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Genetics of the Evolutionary Process
In this volume, the product of decades of study and research, the world's foremost geneticist surveys the major developments in what is emerging as the most important single area of scientific inquiry in the twentieth century: biological theory of evolution in particular.
Noting that the theory of evolution in biology is more than a century old, Dr. Dobzhansky points out that it is nevertheless only in recent times that our knowledge of its physical basis as well as our understanding of its dynamics has progressed greatly. Yet, he notes, new problems have replaced the older ones at the forefront of scientific inquiry, problems which require entirely new approaches. It is to these manifold and exciting new questions that the author brings a lifetime of experience.
Throughout, his goal is to create not a summary of all the available literature, nor a professional book written only for the scientific community, but rather a presentation of basic ideas, accompanied by the indispensable references which would enable interested readers to pursue the matter further. The book has been purposely kept short to enable it to be read as a whole, and above all, it has been written in a manner which will hold the attention as well as inform both the general reader and the professionally concerned scientist.
Noting that the theory of evolution in biology is more than a century old, Dr. Dobzhansky points out that it is nevertheless only in recent times that our knowledge of its physical basis as well as our understanding of its dynamics has progressed greatly. Yet, he notes, new problems have replaced the older ones at the forefront of scientific inquiry, problems which require entirely new approaches. It is to these manifold and exciting new questions that the author brings a lifetime of experience.
Throughout, his goal is to create not a summary of all the available literature, nor a professional book written only for the scientific community, but rather a presentation of basic ideas, accompanied by the indispensable references which would enable interested readers to pursue the matter further. The book has been purposely kept short to enable it to be read as a whole, and above all, it has been written in a manner which will hold the attention as well as inform both the general reader and the professionally concerned scientist.
505 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1970
About the author
Theodosius Dobzhansky
67 books32 followersTheodosius Grygorovych Dobzhansky (Ukrainian: Теодо́сій Григо́рович Добжа́нський; Russian: Феодо́сий Григо́рьевич Добржа́нский) , Ph.D. (University of Leningrad, 1927; B.S., Biology, University of Kiev, 1921), was a prominent geneticist and evolutionary biologist, one of the central figures in modern evolutionary synthesis; his major work concerning the latter is "Genetics and the Origin of Species", published in 1937. He emigrated to the USA in 1927 on a scholarship from the Rockefeller Foundation.
Dobzhansky was the recipient of the National Medal of Science in 1964 and the Franklin Medal in 1973.
Dobzhansky was the recipient of the National Medal of Science in 1964 and the Franklin Medal in 1973.
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January 13, 2025
AN OUTLINE OF EVOLUTIONARY GENETICS SINCE 1951
Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900-1975) was a Russian-American geneticist. He wrote in the Preface to this 1970 book, “This book was started as a fourth edition of my ‘Genetics and the Origin of Species.’ It soon became apparent that so much has happened in evolutionary biology during the years since 1951 that no revision of the old book can be satisfactory… new problems have replaced the old at the forefront of our attention. Many things that had to be argued and demonstrated in 1937… now seem almost trite… My intention is… to present ideas with necessary examples, and not a miscellany of literature references… Evolutionary genetics is at present in an exciting period of development. Discoveries currently being made upset some classical theories that have acquired a status almost of dogma… a book attempting to describe a rapidly developing field will inevitably soon be out of date.”
In the first chapter, he states, “‘p’ isomers are found in some relatively advanced forms… This should not be taken as evidence that life if polyphyletic, having arisen independently two or more times. The many similarities in the key constituents of most diverse organisms… argue against a polyphyletic origin.” (Pg. 7)
He suggests, “One can imagine a planet having just one kind of living beings capable of surviving in some specially protected and lenient environment. Perhaps primordial life was thus uniform and sheltered. Life has, however, a propensity ever to expand in numbers and in mass, and to spread, invade, and assimilate ever new environments. We may envisage two strategies with the aid of which such expansion could be achieved. One is a strategy of environmental adaptability; an extraordinarily versatile genotype would evolve… The second is a strategy of diversification and environmental specialization, whereby a multitude of genotypes, each of them ideally suited to live in one and only one environment, would be formed. In reality, both strategies have been used in the evolution of the living world, but in different proportions in different lines of descent.” (Pg. 25)
He observes, “Evolutionists of the 19th century were interested primarily demonstrating that evolution had in fact taken place. They succeeded… As the study of evolution proceeded, two main approaches were employed. The first concentrated on unraveling actual evolutionary histories… The second approach emphasized studies of the mechanics that bring evolution about, of causal rather than historical aspects. Genetics, especially population genetics and ecological genetics, has supplied the basic concept and the experimental as well as observational methods… This book presents an outline of the biological theory of evolution, with special emphasis on its genetic aspects.” (Pg. 28-29)
