From now into the future

1. From now into the future or Cultural control of genes: How much do individuals matter?

3. 1. How old is cultural control over genes? • sex or marriage rule (for example, the incest taboo or exogamy and endogamy) as cultural control over the genes. - The rules are socially-learned, socially-transmitted, and, hence, are part of culture. - The rules prohibit or promote certain patterns or sexual recombination. - They specify in some measure with which other sets of genes certain sets are to recombine.

4. 1. How old is cultural control over genes? • sex or marriage rule (for example, the incest taboo or exogamy and endogamy) as cultural control over the genes. - The rules are socially-learned, socially-transmitted, and, hence, are part of culture. - The rules prohibit or promote certain patterns or sexual recombination. - They specify in some measure with which other sets of genes certain sets are to recombine. - If this counts as cultural control over genes, then the antiquity of cultural control over the genes may be very great, indeed. - Some anthropologists believe it may go back hundreds of thousands or even millions of years ago.

5. Imperfection of control - This kind of control is not perfect. - People may not marry as the rule says they should. - Sexual reproduction may occur outside of marriage relations. - Even incestuous reproduction occurs in human populations where the culture prohibits it.

6. Imperfection of control - This kind of control is not perfect. - People may not marry as the rule says they should. - Sexual reproduction may occur outside of marriage relations. - Even incestuous reproduction occurs in human populations where the culture prohibits it. Culture and biology (as impulse) struggle for control.

7. • domestication as cultural control over genes - Domestication involves selection. - This is an analogue to natural and sexual selection, - But the selecting in this case is done by humans exercising choice. - They pick out the individuals who are to reproduce. Domestication dates back to 10-12,000 BP, though it probably has antecedents in the accidental spreading of seeds as the result of gathering, camping, etc. Hunters and gatherers move plants and animals around.

8. What is selected for in domestication? • Increased yield, e.g., - number of grains on an ear, - size of the edible fruits, - amount of meat on an animal used for meat, - amount of milk produced on an animal used for milk production, - amount of fur on an animal used for its coat.

9. What is selected for in domestication? • Increased yield, e.g., - number of grains on an ear, - size of the edible fruits, - amount of meat on an animal used for meat, - amount of milk produced on an animal used for milk production, - amount of fur on an animal used for its coat. • Ease of managing the reproductive process, e.g., - reduced thickness of seed coverings, - distribution of the seeds for easier removal, - synchronization of harvesting, more docile animals.

10. Corn (zea mays) • probably domesticated in what is today the Valley of Mexico • time frame = circa 8,000 B.P. • most likely ancestor = teosinte

11. Teosinte (Zea mexicana) • found in Mexico today • belongs to the genus of corn (Zea) • same chromsomal number as corn (=20) • crosses with corn waynesword.palomar.edu/ plapr99.htm waynesword.palomar.edu/ plapr99.htm

12. Corn became a staple for New World Indians from North American to South America long before the arrival of Columbus. waynesword.palomar.edu/ plapr99.htm

13. • corn now completely domesticated • can no longer exists in the wild • reproduction depends on human intervention www.propanefl.com/images/corn.jpg www.kookooroo.com/images/corn.jpg

14. Domestication as a process • took place in different parts of the world at roughly the same time. • hard to know in what measure the idea of domestication, as a general invention, spread by means of cultural diffusion, versus the extent to which the general idea itself was independently stumbled upon (independent invention).

15. The idea of domestication • once individuals grasp it, is tried on many different entities. • the idea is socially-learned and, hence, a part of culture. • so too are the specific practices surrounding cultivation or animal rearing. - When to plant - how to plant (putting a fish in with the seeds, for example) - how to care for plants - how to harvest - how to process, etc. There are even reports [from Karl von den Steinen, who explored central Brazil in the 19th century] that some of the Indians, upon first acquiring matches as trade goods, attempted to plant them to see whether they would grow.

16. End result of domestication: • nature is transformed at the behest of culture; • new species are produced and existing ones modified and some are eliminated; culture has been playing this god-like role for thousands of years; • the transformation of nature in turn affects culture; more people can be supported, but also productivity can be increased; • this means that specialization can take place, since not everyone has to provide for their own food; division of labor; • this means that more culture can accumulate in specialized areas.

