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BOOKMONGER
New ways of understanding evolution?
With every book I’ve
ever read by Peter Ward —
the University of Washing-
ton professor of paleontol-
ogy and astrobiology who
has interests in geology
and zoology — I’ve been
lured in by the energy and
provocative nature of his
writing. Bless the fellow for
his efforts to bring science
to a general audience. It
isn’t his fault I’ve some-
times found myself mired,
mid-book, in concepts and
controversies beyond my
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One Night Only in Astoria
at the
Jeffrey ELVIS Liberty
Theatre
Friday, August 31
7:00pm
comprehension. But the ur-
gency of the writing always
brings me back.
So of course I pulled
Ward’s brand-new book,
“Lamarck’s Revenge,” off
the bookshelf last week and
have been working my way
through this fascinating
and at times confounding
exploration of a mechanism
of inheritance called epi-
genetics that, although once
discredited, is receiving
attention once again.
As Ward tells it, early
in the 19th century, French
naturalist Jean-Baptiste La-
marck proposed an early hy-
pothesis of evolution based
on the idea that life forms
were not only impacted by
their environment, but they
could then transmit those
impacts to their offspring.
Giraffe’s elongated necks,
for example, might be ex-
plained by the stretching ac-
tivities of the parent giraffes
for water or food, which
then led to the lengthened
necks of their calves.
Even in his own era,
Lamarck’s ideas met with
resistance and derision. And
by the time Charles Darwin
“Lamarck’s Revenge”
By Peter Ward
Bloomsbury
288 pp
$28
COURTESY BLOOMSBURY
The cover of ‘Lamarck’s Re-
venge’ by Peter Ward.
JAMES HAGGART PHOTO
Author Peter Ward.
and Alfred Russel Wallace
came along a few decades
later with a more thorough-
ly argued, evidence-based
theory of natural selection
that manifested over a much
longer span of time, La-
marck’s work lost credence
in most scientific circles.
But as Ward points out,
all of these fellows were op-
erating prior to the mid-20th
century discovery of DNA.
And in our era, following
more recent research such as
the Human Genome Project,
more scientists are delving
into complex questions
that once again are arising
around heritable epigenetics,
or the transmission of
acquired characteristics to
offspring. But even in the
21st century, this scientific
pursuit, sometimes referred
to as “neo-Lamarckism,” is
not without controversy.
In “Lamarck’s Revenge,”
Ward decries the scientific
establishment’s resistance to
epigenetics and argues that
there should be room for this
kind of exploration: “Sci-
ence is more of a template
for action than the sum of its
discoveries.”
And he makes a powerful
case for more study. If it
turns out that the epigenetic
paradigm is valid, this could
help people understand
that there are implications
beyond solely personal im-
pact in the way they behave
and the risks they take:
the drinks imbibed and the
drugs ingested, the plastics
used, the fumes tolerated.
Epigenetics may offer a
new way of comprehending
that our behavior and our
environment affect not only
our own bodies and cellular
make-up, but also the genet-
ic information we pass along
to our offspring.
Habitat loss, warfare,
chemical prevalence, cli-
mate change, stress! Ward
discusses how all of these
things might impact us, and
our descendants, at the cellu-
lar level. It is terrifying, but
also motivating. Shouldn’t
we want to learn more about
this?
The Bookmonger is Bar-
bara Lloyd McMichael, who
writes this weekly column
focusing on the books, au-
thors and publishers of the
Pacific Northwest. Contact
her at bkmonger@nwlink.
com.
the
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