Category Archives: Darwinism

I have long been struck by the work of Charles Darwin. In an age when we are seeing rapid and often unpredictable changes, the notion embedded in this summation of his view in On the Origin of Speciesis an important one and continues to ring true: It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.

Darwins work makes strides in making scientific thought accessible and provides an important indication of our place in the evolutionary process, providing crucial insight into the development and evolution of humanity. In 2015, it was voted in a public poll as the most influential academic book ever written, acclaimed as the supreme demonstration of why academic books matter and a book which has changed the way we think about everything.

Elaborating on the popularity of the work, Andrew Prescott of the University of Glasgow said: Darwin used meticulous observation of the world around us, combined with protracted and profound reflection, to create a book which has changed the way we think about everything not only the natural world but religion, history and society.

Darwins theory of evolution was conceptualised as he travelled the world as a naturalist on board the HMS Beagle. Quite simply put, the theory as outlined in this book is based on the notion of variation. Traits that differentiate species from one another, ranging from structure to colour, and even to capabilities, explain how we have evolved over centuries. Many of these variations are adaptations that have allowed species to survive. This is explained through the concept of natural selection, which makes the argument that infinite population growth is held in check by various factors for example, access to resources and spatial limitations which result in what Darwin terms a struggle for existence.

It is these adaptations and variations that give species the competitive edge that ultimately ensures survival. This not only explains how we evolve and indeed how those with stronger characteristics survive, but it also explains extinction and why some do not. As Darwin noted, the classification systems of his time already indicated a relationship between species. But his theory went to the heart of the similarities between species, exploring the crucial question of why we see so many similarities between humans and apes, for instance. One can hardly watch videos of chimpanzees engaging with their handlers or Koko the gorilla signing without making comparisons to our own species.

Darwins theory is the explanation of this phenomenon. As he terms it, evolution is descent with modification and he proposes that diverse groups of animals evolve from one or a few common ancestors. The mechanism by which this evolution takes place is natural selection. As Darwin intricately explains his theory, he also provides insight into the complexities of academia and the fightback he often received from detractors. One of the greatest hurdles he faced was one that continues today.

The notion that humans are the result of biological evolution by natural selectionrather than fate and divine purpose threatened contemporary religious ideology that argued that creationism, not evolution, explained our surroundings.

Naturally, the idea that he had to fight so vehemently to assert his theory appealed to me as an academic. Academia, after all, is where intensive inquiry occurs and it often challenges our convictions. What is compelling is to see how this work represents a fight for academic credibility.

Darwin, convincingly, stands firm in his argument. As Julia Kindt and Professor Tanya Latty of the University of Sydney poignantly argue:Darwin had to think carefully how to convince his contemporaries of its validity. He had to defend himself against accusations of blasphemy; some of the resulting ridicule targeted him personally. The traces of this struggle are clearly visible in his work. This alone makes it a must-read for all budding scientists, both real and armchair.

Perhaps even more intriguing is the relevance of Darwin today. Just this week, I read the fascinating case of an Argentinian womans body ridding itself of HIV. Doctors think the patients immune system eliminated the virus on its own. Tests of more than a billion of her cells uncovered no trace of the infection. Experts argue that if this process can be harnessed, it might offer a way to wipe out or effectively cure HIV. This is evolution.

Similarly, the rapid evolution of the coronavirus raises questions about the next variants, the ones we have not seen yet. Will we still be protected by our current vaccines as they emerge? Emanuel Goldman of Rutgers University argues:The real danger is a future variant, which will be the legacy of those people who are not getting vaccinated, providing a breeding ground for the virus to continue to generate variants. A variant could arise that is resistant to current vaccines, rendering those already vaccinated susceptible again.

Elsewhere, scientists from the University of Birmingham have argued that Darwins work could be the key to combating the climate crisis. Darwin observed that trees that grow in forests rich in diverse foliage and diverse plants, tend to grow much more viably than trees that are planted individually. This insight could offer a solution to governments to mitigate the worst of climate change by allowing stronger forests to draw more carbon from the air. What is apparent is that Darwin still remains relevant today, if not even more pertinent, than in his lifetime.

Darwin wrote: Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

One of the technologies that are defining our times is artificial intelligence (AI). AI is changing the way we live, work and the very essence of our being. These changes are both negative and positive. What ultimately happens will depend on how AI technology evolves, and thus, Darwins ideas are at the heart of this technological evolution too.

There are many types of AI, including machine learning and evolutionary programming. In the evolutionary programme, one type of AI is the genetic algorithm (GA), which is inspired by Darwins theory of evolution. In genetic algorithms, new solutions to complex problems are evolved by crossover, mutation and reproduction. In this regard, randomly generated solutions in a population are mixed to create new solutions using the principles of crossover.

Second, these new solutions are randomly changed to add new information, and this is called a mutation. Then a new population is reproduced by using the principles of the survival of the fittest. This GA process has been so successful that it has successfully been used to design cars, design electricity transmission and distribution lines, schedule optimum routes, and in protein design.

Darwins ideas are powerful and should be studied and taken seriously. Let us not be deterred by the negative and often misguided use of social Darwinism in extreme politics and racism, but use his ideas to tackle some of the pressing problems confronting our society. DM

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The relevance of Charles Darwin in the contemporary world of viruses, climate crisis and artificial intelligence - Daily Maverick

Photo source: Science Uprising.

The nextScience Uprisingepisode Fossils: Mysterious Origins premieres this coming Wednesday, November 17 at 12 noon Pacific time. If you ask a traditional Darwinian evolutionist for the very best evidence of his theory, he will almost certainly say that evidence comes from paleontology. Fossils surely demonstrate the truth of Darwinism. Dont they?

Not so fast, as paleontologist Gnter Bechly, geologist Casey Luskin, biologist Richard Sternberg, and philosopher of science Stephen Meyer explain. The masked narrator ofScience Uprisingseries asks, Just how bad is the fossil record for Darwins theory? The answer is that, with all the jumps and explosions, the abrupt transitions and rapid developments of form where Darwin and his followers expected only slow change, the fossil record is nothing less thanawful for evolution. Its simply not what Darwinian theory would have expected. As University of Pittsburgh anthologist and evolutionist Jeffrey Schwartz has put it, We are still in the dark about the origin of most major groups of organisms. They appear in the fossil record as Athena did from the head of Zeus full-blown and raring to go, in contradiction to Darwins depiction of evolution as resulting from the gradual accumulation of countless infinitesimally minute variations.

