The Baerian biology and evolution as leaded by the organism’s interpretation

Kalevi Kull

In the history of biology, two great lines of thinking can be distinguished — the Baerian, and the Darwinian. Defining only two categories in the classification is, of course, a great simplification. However, Romanticist and Victorian cultural trends, continental and Anglo-American schools in scientific discourse, structuralism and functionalism in the backgrounds of the explanations — these can be seen as parallels (which, apparently not so seldom, correspondingly coincide) with the same distinction.

J.v.Uexküll expressed the same opposition, when he noted the preference toward Merkseite versus Wirkseite, for instance by Kepler or Newton. “Kepler suchte nach dem Plan — Newton nach der Ursache der gleichen Erscheinung. /../ Seit Darwin waren die Biologen eifrig bemüht, die Merkseite der Lebewesen zu unterschlagen und nur ihre Wirkseite zu beachten” (Uexküll 1937: 188–189).

One of the basic differences concerns the stress on development versus evolution. According to the Darwinian view, adaptation to the environment as a result of a struggle for existence and differential reproduction of genotypes is the main issue in evolution, whereas the organic form itself provides the main evolutionary trends and innovations according to the other approach. The latter has its roots in the views of Leibniz and Goethe, and later von Baer (1864), G.Teichmüller, D’Arcy Thompson, R.Woltereck, and others. This view is close to the structuralist approaches in biology of this century (Goodwin, Sibatani, Webster 1989). Lamarckian biology, however, seems to be situated somehow in between — its teleology puts it close to the Baerian line, whereas its stress on the adaptation to environment is more similar to that of Darwinism.

According to what we know for certain today, genetic memory in cells is read-only. It can be copied, but it is not possible for a cell to store any new messages in it. From this, it is conventionally concluded that only genetic changes, and not phenotypic modifications, have an importance for evolution.

However, what the semiotic approach to organisms teaches us, is that the genome does not determine phenotype, but that the organism, in each stage of its development, interprets its genome when producing phenotype, and this interpretation can be shifted depending on the context of Umwelt.

Thus, the problem remains, what can an organism as a subject do to influence its evolution, considering that it cannot write anything into its genetic memory.

An answer to this question can be formulated as follows: an organism can influence its evolution via changes in the usage of different parts or pieces of its genome, or shifts of their meaning (or function), which result in a certain ambiguity in the meaning of mutation, and via a possibility to fix this change in its genetic memory (due to stochastic genetic modifications which may make the changes irreversible), i.e. by forgetting the unused or unnecessary. This is possible, if the organism has a little freedom; and it has, due to its communication with the outer world or other organisms, due to its engagement in triadic processes, or in functional circles.

Or, in short: an organism can change the interpretation of its genetic memory, even despite the constancy of the latter. The genome can thus be compared to an ordered read-only vocabulary, which can be used to produce various texts, i.e. organisms. A genome is like a pattern from which that which is compatible is used. However, since, in addition to the vocabulary, the initial reader (the whole cell) is also inherited, the possible innovations or changes in the texts produced are limited.

This also means that, at least theoretically, evolutionary changes and the emergenge of new structures can take place without any differences in individuals’ fecundity. (And according to the definition of natural selection, if there are no differences in fecundity, there is no natural selection.)

According to this view, the first things to happen are usually the new choices. A functional circle, searching to supply of an organism’s need, may stumble upon a new solution. If the interpretational shift can be retained for a long time, for generations, independently of the genome, then the stochastic genetic changes tend to make the shift irreversible. This means that epigenetic changes precede genetic ones.

Here, we can remind ourselves of the ‘Baldwin effect’ (according to American psychologist James Mark Baldwin (1896), advocated also by another psychologist Conway Lloyd Morgan, an author of the concept of ‘emergent evolution’). “The mechanism was based on the assumption that a deliberately chosen new behavior pattern could influence the evolution of a species, but not by means of the inheritance of acquired characters. The body of each animal would adapt itself to the new situation, but instead of this adaptation being directly inherited, it would give the species time during which random variation could come up with truly hereditable equivalents, which would then be favored by selection. Thus, selection need not be the purely mechanistic process condemned by most Lamarckians, but could include a role for the active participation of the organisms themselves” (Bowler 1992: 81). “This presented habit as the guiding force of evolution — not via Lamarckism, but through its ability to define a trend in bodily structure that would be followed up by natural selection” (Bowler 1992: 131–132). Recently, this mechanism has found a number of new advocates (Belew, Mitchell 1996).

The described mechanism of the Baldwin effect provides the possibility for an organism’s choice (or organism’s search) to be a directing factor in evolution. This may considerably enhance the possible speed of evolution (since there is no need then to wait a whole generation to make the next trial), thus also proposing a solution to the known ‘paradox of speed’ of evolution.

An important feature of the ‘interpretation change’ mechanism is that it can take place simultaneously and similarly in many individuals of population. A usual example where this can occur may be a population’s move to a new territory, or an irreversible change in climate or in a resource level, which concurrently influences many organisms. To give an evolutionary consequence, these changes do not require the appearance of a genotype with higher fitness and the long-term process of out-competing less well fitted genotypes, or even any change in fecundity. Epigenetic inheritance represents another mechanism which can provide time for stochastic genetic changes to appear and fix the otherwise phenotypic changes, e.g. through the forgetting of the unused. The phenomenon of epigenetic inheritance has, in recent years, progressed to a firmly established biological principle, known, for instance, as genomic imprinting. “Epigenesis, /../ in fact quite ancient [notion] in biology, has been underappreciated in the recent past for ideological reasons (specifically, anti-‘vitalist’ phobias), but it continues to be an indispensable notion” (Anderson et al. 1990: 758).

It is also interesting to mention that new genetic material comes into the genome mainly from the duplication of pieces of the existing genome. There is a trend for these duplications to become unidentical. Also, the majority of genetic material in eukaryotic cells has more than one copy, which also may not be exactly identical copies. Therefore, for a required function a cell often has the possibility to choose between several slightly different genes (or the products of genes), which may give almost identical result, but which may also provide possible solutions for new, not previously experienced situations.

These arguments, hopefully, give some hints for explaining in which way the organisms as subjects can influence the evolution, and how its Zielstrebigkeit may become possible.

Anderson Myrdene 1990. Biology and semiotics. In: W.A.Koch (ed.). Semiotics in the Individual Sciences, Part I. Bochum: Universitätsverlag Dr. N. Brockmeyer, 254–281. Baer Karl Ernst von 1864. Reden, 1. St.Petersburg: Schmitzdorff. Baldwin James Mark 1896. A new factor in evolution. In: American Naturalist 30, 441–451, 536–553. Belew R.K., Mitchell M. (eds.). 1996. Adaptive Individuals in Evolving Populations: Models and Algorithms. Reading: Addison-Wesley. Bowler Peter J. 1992. The Eclipse of Darwinism: Anti-Darwinian Evolution Theories in the Decades around 1900. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press. Goodwin Brian C., Sibatani Atuhiro, Webster Gerry C. (eds.) 1989. Dynamic Structures in Biology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Uexküll Jakob von 1937. Die neue Umweltlehre: Ein Bindeglied zwischen Natur- und Kulturwissenschaften. In: Die Erziehung 13(5), 185–199.