We don’t know if this is the case. Looking at squib/wizard descent rates from wizard/muggle marriages would be an obvious additional test of Harry’s genetic hypothesis, which he hasn’t done. We don’t know if Harry is correct about there being a single wizard gene.
I really don’t get how the genetics works in either MOR or canon. In canon, there are wizards with one wizard parent and one muggle parent, who aren’t squibs (Snape and Riddle for two). That implies it’s dominant. Also, squibs in canon are born to 2 wizard parents (Neville’s pure-blood and was thought to be one, and it’s mentioned in the definition), and squibs are implied to be pretty uncommon, which they wouldn’t be if they were all heterozygotes. In the end, though, I support EY’s right to make it work out however he feels like, because canon is confused and self-contradictory and MOR’s point about complex adaptations being either ubiquitous or absent is true.
In canon, there are wizards with one wizard parent and one muggle parent, who aren’t squibs (Snape and Riddle for two).
In canon they call “squib” the non-magic-capable child of two wizards.
In MoR, that means the child has only one copy of the recessive magic gene. (Either mommy didn’t love only daddy, or one copy of the gene got messed up somehow.) But in MoR you need to distinguish between genetic|squib (has one copy of the gene), and genealogic|squib (can’t do magic but has wizard/witch parents).
All genealogical|squibs are genetic|squibs, but wizards use the word “squib” only for the former, since wizards don’t know much about genetics, and about the magic gene in particular. They call anybody who isn’t a part of magic Britain a muggle (genealogical |muggle), even though they might actually be genetic|squibs.
An example: Wizard Nasty Pants does the nasty with lots of muggle women a couple of centuries ago. He doesn’t like commitments, so he abandons the women to raise their children alone.
All his children are genetic|squibs, but they’re raised by muggles and—after Mr. Nasty dies because he tried that with a witch married to a Gryffindor—nobody knows they had a wizard parent.
Mr. and Mrs. Ancient Robes have a squib (Mr. Robes was often away on ancient business), and Mrs. Robes leaves him to be raised by a muggle family, because she doesn’t have the heart to see him killed (Mr. Robes is kind of old-fashioned that way), and claims he died at birth or something.
A couple of generations later the magic gene still exists in a lot of Mr. Pants’ and Mrs. Robes’ muggle-raised descendants: half a genetic|squib’s children are also genetic|squibs, if the other parent is genetic|muggle, and people used to have lots of kids until recently. But they’ll be genealogic|muggles, and any wizard will call them muggles, because they’re not known to have a magic parent.
And then, two of these genetic|squib descendants marry (either the two trees intersect, or a couple of kissing cousins decide to do more than kiss), and a quarter of their kids are wizards. Magic Britain will call them muggle-born (or mudbloods, depending on political inclination), although in fact they’re lost descendants of wizards.
Similarly, when Ms. Broad Horizons, a witch of liberal inclination, falls in love with young muggle (but genetic|squib) Bendsinister McPants, half her kids will be wizards, and Magic Britain will call them half-bloods.
Since there is a single magic gene (apparently), it is also possible that a mutation will toggle between the magic and non-magic alleles. So it is also possible, though probably much rarer, that a squib (or, even less likely, a wizard) appears from completely non-magical parents, or that two magic users have a squib or non-magic child, due to simple mutation. How likely that is depends on the complexity of the gene, but it’d have to be much rarer than the above scenarios, unless there’s magical interference in mutation rates for that specific gene.
Also, we cannot completely ignore the possibility of the “magic machinery” (the one that recognize the genetic marker) to have some kind of shuffling process that’ll occasionally turn on or off the magical marker when an egg is fertilized. Either randomly, or based on events (triggers like “an egg fertilized exactly at the second where the moon is the fullest will have a high probability of having the magical marked added”).
We have no hints towards that, so Occam’s Razor would tend to give it a low probability, but it would seem coherent to me with the twisted, not really occamian, way magic seems to work. Harry’s and Draco’s experiment on the genes was low-scale enough so they had no chance of detecting any such shuffling.
But sure, adultery is a much more plausible explanation of why squibs would occasionally appear in pure magical couples, and why there are “muggleborn”.
Also, we cannot completely ignore the possibility of the “magic machinery” (the one that recognize the genetic marker) to have some kind of shuffling process that’ll occasionally turn on or off the magical marker when an egg is fertilized. Either randomly, or based on events (triggers like “an egg fertilized exactly at the second where the moon is the fullest will have a high probability of having the magical marked added”).
Or that there is no genetic marker at all and the machinery uses some algorithm of its own to determine who should have magic which is heavily biased towards children of wizards.
Well, Harry and Draco’s “experiment” (I’d say “poll” would be a better term) didn’t have a huge support population, but their numbers suggest that the bias would have to match suspiciously well with a genetic marker. That is, it seems that the actual results would be the same either way.
I agree with most of this. However, I think it is worth noting that JKR’s understanding of biology is about as good as her understanding of math or astronomy so I don’t expect her to have even thought of this sort of thing. I don’t think the nature of complex adaptations is a great argument in this context given that we’ve already found that magic doesn’t seem to act very much like what science tells us to expect in general.
While I support Eliezer’s right to do what he wants, I suspect that Harry will turn out to be wrong about this, and that we’ll find out in the story.
We don’t know if this is the case. Looking at squib/wizard descent rates from wizard/muggle marriages would be an obvious additional test of Harry’s genetic hypothesis, which he hasn’t done. We don’t know if Harry is correct about there being a single wizard gene.
I really don’t get how the genetics works in either MOR or canon. In canon, there are wizards with one wizard parent and one muggle parent, who aren’t squibs (Snape and Riddle for two). That implies it’s dominant. Also, squibs in canon are born to 2 wizard parents (Neville’s pure-blood and was thought to be one, and it’s mentioned in the definition), and squibs are implied to be pretty uncommon, which they wouldn’t be if they were all heterozygotes. In the end, though, I support EY’s right to make it work out however he feels like, because canon is confused and self-contradictory and MOR’s point about complex adaptations being either ubiquitous or absent is true.
In canon they call “squib” the non-magic-capable child of two wizards.
In MoR, that means the child has only one copy of the recessive magic gene. (Either mommy didn’t love only daddy, or one copy of the gene got messed up somehow.) But in MoR you need to distinguish between genetic|squib (has one copy of the gene), and genealogic|squib (can’t do magic but has wizard/witch parents).
All genealogical|squibs are genetic|squibs, but wizards use the word “squib” only for the former, since wizards don’t know much about genetics, and about the magic gene in particular. They call anybody who isn’t a part of magic Britain a muggle (genealogical |muggle), even though they might actually be genetic|squibs.
An example: Wizard Nasty Pants does the nasty with lots of muggle women a couple of centuries ago. He doesn’t like commitments, so he abandons the women to raise their children alone.
All his children are genetic|squibs, but they’re raised by muggles and—after Mr. Nasty dies because he tried that with a witch married to a Gryffindor—nobody knows they had a wizard parent.
Mr. and Mrs. Ancient Robes have a squib (Mr. Robes was often away on ancient business), and Mrs. Robes leaves him to be raised by a muggle family, because she doesn’t have the heart to see him killed (Mr. Robes is kind of old-fashioned that way), and claims he died at birth or something.
A couple of generations later the magic gene still exists in a lot of Mr. Pants’ and Mrs. Robes’ muggle-raised descendants: half a genetic|squib’s children are also genetic|squibs, if the other parent is genetic|muggle, and people used to have lots of kids until recently. But they’ll be genealogic|muggles, and any wizard will call them muggles, because they’re not known to have a magic parent.
And then, two of these genetic|squib descendants marry (either the two trees intersect, or a couple of kissing cousins decide to do more than kiss), and a quarter of their kids are wizards. Magic Britain will call them muggle-born (or mudbloods, depending on political inclination), although in fact they’re lost descendants of wizards.
Similarly, when Ms. Broad Horizons, a witch of liberal inclination, falls in love with young muggle (but genetic|squib) Bendsinister McPants, half her kids will be wizards, and Magic Britain will call them half-bloods.
Since there is a single magic gene (apparently), it is also possible that a mutation will toggle between the magic and non-magic alleles. So it is also possible, though probably much rarer, that a squib (or, even less likely, a wizard) appears from completely non-magical parents, or that two magic users have a squib or non-magic child, due to simple mutation. How likely that is depends on the complexity of the gene, but it’d have to be much rarer than the above scenarios, unless there’s magical interference in mutation rates for that specific gene.
Also, we cannot completely ignore the possibility of the “magic machinery” (the one that recognize the genetic marker) to have some kind of shuffling process that’ll occasionally turn on or off the magical marker when an egg is fertilized. Either randomly, or based on events (triggers like “an egg fertilized exactly at the second where the moon is the fullest will have a high probability of having the magical marked added”).
We have no hints towards that, so Occam’s Razor would tend to give it a low probability, but it would seem coherent to me with the twisted, not really occamian, way magic seems to work. Harry’s and Draco’s experiment on the genes was low-scale enough so they had no chance of detecting any such shuffling.
But sure, adultery is a much more plausible explanation of why squibs would occasionally appear in pure magical couples, and why there are “muggleborn”.
Or that there is no genetic marker at all and the machinery uses some algorithm of its own to determine who should have magic which is heavily biased towards children of wizards.
Well, Harry and Draco’s “experiment” (I’d say “poll” would be a better term) didn’t have a huge support population, but their numbers suggest that the bias would have to match suspiciously well with a genetic marker. That is, it seems that the actual results would be the same either way.
I agree with most of this. However, I think it is worth noting that JKR’s understanding of biology is about as good as her understanding of math or astronomy so I don’t expect her to have even thought of this sort of thing. I don’t think the nature of complex adaptations is a great argument in this context given that we’ve already found that magic doesn’t seem to act very much like what science tells us to expect in general.
While I support Eliezer’s right to do what he wants, I suspect that Harry will turn out to be wrong about this, and that we’ll find out in the story.