This article considers several problems concerning the origin of the soul in the work of the nineteenth century American theologian, William G. T. Shedd. He opts for the traducian position, which is, that the soul is passed down from parents to child, in a way similar to the passing of physical seed from two human parents that fuse in syngamy to form a genetically distinct entity. The essay considers three problems with this view. The first concerns the composition of (...) human natures; the second, whether souls are fissiparous; and the third, the relationship between traducianism, creationism and Augustinian realism. (shrink)

This is a brief response to Stephen Buckle's paper 'Biological Processes and Moral Events', Journal of Medical Ethics 14 (1988): 144-7, in which Buckle argues that the continuity of early human development does not preclude there being 'morally significant' events, such as syngamy, that set boundaries for the permissibility of human embryo experimentation. I reply to Buckle that the very continuity at issue does indeed preclude the existence of such 'morally significant' events, and that the Australian Senate Select Committee (...) on Human Embryo Experimentation (1985) was, contra Buckle, not confused about this matter. ERRATUM: middle column, line 3 from bottom: 'fifteen days later' should read 'one day later'. (shrink)

Biologists have long theorized about the evolution of life cycles, meiosis, and sexual reproduction. We revisit these topics and propose that the fundamental difference between life cycles is where and when multicellularity is expressed. We develop a scenario to explain the evolutionary transition from the life cycle of a unicellular organism to one in which multicellularity is expressed in either the haploid or diploid phase, or both. We propose further that meiosis might have evolved as a mechanism to correct for (...) spontaneous whole‐genome duplication (auto‐polyploidy) and thus before the evolution of sexual reproduction sensu stricto (i.e. the formation of a diploid zygote via the fusion of haploid gametes) in the major eukaryotic clades. In addition, we propose, as others have, that sexual reproduction, which predominates in all eukaryotic clades, has many different advantages among which is that it produces variability among offspring and thus reduces sibling competition. (shrink)