Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Foreword: Evolution and the Human Condition
- Acknowledgments
- Preface
- Earth’s Climate
- The Evolution of the Homo Species
- Climate and Human Migration
- Climate and Agriculture
- The Dominant Paradigm
- 9 Dominance Destabilized
- 10 Fitness Folly
- 11 Darwin the Selector
- 12 Hunting Down Woody
- 13 Kammerer’s Suicide
- 14 Giants and Pygmies
- 15 Dutch Hunger Winter Babies
- Today and Tomorrow
- The Economic Connection
- Dangerous Attitudes
- Living in Dangerous Times
- Glossary
- Notes
- Index
13 - Kammerer’s Suicide
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Foreword: Evolution and the Human Condition
- Acknowledgments
- Preface
- Earth’s Climate
- The Evolution of the Homo Species
- Climate and Human Migration
- Climate and Agriculture
- The Dominant Paradigm
- 9 Dominance Destabilized
- 10 Fitness Folly
- 11 Darwin the Selector
- 12 Hunting Down Woody
- 13 Kammerer’s Suicide
- 14 Giants and Pygmies
- 15 Dutch Hunger Winter Babies
- Today and Tomorrow
- The Economic Connection
- Dangerous Attitudes
- Living in Dangerous Times
- Glossary
- Notes
- Index
Summary
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
Max Planck, Scientific AutobiographyAccording to Darwin’s theory, natural selection is not tolerant of difference or change unless it is either “neutral” or of immediate benefit to the species affected. In the same way, the scientific establishment is not always kind to the progenitors of novel ideas that conflict with the generally accepted paradigm.
In 1880, a son was born to Sofie and Karl Kammerer in Vienna, Austria. Paul Kammerer initially studied music but later switched to zoology at the University of Vienna, obtaining his PhD at the age of twenty-four. He published his findings on the care and welfare of captive amphibians, then turned his attention to an aspect of evolutionary theory that has subsequently been rejected by neo-Darwinists: Jean-Baptiste Lamarck’s theory of the “inheritance of acquired characteristics.” Neither Kammerer nor his chosen research field fit well within the research environment of his time, which may explain the fate that befell him.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Living in a Dangerous ClimateClimate Change and Human Evolution, pp. 119 - 122Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2012