He writes, “The following illustration of the nonhaphazard nature of mutations is flippant but apt. Suppose that one wishes to transform, by selective breeding, the human race into a race of angels. We can be virtually certain that it would be much easier to breed for angelic disposition than for a pair of wings because there is available in the human population a variance in disposition, and it is not implausible to suppose that part of this variance is genetic… There is much less chance of encountering variants on the basis of which the development of wings may be started, and to expect mutations providing such a basis seems rather farfetched. And yet birds and mammals… have had a common albeit remote ancestry. There is no possibility, however, of reversing and repeating the evolutionary process that gave rise to these winged and wingless creatures.” (Pg. 94)
He explains, “Rapidly evolving groups need not have high mutation rates, nor should evolutionary statis be taken as evidence of insufficient mutability. Polymorphisms … can react to changes in the environment without waiting for new mutations to appear. In Drosophila even seasonal changes in the environment evoke genetic alterations. These alterations are, of course, cyclic and reversible. The gene pool is in constant motion; if a simile is desired, a stormy sea is more appropriate than a beanbag.” (Pg. 201)
He says, “In summary, the problems of the maintenance of genetic variability in natural populations, and of the ways in which natural selection acts, are as yet far from solved. These are basic problems of any causal theory of evolution. Both theoretical and experimental studies in this field, however, have resulted in gratifying or even spectacular advances in recent years. Moreover, it is probable that the state of the knowledge as outlined above will be surpassed in the near future.” (Pg. 229)
He argues, “[Carleton] Coon divides mankind into 5 ‘subspecies’… It should be made unequivocally clear that the number of races or subspecies which one chooses to recognize by giving them vernacular or formal Latin names is largely… arbitrary. Every local population of human beings, or of any other sexual species, probably differs from other populations in the incidence of some gene alleles in its gene pool. Every population is, then, racially distinct from every other. But it would serve no useful purpose to give every population a name as a separate race. In a continuously inhabited territory populations have no boundaries; they merge into each other.” (Pg. 290)
He continues, “Thus, Mongoloid and Amerindian populations are frequently placed together in a single race, but it would hardly occur to anybody to combine Amerindian and African populations and to contrast them with the Mongoloids. Although some separations and combinations are debatable, others are clearly reasonable, and still others obviously impossible.” (Pg. 291)
He states, “I feel that a biologist may reasonably speak of evolutionary progress, provided only that he makes clear what kind of progress is meant... the concept of progress, including biological progress, necessarily is axiological, that is, refers to some kind of value in reference to which we choose to consider objects of events. Our choices of values may or may not be determined by whether the valuation can be measured exactly. The approach of evolution to man is almost inevitably in one’s mind in considering the evolutionary history of life on earth. If made explicit (as Teilhard de Chardin has done [in ‘The Phenomenon of Man’]), this emphasis is legitimate, although totally inapplicable to the evolution of the plant kingdom… The destruction of billions of individuals is easily supported among bacteria, whereas in invertebrates an individual’s life is hedged and sheltered by many physiological and developmental homeostatic mechanisms.” (Pg. 394-395)
He says in the concluding chapter, “Evolution is a creative process, in precisely the same sense in which composing a poem or a symphony, carving a status, or painting a picture are creative acts. An art work is novel, unique, and unrepeatable… The evolution of every phyletic line yields a novelty that never existed before and is a unique, unrepeatable, and irreversible proceeding… only a most elementary component of the evolutionary process, a mutation followed by selection of a single gene allele, may be recurrent. An evolutionary history is a unique chain of events.” (Pg. 430)
He adds, “Man’s foresight has not… enabled him to avoid miscarriages of his social and political history! Anyway, the living world not only persists but also contains a greater variety of forms and more complex, sophisticated, or ‘progressive’ ones than in the past. Teilhard de Chardin has said that evolution is ‘pervading everything so as to find everything.’ This is an overstatement, since the potentially possible variety of gene patterns is vastly greater than the variety ever realized. Yet he is right in essence: natural selection has tried out an immense number of possibilities and has discovered many wonderful ones. Among which, to date, the most wonderful is man.” (Pg. 431)
This book goes beyond simply evolutionary biological theory, and will thus appeal to a wider variety of readers.
Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900-1975) was a Russian-American geneticist. He wrote in the Preface to this 1970 book, “This book was started as a fourth edition of my ‘Genetics and the Origin of Species.’ It soon became apparent that so much has happened in evolutionary biology during the years since 1951 that no revision of the old book can be satisfactory… new problems have replaced the old at the forefront of our attention. Many things that had to be argued and demonstrated in 1937… now seem almost trite… My intention is… to present ideas with necessary examples, and not a miscellany of literature references… Evolutionary genetics is at present in an exciting period of development. Discoveries currently being made upset some classical theories that have acquired a status almost of dogma… a book attempting to describe a rapidly developing field will inevitably soon be out of date.”