18. 2. How much do individuals matter in cultural processes? • In what measure can an individual influence the language he/she speaks? • How many people will contribute to the English language even one new word that will one day appear in a dictionary like Webster’s International? • In what measures is any given individual likely to modify large-scale culture in some significant way?

19. The idea of individual invention is poofed in “Forrest Gump,” who is portrayed as the inadvertent inventor of jogging, the yellow smiling face, the expression “sh-- happens,” and so forth.)

20. Incremental change Much cultural and linguistic change is incremental. As in the calculus, where the D can be diminishingly small, producing a smooth rate of change, so too can the incremental change involved in language and culture be infinitesimally small.

21. Incremental change Much cultural and linguistic change is incremental. As in the calculus, where the D can be diminishingly small, producing a smooth rate of change, so too can the incremental change involved in language and culture be infinitesimally small. We may (indeed, we are, each and every one of us) contributing to long-term changes of which we are only dimly aware, or even wholly unaware.

22. Incremental change Much cultural and linguistic change is incremental. As in the calculus, where the D can be diminishingly small, producing a smooth rate of change, so too can the incremental change involved in language and culture be infinitesimally small. We may (indeed, we are, each and every one of us) contributing to long-term changes of which we are only dimly aware, or even wholly unaware. However, some increments are bigger than others. We sometimes have major and revolutionary change — literally, in the case of the French revolution, for example, where aristocratic social institutions were replaced by democratic ones.

23. Culture as constraining the direction of change: Culture and language, as accumulated learning transmitted from the past, represent a constraint on the direction of change. Popular films play on the idea of time travel, and on the incomprehensibility of certain inventions in a different cultural context. The culture only permits certain kinds of changes. Here culture is something that individuals fight against.

24. Publishers Weekly: Never mind a crashed saucer with dead aliens strewn around it. Corso has bigger news to impart: that alien technology harvested from the infamous saucer crash in Roswell, N.Mex., in July 1947 led directly to the development of the integrated circuit chip, and laser and fiber optic technologies, among other marvels and that he knows this because he was in charge of distributing the harvest. Senator Strom Thurmond offers a foreword that will reassure readers that Corso is in fact a real person, and a patriot. Curiously, His claims are so outlandish, though, that the many readers he's going to attract likely will have difficulty discerning whether they are reading a hoax, ravings or the biggest story of the century. (July) www.epinions.com/book_mu-3278763/additive_~1

25. Culture as constraining the direction of change: Culture and language, as accumulated learning transmitted from the past, represent a constraint on the direction of change. Popular films play on the idea of time travel, and on the incomprehensibility of certain inventions in a different cultural context. The culture only permits certain kinds of changes. Here culture is something that individuals fight against. Vs. Culture as enabling certain kinds of change: Contrasting idea that culture, once it has accumulated sufficiently, makes certain discoveries or inventions inevitable. From this point of view, the individual inventors or discoverers are more or less happenstantially chosen by culture. If those particular individuals didn’t do it, others would have. The next step is made obvious by the accumulation of previous steps. Hence, from this perspective, culture plays the agentive role, with individuals as facilitators.

26. Collective brains: This latter idea has sometimes been referred to “superorganic,” culture or language as superorganic phenomena.

27. Collective brains: This latter idea has sometimes been referred to “superorganic,” culture or language as superorganic phenomena. Collective agency versus individual agency. The superorganic concept is connected with the idea that culture is agentive in its own right. It has a god-like ability to influence individuals and to control their behavior, including their discoveries and inventions.

28. Collective brains: This latter idea has sometimes been referred to “superorganic,” culture or language as superorganic phenomena. Collective agency versus individual agency. The superorganic concept is connected with the idea that culture is agentive in its own right. It has a god-like ability to influence individuals and to control their behavior, including their discoveries and inventions. Theories in anthropology (associated especially with the French anthropologist/sociologist Emile Durkheim) that the very idea of god or spiritual forces is a recognition of the existence of such superorganic forces.

29. 3. One recent step in the development of cultural control over genes - PCR = Polymerase Chain Reaction • Scientific developments especially of the last 50 years have made it possible for humans to engage in direct tinkering with the mechanisms of life. • From the point of view of this class, where we have been learning about natural and sexual selection, the irony is that those processes are no longer necessary for biological change. • Humans can now directly intervene in genetic processes, introducing change at the biological level that is controlled by conscious purpose and by culture, as well as by accident.

