A meeting of the Two Lines in Natural Sciences Study Group was held on August 8, 1969, in the McIntyre Medical Centre of McGill University, Montreal. This group published a materialist scientific quarterly, “Two Lines in the Natural Sciences,” and was sponsored by the Necessity for Change Institute of Ideological Studies.
In his opening remarks, H.S. Bains, Chairman of the Institute, pointed out that bourgeois science was geared to profit making and not to the solving of people’s problems. Bourgeois science is based on hypotheses, assumptions, suppositions, superstitions, and myths and that is why it is not a science. He said, “Bourgeois scientists are promoting racism and trying to show that hereditary characters are immutable and racial and intellectual superiority is innate.” He went on to say that all scientists should combat reactionary attitudes and theories in the sciences and fight for a science based on seeking truth from facts and devoted to serving the people.
This meeting was addressed by two science students who discussed two lines in the biological sciences by focusing on Michurin biology. The Michurin biology, developed further by Lysenko of the Soviet Union and other scientists, studies things in their interrelationships, recognizes the effects of the environment on the biological system, accepts the transmission of acquired characters from one generation to the other, and examines the continuous struggle between heredity which attempts to retain parent characters and adaptability which attempts to transform them. Thus heredity and adaptability form unity of opposites. This materialist line clearly shows that there is no such thing as genes in isolation and immutability of genes and heredity. The bourgeois idealistic line sees things in isolation, considers heredity as unrelated to the organism as a whole, believes in chance mutation, disallows the role of the environment inheredity, and denies the transference of acquired characters.
The speakers cited several examples proving the correctness of Michurin biology which is based on the laws of nature. Michurin biology is materialist and dialectical. One of the speakers mentioned the experiments of Dr. Durrant who subjected flax to different environmental and nutritional conditions and found the development of different types of flax. Similarly, Drosophilia (fly), bred for 240 generations on the dark, led to the emergence of a new type of fly which had different susceptibility to light and had organic changes in the retina of the eye resembling those of the cave dwelling animals. These changed characters were retained for over a hundred generations even when the fly was brought to natural living conditions. The speaker presented the experimental evidence from T.D. Lysenko, a well-known Soviet Michurin biologist, who not only showed that acquired characters developed due to interaction with the environment can be transferred to a new generation but also that this change takes place abruptly in a revolutionary fashion. Quoting from experiments on micro-organism, analysed by a materialist microbiologist Dr. Hinchalwood, the speaker said, “There is no basis for assuming chance mutations.” The speaker continued, “Radiation or anti-mitotic agents (agents which stop the growth of cells) affect the cell by acting on it as a whole in relation to its metabolism rather than by acting on some abstract genes.”
(Information from the newspaper “Mass Line,” No. 10, September 17, 1969.)