In the first chapter, he states, “‘p’ isomers are found in some relatively advanced forms… This should not be taken as evidence that life if polyphyletic, having arisen independently two or more times. The many similarities in the key constituents of most diverse organisms… argue against a polyphyletic origin.” (Pg. 7)
He suggests, “One can imagine a planet having just one kind of living beings capable of surviving in some specially protected and lenient environment. Perhaps primordial life was thus uniform and sheltered. Life has, however, a propensity ever to expand in numbers and in mass, and to spread, invade, and assimilate ever new environments. We may envisage two strategies with the aid of which such expansion could be achieved. One is a strategy of environmental adaptability; an extraordinarily versatile genotype would evolve… The second is a strategy of diversification and environmental specialization, whereby a multitude of genotypes, each of them ideally suited to live in one and only one environment, would be formed. In reality, both strategies have been used in the evolution of the living world, but in different proportions in different lines of descent.” (Pg. 25)
He observes, “Evolutionists of the 19th century were interested primarily demonstrating that evolution had in fact taken place. They succeeded… As the study of evolution proceeded, two main approaches were employed. The first concentrated on unraveling actual evolutionary histories… The second approach emphasized studies of the mechanics that bring evolution about, of causal rather than historical aspects. Genetics, especially population genetics and ecological genetics, has supplied the basic concept and the experimental as well as observational methods… This book presents an outline of the biological theory of evolution, with special emphasis on its genetic aspects.” (Pg. 28-29)
He writes, “The following illustration of the nonhaphazard nature of mutations is flippant but apt. Suppose that one wishes to transform, by selective breeding, the human race into a race of angels. We can be virtually certain that it would be much easier to breed for angelic disposition than for a pair of wings because there is available in the human population a variance in disposition, and it is not implausible to suppose that part of this variance is genetic… There is much less chance of encountering variants on the basis of which the development of wings may be started, and to expect mutations providing such a basis seems rather farfetched. And yet birds and mammals… have had a common albeit remote ancestry. There is no possibility, however, of reversing and repeating the evolutionary process that gave rise to these winged and wingless creatures.” (Pg. 94)
He explains, “Rapidly evolving groups need not have high mutation rates, nor should evolutionary statis be taken as evidence of insufficient mutability. Polymorphisms … can react to changes in the environment without waiting for new mutations to appear. In Drosophila even seasonal changes in the environment evoke genetic alterations. These alterations are, of course, cyclic and reversible. The gene pool is in constant motion; if a simile is desired, a stormy sea is more appropriate than a beanbag.” (Pg. 201)
He says, “In summary, the problems of the maintenance of genetic variability in natural populations, and of the ways in which natural selection acts, are as yet far from solved. These are basic problems of any causal theory of evolution. Both theoretical and experimental studies in this field, however, have resulted in gratifying or even spectacular advances in recent years. Moreover, it is probable that the state of the knowledge as outlined above will be surpassed in the near future.” (Pg. 229)
He argues, “[Carleton] Coon divides mankind into 5 ‘subspecies’… It should be made unequivocally clear that the number of races or subspecies which one chooses to recognize by giving them vernacular or formal Latin names is largely… arbitrary. Every local population of human beings, or of any other sexual species, probably differs from other populations in the incidence of some gene alleles in its gene pool. Every population is, then, racially distinct from every other. But it would serve no useful purpose to give every population a name as a separate race. In a continuously inhabited territory populations have no boundaries; they merge into each other.” (Pg. 290)
He continues, “Thus, Mongoloid and Amerindian populations are frequently placed together in a single race, but it would hardly occur to anybody to combine Amerindian and African populations and to contrast them with the Mongoloids. Although some separations and combinations are debatable, others are clearly reasonable, and still others obviously impossible.” (Pg. 291)
He states, “I feel that a biologist may reasonably speak of evolutionary progress, provided only that he makes clear what kind of progress is meant... the concept of progress, including biological progress, necessarily is axiological, that is, refers to some kind of value in reference to which we choose to consider objects of events. Our choices of values may or may not be determined by whether the valuation can be measured exactly. The approach of evolution to man is almost inevitably in one’s mind in considering the evolutionary history of life on earth. If made explicit (as Teilhard de Chardin has done [in ‘The Phenomenon of Man’]), this emphasis is legitimate, although totally inapplicable to the evolution of the plant kingdom… The destruction of billions of individuals is easily supported among bacteria, whereas in invertebrates an individual’s life is hedged and sheltered by many physiological and developmental homeostatic mechanisms.” (Pg. 394-395)
He says in the concluding chapter, “Evolution is a creative process, in precisely the same sense in which composing a poem or a symphony, carving a status, or painting a picture are creative acts. An art work is novel, unique, and unrepeatable… The evolution of every phyletic line yields a novelty that never existed before and is a unique, unrepeatable, and irreversible proceeding… only a most elementary component of the evolutionary process, a mutation followed by selection of a single gene allele, may be recurrent. An evolutionary history is a unique chain of events.” (Pg. 430)
He adds, “Man’s foresight has not… enabled him to avoid miscarriages of his social and political history! Anyway, the living world not only persists but also contains a greater variety of forms and more complex, sophisticated, or ‘progressive’ ones than in the past. Teilhard de Chardin has said that evolution is ‘pervading everything so as to find everything.’ This is an overstatement, since the potentially possible variety of gene patterns is vastly greater than the variety ever realized. Yet he is right in essence: natural selection has tried out an immense number of possibilities and has discovered many wonderful ones. Among which, to date, the most wonderful is man.” (Pg. 431)
This book goes beyond simply evolutionary biological theory, and will thus appeal to a wider variety of readers.
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