Agents Competent in Natural Genetic Engineering

Abstract

The book contains 4 main chapters (see headlines below) in which this new view of the evolutionary process is presented. Step by step all currently known empirical data are listed. The extraordinary quality of the arguments that Shapiro presents goes in parallel with the absence of any redundant information, so that this masterpiece of a reading book gives dense information in a primary text of 140 pages followed by a very helpful glossary and index, and more than 1100 of the best references in the field. All chapters contain well structured tables that help in categorising the given examples. A special service is offered by a list of far-reaching analyses and appendices that are available online. The introduction leads to a fresh look at the basic problem of how novelty arises in evolution. Shapiro states that novelty is the critical issue in evolutionary change because without novelty selection would not have anything to act upon. In this respect, mainstream thoughts of the past 60 years were based on the assumption that inheritable novelty is the result of chance or accident or, as Darwin assumed, adaptive change resulting from natural selection applied to a number of small changes over long periods of time. The currently dominant evolutionary biology paradigm is based on the neodarwinian paradigm that all genetic change occurs accidentally and randomly. At the end of the first half of the last century this perspective received amolecular interpretation as a number of errors in replication processes. The insistence on randomness and accident became dogmatic in order to reject all possible revivals of vitalism. But in the last 50 years there has been an abundance of empirical data that contradict this randomness and accident in variation. Cells have the capacity to change themselves adaptively and to alter their own heredity. In contrast to the predictions of the former mechanistic approaches, it is well documented that recombination has the ability to generate information and to alter the content of the genetic storage. Finally, thanks to Barbara Biosemiotics (2012) 5:291–296 DOI 10.1007/s12304-012-9141-9