The fossil record is not a good match with Darwinian thinking. But as Bechly, Luskin, Sternberg, and Meyer explain, it makes a strong pairing with intelligent design. Join us on Wednesday to be the first to see the new episode, here and on YouTube, where Dr. Luskin will participate in a simultaneous online discussion. Its just under 10 minutes long. Oh, and wait for the Bechly mic drop moment. You will enjoy this:

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How Bad Is the Fossil Record for Darwin? - Discovery Institute

Photo: Charles Darwin, in a scene from The War on Humans (screenshot).

Editors note: We are delighted to host a new series by Neil Thomas, Reader Emeritus at the University of Durham, How I Came to Take Leave of Darwin, of which this article is the second installment.Find the full series here. Professor Thomass recent book,Taking Leave of Darwin: A Longtime Agnostic Discovers the Case for Design, is available now from Discovery Institute Press.

It is self-evident that any dispute concerning Darwin must have far-reaching implications for society beyond the world of the biological sciences because Darwins strictly materialist theories of human origins and evolution came to oust the idea of the world as a divinely created and providentially directed planet.Hence, if a group of eminent biologists and other scientists could no longer support the claims on which those profound inferences depend (and on which, rightly or wrongly, the worldview of many in the West rests), this must incontestably be a matter of some existential moment, and, I concluded, deserving of far more than the cursory examination I had given to the subject heretofore. This inspired me to make amends for my previous inattention by making the attempt to unpack both the scientific evidence for Darwinism and the wider ramifications of its acceptance by Western society as a whole.

Since biology specialists had, in a manner of speaking, been largely left to mark their own homework for upwards of 160 years, an independent audit, I felt, was overdue, especially since I came to perceive the field of evolutionary research as being distorted by a considerable ideological bias (with some honorable exceptions).Albeit a complete outsider to the biological guild, I came to see myself in the role of foreman of a jury in a technical legal trial tasked with weighing up complicated evidence with as much insight and impartiality as I could muster. I felt that as a specialist in European languages I could usefully bring to bear my professional linguistic experience in parsing the written word to the presentation of biological evidence. With regard to this hoped-for transfer of skills, I felt that having once taught university courses on the propaganda techniques used both by the Nazis and by the functionaries of the old Communist regime in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) might possibly have given me valuable experience in decoding some of the more tendentious forms of argumentation used by biologists to solicit conformity with a party line. My attempt to disentangle this case forensically was to lead me on what was often a surprising journey of discovery.

Darwins major hypothesis concerning the idea of a biological continuum with its Ascent of Man narrative from ape toHomo sapiens(which I, in the company of doubtless numberless others, had previously accepted by dint of little more than passive osmosis) had, I now discovered, been cast into considerable doubt on a whole host of fronts by recent discoveries. In particular, the idea invoked of a crossover from one species to another appears highly problematical in view of the practical experience of animal husbandry, where selective breeding has considerably greater success in bringing about minor changes than major ones (which in fact remain unheard of to date).For it is now thought that the genetic code possesses what might for convenience be termed an inbuilt fail-safe system to ensure genetic homeostasis and the integrity of the species.

Darwin envisioned the momentous ontological change from ape to man occurring gradually by way of transitional forms. Pressing far too heavily on time itself as a causal agent, he advanced the untestable hypothesis that the changes will have taken place during the billions of years separating our present day from the supposed time of the first appearance of a simian species on our planet. Since this theory is beyond the reach of any possible empirical test, it requires alternative evidential back-up. Unfortunately for Darwin there is a dearth of any fossil evidence establishing the claimed evolutionary missing links, a large lacuna which Darwin was aware of but still hoped might be remedied in finds after his day (vainly to date, it must be added, and the notorious Piltdown fraud only served to underscore the evidentiary gap)1.

Next, Darwins Many Doubts.

The rest is here:

Darwin on Trial (Again) - Discovery Institute

Photo credit: Jannik - JWDShots on Unsplash.

Editors note: We are delighted to host a new series by Neil Thomas, Reader Emeritus at the University of Durham, How I Came to Take Leave of Darwin, of which this article is the first installment.Professor Thomass recent book,Taking Leave of Darwin: A Longtime Agnostic Discovers the Case for Design, is available now from Discovery Institute Press.

I guess few people with busy personal and work lives have the mental repose required to spend too much time considering the existential imponderables of life, and in my own case I was well in to my retirement years when the realization came to me that nothing I had learned about Darwinism a polite fiction I had allowed myself to accept on trust for decades stacked up logically. In the light of cool analytical thought, it appeared to me that Darwinism was a badly supported and even ludicrous theory. This realization drove me towards what, as a lifelong rationalist, I deemed to be the responsible course of action: researching the whole subject properly, something which, regrettably, I had omitted to do heretofore.

Stephen Hawking once claimed that the world could have formed from nothing at all as the result of the force of gravity, but as Oxford mathematics professor John Lennox briskly counters, [gravity] is not nothing,1adding with pardonable sternness, Nonsense remains nonsense even when talked by world-famous scientists. The stubborn question remains: How did gravity come to exist in the first place?Wholititsblue touch paper? Hawkings speculations were in Lennoxs judgment more in the nature of metaphysics than physics proper. Similarly, in the course of my own researches it became clear that, whether I cared to acknowledge it or not (and I had been a secular humanist for many decades) a form of cosmic intelligence would have been required to initiate and superintend the whole course of lifeandevolution. To simply invoke the notion of a quasi-mystical automatism (glossed variously as chance, self-assembly, a cosmic imperative, or natural selection) now seemed to me absurd.

In logical terms, I felt, there could be no effect without a cause despite the siren counterclaims of such as Hawking, Darwin himself, Richard Dawkins, Nobel Prize-winner Christian de Duve, Peter Atkins, and, notably, Lawrence Krauss, who has defended that position both in written form and in a number of recent cosmology-themed TV programs.2From that point onwards I began to view the very notion ofmindlesscreation/evolution with unqualified skepticism. What I had come to see as the wholly unconvincing attempts made by Darwin and his successors to circumvent the philosophic necessity for a first cause only strengthened my conviction that there must be an almighty (Almighty?) initiator of all things.

I have to confess that I had once assumed that any opposition to Darwin must necessarily be confined to the ranks of such as Biblical fundamentalists. However, my attention was somewhat belatedly caught by some more substantive (and less easily disregarded) opposition arising from the ranks of Darwins latter-day peers in the ranks of scientificacademe whose accumulated evidence could in no way be glossed as stemming from any religiousparti pris. Michael Denton, the pioneering biologist in what later came to be known as the intelligent design community, concluded in his seminal book, Evolution. A Theory in Crisis(1985), that the scarcely conceivable complexity of life could hardly have evolved from the contingent dynamics of natural selection. For him and for other non-Darwinian scientists such as the Americans Michael Behe, William Dembski, and others writing in the 1990s and 2000s, the irreducible complexity of such organs as the eye and human brain provide unarguable counter-indications to any inference that the blunt tool of natural selection could have been the mechanism of their making. Given the interdependent nature of these organs structuring, their component parts could hardly have achieved their exquisitelyharmonizedform and synergetic functionality in an exclusively additive way (since natural selection is of course held to advance randomly by small modifications accumulating over time).

