Darwinism to-day : a discussion of present-day scientific criticism of the Darwinian selection theories, together with a brief account of the principal other proposed auxiliary and alternative theories of species-forming / by Vernon L. Kellogg.

  • Kellogg, Vernon L. (Vernon Lyman), 1867-1937.
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Darwinism to-day : a discussion of present-day scientific criticism of the Darwinian selection theories, together with a brief account of the principal other proposed auxiliary and alternative theories of species-forming / by Vernon L. Kellogg. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of biological investigation. Conspicuous among these new kinds of work are the statistical or quantitative study of variations and that most alluring work variously called developmental mechanics, experimental morphology, ex- perimental physiology of development, or, most suitably of all because most comprehensively, experimental biology.2 This work includes the controlled modification of conditions attending development and behaviour, and the pedigreed breeding of pure and hybrid generations. Now this combina- tion of destructive critical activity and active constructive ex- perimental investigation has plainly resulted, or is resulting, in the distinct weakening or modifying of certain familiar and long-entrenched theories concerning the causative factors and the mechanism of organic evolution. Most conspicuous among these theories now in the white light of scientific scrutiny are those established by Darwin, and known, col- lectively, to biologists, as Darwinism. To too many general readers Darwinism is synonymous with organic evolution or the theory of descent. The word is not to be so used or considered. Darwinism, whitemb**' primarily, is a most ingenious, most plausible, and, according to one’s belief, most effective or most inadequate, causo-mechanical explanation of adaptation and species-transforming. It is that factor which, ever since its proposal by Darwin in 1859, has been held by a majority of biologists to be the chief working agent in the descent, that is, the origin, of species. However worthy Darwin is of having his name applied directly to the great theory of descent—for it was only by Darwin’s aid that this theory, conceived and more or less clearly announced by numerous pre-Darwinian naturalists and philosophers, came to general and nearly immediate acceptance—the fact is that the name Darwinism has been pretty consistently applied by biologists only to those theories practically original with Darwin which offer a mechanical explanation of the accepted fact of