The Modern Synthesis
Following the rediscovery of Mendel's principles of genetics, several theorists such as RA Fisher, JBS Haldane, Sewall Wright, Ernst Mayr and Theodosius Dobzhansky contributed to the synthesis of Mendel and Darwin's concept of natural selection. In contrast to Weismann, the modern synthesis rejected the notion that the organism is ultimately reducible to physical principles. According to Mayr, the organism responds to a dual causation, one based on laws of physics, the other based on a genetic program. Thus the organism reflects not just the mechanics of its constituent parts but the phylogenetic history encoded in its genes. Genetic information both reflects a species' descent and directs an organism’s development. The key to genes is not their chemical makeup but the information they carry. According to esteemed researcher Christiane Nusslein-Volhard, what distinguishes genes from proteins is that genes are chemically identical and differ only in terms of their sequence of nucleic acids and the information encoded in that sequence.
Read more about this topic: Genetic Determinism
Famous quotes containing the words modern and/or synthesis:
“Miss Nancy Ellicott smoked
And danced all the modern dances;
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But they knew that it was modern.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“The invention of photography provided a radically new picture-making process—a process based not on synthesis but on selection. The difference was a basic one. Paintings were made—constructed from a storehouse of traditional schemes and skills and attitudes—but photographs, as the man on the street put, were taken.”
—Jean Szarkowski (b. 1925)