Hammond's Law of Auxology
ghammond at mediaone.net
Wed Dec 20 17:39:56 EST 2000
David Knorr wrote:
> Okay George, so I'll jump in here after the recap.
Dear D. Knorr:
You have emailed me privately. I must inform you that I do not engage
in private conversations except with recognized authorities, department
heads, textbook authors, highly cited researchers etc. After 20 years
of research in this area and having published in the peer reviewed
literature myself, I have concluded that it is only public scientific
consensus that carries any weight in this discussion, unless you are
a Nobel Laureate or something of that magnitude.
I have not located this post on any of the newsgroups where a discussion
of this is underway, so I have no idea how you heard about this.
Anyway, I have taken the liberty of posting my reply to
to the thread entitled "Hammond's law of Auxology".
If you wish to reply, please post your comments there.
> I'd appreciate a few more definitions that I haven't gotten from the many
> postings or your website.
> When you speak of phenotype, are you referring to it as the manifestation of
> a single genetic trait? Or as the sum of the total genetic expression of
> the entire genome of an individual organism?
We are talking almost exclusively of the "entire genomic phenotype",
particularly as it manifests itself in relation to
nutrition/malnutrition. Central to the issue is the matter of
malnutrition growth stunting in Humans. In 3rd World countries
for instance malnutrition growth stunting can reach 20, 30, 40
even 50% of human bodily size (height, weight, brain size, IQ).
Roughly speaking, such a stunted person is taken as the
"starvation phenotype", whereas a well nourished person is
taken to be much closer to the "true genotye".
Further... it is theorized that NOBODY so far has actually
ever reached an expression of the "full existing genotypical size"
simply because no where in the world is the Standard of Living
high enough to do so. This latter assertion is CONFIRMED by the
existence of the celebrated "Secular Trend" in human growth.
See Figure 4 at the following URL for a graph of the Secular
In either case, the result
> will be modulated by the environment the organism occupies. Furthermore,
> that environment will change as a result of many organisms interacting. For
> instance, the uniformity of organisms developed for agriculture can fare
> quite badly when something in the environment changes: plague, draught, etc.
> In fact the very heterogeneity of "natural" populations (and hence
> differential expression of "growth" characteristics in the same environment)
> is what provides the background for species to overcome changes in the
We certainly are aware of all that. Regardless, it is argued
that malnutrition reduces the size of the phenotype in
relation to the genotype, and therefore produces a "growth
The UPPER CURVE is a phenotypical expression of the "true
genotype", while the LOWER CURVE is an expression of the
"average phenotype" in the population under actual world
As you can see, there is a DECREMENT between the
"maximum phenotype" and the "actual phenotype".
> In other words, one gene may be "optimum" in a given environment, while
> others are not. What would then be the definition of a "perfect"
A "perfect world" would be one where people grow along the
UPPER CURVE in the diagram instead of along the LOWER CURVE
in the diagram as they do in the present world.
> In the original question about identical plants they have been
> human-selected to perform uniformly in a given environment. That does not
> necessarily mean that they are performing at their genetic optimum.
True. This means that they are not growing along the UPPER CURVE
but along some LOWER CURVE.
> I'm trying to reconcile how on the one hand what boils down to gene
> expression (phenotype in a given environment). In any way relates to god.
Well, that is another subject. What we are trying to determine
here is whether HAMMOND'S LAW OF AUXOLOGY is correct:
This is a BIOLOGY LAW. And what it says is that the existence
of the SECULAR TREND in Human Growth, PROVES that man must
presently be located on the LOWER CURVE in the above diagram,
and that the SECULAR TREND is steadily reducing the difference
between the upper curve and the lower curve.
I say, that OBVIOUSLY the existence of the Secular Trend
proves that the population-average growth curve MUST BE
displaced to a position BELOW the theoretical maximum
(gentypical) growth curve.
I further advance that this condition indubitably holds
true for all living organisms, not only man. This then, is
the LAW OF AUXOLOGY as I have called it, and I am here to
find out if Biology concurs that the Law is true?
As far as the question of "how does this Law prove God
exists"... that is a SEPARATE ISSUE, properly discussed on
a philosophy or Theology newsgroup. But, parenthetically,
let me explain that it is not complicated. To wit, if
there is a growth curve deficit as I have argued, then it
obviously must exist for every organ in the body including
the human BRAIN. Obviously according to this 15 or 20%
of the human brain is actually only "PARTIALLY GROWN" in
the average human being. The theory argues (and proves BTW)
that the average human being only sees "80% of reality"
because of this, and, not incredibly, refers to the other
20$ as "God". See my website for further details.
HOWEVER, I would hope that we could keep to the BIOLOGY
question here, and not go off on a long discussion of "God"
on the bionet channels. If you do wish to discuss these
other aspects.. there is a debate of them currently taking
SOCRATEEZ DEBATES HAMMOND'S SCI-PROOF OF GOD
Perhaps you might join us there if you are interested.
> If an organism were in a perfect environment, what would that say about god?
> Maybe I'm using an incorrect definition for god and you can enlighten us.
> Dave Knorr
BE SURE TO VISIT MY WEBSITE, BELOW:
George Hammond, M.S. Physics
Email: ghammond at mediaone.net
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