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Comment by ctdavies | Hacker News Reader

"We hold that organisms are constructed in development, not simply ‘programmed’ to develop by genes. Living things do not evolve to fit into pre-existing environments, but co-construct and coevolve with their environments, in the process changing the structure of ecosystems."

I thought that these were already generally accepted ideas within evolutionary theory.

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They really are, and I did my biology degree in the 80s and even it didn't really seem controversial. Yet there is a long history of people attempting to make themselves appear iconoclastic.

So look at the Amazon description of this book: http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-The-Leopard-Changed-Spots/dp/075...

I met its author just after it was published. It's a very good book and very interesting, and makes you think about developmental biology in new ways. But even it was always an added nuance and richness to the evolutionary story, rather than the revolution claimed in the blurb.

" For instance, leaf shape changes with soil water and chemistry. SET views this plasticity as merely fine-tuning, or even noise. The EES sees it as a plausible first step in adaptive evolution."

So the EES model believes these organisms are evolving as they grow to adapt to a changing environment. Am I reading this right? Do any organisms actually have the ability to modify their genetic code as they develop?

Gene expressions are not binary. Code may not necessarily need to be modified-- merely activated or deactivated per expression levels. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if code does in fact get 'modified' over time (but there is the problem of separating code from data in your model even then).

Agreed. This is not the first such article posted to Hacker News. My take is that there appears to be a subset of evolutionary biologists who, as in far too many fields, are unaware that qualitative research is possible (or not allowed by their departments to practice such), and try to force reality to fit their computer models, to which then there has to be a constant "reaction" to the oversimplification.

> I thought that these were already generally accepted ideas within evolutionary theory.

They are. See e.g. epigenetics and the seminal studies about how grand-maternal environment can affect children.

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