30. PCR We’ll look in a little more detail at one one incremental cultural change in the area of culture taking control over genes. This is the invention of polymerase chain reaction or PCR. PCR is an idea and a practical technique for amplifying any given stretch of DNA, such that the stretch can be produced in quantities abundant enough for chemical investigation. Kary B. Mullis was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1993 for the discovery of PCR.

31. “Sometimes a good idea comes to you when you are not looking for it. Through an improbable combination of coincidences, naivete and lucky mistakes, such a revelation came to me one Friday night in April, 1983, as I gripped the steering wheel of my car and snaked along a moonlit mountain road into northern California's redwood country. That was how I stumbled across a process that could make unlimited numbers of copies of genes, a process now known as the polymerase chain reaction (PCR).” (Kary B. Mullis, “The Unusual Origin of the Polymerase Chain Reaction,” Scientific American, 1990. www.nobel.se/chemistry/educational/poster/1993/

32. “Beginning with a single molecule of the genetic material DNA, the PCR can generate 100 billion similar molecules in an afternoon. The reaction is easy to execute: it requires no more than a test tube, a few simple reagents and a source of heat. The DNA sample that one wishes to copy can be pure, or it can be a minute part of an extremely complex mixture of biological materials. The DNA may come from a hospital tissue specimen, from a single human hair, from a drop of dried blood at the scene of a crime, from the tissues of a mummified brain or from a 40,000-year-old woolly mammoth frozen in a glacier” (Mullis 1990).

33. What was the state of knowledge before PCR was invented? “By the late 1970's, therefore, molecular biologists were busily studying DNA with endonucleases and with other molecules called oligonucleotide probes. An oligonucleotide is a short chain of specifically ordered nucleotide bases. Under the right conditions, an oligonucleotide will bind specifically with a complementary sequence of nucleotides in single-strand DNA. Therefore, radioactively labeled, man-made oligonucleotides can serve as probes for determining whether a sample of DNA contains a specific nucleotide sequence or gene. In 1979 the Cetus Corporation in Emeryville, Calif., hired me to synthesize oligonucleotide probes” (Mullis 1990).

35. • The idea and use of “polymerase” dates back to 1955, when it was discovered by Arthur Kornberg at Stanford University. • So was the idea of “primers,” specific sequences of nucleotide bases that could be manufactured and bonded with an analogous stretch of nucleotides on a stretch of DNA. • None of this was due to Kary Mullis. He inherited this knowledge and these techniques from the past. They formed part of his received culture, just as knowledge of PCR will now form part of your received culture.

36. What was Mullis’s contribution to this received culture?

37. What was Mullis’s contribution to this received culture? • Principally, that you could apply the known processes over and over again, in 20, 30, 40 or more cycles, to greatly amplify a given stretch of DNA.

38. What was Mullis’s contribution to this received culture? • Principally, that you could apply the known processes over and over again, in 20, 30, 40 or more cycles, to greatly amplify a given stretch of DNA. • This would supply you with enough of that stretch that it could be studied.

41. 4. In what measure did an individual discover PCR; in what measure did culture discover PCR?

43. Let’s quickly refresh our memory about some of the culture that has to have accumulated prior to the invention of PCR. • Knowledge of chemistry, and of a particular class of molecules known as nucleotides.

44. • Knowledge of the genetic code and the triplets or “codons” that code for amino acids

45. • Knowledge of DNA structure and of the replication process.

46. • Knowledge of cells.

47. • Knowledge of chromosomes, meiosis, and mitosis.

48. • Knowledge of chromosomes, meiosis, and mitosis. • Add knowledge of physics, mathematics, chemistry….

49. So in what measure did Mullis invent PCR? in what measure did culture invent PCR? “Yet in the morning I was too tired not to believe that someone, somewhere, must have tried this idea already. Thousands of investigators had, for various reasons, extended single oligonucleotides with polymerases; surely someone would have noticed the possibility of a polymerase chain reaction. But if it had worked, I was sure I would have heard about it: people would have been using it all the time to amplify,or multiply, DNA fragments.”

50. “At one point [Joshua Lederberg] mentioned that about 20 years previously, after Kornberg had discovered DNA polymerase, the two of them had considered the notion that the enzyme could somehow be harnessed to make large quantities of DNA. They had not figured out exactly how to do it, however. I reminded him that oligonucleotides were not readily available at that time and that there was hardly any DNA sequence information either.