Criticism of the Darwinian model became even more acute, I found, when the unequivocally non-material aspects of life, such as consciousness, thought, and the subjective self, came into the picture. It lacks logical coherence, assert the ID scientists, to suppose thatsentiencecould have evolved template-less from any purely material matrix. How could the entirely random interplay of impersonal forces have all unwittingly been instrumental in the creation of persons? For Denton, the large improbability of intelligent life being shaped by forces bereft of all cognitive capacity themselves provides nothing less than a formal disproof of the whole Darwinian paradigm, famously dubbed by him the great cosmogenic myth of the modern era.

Next, Darwin on Trial (Again).

Excerpt from:

How I Came to Take Leave of Darwin - Discovery Institute

William Graham Sumner, a sociologist at Yale University, penned several pieces associated with the philosophy of Social Darwinism. In the following, Sumner explains his vision of nature and liberty in a just society.

The struggle for existence is aimed against nature. It is from her niggardly hand that we have to wrest the satisfaction for our needs, but our fellow-men are our competitors for the meager supply. Competition, therefore, is a law of nature. Nature is entirely neutral; she submits to him who most energetically and resolutely assails her. She grants her rewards to the fittest, therefore, without regard to other considerations of any kind. If, then, there be liberty, men get from her just in proportion to their works, and their having and enjoying are just in proportion to their being and their doing. Such is the system of nature. If we do not like it, and if we try to amend it, there is only one way in which we can do it. We can take from the better and give to the worse. We can deflect the penalties of those who have done ill and throw them on those who have done better. We can take the rewards from those who have done better and give them to those who have done worse. We shall thus lessen the inequalities. We shall favor the survival of the unfittest, and we shall accomplish this by destroying liberty. Let it be understood that we cannot go outside of this alternative; liberty, inequality, survival of the fittest; not-liberty, equality, survival of the unfittest. The former carries society forward and favors all its best members; the latter carries society downwards and favors all its worst members.

For three hundred years now men have been trying to understand and realize liberty. What we mean by liberty is civil liberty, or liberty under law; and this means the guarantees of law that a man shall not be interfered with while using his own powers for his own welfare. It is, therefore, a civil and political status; and that nation has the freest institutions in which the guarantees of peace for the laborer and security for the capitalist are the highest. Liberty, therefore, does not by any means do away with the struggle for existence. We might as well try to do away with the need of eating, for that would, in effect, be the same thing. What civil liberty does is to turn the competition of man with man from violence and brute force into an industrial competition under which men vie with one another for the acquisition of material goods by industry, energy, skill, frugality, prudence, temperance, and other industrial virtues. Under this changed order of things the inequalities are not done away with. Nature still grants her rewards of having and enjoying, according to our being and doing, but it is now the man of the highest training and not the man of the heaviest fist who gains the highest reward. It is impossible that the man with capital and the man without capital should be equal. To affirm that they are equal would be to say that a man who has no tool can get as much food out of the ground as the man who has a spade or a plough; or that the man who has no weapon can defend himself as well against hostile beasts or hostile men as the man who has a weapon. If that were so, none of us would work any more. We work and deny ourselves to get capital just because, other things being equal, the man who has it is superior, for attaining all the ends of life, to the man who has it not. Considering the eagerness with which we all seek capital and the estimate we put upon it, either in cherishing it if we have it, or envying others who have it while we have it not, it is very strange what platitudes pass current about it in our society so soon as we begin to generalize about it. If our young people really believed some of the teachings they hear, it would not be amiss to preach them a sermon once in a while to reassure them, setting forth that it is not wicked to be rich, nay even, that it is not wicked to be richer than your neighbor.

It follows from what we have observed that it is the utmost folly to denounce capital. To do so is to under- mine civilization, for capital is the first requisite of every social gain, educational, ecclesiastical, political, aesthetic, or other.

Source: William Graham Sumner, The Challenge of Facts and Other Essays, edited by Albert Galloway Keller (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1914).

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William Graham Sumner on Social Darwinism (ca.1880s) | The ...

Photo: Jonathan Wells, by Brian Gage.

A newID the Futureepisode spotlightsThe Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith, and specifically, an essay in the new anthology by biologist Jonathan Wells, Is Darwinism a Theory in Crisis? As Wells and host Casey Luskin note, the essay title alludes to philosopher of science Thomas Kuhns influential 1962 bookThe Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn argued there that if one studies the history of scientific revolutions, one finds that when the scientific evidence has begun to turn against a dominant scientific paradigm when itsdays are numbered its adherents do not simply concede defeat. Instead they use all their institutional power to suppress dissent and punish proponents of any competing paradigm.

This is the period of crisis, which can last for years and even decades. Wells contends that modern evolutionary theory is a current instance of a dominant paradigm in crisis. He briefly makes the case in this episode, and at greater length in his essay, which appears in the newly released anthology from Harvest House, edited by William Dembski, Casey Luskin, and Joseph Holden.Download the podcast or listen to it here.

Link:

Is Darwinism a Theory in Crisis? - Discovery Institute

German doctor, anthropologist, public health activist, pathologist, prehistorian, biologist and politician (18211902)

Rudolf Ludwig Carl Virchow (;[1] German: [fo] or [vo];[2] 13 October 1821 5 September 1902) was a German physician, anthropologist, pathologist, prehistorian, biologist, writer, editor, and politician. He is known as "the father of modern pathology" and as the founder of social medicine, and to his colleagues, the "Pope of medicine".[3][4][5]

Virchow studied medicine at the Friedrich Wilhelm University under Johannes Peter Mller. While working at the Charit hospital, his investigation of the 18471848 typhus epidemic in Upper Silesia laid the foundation for public health in Germany, and paved his political and social careers. From it, he coined a well known aphorism: "Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing else but medicine on a large scale". He participation in the Revolution of 1848 led to his expulsion from Charit the next year. He then published a newspaper Die Medizinische Reform (The Medical Reform). He took the first Chair of Pathological Anatomy at the University of Wrzburg in 1849. After five years, Charit reinstated him to its new Institute for Pathology. He co-founded the political party Deutsche Fortschrittspartei, and was elected to the Prussian House of Representatives and won a seat in the Reichstag. His opposition to Otto von Bismarck's financial policy resulted in an anecdotal "Sausage Duel", although he supported Bismarck in his anti-Catholic campaigns, which he named Kulturkampf ("culture struggle").[6]

