I want to know, how does the Baldwin effect work? My current understanding (developed by reading "Individual Development & Evolution by Gilbert Gottlieb) is that:
- When the "environment" changes during development, sometimes there is some cascading chemical change that, ultimately based on protein transcription, leads to observable (behavioral or physical) changes in the organism, as compared to "controls" (i.e. what we call 'normal envorinmental conditions' for that organism).
- Baldwin showed that if you selectively breed the organisms showing the morphological "change" due to the "environmental change", that eventually, the selectively-bred descendents will exhibit the morphological "change" even when reared in the same environment as the controls.
Thus, to me, the "Baldwin Effect" is "simply" the development of an "internal trigger" for the development of some morphology that has been selected for. The "internal trigger" removes the dependency on the "environmental change" and simply reuses existing environmental dependencies.
How in the world can an "environmental dependency" be incorporated into the organism itself, and become an "internal dependency" (well, really just an "existing environmental dependency" since all development is co-dependent on internal AND external factors)?
Note: I did a Google search, and surprisingly at least half of the references I found on the "Baldwin Effect" have to do with computational modelling strategies of behavior. Not far off from my own approach.
("Biological Evolution" ? Or maybe "Education and Creation/Evolution" [after all, this is MY education here < !--UB
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