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| Pâ•qidꞋ Yi•rᵊmᵊyâhꞋ u |
2003.06.10 – Until recently, genes were considered a hard-wiring of the brain, personality and nature, including human nature. The Nazis based their theory of innate behavior – ‘eugenics’ – on such hard-wiring. The existence of free will was questioned since a hard-wired brain presupposes free will. However, science is now learning that experience interacts with – and alters – genes (Matt Ridley, Time Magazine, 2003.06.02, p. 50-57).
Ridley hyperbolizes (‘hypes’) "Theologians may develop a whole new theory of free will based on the observation that learning expands our capacity to choose our own path. As was true of Copernicus’s observation 500 years ago that the earth orbits the sun, there is no telling how far the repercussions of this new scientific paradigm may extend."
No new theory is needed. It’s always been evident that free will operates within environmental constraints (refer, for example, to Pavlov). Your free will permits you to choose to fall up to avoid a charging elephant, but if you choose to fall up gravity isn’t going to change for you and you’re gonna get trampled. We have previously demonstrated this kind of interaction between free will and environmental constraints by showing that we can manipulate environmental factors to dictate limits of your free will. ("Free Will, versus Predestination, demonstrated" in the ‘Topics’ section of our Netzarim Judaica Shoppe, demonstrates how Pharaoh’s heart was "hardened" without infringing on his free will.)
"Fear of snakes, for instance, is the most common human phobia, and it makes good evolutionary sense for it to be instinctive. Learning to fear snakes the hard way would be dangerous. Yet experiments with monkeys reveal that their fear of snakes (and probably ours) must still be acquired by watching another individual react with fear to a snake. It turns out that it is easy to teach monkeys to fear snakes but very difficult to teach them to fear flowers. What we inherit is not a fear of snakes but a predisposition to learn a fear of snakes – a nature for a certain kind of nurture" (Time). This is relevant to many ethnic differences that have no basis in biology, as well as illuminating the genius hidden in the always-mistranslated statement in
Maltreatment of a child results in an adult criminal far more frequently when there is a genetic predisposition. Yet, the genetic predisposition itself doesn’t automatically result in adult criminals. "Again, the difference lies in a promoter that alters the activity of a gene… In other words, maltreatment is not enough; you must also have the low-active gene. And it is not enough to have the low-active gene; you must also be maltreated" (Time). Criminal behavior indicates criminal-predisposed (oriented) genes passed on to children. Yet, promoters alter these genes, and their expression, based on the individual’s own experience and will, changing the genetic predisposition over several generations. Scientists propose that homosexuality operates similarly. How long before scientists catch up with the observations of the ancients recorded in the
Scientists working on the genome discovered that certain "hox" genes set out the body plan of an organism. "Hox genes, like all genes, are switched on and off in different parts of the body at different times. In this way, genes can have subtly different effects, depending on where, when and how they are switched on [expressed]. The switches that control this process – stretches of DNA upstream of genes – are known as promoters" (Time).
"Small changes in the promoter can have profound effects on the expression of a hox gene… To make grand changes in the body plan of animals, there is no need to invent new genes… All you need do is switch the same ones on and off in different patterns. Suddenly, here is a mechanism for creating large and small evolutionary changes from small genetic differences. Merely by adjusting the sequence of a promoter or adding a new one, you could alter the expression of a gene." (Time).
Pavlov demonstrated the interplay between heredity and environment. "But now we know how the brain changes: by the real-time expression of 17 genes, known as the CREB genes. They must be switched on and off to alter connections among the nerve cells in the brain and thus lay down a new long-term memory. These genes are at the mercy of our behavior, not the other way around. Memory is in the genes in the sense that it uses genes, not in the sense that you inherit memories" (Time).
We are like an intelligent computer program that can alter its own code. "In this new view, genes allow the human mind to learn, remember, imitate, imprint language [well, I wish!], absorb culture and express instincts. Genes are not puppet masters or blueprints, nor are they just the carriers of heredity. They are active during life; they switch one another on and off; they respond to the environment. They may direct the construction of the body and brain in the womb, but then almost at once, in response to experience, they set about dimantling what they have made. They are both the cause and the consequence of our actions…" (Time).
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