Adaptationism and the Author

Adaptationism endorses the gene as the primary locus of change (leading to new structures in evolution). This functionalist position is consistent with current applications of biology, especially genetic manipulation technologies. Rather than a one-one gene/trait relation, more sophisticated models emerge with systems biology, yet these still establish the gene as the primary driver of the phenotype, based on August Weismann’s barrier between germline and somatic cells and the Central Dogma, a one-way flow of information summarised as ‘DNA makes RNA makes protein’. The germline as an ‘external’ determinant of the soma (or body) has similarities to nineteenth-century proposals in Naturphilosophie of an underlying archetype. A comparison can be drawn with literary theory: in expressive realism, the meaning of a text is attributed to authorial intention. Formalist models in literature, in contrast, attribute meaning to the text itself. According to New Criticism, the properties of a text cannot be attributed to the mind (psychology) of the author, or seen as a product of authorial expression. Formalist biology similarly rejects the idea that form is the expressive outcome of an external factor or ‘author’ (germline or archetype).