IUBio

Reincarnation versus "Genetic Memory"

et_al at my-deja.com et_al at my-deja.com
Sun Feb 24 02:09:15 EST 2002


On 23 Feb 2002 09:05:18 -0800, rnorman at Umich.edu (Richard Norman) wrote:

>In other words, inheritance of acquired characters in this way is
>not at all reasonable.  Those who wish to speculate on any possibility
>in this area have the enormous burden of providing, not only a 
>plausible biochemical and molecular biological mechanism, but also
>hard experimental evidence that such a mechanism is actually at work.

While also being sceptical about the concept of "genetic" memory as its
being suggested, it is a fact that we come into the world with some pre
programming. Babies, universally, do suck their thumbs, cry when
distressed, giggle when tickled, know how to grip something, apparently
are programmed to respond to certain stimuli more than others, for
example, speech - particularly that of the mother,  look at faces more
than other objects in view, etc. 

There are also many animals and birds who seem to come pre programmed
with just about all the information they need to survive. They aren't
taught by their parents or other older members of their species. 

So to some extent all life forms are programmed, presumably by the
actions of DNA.

Ian




More information about the Neur-sci mailing list

Send comments to us at biosci-help [At] net.bio.net