. The eldest, who receive exclusively the parents' attention until their younger brothers emerge into the world, and who are stronger than their younger brothers (due to their age and size), often find their way with parental authority and with the advantages of their status. They tend to grow up competent and self-confident, but also conservative, and don't tend to like "craziness" and innovations.
Why threaten an existing structure that has always offered you an advantage over your brother? The younger children are born to rebel. They must compete against the odds to win the parental attention that has long been focused on someone else. They must fight and struggle and learn to take care of themselves. The younger children therefore tend to be flexible, innovative and open to change. The business and political leaders of stable nations are usually the first-born, but the revolutionaries who shake up our cultures and reshape our scientific knowledge tend to be the younger brothers.
Salloway defends his thesis using statistical information on the relationship between birth order and professional achievements in modern societies, and interprets historical patterns as largely influenced by typical behavioral differences between firstborns and their youngest. Some of his historical arguments are fascinating and convincing in my opinion when applied to large samples (but they are often awkwardly over-interpreted in their attempts to explain the intricate details of private life, such as the influence of birth order on the success of Henry VIII's wives in overcoming his capricious cruelty).
As a fascinating example, Saloway documents a constant shift in the relative percentage of first-borns among successive power groups during the French Revolution. The moderates who were in the position of power at the beginning tended to be the firstborn. After the revolution and the officer, but it still had ideals and was open to innovations and open discussion, mainly the younger children ruled. But when control passed to the uncompromising supporters of the hard line, who established the reign of terror, the elders once again ruled the dome.
Saloway tabulated the order of birth of several hundred deputies who decided the fate of Louis XVI in the National Assembly. Among the hard-line supporters who voted for his beheading, 16 percent were first-born; But 73 percent of those born later voted in favor of a compromise with conviction and amnesty. Since Louis lost his head at the edge of a voice, it is possible that even such a small difference in birth order rates among the representatives has the power to change the course of history.
Since Frank is a good friend (although I don't agree with all the details of his thesis), and since I was at least an assistant midwife to his 20-year project, I have a special interest in the late birth of Born to Rebel. I read the text and all the important reviews that appeared in many newspapers and magazines. And I was surprised - even shocked would not be too strong a word - at the complete disregard of the simplest and most obvious conclusion that emerges from Frank's data - the only absolutely obvious point that anyone should have emphasized, given the long history of the issues that arise from this data.
Salloway focuses most of his commentary on a broad analogy (ordinarily valid, to the best of my judgment, but exaggerated as an exclusive measure) between birth order in families and ecological status in a world of Darwinian competition. Children compete for limited parental resources, just as individuals struggle for their existence (and reproduction) in nature. Birth order promotes children in different "niches", and requires different ways of competition for maximum success. If the first-born are more gifted with the advantages that come with accepting responsibility, the younger ones must find every intelligent means at their disposal and hold on to it - something that leads them to different personality types that are solid and rebellious.
Alan Wolfe in my favorite negative review in the New Republic writes (in the December 23, 1996 issue; Jared Diamond emphasized this point in my favorite positive review, in the New York Review of Books (November 14, 1996): Theirs, those born after them - if they want to be noticed, they need to find free niches for themselves. If they succeed - they will be rewarded with the parents' investment."
As I said, I am willing to pursue this line of argument up to a certain limit. But I must also point out that the limitations of the interpretation of this Darwinian image diverted attention from the main conclusion arising from the great influence that birth order has on human behavior. The Darwinian image touches on biology; We also tend (albeit mistakenly) to see biological explanations as essentially genetic.
I assume that this widespread and far-fetched chain of arguments motivates us to emphasize everything that we believe Saloway's theory teaches us in relation to "nature" (in any case, our preference in this period of fashion is changing to genetic reasons) out of our wrong tendency to refer to explanations of human behavior as a struggle between nature and the environment.
But let us consider the significance of the influence of birth order in relation to environmental influences, even unfashionable at the moment. There are, of course, genetic differences between the siblings, but no aspect of these genetic differences is consistent with any systematic mode of birth order. The eldest and the younger receive the same genetic treatment within the family. Therefore, systematic differences in behavior between the eldest and the younger should not be attributed to genetics.
(Other biological effects may coincide with birth order - if, for example, the uterine environment changes systematically during the number of pregnancies - but such presumed effects have nothing to do with the genetic differences between siblings in a family.) The essential effect that birth order has according to Salloway gives us the most successful and ultimate documentation of the power of the environment.
If birth order is so decisive in determining the course of history and the direction of people in their chosen professions, then it is impossible to deny the power of the environment as having a powerful role in our intellectual and behavioral variations. Certainly, more than once we do not notice what is under our nose; But how can the spirits of fashion hide this clear diagnosis, a diagnosis that has so much affinity to the deepest and most constant questions we ask about ourselves?
This time I am especially surprised by the irony of the fashion screen. As I mentioned above, I urged Sallowway to publish his findings twenty years ago - when (to the best of my judgment) he could have made a more successful argument, because then he had already documented the strong and general influence of birth order on personality, and had not yet tried his way down the slippery slope of trying to explain too many details with the force of his arguments, which were limited to episodes of self-parody.
If Salloway had published his research in the mid-seventies, when the environmental concept dominated the fashion pendulum in a more politically liberal era (which was probably dominated by a majority of non-firstborn children!), I am sure that this clear argument regarding the influence of birth order as proof of the power of The environment would receive a lot of attention and would not be relegated to a corner.
There are few things in intellectual life that can be praised more than the separation of fashion from facts. A person will never be suspected of fashion (especially when the practice of the moment corresponds to his personal inclination); One will forever dedicate the facts (and remember that a treasure trove of pure and objective information may only record the mythic perception of a passing fashion). I discussed two issues that are not as "hot" as they are, but it is impossible to understand them correctly because a screen of genetic fashion hides for the time being the richness of the full explanation by hiding an important environmental issue.
And so we fear that the first cloned sheep represents a self-carrying animal at all, and we forget that we never doubted the different personality that the environment created for each of the clones created by nature - the identical twins - clones that are much more similar and immeasurably more successful than Dolly and her mother. And so we try to explain the great influence of birth order solely by bringing up the Darwinian parallel between family status and ecological niche, forgetting that these systematic effects cannot be the product of genetic differences, and therefore they can only indicate the predictability of the environment.
Sorry, Louie. You have lost your mind to the power of influence of family environments on firstborn children. Hello, Dolly! I wish we could forever monitor your production method, at least when it has to do with humans. May genetic fashion never stand in the way of the endless variety that society promises us for the rest of our lives in the winding complexity of our world - that valley of tears, happiness and endless wonder.
