In 1889, a natural philosopher by the name of August Weismann performed the paradigm stupid and wasteful experiment in an era and stupid and wasteful experiments. I say an "era and stupid and wasteful experiments" because the scientific method was only beginning to be developed. Most of those experiments did not record enough about the procedure to render them reproducible even by themselves, let alone another experimenter. Their data was therefore useless as a basis for drawing any meaningful conclusions. August Weismann, though, stands above the crowd and designing and executing a particularly stupid and wasteful experiment. What did he do? He cut the tails off five generations of mice in an attempt to disprove Lamarckism -- a notion (I refuse to give it the title "theory", "hypothesis", or even "conjecture") that acquired traits can be inherited.
In Weismann's own words: "901 young were produced by five generations of artificially mutilated parents, and yet there was not a single example of a rudimentary tail or of any other abnormality in this organ." It was stupid in that it did not actually say anything at all about Lamarckism. It was wasteful in that he already had a much larger data set from the same experiment being performed for millennia in every corner of the inhabited world. I mean, of course, the Jewish people. We have been religiously (you better believe every pun intended) circumcising our boys for millennia. And what do you know? We continue that practice till today because the boys keep being born in need of circumcision! (Aside: I first learned about this experiment in high school biology. I was shocked even at that time that he had ignored the Jewish circumcision data... and bewildered that no one else mentioned it either. Go figure.)
However, it turns out that the situation is not a simple as "whatever the genes say, organism does." There are many genes, of course, that do function that way: eye color, height, number of fingers, etc. Those things, quite obviously, cannot be changed by things that happen to the body. Interestingly, though, there is another class of gene. Genes that are essentially switched on and off by the environment. The example I heard was they associated a certain gene with violent behavior. Open further investigation, though, they found that the gene only functioned that way when certain environmental factor were extant in the person's childhood. Remove the factors, and the gene was completely dormant. Moreover, those traits which are switched on or off during a person's life actually can be transmitted to the next generation. The state of ("on" or "off") those genes also affects how those genes interact and combine during conception. Cool, eh?
What does that have to do with Torah and Rabbinic Law? Nothing directly, but I think it helps to lend a deeper appreciation for what Chazal did. The Ramchal, in דרך השם, says that there is really no difference between Torah and Rabbinic Law, except that Torah Law was given as a national revelation at Har Sinai, whereas Rabbinic Law was given through the debates and exertions of Chazal to learn the Torah law to it ultimate depths. From this recently discovered mechanism of genetics, perhaps we can appreciate this Ramchal in a new light. The source of the Rabbinic Law was always there, simply waiting for the environment -- so to speak -- to be switched on.
This perspective has a lot of merit for me. For example, our Rabbinic Law mostly developed at certain junctures of history; mostly during the Babylonian exile. Also, there are discussions among the early medieval rabbis about things such as brachos -- which are clearly of rabbinic origin; and yet we find sources that they are actually הלכה למשה מסיני/laws given only orally to Moshe from the national revelation at Sinai. We also know that they early patriarchs kept even Rabbinic laws. This perspective offers some tangible explanation of how people centuries apart and living under completely different circumstances could come to the same conclusion.
As I hope is obvious: I am not offering explanation of how or why any particular Rabbinic law was enacted. Nor am I, chas v'shalom, suggesting that we can make changes. I am only noting that this gives a framework, an approach -- if you will, of how one could have a very complicated set of explicit instructions for a pristine environment, while at the same time encoding expected behaviors for anything that might change in the living circumstances.
In Weismann's own words: "901 young were produced by five generations of artificially mutilated parents, and yet there was not a single example of a rudimentary tail or of any other abnormality in this organ." It was stupid in that it did not actually say anything at all about Lamarckism. It was wasteful in that he already had a much larger data set from the same experiment being performed for millennia in every corner of the inhabited world. I mean, of course, the Jewish people. We have been religiously (you better believe every pun intended) circumcising our boys for millennia. And what do you know? We continue that practice till today because the boys keep being born in need of circumcision! (Aside: I first learned about this experiment in high school biology. I was shocked even at that time that he had ignored the Jewish circumcision data... and bewildered that no one else mentioned it either. Go figure.)
However, it turns out that the situation is not a simple as "whatever the genes say, organism does." There are many genes, of course, that do function that way: eye color, height, number of fingers, etc. Those things, quite obviously, cannot be changed by things that happen to the body. Interestingly, though, there is another class of gene. Genes that are essentially switched on and off by the environment. The example I heard was they associated a certain gene with violent behavior. Open further investigation, though, they found that the gene only functioned that way when certain environmental factor were extant in the person's childhood. Remove the factors, and the gene was completely dormant. Moreover, those traits which are switched on or off during a person's life actually can be transmitted to the next generation. The state of ("on" or "off") those genes also affects how those genes interact and combine during conception. Cool, eh?
What does that have to do with Torah and Rabbinic Law? Nothing directly, but I think it helps to lend a deeper appreciation for what Chazal did. The Ramchal, in דרך השם, says that there is really no difference between Torah and Rabbinic Law, except that Torah Law was given as a national revelation at Har Sinai, whereas Rabbinic Law was given through the debates and exertions of Chazal to learn the Torah law to it ultimate depths. From this recently discovered mechanism of genetics, perhaps we can appreciate this Ramchal in a new light. The source of the Rabbinic Law was always there, simply waiting for the environment -- so to speak -- to be switched on.
This perspective has a lot of merit for me. For example, our Rabbinic Law mostly developed at certain junctures of history; mostly during the Babylonian exile. Also, there are discussions among the early medieval rabbis about things such as brachos -- which are clearly of rabbinic origin; and yet we find sources that they are actually הלכה למשה מסיני/laws given only orally to Moshe from the national revelation at Sinai. We also know that they early patriarchs kept even Rabbinic laws. This perspective offers some tangible explanation of how people centuries apart and living under completely different circumstances could come to the same conclusion.
As I hope is obvious: I am not offering explanation of how or why any particular Rabbinic law was enacted. Nor am I, chas v'shalom, suggesting that we can make changes. I am only noting that this gives a framework, an approach -- if you will, of how one could have a very complicated set of explicit instructions for a pristine environment, while at the same time encoding expected behaviors for anything that might change in the living circumstances.
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