Charles Darwin, desperate to discover how evolution keeps going, in 1865, sent his good friend, Thomas Huxley, a thirty-page manuscript under the heading “The Hypothesis of Pangenesis.” Huxley’s response must have been discouraging, since Darwin replied, “I do not doubt your judgment is perfectly just and I will persuade myself not to publish. The whole affair is much too speculative.”

Pangenesis extended Aristotle’s concept of “spontaneous generation,” later popularized by French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. Still anxious, two years late in 1867 Darwin sent a letter to American scientist, Asa Gray at Harvard University -

The chapter on what I call Pangenesis will be called a mad dream, and I shall be pretty well satisfied if you think it a dream worth publishing; but at the bottom of my own mind I think it contains a great truth.

Pangenesis was the “mad dream” answer to the question, how does nature acquire new information to keep going? In a letter to Charles Lyell in 1867, Darwin wrote,

I am inclined to think that if it [pangenesis] be admitted as a probable hypothesis it will be a somewhat important step in biology.

Darwin finally outlined his theory of pangenesis in his 1868 work The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication. Pangenesis is not mentioned in The Origin of Species, even in the sixth edition, which was published later in 1872. As reflected in a letter to John Jenner Weir in 1868, Darwin knew that the theory was sketchy, at best:

You will find pangenesis stiff reading, and I fear [you] will shake your head in disapproval.

Darwin historian E. Janet Browne in the book entitled The Power of Place, notes that Darwin clearly ascribed to the “mad dream” concept of pangenesis, “Pangenesis looked to him as if it might supply the answer.”

The pangenesis hypothesis was Darwin’s misguided deductive “scientific point of view” answer to the question – where do all the new variations needed to keep evolution going come from? In a letter to Fritz Müller in 1870, Darwin wrote, “Pangenesis will turn out true some day!”

Little did Darwin know that the “some day” had already come and gone. Using the Scientific Method, rather than deductive logic, French microbiologist, Louis Pasteur, demonstrated that fermentation is caused by the growth of micro-organisms, and that the emergent growth of bacteria is not due to spontaneous generation or pangenesis, but rather to biogenesis-Omne vivum ex vivo Latin for “all life is from life.”

In his triumphal lecture at the Sorbonne in 1864, Pasteur declared – “Never will the doctrine of spontaneous generation recover from the mortal blow struck by this simple experiment”

While Girolamo Fracastoro, Agostino Bassi, Friedrich Henle had earlier proposed a germ theory, it was not until Pasteur, using the Scientific Method, demonstrated that Darwin’s pangenesis hypothesis did not pass the test. Today, Pasteur is known as the father of germ theory and bacteriology.

“The more I study nature,” Pasteur reflects, “the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator”. Along with the Scientific Method, Pasteur gives further insight into his key to success, “I pray while I am engaged at my work in the laboratory.”

The requests for divine intervention placed into action Pasteur’s “Absolute faith in God and in Eternity, and a conviction that the power for good given to us in this world will be continued beyond it, were feelings which pervaded his whole life,” according to his son-in-law. In Pasteur’s own words, “Science brings men nearer to God.”

Inspired by Louis Pasteur‘s germ theory, to combat surgical infections, Joseph Lister in 1867 published in the paper entitled Antiseptic Principle of the Practice of Surgery, introduced the prinicples of the modern antiseptic surgical method.

Lister acknowledged Pasteur’s invaluable contribution. In a letter to Pasteur in February 1874, Lister gave him “thanks for having, by your brilliant researches, proved to me the truth of the germ theory. You furnished me with the principle upon which alone the antiseptic system can be carried out.” Joseph Lister is now known as the father of modern surgery.

Darwin and Pasteur is a study of contrasts. For Darwin, use of the “scientific point of view”, who viewed the Bible as a “damable doctrine”, led to the “mad dream”, pangenesis. For Pasteur, use of the Scientific Method and praying launched the era of modern surgery.

Darwin along with the evolution industry, unlike Pasteur, has yet to deliver on the promise to discover and introduce advances in medicine. In the post-Modern Synthesis era, the theory of evolution, like the “mad dog” theory of pangenesis, has crash into an irrelevant dead-end.

