(March 7, 2016 at 4:38 am)Rhythm Wrote:Quote:Genotype influences phenotype, ofc. Phenotype also influences genotype. You think that "what we learned the hard way" wasn't passed on? Where did all of this -looks around him- come from, then? Is there a gene that confers the ability to start a fire, to make a clovis point and haft it to a spear? A gene that tells us which plants are safe to eat and which are not? Is there such a thing as a "born physicist" who falls out of the womb with a piece of chalk and begins to scribble quantum equations on the floor of the delivery room? The different behaviors we've learned, and that we teach, have influenced our genotype. To use your example above...there aren't many native americans left round these parts. Sure, genotype accounts for some of that, resistance to certain diseases, for example. Phenotype accounts for yet more. Bang bang.
Hard-learned behaviors can be passed on to others through the same means, but it doesn't pass down the genotype which makes such behaviors more natural. Nor will it drive a duck's ducklings to protect their own ducklings, in a world where duck mothers abandoned their eggs as soon as they were laid.
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