The Origin of Species Revisited: A Victorian Who Anticipated Modern Developments in Darwin’s Theory

288 Pages·2001·15.58 MB·English

by  Donald R. Forsdyke

The Origin of Species
Revisited
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The Origin of Species
Revisited
A Victorian Who Anticipated
Modern Developments in
Darwin s Theory
DONALD R. FORSDYKE
McGill-Queen's University Press
Kingston & Montreal • London • Ithaca
McGill-Queen's University Press 2001
ISBN 0-7735-2259-x
Legal deposit fourth quarter 2001
Bibliotheque nationale du Quebec
Printed in Canada on acid-free paper
This book has been published with the help of a grant
from the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of
Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada, and with the
help of funds from Queen's University.
McGill-Queen's University Press acknowledges the finan-
cial support of the Government of Canada through the
Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP)
for its activities. It also acknowledges the support of the
Canada Council for the Arts for its publishing program.
National Library of Canada Cataloguing in
Publication Data
Forsdyke, Donald
The origin of species revisited: a Victorian who anticipated
modern developments in Darwin's theory
Includes bibliographical references and index
ISBN 0-7735-2259-x
i. Evolution (Biology) - Great Britain - History - ipth
century. 2. Romanes, George John, 1848-1894. I. Title.
QH361.F67 2001 576.8'2'o94i09O34 C2001-900151-7
To Patricia, Ruth, Sara, Polly, and Charlotte
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Prologue 1
PART ONE SEARCH FOR A VICTORIAN 7
1 Evolution of Languages and Species 9
2 Variation, Heredity, Phenotypic and Reproductive
Selection 15
3 Darwin's Difficulties 27
4 Hybrid Sterility 39
5 Physiological Selection 47
6 Failure of Meiotic Pairing 64
7 Conjugation of the Chromosomes 72
8 Why Sex? 80
PART TWO THE SPECIES-DEPENDENT COMPONENT
OF BASE COMPOSITION 87
9 Molecular Biology 89
10 Primary and Secondary Levels of Information 100
11 The Dominance of the Genome Phenotype 108
12 Initiation of Speciation 117
13 Relationship to Physiological Selection 127
viii Contents
PART THREE THE DIVERGENCE AND CONVERGENCE
OF SPECIES 135
14 Selfish Genes and Selfish Groups 137
15 Slow Fine-Tuning of Sequences 150
16 Fine-Tuning of RNAs 157
17 RNAs Driving on the Wrong Side 164
18 Protein Concentration and Genetic Dominance 173
19 Sex Chromosomes 183
PART FOUR THE DARWINIAN STRUGGLE FOR
TRUTH 201
20 The Philosopher 203
21 Huxley and the Philosopher's Wife 217
22 "We Commend This State of Mind" 234
Epilogue 241
References 243
Index 265
Acknowledgments
I am indebted to William Provine whose works greatly eased the sifting
of the "Darwiniana" literature. Provine (1986 ch.7, 207) admits that "evo-
lutionary biology in the period 1859-1925 is extraordinarily complex." It is
my hope that this book has made it less so. Elizabeth Barnes made avail-
able her unpublished Cambridge B.A. thesis on Romanes. John
Ringereide kindly donated Mabel Ringereide's unpublished papers on the
Romanes family, which are in Queen's University Archives. Anne Barrett
of the Archives at the Imperial College of Science, Technology and
Medicine in London made available correspondence from the Huxley
Archives. P. Divakar provided information on the content of Haldane's
personal library in Hyderabad.
Permission to reproduce the Haldane drawing was given by the
Genetic Society of America. Giles Romanes made available photographs
of the portraits of his grandfather and grandmother. Morten Kielland-
Brandt provided the photograph of Ojvind Winge, with the permission
of the Carlsberg Foundation. The photograph of Darwin as a young man
is from an original drawing held by the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
Figure 9.1 is adapted from Crick's 1971 paper, and Figure 9.2 is adapted
from Gierer's 1966 paper, with the permission of the publishers of Nature.
Figure 10.2 is from Bronson and Andersons' 1994 paper with the permis-
sion of Springer-Verlag.
Academic Press gave permission to include parts of papers published
in the Journal of Theoretical Biology. The editor of Queens Quarterly gave
permission for material in chapter 20. Gordon and Breach (Harwood
Academic) gave permission to include material in chapter 21 from my