A prolific writer, he produced more than 2000 scientific writings.[7] Cellular Pathology (1858), regarded as the root of modern pathology, introduced the third dictum in cell theory: Omnis cellula e cellula ("All cells come from cells").[8] He was a co-founder of Physikalisch-Medizinische Gesellschaft in 1849 and Deutsche Gesellschaft fr Pathologie in 1897. He founded journals such as Archiv fr Pathologische Anatomie und Physiologie und fr Klinische Medicin (with Benno Reinhardt in 1847, later renamed Virchows Archiv), and Zeitschrift fr Ethnologie (Journal of Ethnology).[9] The latter is published by German Anthropological Association and the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory, the societies which he also founded.[10]

Virchow was the first to describe and name diseases such as leukemia, chordoma, ochronosis, embolism, and thrombosis. He coined biological terms such as "chromatin", "neuroglia", "agenesis", "parenchyma", "osteoid", "amyloid degeneration", and "spina bifida"; terms such as Virchow's node, VirchowRobin spaces, VirchowSeckel syndrome, and Virchow's triad are named after him. His description of the life cycle of a roundworm Trichinella spiralis influenced the practice of meat inspection. He developed the first systematic method of autopsy,[11] and introduced hair analysis in forensic investigation.[12] Opposing the germ theory of diseases, he rejected Ignaz Semmelweis's idea of disinfecting. He was critical of what he described as "Nordic mysticism" regarding the Aryan race.[13] As an anti-Darwinist, he called Charles Darwin an "ignoramus" and his own student Ernst Haeckel a "fool". He described the original specimen of Neanderthal man as nothing but that of a deformed human.[14]

Virchow was born in Schievelbein, in eastern Pomerania, Prussia (now widwin, Poland).[15] He was the only child of Carl Christian Siegfried Virchow (17851865) and Johanna Maria ne Hesse (17851857). His father was a farmer and the city treasurer. Academically brilliant, he always topped his classes and was fluent in German, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, English, Arabic, French, Italian and Dutch. He progressed to the gymnasium in Kslin (now Koszalin in Poland) in 1835 with the goal of becoming a pastor. He graduated in 1839 with a thesis titled A Life Full of Work and Toil is not a Burden but a Benediction. However, he chose medicine mainly because he considered his voice too weak for preaching.[16]

In 1839, he received a military fellowship, a scholarship for gifted children from poor families to become army surgeons, to study medicine at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin (now Humboldt University of Berlin).[17] He was most influenced by Johannes Peter Mller, his doctoral advisor. Virchow defended his doctoral thesis titled De rheumate praesertim corneae (corneal manifestations of rheumatic disease) on 21 October 1843.[18] Immediately on graduation, he became subordinate physician to Mller.[19] But shortly after, he joined the Charit Hospital in Berlin for internship. In 1844, he was appointed as medical assistant to the prosector (pathologist) Robert Froriep, from whom he learned microscopy which interested him in pathology. Froriep was also the editor of an abstract journal that specialised in foreign work, which inspired Virchow for scientific ideas of France and England.[20]

Virchow published his first scientific paper in 1845, giving the earliest known pathological descriptions of leukemia. He passed the medical licensure examination in 1846 and immediately succeeded Froriep as hospital prosector at the Charit. In 1847, he was appointed to his first academic position with the rank of privatdozent. Because his articles did not receive favourable attention from German editors, he founded Archiv fr Pathologische Anatomie und Physiologie und fr Klinische Medicin (now known as Virchows Archiv) with a colleague Benno Reinhardt in 1847. He edited alone after Reinhardt's death in 1852 till his own.[17] This journal published critical articles based on the criterion that no papers would be published that contained outdated, untested, dogmatic or speculative ideas.[16]

Unlike his German peers, Virchow had great faith in clinical observation, animal experimentation (to determine causes of diseases and the effects of drugs) and pathological anatomy, particularly at the microscopic level, as the basic principles of investigation in medical sciences. He went further and stated that the cell was the basic unit of the body that had to be studied to understand disease. Although the term 'cell' had been coined in the 1665 by an English scientist Robert Hooke, the building blocks of life were still considered to be the 21 tissues of Bichat, a concept described by the French physician Xavier Bichat.[21][20]

The Prussian government employed Virchow to study the typhus epidemic in Upper Silesia in 18471848. It was from this medical campaign that he developed his ideas on social medicine and politics after seeing the victims and their poverty. Even though he was not particularly successful in combating the epidemic, his 190-paged Report on the Typhus Epidemic in Upper Silesia in 1848 became a turning point in politics and public health in Germany.[22][23] He returned to Berlin on 10 March 1848, and only eight days later, a revolution broke out against the government in which he played an active part. To fight political injustice he helped found Die Medizinische Reform (Medical Reform), a weekly newspaper for promoting social medicine, in July of that year. The newspaper ran under the banners "medicine is a social science" and "the physician is the natural attorney of the poor". Political pressures forced him to terminate the publication in June 1849, and he was expelled from his official position.[24]

In November 1848, he was given an academic appointment and left Berlin for the University of Wrzburg to hold Germany's first chair of pathological anatomy. During his six-year period there, he concentrated on his scientific work, including detailed studies of venous thrombosis and cellular theory. His first major work there was a six-volume Handbuch der speciellen Pathologie und Therapie (Handbook on Special Pathology and Therapeutics) published in 1854. In 1856, he returned to Berlin to become the newly created Chair for Pathological Anatomy and Physiology at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-University, as well as Director of the newly built Institute for Pathology on the premises of the Charit. He held the latter post for the next 20 years.[20][25][26]

Virchow is credited with several key discoveries. His most widely known scientific contribution is his cell theory, which built on the work of Theodor Schwann. He was one of the first to accept the work of Robert Remak, who showed that the origin of cells was the division of pre-existing cells.[27] He did not initially accept the evidence for cell division and believed that it occurs only in certain types of cells. When it dawned on him in 1855 that Remak might be right, he published Remak's work as his own, causing a falling-out between the two.[28]

Virchow was particularly influenced in cellular theory by the work of John Goodsir of Edinburgh, whom he described as "one of the earliest and most acute observers of cell-life both physiological and pathological". Virchow dedicated his magnum opus Die Cellularpathologie to Goodsir.[29] Virchow's cellular theory was encapsulated in the epigram Omnis cellula e cellula ("all cells (come) from cells"), which he published in 1855.[8][20][30] (The epigram was actually coined by Franois-Vincent Raspail, but popularized by Virchow.)[31] It is a rejection of the concept of spontaneous generation, which held that organisms could arise from nonliving matter. For example, maggots were believed to appear spontaneously in decaying meat; Francesco Redi carried out experiments that disproved this notion and coined the maxim Omne vivum ex ovo ("Every living thing comes from a living thing" literally "from an egg"); Virchow (and his predecessors) extended this to state that the only source for a living cell was another living cell.[32]

