Volume 2

The system of animate nature : the Gifford lectures delivered in the University of St. Andrews in the years 1915 and 1916 / by J. Arthur Thomson.

  • Thomson, J. Arthur (John Arthur), 1861-1933.
Date:
1920
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The system of animate nature : the Gifford lectures delivered in the University of St. Andrews in the years 1915 and 1916 / by J. Arthur Thomson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    where mechanism is in many departments transcended or sublimed, where even the science of the individual is tran- scended, for human beings in societies behave in a way which cannot be formulated in terms of individual Biology and Psychology. The homing bird transcends the boomerang, and a purely Natural History account of social activity or social evolution leaves much out. So we have:—- the Kingdom of Man the Realm of Organisms and the Domain of the Inorganic well marked off from one another, and it seems on the face of it likely that fallacy will result from using the same word 4 evolution ? for all the processes of becoming that are observable in these diverse fields. We hear of the evolution of the solar system, of scenery, of chemical elements, the evolution of organisms, of species, of consciousness, of mind, of man, the evolution of societary forms, of institutions, of language, of religions, the evolution of evolution-theories. Now the use of the same word, especially a semi-technical word, suggests that we have to do throughout with a similar, perhaps a continuous process. But this begs several ques- tions. No matter how convinced we may be as to Continuity, we must not assume that the processes that have led to the in- organic domain being what it is are also those which account for the becoming of organisms, or that human history is nothing more than a continuation of organic evolution. A staircase is continuous, but there are successive steps, and so in evolution there seem to have been epoch-making steps of < creative synthesis \ The following suggestions as to terms are offered. For the process of becoming in the inorganic domain, when there