In his autobiography, Charles Darwin notes, “Towards the end of the work I gave my well abused hypothesis of Pangenesis. An unverified hypothesis is of little or no value”—the First-Wave of evolutionary thought. Today, Darwin’s sentiments on pangenesis have re-emerged, however, this time on genetics.

In this week’s edition of the journal Science published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the focus is on epigenetics. An on-line issue even features a video by Science editor Guy Riddihough asking a number of top researchers a simple question: “What’s your definition of epigenetics?” And, “Their answers aren’t quite so simple,” according to Riddihough.

While Darwin’s theory of pangenesis in The Origin of Species gained little support, the emerging gene-centric model Second-Wave for evolution proposed by the giants of evolution starting with Theodosius Dobzhansky, Julian Huxley, Ernst Mayr, and Francis Crick, became the foundation of evolution of theory over the during the late twentieth century.

Crick named the theory, the “Central Dogma” of evolution. Evolutionary theory was envisioned as simply a process of genetic mutations acted on by natural selection.

Since then, the stage has been set to discover the anticipated Darwinian “slight, successive” sequence of genetic mutations associated with the evolution of new species. Not until just the last ten years has last the technological frontier been conquered, DNA sequencing, to validate the gene-centric theory of evolution.

Now with genetic evidence available to valid the Second-Wave, scientists are abandoning the gene-centric evolutionary theory for one big reason; there are no “slight, successive” genetic changes to validate the gene-centric theory of evolution as anticipated by neo-Darwinism, the Modern Synthesis, or the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis. From nature, the evidence is clear; any mechanism for evolution must exist beyond genetics—epigenetic.

Epigenetics major problem is, as Riddihough highlights, there is no consensus on what constitutes epigenetics, “Although epigenetics generally refers to the inheritance of variation above and beyond changes in DNA sequence, the term is becoming shorthand for a variety regulatory systems involving DNA methylation, histone modification, nucleosome location, or noncoding RNA.”

The once simple Second-Wave theory of mutations acted on by natural selection has now been given way to a Third-Wave of yet a vastly more complex theory, in yet some unknown system, and with yet some unknown mechanisms, as Riddihough highlights.

The Third-Wave of genetics, including epigenetics, has completely replaced the Second-Wave realm of theoretical evolution. Massimo Pigliucci in his new book entitled Evolution-The Extended Synthesis published by MIT Press, recognizes that the fundamental tenets of Modern Synthesis “are being challenged as either inaccurate or incomplete” and “all these molecular processes clearly demolish the alleged central dogma.”

To address the Second-Wave crisis and pave the way to the Third-Wave, Pigliucci and Gerd Muller in the summer of 2008 convened a workshop at the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research in Altenberg near Vienna, Austria. 

The workshop was entitled “Toward an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis?” Evolutionary academians from sixteen universities participated in the workshop. The workshop became known as the “Altenberg-16” and dubbed “The Woodstock of Evolution.”

Today, evolution is a philosophy looking for the evidence to support the theory. As such, the evolutionary industry has completed abandoned the Scientific Method.

Nature has spoken. Evolution, once a theory in crisis, is now in crisis without a theory.

Charles Darwin lamented in his autobiography over ascribing to pangenesis in The Origin of Species - 

Towards the end of the work I gave my well abused hypothesis of Pangenesis. An unverified hypothesis is of little or no value.

While Darwin’s hypothetic pangenesis was an accepted theory in 1859, by 1864 French biologist, Louis Pasteur, had undermined pangenesis by demonstrating that life cannot arise spontaneously—life can only come from life. Darwin was right. Pangenesis is of “no value.”

By the mid-twentieth century, while Francis Crick and James D. Watson unveiled the molecular structure of DNA. In 1953, the momentum of evolution theory was rapidly defaulting to a mutation plus natural selection neo-Darwinian model, most commonly known as Modern Synthesis.

The gene became the center of Modern Synthesis theory and promoted as a “fact of life.” The fundamentals of Modern Synthesis gene-centric theory were declared by American geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky

Mutations and chromosomal changes … constantly and unremittingly supply the raw materials for evolution.

