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Bezig met laden... The Case of the Midwife Toad (1971)door Arthur Koestler
Bezig met laden...
Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. An attempt to exonerate a famous scientist accused of fraud. It works well, gradually introducing evidence and maintaining interest. Personally, I felt the author withheld some information until later in the book to try to bolster his case. I remain unconvinced,but somewhat doubtful and enjoyed the read ( ) Just to be clear, no one here, including Koestler, a non-scientist, was disputing the fact of evolution. The debate was about the mechanisms of evolution. The latest research suggests that Kammerer was not a fraud but rather made an extraordinary discovery about midwife toads. Extraordinary claims require remarkable proof, so that strong doubt about his unverified claim was fully appropriate. His Lamarckian view of the mechanism of evolution, which he was attempting to prove, was wrong, although recent advances show that epigenetic mechanisms may be heritable, uncommon in higher organisms and unrelated to our toad. Arthur Koestler found the idea of evolution by natural selection unsatisfying, if not disturbing, and spent years trying to promote non-selectionist mechanisms. In this book, he attempted to resurrect Paul Kammerer's reputation along with what he saw as his neo-Lamarckian views. In so doing, he had to battle against the evidence that Kammerer faked the results in the famous midwife toad experiment. Chief among the alternative explanations that Koestler promotes are that someone else at Kammerer's lab injected the single remaining specimen with India ink to make it appear that the toad had developed nuptial pads. As a hypothesis with no evidence to support it, Koestler's opinion must be regarded as untestable speculation. On the positive side, Koestler delves deeply into the relevant correspondence and other evidence in an attempt to tease out the explanation for the alleged fraud. Likewise, he offers a detailed account of Kammerer's life and career, and offers a popularized account of the historical controversy. On the negative side, Koestler is far from an objective observer. He goes to great lengths to present Kammerer as an unfortunate victim of scientific orthodoxy of his day, particularly as represented by British and American scientists. Knowledgeable scientists will find Koestler's interpretations labored, convoluted, and less-than-plausible, and his arguments for a non-Darwinian mechanisms weak and unconvincing. Unfortunately, Koestler lacks the necessary scientific knowledge to make a convincing case. What's more, he was insufficiently grounded in evolutionary science to characterize the opposing views accurately. Bateson (whom he paints as an orthodox Darwinian) held heretical ideas of his own, including his view that saltation accounted for evolutionary change. Meanwhile, as Gliboff (2006) noted in her paper in Biology Reviews, "Koestler also exaggerated the threat that Kammerer's results posed to the theory of natural selection, for most of them can be explained in selectionist terms." Far from being a "Lamarckian" in the modern sense, Kammerer sought to reconcile Darwinian selection with genetics, while paying due credit to the very effects of environment that Darwin invoked. As a side note, one can note that a notable gap in Koestler's account lies in his omission of Kammerer's outlandish claims to have modified reproductive modes of lizards and salamanders by maintaining them under altered conditions. This book enjoyed some popular attention when it first came out, but is unreliable as a disinterested guide to the controversy, much less to the relevant science involved. Koestler sought to use the Kammerer incident in an attempt to discredit modern evolutionary science, and in this respect his book is better regarded as a polemic than as a guide to the historical controversy. geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
On September 23, 1926, and Austrian experimental biologist named Dr. Paul Kammerer blew his brains out on a footpath in the Austrian mountains. His suicide was the climax of a great evolutionary controversy which his experiments had aroused. The battle was between the followers of Lamarck, who maintained that acquired characteristics could be inherited, and the neo-Darwinists, who upheld the theory of chance mutations preserved by natural selection. Dr. Kammerer's experiments with various amphibians, including salamanders and the midwife toad (Alytes obstetricans), lent much weight to the Lamarckian argument and drew upon him the full fury of the orthodox neo-Darwinists. Arthur Koestler had known about Dr. Kammerer's work when he himself was a student in Vienna, and he has always been interested in this tragic story. He gives a fascinating description of the venomous atmosphere in which the battle was fought and of the lengths to which apparently respectable scholars would go to discredit their opponents. Heading the attack on Kammerer was a British scientist, William Bateson, who hinted that the Viennese's experiments were fakes, but who failed to examine the evidence, including the so-called nuptial pads of Kammerer's last remaining specimen of the midwife toad. It was a young American scientist who delivered the coup de grace; on a visit to Vienna, he discovered that the discoloration of the nuptial pads was due not to natural causes but to the injection Indian ink. When his findings were published, Kammerer shot himself. Mr. Koestler, whose recent writings, in books such as The Act of Creation and The Ghost in the Machine, have been in part concerned with evolutionary theory, decided to investigate this old mystery. When he started on his researches, he expected to relate the tragedy of a man who had betrayed his calling, for Kammerer's suicide was accepted as a confession of guilt and his work was discredited from that day to this. Instead, as Mr. Koestler read the contemporary papers, corresponded with Kammerer's daughter, Bateson's son, and the surviving scientists who attended Kammerer's lecture in Cambridge, he found himself writing a vindication of a man who in all probability was himself betrayed. The story that emerges is, on one level, fascinating piece of scientific detection; on another, it is a moving and human narrative about a much abused, brilliant and lovable figure. Though no Lamarckian himself, Mr. Koestler ends the book with an appeal to biologists to repeat Kammerer's experiments with an open mind in order to verify or refute them. If Kammerer's claims were posthumously confirmed our outlook on evolution would be significantly changed. A superb intellectual thriller whose implications still reverberate today, The Case of the Midwife Toad is an entirely new kind of book for Mr. Koestler, and perhaps only he could have written it, for it required expert knowledge and familiarity with the academic world of science, combined with the creativity and imaginative insight of an outstanding novelist. Annotation Published: March 2016. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)575.0092Natural sciences and mathematics Life Sciences, Biology Physiological systems in plants EvolutionLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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