456 THE STRUCTURE OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY
as his own" (p. 358—indeed, Mayr would soon write such a rebuttal). But
Dobzhansky's demurral does not prevent him from trying to annihilate
Goldschmidt with the unkindest cut of all—an explicit removal of scientific status:
"But in the reviewer's opinion the simplicity of Goldschmidt's theory is that of a
belief in miracles" (p. 358).
No one can deny that Goldschmidt's theory merits historical attention for its
palpable and extensive influence, at least upon the psyches of his major opponents.
But we also need to assess whether anything in Goldschmidt's theory merits our
respect and study today. We must therefore clarify a primary issue that
Goldschmidt himself unfortunately plunged into deep confusion: how shall we
characterize the genetic source of saltations that make new species? Beginning in
the 1930's, and extending with increasing scope, unconventionality, and self-
assurance to his death, Goldschmidt developed an idiosyncratic concept of genetics
that eventually sought to refute the "particulate" or "corpuscular" gene entirely (see
the culmination of this development in Goldschmidt's last and least cogent book—
Theoretical Genetics, 1955. A comparison between Goldschmidt's "holistic" view
and Bateson's unwillingness to abandon his "vibrational" theory of heredity would
provide an interesting subject of research. I suspect that more than mere
coincidence must inhere in the observation that Bateson and Goldschmidt—the
most thoroughly non-Darwinian thinkers among important 20th century
evolutionists, particularly as expressed in their full and coordinated support for the
channeling and the facet-flipping themes of Galton's polyhedron—both insisted
upon a holistic concept of genetic material).
In short, Goldschmidt finally concluded that the underlying basis for all
mutational change must be sought in alterations of chromosomal patterns. If
inversions, translocations, and other chromosomal changes can exert such a
marked effect upon phenotypes in the absence of alteration within supposed genes,
why should genes exist at all as discrete and bounded entities? Perhaps all genetic
changes arise as alterations in pattern, with mappable, so-called micromutations as
modifications of minimal spatial extent and phenotypic effect. (Goldschmidt, of
course, did not deny the methodology of locating and mapping "genes" on
chromosomes. He merely considered these loci as operationally definable spots on
an indivisible chromosome. Order must be conserved for normal development. The
"mutations" of conventional terminology must represent disruptions of this
standard order, not material changes within discrete entities.) Eventually,
Goldschmidt even regarded individual chromosomes as mere segments of a more
comprehensive, holistically acting, system. As he touted this concept with
increasing vigor and assurance, even after Watson and Crick's resolution of the
structure of DNA in 1953, Goldschmidt became more and more marginalized
within his field.
This idiosyncratic view of genetics bears an obvious relationship to
Goldschmidt's saltational concept. If all genetic change can be rendered as
alteration of pattern within a single integrated system, then some changes must be
great enough in scope to reorient the entire program of development (while others,
with only local effect, correspond to micromutations of standard interpretations).