By the early twenty-first century, however, the unifying theory of evolution began to unravel. In their 2002 book entitled Acquiring Genomes: A Theory of the Origins of Species, Lynn Margulis, and Dorion Sagan succinctly declare the now obvious fact –  

Mutation accumulation does not lead to new species or even to new organs or new tissues.

Giuseppe Sermonti, an Italian geneticist, in his 2005 book Why a Horse is Not a Fly notes that the late citadel of evolutionary theory, Modern Synthesis, was in fact a never event -

 To say that blind mutations are the driving principle of the world, and to rely on the rare fortunate mistake, is a poor resource, quite apart from the fact that transgressions of the kind needed by Darwinian evolution have never been documented.

In the new book, The Altenberg-16, An Exposé of the Evolution Industry, Suzan Mazur, explains the reasons for the emerging revolution in the evolution industry -  

[T]here is a need to challenge the prevailing Modern Synthesis because there is too much it doesn’t explain. For example, the Modern Synthesis was produced when genetics was still a baby and science has discovered all human genes there are to be found. We’ve only got 20,000 – 25,000 of them.

The number of genes, 25,000, is nearly the same number of genes in the fruit fly and in coral. Evolution from the simple to more complex is not supported by newly emerging scientific evidence in genetics.

Professor David Miller of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Coral Reef Studies and the ARC Special Research Centre for the Molecular Genetics of Development, notes - 

Corals are among the simplest animals in the world – yet they may possess a set of genes as large and complex as our own.

Twenty-five thousand is not only a numbers problem for the simple to complex evolution camp, 25,000 is a problem in cellular biology. How can just 25,000 genes alone control the function of millions of biological processes? Sermonti reflects on the dilemma –

It was thought that a gene count might offer a better index of organismal complexity…. And where did this all lead? To the conclusion, that biochemical complexity has little to offer in explaining evolution.

The gene-centric Modern Synthesis developed from an untested hypothesis. Once again, history has come full circle. Like Darwin’s pangenesis, the Modern Synthesis is in a game-changing crisis and theories of evolution are once again facing the “no value” charge.

The challenge facing the evolution industry is finding a theoretical successor—fast. History might repeat itself. Sadly, eight years after Pasteur undermined pangenesis Darwin in last edition of The Origin of Species in 1872, continued to promote the concept of pangenesis.

Evolution was a theory in crisis in the twentieth century, now evolution is in crisis without a theory. After 150 years, evolution, like pangenesis, continues as “an unverified hypothesis… of little or no value.”

The etymology of pangenesis comes from the Greek words pan (a prefix meaning “whole”, “encompassing”) and genesis (birth) or genos (origin). Gemmules were thought to learn from experiences.

The origin of new variations was critical for Darwin’s theory since the “slight, successive” changes in evolution requires a constant stream of new variations for the actions of natural selection. Gemmules were imagined particles. These learned gemmules particles sent from every cell (pan) in the body with new variations (genos) accumulated in the germ cells and had a ‘vote’ in the constitution of the offspring (genesis).

This hypothesis provided a possible mechanism for the inheritance of acquired characteristics, as proposed by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, which Darwin believed to be the origin of new variations in living organisms.

Little did Darwin know that even before the publication of the fourth edition of The Origin of Species in 1866, Gregor Mendel had presented the now-famous paper entitled “Experiments on Plant Hybridization,” laying the foundations of modern genetics.

Although, Mendel’s discovery went unnoticed until the turn of the twentieth century, German biologist August Weismann, at the University of Freiburg, launched the first scientific evidence directly challenging Darwin’s theory. Now known as the “Weisman Barrier,” in 1883, Weismann cut off the tails of mice from 21 generations. Seeing that the 22^nd generation still had tails, Weismann concluded that the evidence contradicted Darwin’s theory of pangenesis despite obvious reasons for change in the mice, “continuity” was observed, not new variations.

Ernst Mayr, Darwin’s twentieth-century bull-dag, stated Weismann as “The second most notable evolutionary theorist of the 19th century.” What is still unresolved now 150 years later is—what is the origin of variation?