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Bauplans in the highest Linnaean ranks of phyla during the Cambrian explosion,
transgenerational developmental plasticity, “genetic polymorphism,” sympatric spe-
ciation, induction of inherited changes without changes in genes, and transmission of
learned behaviors to the offspring.
The modern synthesis has shown a limited capacity to assimilate new, often
groundbreaking, knowledge from other fields of biological investigation. Since its
inception as a hypothesis, it sidestepped the entire field and facts of experimental
embryology, which Darwin considered to be:
second to none in importance
Darwin (1859)
and that for his theory, these facts were:
by far the strongest single class of facts
Darwin (1860)
Modern synthesis has deemed it impossible to deal with the long known facts
on the role of epigenetic inheritance. More than adequate evidence on epigenetic
hereditary changes in animals and plants has existed for a long time; Beisson and
Sonneborn (1965) and others produced experimental evidence on the transmission
of “acquired characters” in Protozoa; abundant evidence on induction and transmis-
sion at a cellular level of epigenetic marks (DNA methylation and histone modifica-
tion) and of epigenetically induced changes is accumulating at an accelerated pace.
No attempts are made to deal with the epigenetic control of gene expression and the
sudden heritable changes in cases of transgenerational developmental plasticity that
affect not one individual but whole populations simultaneously. Ignoring this body of
evidence is unexplainable at best.
The neoDarwinian synthesis is hardly compatible with new biological discover-
ies, especially in the field of evo-devo. Among these discoveries is the conserved
common genetic toolkit (responsible for production of transcription factors (TFs)
and a number of other genes) determining the development of the Bauplan across
animal species, indicating that the eruptive morphological diversity of the Cambrian
period was unrelated to genetic variation or diversity of genes and gene products pre-
dicted by the modern synthesis. Gerhart and Kirschner pointed out that:
where we most expect to find variation, we find conservation, a lack of change.
Gerhart and Kirschner (2007)
While positing that natural selection drives morphological change, the modern
synthesis does not pay the deserved attention to the mechanism and origin of the
changes that always precede the selection, although:
selection has no innovative capacity: it eliminates or maintains what exists.
Müller (2003)
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