In 1845, Virchow and John Hughes Bennett independently observed abnormal increases in white blood cells in some patients. Virchow correctly identified the condition as a blood disease, and named it leukmie in 1847 (later anglicised to leukemia).[33][34][35] In 1857, he was the first to describe a type of tumour called chordoma that originated from the clivus (at the base of the skull).[36][37]

Virchow was the first to correctly link the origin of cancers from otherwise normal cells.[38] (His teacher Mller had proposed that cancers originated from cells, but from special cells, which he called blastema.) In 1855, he suggested that cancers arise from the activation of dormant cells (perhaps similar to cells now known as stem cells) present in mature tissue.[39] Virchow believed that cancer is caused by severe irritation in the tissues, and his theory came to be known as chronic irritation theory. He thought, rather wrongly, that the irritation spread in the form of liquid so that cancer rapidly increases.[40] His theory was largely ignored, as he was proved wrong that it was not by liquid, but by metastasis of the already cancerous cells that cancers spread. (Metastasis was first described by Karl Thiersch in the 1860s.)[41]

He made a crucial observation that certain cancers (carcinoma in the modern sense) were inherently associated with white blood cells (which are now called macrophages) that produced irritation (inflammation). It was only towards the end of the 20th century that Virchow's theory was taken seriously.[42] It was realised that specific cancers (including those of mesothelioma, lung, prostate, bladder, pancreatic, cervical, esophageal, melanoma, and head and neck) are indeed strongly associated with long-term inflammation.[43][44] In addition it became clear that prolonged use of anti-inflammatory drugs, such as aspirin, reduced cancer risk.[45] Experiments also show that drugs that block inflammation simultaneously inhibit tumour formation and development.[46]

Virchow was one of the leading physicians to Kaiser Frederick III, who suffered from cancer of the larynx. While other physicians such as Ernst von Bergmann suggested surgical removal of the entire larynx, Virchow was opposed to it because no successful operation of this kind had ever been done. The British surgeon Morell Mackenzie performed a biopsy of the Kaiser in 1887 and sent it to Virchow, who identified it as "pachydermia verrucosa laryngis". Virchow affirmed that the tissues were not cancerous, even after several biopsy tests.[47][48]

The Kaiser died on 15 June 1888. The next day a post-mortem examination was performed by Virchow and his assistant. They found that the larynx was extensively damaged by ulceration, and microscopic examination confirmed epidermal carcinoma. Die Krankheit Kaiser Friedrich des Dritten (The Medical Report of Kaiser Frederick III) was published on 11 July under the lead authorship of Bergmann. But Virchow and Mackenzie were omitted, and they were particularly criticised for all their works.[49] The arguments between them turned into a century-long controversy, resulting in Virchow being accused of misdiagnosis and malpractice. But reassessment of the diagnostic history revealed that Virchow was right in his findings and decisions. It is now believed that the Kaiser had hybrid verrucous carcinoma, a very rare form of verrucous carcinoma, and that Virchow had no way of correctly identifying it.[47][48][50] (The cancer type was correctly identified only in 1948 by Lauren Ackerman.)[51][52]

It was discovered approximately simultaneously by Virchow and Charles Emile Troisier that an enlarged left supraclavicular node is one of the earliest signs of gastrointestinal malignancy, commonly of the stomach, or less commonly, lung cancer. This sign has become known as Virchow's node and simultaneously Troisier's sign.[53][54]

Virchow is also known for elucidating the mechanism of pulmonary thromboembolism (a condition of blood clotting in the blood vessels), coining the terms embolism and thrombosis.[55] He noted that blood clots in the pulmonary artery originate first from venous thrombi, stating in 1859:

[T]he detachment of larger or smaller fragments from the end of the softening thrombus which are carried along by the current of blood and driven into remote vessels. This gives rise to the very frequent process on which I have bestowed the name of Embolia."[56]

Having made these initial discoveries based on autopsies, he proceeded to put forward a scientific hypothesis; that pulmonary thrombi are transported from the veins of the leg and that the blood has the ability to carry such an object. He then proceeded to prove this hypothesis by well-designed experiments, repeated numerous times to consolidate evidence, and with meticulously detailed methodology. This work rebutted a claim made by the eminent French pathologist Jean Cruveilhier that phlebitis led to clot development and that thus coagulation was the main consequence of venous inflammation. This was a view held by many before Virchow's work. Related to this research, Virchow described the factors contributing to venous thrombosis, Virchow's triad.[20][57]

Virchow founded the medical fields of cellular pathology and comparative pathology (comparison of diseases common to humans and animals). His most important work in the field was Cellular Pathology (Die Cellularpathologie in ihrer Begrndung auf physiologische und pathologische Gewebelehre) published in 1858, as a collection of his lectures.[25] This is regarded as the basis of modern medical science,[58] and the "greatest advance which scientific medicine had made since its beginning."[59]

His very innovative work may be viewed as between that of Giovanni Battista Morgagni, whose work Virchow studied, and that of Paul Ehrlich, who studied at the Charit while Virchow was developing microscopic pathology there. One of Virchow's major contributions to German medical education was to encourage the use of microscopes by medical students, and he was known for constantly urging his students to "think microscopically". He was the first to establish a link between infectious diseases between humans and animals, for which he coined the term "zoonoses".[60] He also introduced scientific terms such as "chromatin", "agenesis", "parenchyma", "osteoid", "amyloid degeneration", and "spina bifida".[61] His concepts on pathology directly opposed humourism, an ancient medical dogma that diseases were due to imbalanced body fluids, hypothetically called humours, that still pervaded.[62]

Virchow worked out the life cycle of a roundworm Trichinella spiralis. Virchow noticed a mass of circular white flecks in the muscle of dog and human cadavers, similar to those described by Richard Owen in 1835. He confirmed by microscopic observation that the white particles were indeed the larvae of roundworms, curled up in the muscle tissue. Rudolph Leukart found that these tiny worms could develop into adult roundworms in the intestine of a dog. He correctly asserted that these worms could also cause human helminthiasis. Virchow further demonstrated that if the infected meat is first heated to 137F for 10 minutes, the worms could not infect dogs or humans.[63] He established that human roundworm infection occurs via contaminated pork. This directly led to the establishment of meat inspection, which was first adopted in Berlin.[64][65]

