Pierre Grasse was the most distinguished of French zoologists, the editor of the 28 volumes of Traite de Zoologie, author of numerous original investigations, and ex-president of the Academie des Sciences. His knowledge of the living world is encyclopedic.
Grasse believed in something that he called "evolution." So did Dobzhansky, but when Dobzhansky
used that term he meant neo-Darwinism, evolution propelled by random mutation and guided by
natural selection.
Grasse used the same term to refer to something very different, a poorly
understood process of transformation in which one general category (like reptiles) gave rise to
another (like mammals), guided by mysterious "internal factors" that seemed to compel many
individual lines of descent to converge at a new form of life. Grasse denied emphatically that
mutation and selection have the power to create new complex organs or body plans, explaining
that the intra-species variation that results from DNA copying errors is mere fluctuation, which
never leads to any important innovation.
The genic differences noted between separate populations of the same species that are so often
presented as evidence of ongoing evolution are, above all, a case of the adjustment of a
population to its habitat and of the effects of genetic drift. The fruitfly (drosophila
melanogaster), the favorite pet insect of the geneticists, whose geographical, biotropical, urban,
and rural genotypes are now known inside out, seems not to have changed since the remotest
times
Grasse insisted that the defining quality of life is the intelligence encoded in its biochemical
systems, an intelligence that cannot be understood solely in terms of its material embodiment
The minerals that form a great cathedral do not differ essentially from the same materials in the
rocks and quarries of the world; the difference is human intelligence, which adapted them for a
given purpose. Similarly,
Any living being possesses an enormous amount of "intelligence," very much more than is
necessary to build the most magnificent of cathedrals. Today, this "intelligence" is called
information, but it is still the same thing. It is not programmed as in a computer, but rather it is
condensed on a molecular scale in the chromosomal DNA or in that of every other organelle in
each cell. This "intelligence" is the sine qua non of life. Where does it come from? . . . This is a
problem that concerns both biologists and philosophers, and, at present, science seems incapable
of solving it.... If to determine the origin of information in a computer is not a false problem,
why should the search for the information contained in cellular nuclei be one?
Grasse argued that, due to their uncompromising commitment to materialism, the Darwinists
who dominate evolutionary biology have failed to define properly the problem they were trying
to solve. The real problem of evolution is to account for the origin of new genetic information,
and it is not solved by providing illustrations of the acknowledged capacity of an existing
genotype to vary within limits. Darwinists had imposed upon evolutionary theory the dogmatic
proposition that variation and innovative evolution are the same process, and then had employed
a systematic bias in the interpretation of evidence to support the dogma. Here are some
representative judgments from Grasse's introductory chapter:
Through use and abuse of hidden postulates, of bold, often ill-founded extrapolations, a
pseudoscience has been created.... Biochemists and biologists who adhere blindly to the
Darwinist theory search for results that will be in agreement with their theories.... Assuming that
the Darwinian hypothesis is correct, they interpret fossil data according to it; it is only logical
that [the data] should confirm it; the premises imply the conclusions.... The deceit is sometimes
unconscious, but not always, since some people, owing to their sectarianism, purposely overlook
reality and refuse to acknowledge the inadequacies and the falsity of their beliefs.
Grasse was an evolutionist, but his dissent from Darwinism could hardly have been more radical
if he had been a creationist. It is not merely that he built a detailed empirical case against the
neo-Darwinian picture of evolution. At the philosophical level, he challenged the crucial doctrine
of uniformitarianism which holds that processes detectable by our present-day science were also
responsible for the great transformations that occurred in the remote past. According to Grasse,
evolving species acquire a new store of genetic information through "a phenomenon whose
equivalent cannot be seen in the creatures living at the present time (either because it is not there
or because we are unable to see it)."
Grasse even turned the charges of mysticism against his opponents, commenting sarcastically
that nothing could be more mystical than the Darwinian view that "nature acts blindly,
unintelligently, but by an infinitely benevolent good fortune builds mechanisms so intricate that
we have not even finished with analysis of their structure and have not the slightest insight of the physical principles and functioning of some of them."
What was different about Grasse was that he was willing to give unprejudiced consideration to the possibility that science does not know, and may never know, how new quantities of genetic infommation have come into the world.
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário