Evolution in modern thought E-Book

Various

• Herausgeber: Youcanprint
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

CONTENTS DARWIN'S PREDECESSORS THE SELECTION THEORY HEREDITY AND VARIATION IN MODERN LIGHTS "THE DESCENT OF MAN" CHARLES DARWIN AS AN ANTHROPOLOGIST MENTAL FACTORS IN EVOLUTION THE INFLUENCE OF THE CONCEPTION OF EVOLUTION ON MODERN PHILOSOPHY THE INFLUENCE OF DARWIN UPONRELIGIOUS THOUGHT DARWINISM AND HISTORY DARWINISM AND SOCIOLOGY

Leseprobe

Table of contents

DARWIN'S PREDECESSORS

THE SELECTION THEORY

HEREDITY AND VARIATION IN MODERN LIGHTS

"THE DESCENT OF MAN"

CHARLES DARWIN AS AN ANTHROPOLOGIST

MENTAL FACTORS IN EVOLUTION

THE INFLUENCE OF THE CONCEPTION OF EVOLUTION ON MODERN PHILOSOPHY

THE INFLUENCE OF DARWIN UPONRELIGIOUS THOUGHT

DARWINISM AND HISTORY

DARWINISM AND SOCIOLOGY

Evolution in modern thought

Various

First digital edition 2017 by Anna Ruggieri

DARWIN'S PREDECESSORS

By J. Arthur Thomson

Professor of Natural History in theUniversity of Aberdeen

In seeking to discover Darwin's relation to his predecessors it is useful to distinguish the various services which he rendered to the theory of organic evolution.

(I) As everyone knows, the general idea of the Doctrine of Descent isthat the plants and animals of the present day are the lineal descendants of ancestors on the whole somewhat simpler, that these again are descended from yet simpler forms, and so on backwards towards the literal "Protozoa" and "Protophyta" about which weunfortunately know nothing. Now no one supposes that Darwin originated this idea, which in rudiment at least is as old as Aristotle. What Darwin did was to make it current intellectual coin. He gave it a form that commended itself to the scientific and public intelligence of the day, and he won widespread conviction by showing with consummate skill that it was an effective formula to work with, a key which no lock refused. In a scholarly, critical, and pre-eminently fair-minded way, admitting difficultiesand removing them, foreseeing objections and forestalling them, he showed that the doctrine of descent supplied a modal interpretation of how our present-day fauna and flora have come to be.

(II) In the second place, Darwin applied the evolution-idea to particular problems, such as the descent of man, and showed what a powerful organon it is, introducing order into masses of uncorrelated facts, interpreting enigmas both of structure and function, both bodily and mental, and, best of all, stimulating and guiding further investigation. But here again it cannot be claimed that Darwin was original. The problem of the descent or ascent of man, and other particular cases of evolution, had attracted not a few naturalists before Darwin's day, though no one [except Herbert Spencer in the psychological domain (1855)] had come near him in precision and thoroughness of inquiry.

(III) In the third place, Darwin contributed largely to a knowledge of the factors in the evolution-process, especially by his analysis of what occurs in the case of domestic animals and cultivated plants, and by his elaboration of the theory of Natural Selection which Alfred Russel Wallace independently stated at the same time, and of which there had been a few previous suggestions of a more or less vague description. It was here that Darwin's originality was greatest, for he revealed to naturalists the many different forms—often very subtle—which natural selection takes, and with the insight of a disciplined scientific imagination he realised whata mighty engine of progress it has been and is.

(IV) As an epoch-marking contribution, not only to Ætiology but to Natural History in the widest sense, we rank the picture which Darwin gave to the world of the web of life, that is to say, of the inter-relations and linkages in Nature. For the Biology of the individual—if that be not a contradiction in terms—no idea is more fundamental than that of thecorrelation of organs, but Darwin's most characteristic contribution was not less fundamental,—it was theidea of the correlation of organisms. This, again, was not novel; we find it in the works of naturalists like Christian Conrad Sprengel, Gilbert White, and Alexander von Humboldt, but the realisation of its full import was distinctly Darwinian.

As Regardsthe General Idea of Organic Evolution

While it is true, as Prof. H. F. Osborn puts it, that "'Before and after Darwin' will always be theante et post urbem conditamof biological history," it is also true that the general idea of organic evolution is veryancient. In his admirable sketchFrom the Greeks to Darwin,[1]Prof. Osborn has shown that several of the ancient philosophers looked upon Nature as a gradual development and as still in process of change. In the suggestions of Empedocles, to take the best instance, there were "four sparks of truth,—first, that the development of life was a gradual process; second, that plants were evolved before animals; third, that imperfect forms were gradually replaced (not succeeded) by perfect forms; fourth, that thenatural cause of the production of perfect forms was the extinction of the imperfect."[2]But the fundamental idea of one stage giving origin to another was absent. As the blue Ægean teemed with treasures of beauty and threw many upon its shores, so did Nature produce like a fertile artist what had to be rejected as well as what was able to survive, but the idea of one species emerging out of another was not yet conceived.