Virchow was the first to develop a systematic method of autopsy, based on his knowledge of cellular pathology. The modern autopsy still constitutes his techniques.[66] His first significant autopsy was on a 50-year-old woman in 1845. He found an unusual number of white blood cells, and gave a detailed description in 1847 and named the condition as leukmie.[67] One on his autopsies in 1857 was the first description of vertebral disc rupture.[18][68] His autopsy on a baby in 1856 was the first description of congenital pulmonary lymphangiectasia (the name given by K. M. Laurence a century later), a rare and fatal disease of the lung.[69] From his experience of post-mortem examinations of cadavers, he published his method in a small book in 1876.[70] His book was the first to describe the techniques of autopsy specifically to examine abnormalities in organs, and retain important tissues for further examination and demonstration. Unlike any other earlier practitioner, he practiced complete surgery of all body parts with body organs dissected one by one. This has become the standard method.[71][72]

Virchow discovered the clinical syndrome which he called ochronosis, a metabolic disorder in which a patient accumulates homogentisic acid in connective tissues and which can be identified by discolouration seen under the microscope. He found the unusual symptom in an autopsy of the corpse of a 67-year-old man on 8 May 1884. This was the first time this abnormal disease affecting cartilage and connective tissue was observed and characterised. His description and coining of the name appeared in the October 1866 issue of Virchows Archiv.[73][74][75]

Virchow was the first to analyse hair in criminal investigation, and made the first forensic report on it in 1861.[76] He was called as an expert witness in a murder case, and he used hair samples collected from the victim. He became the first to recognise the limitation of hair as evidence. He found that hairs can be different in an individual, that individual hair has characteristic features, and that hairs from different individuals can be strikingly similar. He concluded that evidence based on hair analysis is inconclusive.[77] His testimony runs:

[T]he hairs found on the defendant do not possess any so pronounced peculiarities or individualities [so] that no one with certainty has the right to assert that they must have originated from the head of the victim.[12]

Virchow developed an interest in anthropology in 1865, when he discovered pile dwellings in northern Germany. In 1869, he co-founded the German Anthropological Association. In 1870 he founded the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology, and Prehistory (Berliner Gesellschaft fr Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte) which was very influential in coordinating and intensifying German archaeological research. Until his death, Virchow was several times (at least fifteen times) its president, often taking turns with his former student Adolf Bastian.[7] As president, Virchow frequently contributed to and co-edited the society's main journal Zeitschrift fr Ethnologie (Journal of Ethnology), which Adolf Bastian, together with another student of Virchow, Robert Hartman, had founded in 1869.[78][79]

In 1870, he led a major excavation of the hill forts in Pomerania. He also excavated wall mounds in Wllstein in 1875 with Robert Koch, whose paper he edited on the subject.[16] For his contributions in German archaeology, the Rudolf Virchow lecture is held annually in his honour. He made field trips to Asia Minor, the Caucasus, Egypt, Nubia, and other places, sometimes in the company of Heinrich Schliemann. His 1879 journey to the site of Troy is described in Beitrge zur Landeskunde in Troas ("Contributions to the knowledge of the landscape in Troy", 1879) and Alttrojanische Grber und Schdel ("Old Trojan graves and skulls", 1882).[21][80]

Virchow was an opponent of Darwin's theory of evolution,[81][82] and particularly skeptical of the emergent thesis of human evolution.[83][84] He did not reject evolutionary theory as a whole, and viewed the theory of natural as "an immeasurable advance" but that still has no "actual proof."[85] On 22 September 1877, he delivered a public address entitled "The Freedom of Science in the Modern State" before the Congress of German Naturalists and Physicians in Munich. There he spoke against the teaching of the theory of evolution in schools, arguing that it was as yet an unproven hypothesis that lacked empirical foundations and that, therefore, its teaching would negatively affect scientific studies.[86][87] Ernst Haeckel, who had been Virchow's student, later reported that his former professor said that "it is quite certain that man did not descend from the apes...not caring in the least that now almost all experts of good judgment hold the opposite conviction."[88]

Virchow became one of the leading opponents on the debate over the authenticity of Neanderthal, discovered in 1856, as distinct species and ancestral to modern humans. He himself examined the original fossil in 1872, and presented his observations before the Berliner Gesellschaft fr Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte.[7] He stated that the Neanderthal had not been a primitive form of human, but an abnormal human being, who, judging by the shape of his skull, had been injured and deformed, and considering the unusual shape of his bones, had been arthritic, rickety, and feeble.[89][90][91] With such an authority, the fossil was rejected as new species. With this reasoning, Virchow "judged Darwin an ignoramus and Haeckel a fool and was loud and frequent in the publication of these judgments,"[92] and declared that "it is quite certain that man did not descend from the apes."[93] The Neanderthals were later accepted as distinct species of humans, Homo neanderthalensis.[94][95]

On 22 September 1877, at the Fiftieth Conference of the German Association of Naturalists and Physician held in Munich, Haeckel pleaded for introducing evolution in the public school curricula, and tried to dissociate Darwinism from social Darwinism.[96] His campaign was because of Herman Mller, a school teacher who was banned because of his teaching a year earlier on the inanimate origin of life from carbon. This resulted in prolonged public debate with Virchow. A few days later Virchow responded that Darwinism was only a hypothesis, and morally dangerous to students. This severe criticism of Darwinism was immediately taken up by the London Times, from which further debates erupted among English scholars. Haeckel wrote his arguments in the October issue of Nature titled "The Present Position of Evolution Theory", to which Virchow responded in the next issue with an article "The Liberty of Science in the Modern State".[97] Virchow stated that teaching of evolution was "contrary to the conscience of the natural scientists, who reckons only with facts."[85] The debate led Haeckel to write a full book Freedom in Science and Teaching in 1879. That year the issue was discussed in the Prussian House of Representatives and the verdict was in favour of Virchow. In 1882 the Prussian education policy officially excluded natural history in schools.[98]

Years later, the noted German physician Carl Ludwig Schleich would recall a conversation he held with Virchow, who was a close friend of his: "...On to the subject of Darwinism. 'I don't believe in all this,' Virchow told me. 'if I lie on my sofa and blow the possibilities away from me, as another man may blow the smoke of his cigar, I can, of course, sympathize with such dreams. But they don't stand the test of knowledge. Haeckel is a fool. That will be apparent one day. As far as that goes, if anything like transmutation did occur it could only happen in the course of pathological degeneration!'"[99]

Virchow's ultimate opinion about evolution was reported a year before he died; in his own words:

The intermediate form is unimaginable save in a dream... We cannot teach or consent that it is an achievement that man descended from the ape or other animal.

Virchow's anti-evolutionism, like that of Albert von Klliker and Thomas Brown, did not come from religion, since he was not a believer.[14]

Virchow believed that Haeckel's monist propagation of social Darwinism was in its nature politically dangerous and anti-democratic, and he also criticized it because he saw it as related to the emergent nationalist movement in Germany, ideas about cultural superiority,[102][103][104] and militarism.[105] In 1885, he launched a study of craniometry, which gave results contradictory to contemporary scientific racist theories on the "Aryan race", leading him to denounce the "Nordic mysticism" at the 1885 Anthropology Congress in Karlsruhe. Josef Kollmann, a collaborator of Virchow, stated at the same congress that the people of Europe, be they German, Italian, English or French, belonged to a "mixture of various races", further declaring that the "results of craniology" led to a "struggle against any theory concerning the superiority of this or that European race" over others.[106] He analysed the hair, skin, and eye colour of 6,758,827 schoolchildren to identify the Jews and Aryans. His findings, published in 1886 and concluding that there could be neither a Jewish nor a German race, were regarded as a blow to anti-Semitism and the existence of an "Aryan race".[13][107]

Virchow did not believe in the germ theory of diseases, as advocated by Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch. He proposed that diseases came from abnormal activities inside the cells, not from outside pathogens.[60] He believed that epidemics were social in origin, and the way to combat epidemics was political, not medical. He regarded germ theory as a hindrance to prevention and cure. He considered social factors such as poverty major causes of disease.[108] He even attacked Koch's and Ignaz Semmelweis' policy of handwashing as an antiseptic practice, who said of him: "Explorers of nature recognize no bugbears other than individuals who speculate."[62] He postulated that germs were only using infected organs as habitats, but were not the cause, and stated, "If I could live my life over again, I would devote it to proving that germs seek their natural habitat: diseased tissue, rather than being the cause of diseased tissue".[109]

More than a laboratory physician, Virchow was an impassioned advocate for social and political reform. His ideology involved social inequality as the cause of diseases that requires political actions,[110] stating:

Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing else but medicine on a large scale. Medicine, as a social science, as the science of human beings, has the obligation to point out problems and to attempt their theoretical solution: the politician, the practical anthropologist, must find the means for their actual solution... Science for its own sake usually means nothing more than science for the sake of the people who happen to be pursuing it. Knowledge which is unable to support action is not genuine and how unsure is activity without understanding... If medicine is to fulfill her great task, then she must enter the political and social life... The physicians are the natural attorneys of the poor, and the social problems should largely be solved by them.[111][112][113]

Virchow actively worked for social change to fight poverty and diseases. His methods involved pathological observations and statistical analyses. He called this new field of social medicine a "social science". His most important influences could be noted in Latin America, where his disciples introduced his social medicine.[114] For example, his student Max Westenhfer became Director of Pathology at the medical school of the University of Chile, becoming the most influential advocate. One of Westenhfer's students, Salvador Allende, through social and political activities based on Virchow's doctrine, became the 29th President of Chile (19701973).[115]

Virchow made himself known as a pronounced pro-democracy progressive in the year of revolutions in Germany (1848). His political views are evident in his Report on the Typhus Outbreak of Upper Silesia, where he states that the outbreak could not be solved by treating individual patients with drugs or with minor changes in food, housing, or clothing laws, but only through radical action to promote the advancement of an entire population, which could be achieved only by "full and unlimited democracy" and "education, freedom and prosperity".[24]

These radical statements and his minor part in the revolution caused the government to remove him from his position in 1849, although within a year he was reinstated as prosector "on probation". Prosector was a secondary position in the hospital. This secondary position in Berlin convinced him to accept the chair of pathological anatomy at the medical school in the provincial town of Wrzburg, where he continued his scientific research. Six years later, he had attained fame in scientific and medical circles, and was reinstated at Charit Hospital.[20]

In 1859, he became a member of the Municipal Council of Berlin and began his career as a civic reformer. Elected to the Prussian Diet in 1862, he became leader of the Radical or Progressive party; and from 1880 to 1893, he was a member of the Reichstag.[21] He worked to improve healthcare conditions for Berlin citizens, especially by working towards modern water and sewer systems. Virchow is credited as a founder of anthropology[116] and of social medicine, frequently focusing on the fact that disease is never purely biological, but often socially derived or spread.[117]

As a co-founder and member of the liberal party Deutsche Fortschrittspartei, he was a leading political antagonist of Bismarck. He was opposed to Bismarck's excessive military budget, which angered Bismarck sufficiently that he challenged Virchow to a duel in 1865.[21] One version of the events has Virchow declining because he considered dueling an uncivilized way to solve a conflict. A second version has passed into legend, but was well documented in the contemporary scientific literature. It has Virchow, being the one challenged and therefore entitled to choose the weapons, selecting two pork sausages, one loaded with Trichinella larvae, the other safe; Bismarck declined.[60][118][119]

Virchow supported Bismarck in an attempt to reduce the political and social influence of the Catholic Church, between 1871 and 1887.[120] He remarked that the movement was acquiring "the character of a great struggle in the interest of humanity". He called it Kulturkampf ("culture struggle")[6] during the discussion of Paul Ludwig Falk's May Laws (Maigesetze).[121] Virchow was respected in Masonic circles,[122] and according to one source[123] may have been a freemason, though no official record of this has been found.

On 24 August 1850 in Berlin, Virchow married Ferdinande Rosalie Mayer (29 February 1832 21 February 1913), a liberal's daughter. They had three sons and three daughters:[124]

Virchow was an agnostic .[62]

Virchow broke his thigh bone on 4 January 1902, jumping off a running streetcar while exiting the electric tramway. Although he anticipated full recovery, the fractured femur never healed, and restricted his physical activity. His health gradually deteriorated and he died of heart failure after eight months, on 5 September 1902, in Berlin.[16][125] A state funeral was held on 9 September in the Assembly Room of the Magistracy in the Berlin Town Hall, which was decorated with laurels, palms and flowers. He was buried in the Alter St.-Matthus-Kirchhof in Schneberg, Berlin.[126] His tomb was shared by his wife on 21 February 1913.[127]

Virchow was a prolific writer. Some of his works are:[136]

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Rudolf Virchow - Wikipedia

On todays Ruminant, Jonah aims to set the record straight on a matter of international significance: Despite what the producers of American Crime Story would have you believe, he has never owned an oversized poster of Atlas Shrugged. Thankfully, this misunderstanding gives him an excuse to indulge in a nerdtastic exploration of the differences between objectivism and conservatism, the significance of religion to conservative belief, and the differences between conservatives and men of the right. Theres also a disquisition on social anxiety and Theodor Adornos idea of the authoritarian personality, as well as a rant on those who continue to minimize January 6. Plus, as a special treat for The Dispatchs two-year anniversary, tune in to learn the intimate details of Jonah and Steve Hayes late night telephone conversations.

Show Notes:

-The Dispatch manifesto from two years ago

-Todays underwhelming job numbers

-Whittaker Chambers review of Atlas Shrugged

-The Remnant with George Will

-George criticizes Whittaker Chambers

-Al Felzenberg on Georges opposition to Spiro Agnew

-Jonah ruminates on Richard Hofstadter

-The Age of Reform, Hofstatders book on status anxiety

-Hofstadters Social Darwinism in American Thought

-The (underrated) Tyranny of Clichs

-Theodor Adornos The Authoritarian Personality

-Sally Satel: The Experts Have Overlooked Authoritarians on the Left

-Karen Stenners The Authoritarian Dynamic

-The Remnant with Joe Uscinski

-Bring the villain forward

-Jonahs latest Special Report appearance

-The January 6 subpoena saga

-Dinesh DSouzas evil tweet

-Jonah and Hugh Hewitt debate the alt-right in 2016

-Jonah: This Was Always the Plan

-Revelations from Peril, by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa

-The Remnant with Scott Gottlieb

More:

Authoritarian Mental Gestures - by Jonah Goldberg - The Remnant - The Dispatch

The Haitians are only the first wave of climate refugees from South and Central America. The refugee crisis will only get worse because global warming is getting worse. Drought and failed crops in the regions farther south are leading to starving populations.

The problem facing the United States in dealing with the growing crisis is the partisan divide in government because Republicans and Democrats cannot agree on what the problem actually is. The Democrats are divided among themselves and President Joe Biden is unable to balance their competing interests. The Republicans with their investment in the fossil fuel industry and skepticism, at best, about global warming do not see the root cause of the refugee crisis. It is not about better job opportunities, but survival.

With their 19th century notions of civil liberties, small government, pandering to gun rights, anti-abortion, anti-vaccine, anti-science, anti-green energy, anti-immigration, anti-global warming, and anti-tax advocates, Republicans have no solutions to offer, but an appeal to Social Darwinism (euphemistically called meritocracy), hyper-individualism and hyper-masculinity. They continue to tell Americans to go on like it is the 1950s. If they gain the majority in Congress in 2022, God help us all, because things will get much worse, much faster.

In the next few years, as the catastrophe of global warming in the United States and worldwide gets much worse, solutions in the US, if any, will come too little and too late, because of senseless partisan squabbling in Congress.

George Magakis, Jr., Norristown, Pa.

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Climate refugees from Haiti are only the beginning of catastrophe | PennLive letters - pennlive.com

Photo credit: Kumiko SHIMIZU, via Unsplash.

I have been explaining why, if nature is designed, it may exhibit optimal green energy solutions. (See here and here.) Now I will offer an illustration.

The action of removing carbon from the atmosphere and turning it into a sugar molecule is made possible in plants by a very fancy molecular machine called rubisco. Despite being one of a kind, rubisco has received a lot of hate through the years for being slow. Many enzymes process a thousand molecules per second, but rubisco can only process three per second. Because of this, it has been called sluggish and notoriously inefficient. (Bathellier et al. 2018) Justification for these derogatory adjectives does not exist in my personal opinion because, after extensive study for fifty years, no one has been able to make it better. (Bathellier et al. 2018) Id like to suggest (Bathellier et al. 2018) that its slowness might be due to the complexity of the chemical reaction. If one or another function of rubisco were ditched, its mechanism might be able to be enhanced in certain respects. However, there would almost certainly be trade-offs. So I am not suggesting that rubisco cannot be optimized for a different purpose as optimality is always intrinsically tied to function. But I predict that in time it will be recognized for its optimality, given the overall constraints of the ecosystem.

What rubisco actually does is complicated. Rubisco grabs a CO2 molecule (most of the time) and attaches it to a sugar chain. (Bathellier et al. 2018) Rubisco then takes the lengthened carbon chain and clips it, thus producing two identical phosphoglycerate molecules. (PDB-101 Molecule of the Month) Making identical molecules is advantageous because then only a single set of enzymes is required for the remainder of the pathway. Additionally, phosphoglycerate is a highly familiar molecule to the cell. Most of the molecules will be fed back into the carbon fixation cycle, but some of them will also be siphoned off to produce sugars. Every bite of food you have ever taken is directly or indirectly the result of this amazing enzyme.

I said that rubisco grabs CO2 most of the time because occasionally it grabs O2 instead. Thus we have come to the paradox where O2 competes with rubiscos CO2 binding site and this has been said to initiate a wasteful photorespiratory pathway leading to the loss of fixed carbon. (Satagopan and Spreitzer 2008) Id like to throw a wild idea out there that this may be a possible regulatory feature designed to balance carbon and oxygen in the atmosphere, slowing rubisco down if oxygen is already plentiful and CO2 is scarce. (Galms et al. 2014) Others have given better technical explanations, suggesting that the binding of oxygen is likely the result of a compromise between chemical and metabolic constraints:

It is possible that the chemical constraint imposed by CO2 inertness or scarcity (especially in a low CO2 context) is such that the observed specificity represents the best compromise allowing carboxylation at a physiologically acceptable rate. In fact, a recent catalytic survey of Rubisco from diatoms, which possess carbon concentrating mechanisms, strongly suggests that when the pressure on Kc (apparent Michaelis constant for CO2) is relieved (i.e., when CO2 is not limiting), there is an alternative evolutionary path to a better specificity by suppressing oxygenase activity, without impairing carboxylase activity. Therefore, it is very likely that the oxygenase activity is the result of a trade-off: the active site structure adapts to allow maximal enolate twisting and positioning for CO2 reactivity (at the prevailing CO2 mole fraction) even though O2 can also react; alternatively, the enzyme active site can tune its structure (including Mg2+ coordination) to decrease dramatically the probability of the enolate forming a triplet and then reacting with O2, but CO2 reactivity also decreases. In kinetic terms, manipulating oxygenase activity via the geometry of the enolate affects the transition states of oxygenation and carboxylation themselves and consequently can be anticipated to change the energy barrier of CO2 and O2 addition (and thus specificity) as well as the 12C/13C isotope effect associated with CO2 addition, as observed experimentally.

Regardless, rubisco is nothing short of an incredible design, as validated by its abundance in the ecosystem, engineers inability to drastically improve it after fifty+ years of study, and its ability to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere, balancing the atmosphere. (Bathellier et al. 2018)

As Ive indicated, plants are icons of sustainability. They create critical products for other living organisms while utilizing waste products every environmental engineers dream design. Are these ecosystem-level designs mere coincidences of Darwinism? Can consideration of ecosystem constraints really occur without foresight?

These are important questions to consider. Another key question is: Is it possible that because weve been calling rubisco sluggish we have missed the wisdom of its design? Perhaps we incorrectly prioritize efficiency over sustainability. Would this have occurred if we had more respect for the intelligent design in nature for clean, green energy?

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The Molecular Machine Behind Carbon Balance - Discovery Institute