Heredity east and west : Lysenko and world science / Julian Huxley.
- Julian Huxley
- Date:
- 1949
Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
Credit: Heredity east and west : Lysenko and world science / Julian Huxley. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![HEREDITY EAST AND WEST not a good scientist. When truth is attacked or suppressed, it is his duty to speak out. Finally, I will quote various points from a letter in the New Statesman of September 25, 1948. ( I ) The orthodox geneticists have long maintained that the potentialities of the germ-plasm are congenital, in¬ nate, and unchangeable by circumstance. This is incorrect. They have established that the material basis of the germ- plasm is unchangeable (except by mutation). They would all agree that the potentialities of the germ-plasm are changeable by circumstance, the same genes in one set of circumstances giving rise to one character, in another set of circumstances to another (as with the color of the legs of fowls, previously cited). (2) He then refers to this as a premise. It is not a premise, but a basis of fact. (3 ) Such a theory can be used to justify passive accept¬ ance of the workings of chance, and it is as 'scientific fatal¬ ism' that it has been attacked. (a) It is not a theory, but a set of facts, (b) It has been attacked as 'scientific fatalism'; but an elementary understanding of the nature of science should be sufficient to remind us that the scientific value of facts and theories cannot legitimately be attacked on such ideological grounds. (4) In animal breeding [one of] the points at issue [is] whether all characters are 'fixed' at birth. Very few characters are fixed at birth : all characters depend on the interaction between genes and environment during develop¬ ment. Apparently, the writer is again confusing character with hereditary factor. 214](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b18025328_0231.JP2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
