Evolution by Epigenesis: Farewell to Darwinism, Neo and Otherwise

No, that's not what I mean. I mean a somatic cell, except in the case of mosaicism, reflects what individual X has inherited from his parents. So you can do cross-sectional population genetics with cheek swabs or blood samples rather than collecting sperm from people.

Obvious (or it should be) is that population genetic changes are transmitted by germ-line allele frequencies, but the best way to check what population 0 can transmit in their germ lines is to look at the somatic cell gene frequency in population 0+1.

I mean a somatic cell, except in the case of mosaicism, reflects what individual X has inherited from his parents.

I use the somatic cell as illustration of the looseness of your language. a looseness which allows the always-following Dakwinsisms to be admitted as reasonable statements.

A somatic cell, due to some environmental influence on it, has a new mutation of a gene ( a new allele appears) and this event is therefore a population change.

since a somatic cell "reflects what is inherited from his parents", then that allele WAS inherited from the cell's "parents" ....?

You make a vocation out of hair-splitting, though, so I think your "looseness" charge is a bit ludicrous. I'm trying to have a reasonable conversation.

I'll go along with this wild tangent as soon as you demonstrate to me the frequency with which you identify novel mutations in an offspring's somatic cells.

It happens. It's also very rare at a population level, so most genetic innovations (like this or that new point mutation or translocation or whatever) will disappear into background variability when you do population genetic studies.

The importance of mentioning mosaicism, by the way, really has only to do with sampling errors, i.e. the genotype of a sample may differ from an individual's germ line genotype. But since most individual mosaicisms are probably very rare, even this kind of error would be unlikely to much affect the gene frequencies in a large population.

The importance of mentioning mosaicism, by the way, really has only to do with sampling errors, i.e. the genotype of a sample may differ from an individual's germ line genotype. But since most individual mosaicisms are probably very rare, even this kind of error would be unlikely to much affect the gene frequencies in a large population.

Medical ethics

Main article: Medical ethics
Teleology provides a moral basis for the professional ethics of medicine. It is the intrinsic purpose of medicine to relieve suffering by healing and so the first principle of the Hippocratic oath follows - that medical practitioners should not use their skills to do harm.[9]

To make something bad better, to keep something good good, or to keep something bad from happening.

The Thomist philosopher Etienne Gilson vigorously contended in his 1971 book From Aristotle to Darwin and Back Again that Francis Bacon and others perpetrated a philosophical error when they eliminated two of Aristotle's four causes from the purview of science. They sought to explain everything in mechanistic terms, referring only to material and efficient causes and discarding formal and final causality.

Without the form, or the formal cause, it would be impossible to account for the unity and specific identity of any substance. In the human composite the form is the spiritual soul, which makes the organism a single entity and gives it its human character. Once the form is lost, the material elements decompose, and the body ceases to be human. It would be futile, therefore, to try to define human beings in terms of their bodily components alone.

Final causality is particularly important in the realm of living organisms. The organs of the animal or human body are not intelligible except in terms of their purpose or finality. The brain is not intelligible without reference to the faculty of thinking that is its purpose, nor is the eye intelligible without reference to the function of seeing.

The question is, regardless of the adaptive advantages that arose as a result of the large brain in the long run, during the very early stages of human evolution, it is very difficult to see how this could not have had a very large impact on survival rates. I wonder what human infant mortality was in pre-modern societies? I guess it must have been pretty high, especially compared to our non-human predecessors and other animals. So this 'threshhold state' of the early human must have been very precarious indeed.

Scientists understandably bracket the idea (of final causality or purpose) out of their scientific thinking because they seek natural explanations and other kinds of causes. Yet many of them wrongly conclude from their selective study of the world that final causes do not exist at all and that they have no place in the rational study of life. Likewise, many erroneously assume that philosophy cannot draw upon scientific findings, in light of final causality, to better understand the world and man.

Memester, when we were first year medical students we were formally taught to not think teleologically. But that is in terms of mechanisms of disease and basic human biology. Of course there is an end product of medical practice, which is the betterment of our patients' condition, but the teleos of our practice is different than the teleos of glycolysis.

We weren't speaking of the teleos of glycolysis.

We were speaking about Medicine and specifically of prescription, though.

Your purpose as a doctor is not to dance the Fandango, not to tie on a bandage, not to prescribe, but to help the patient get better. You may in fact do some of those things, and you may also tie your shoelaces when going to work. but that is not your purpose as a doctor.

Your purpose - in advising water intake - is for bettering health, not for advocating the pleasure of drinking.

Sorry, it's been a while since I looked back at this thread and I mixed up the evolution discussion with the 'intent' discussion. Yes, in generic terms that is true. Betterment of health is a very broad concept, though, and it often involves weighing symptom palliation versus modifying a disease. Medical care is goal directed. But I think concepts like intentionality (including teleology) are only applicable to the conscious mind.

Medical care is goal directed.