Remarks on the Latest Form of the Development Theory

Francis Bowen (1860)

Classics in the History of Psychology

An internet resource developed by

Christopher D. Green

York University, Toronto, Ontario

ISSN 1492-3713

Remarks on the Latest Form of the Development Theory

By Francis Bowen (1860)

First published in Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, n.s., VIII, pp. 98-107,

vary, and the fact that variations could be inherited, Bowen was ready to grant with only minor

reservations. His real criticism begins with the third point.]

3. But with whatever success the doctrine of Inherited Variation may be applied to explain the

existence of Varieties, it is certain that the origin of Species can be accounted for on the

Development Theory, if at all, only by Cumulative Variation, -- that is, only by supposing a vast

number of Inherited Variations to be successively superinduced one upon another. Doubts have

been raised upon this point only on account of ambiguity in the meaning of words, or from want of

agreement as to the principles of classification. Many races, both of animals and vegetables, appear

to be so nearly allied to each other, that certain naturalists consider them as mere Varieties; others

question whether the several races of men are only Varieties, or are so many distinct Species, and

the same question with respect to dogs, there is no doubt that men and dogs belong respectively to

different Species. And generally, putting aside the question whether the offspring of certain races

when crossed are entirely sterile or only partially so, there is no doubt that animals or plants belong

to distinct Species when they cannot be crossed or made to interbreed at all. It is enough to say,

then, that only Cumulative Variation -- and that of a vast number of successive steps -- will account

for the common origin of animals which will not copulate with each other, or of plants which cannot

be crossed.

Now, on this cardinal point, which contains the essence of the Development Theory, since all the

Livros Grátis

http://www.livrosgratis.com.br

Milhares de livros grátis para download.

In the absence of any direct proof, then, it remains to be inquired if there are sufficient grounds of

probability, reasoning from analogy and the principles of inductive logic, for believing that all

Species of animals and plants map have originated from three or four progenitors. In speaking of

the amount and frequency of Individual Variation, Mr. Darwin and his followers abuse the word

tendency. After heaping up as many isolated examples of it as they can gather, they assert the

legitimate inference from such cases to be, that the Species tends to vary, leaving out of view the

fact that a vastly larger number of individuals of the same Species do not vary, but conform to the

general type. And though only one out of a hundred of these Individual Variations is transmitted by

inheritance, yet, after collecting as many instances of such transmission as they can find, they affirm

that a Variation tends to become hereditable. But it is not so. Tendency is rightly inferred only from

attempt to establish a philosophy of nature, or a theory of creation, on anomalies, -- on rare

accidents, -- on lusus naturae.

This single objection is fatal to Mr. Darwin's theory, which depends on the accumulation, one upon

another, of many successive instances of departure from the primitive type. For if even Individual

Variation appears only in one case out of a hundred, -- and all naturalists will admit this proportion to

be as large as the facts will warrant, -- and if, out of the cases in which it does appear, not more

than one in a hundred is perpetuated by inheritance, then should a second Variation happen, what

chance has it of leaping upon the back of one of the former class: The chance is one out of 100 X

100 X 100 = 1,000,000. And the chance of a third Variation being added to a second, which in turn

Species out of the other would lack no characteristic of eternity except its name. But the theory

requires us to believe that this process has been repeated an indefinite number of times, so as to

account for the development of all the Species now in being, and of all which have become extinct,

out of four or five primeval forms. If the indications from analogy, on which the whole speculation is

based, are so faint that the work cannot have been completed except in an infinite lapse of years,

these indications practically amount to nothing. The evidence which needs to be multiplied by

infinity before it will produce conviction, is no evidence at all.

4. What is here called the "Struggle for Life" is only another name for the familiar fact, that every

Species of animal and vegetable life has its own Conditions of Existence, on which its continuance

whole number in this Species to a mere fraction of what it once was. Civilized man also has

successfully waged war against many ferocious or noxious animals, and probably exterminated

exterminate, sooner or later, all the native Species which were peculiar to it. And at the utmost, the

the future introduction or creation of new forms of life, without tending in the slightest degree to bring

such new forms into existence.

5. Natural Selection, also, as already remarked, has nothing to do with the origin of Species, and, in

its abstract form, is only the statement of a truism. Of course, when two or more Species crowd

each other, the more prolific or the more vigorous, other things being equal, is more likely to gain

possession of the disputed ground, and thus to diminish the numbers of the other or oblige it to

migrate, or, in rare cases, to kill it out altogether. But this last supposition is a conceivable rather

than a probable result. All observation goes to show, that every Species retains a very persistent

these, surely, are a very insufficient basis on which to found a theory embracing all forms of life. Yet

man is the greatest exterminator the world has ever known. His physical powers, coupled with the

use of reason by which they are multiplied a thousand-fold, enables him to wage internecine war

with comparative ease against nearly every race that molests him. Only the insect tribes, through

their immense numbers and their littleness, can successfully defy him; and these not always. In his

Struggle for Life, all other creatures, animal or vegetable, must retreat or perish. Yet how few has he

rooted out altogether! But the Development Theory requires us to believe that this process of

extinction, guided by Natural Selection, has been repeated well-nigh to infinity. Not only all the races

which are now found only in their stone coffins, but countless others,-"the interminable number of

intermediate forms which must have existed" as connecting links, and a still greater crowd of other

Varieties not intermediate, but gross, rude, and purposeless in their formation, -- the unmeaning

creations of an unconscious cause, -- must all have perished, each through its own peculiar

theory, should be so infrequent. He holds that all the races which have originated upon the earth

since the primeval act of creation first grudgingly threw only four or five seeds of existence into the

ground, have been shaded into each other by gradations so slight as to be nearly imperceptible.

Differing so slightly from each other, the advantage possessed by any one of them in the Struggle

for Life must have been almost indefinitely small. But a peculiarity important enough to preserve

those who have it, while whole Species must die out because they have it not, cannot be thus trifling

in character. It must have been one of grave moment; not a slight Variation, but a jump. The

successive development of new races -- itself, as we have seen, an extremely slow process -- must

have been continued through numerous steps before the divergence resulting from it could have

been serious enough to enable one of the divergent stocks to overcome and exterminate the other.

Numerous Species of the same genus now coexist, often within the bounds of a not very extended

territory, without any one of them showing any tendency to supplant or exterminate another. Thus,

Natural Selection can operate only upon races previously brought into being by other causes. In

same Species, the same Variety, and even of the same flock, certainly differ much from each other

undoubted part to play, when the struggle comes for such a flock, in determining which of its

members shall succumb. But that it ever plays a corresponding part in the grand contest of Species

imagined by Mr. Darwin, is a supposition resting upon no evidence whatever, but only upon the faint

presumption afforded by the fact, that certain Species at widely separated times have become

extinct, through what causes we know not; and therefore, for all that we know to the contrary,

Natural Selection may have had something to do with their disappearance. This is to found a theory,

not upon knowledge, but upon ignorance. If such reasoning be legitimate, we are entitled to affirm

that the moon is inhabited by men "whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders." It may be so, for

all we know to the contrary. This review of the state of the evidence upon each of Mr. Darwin's five

points is enough to show that the testimony fails entirely just where it is most wanted. Facts and

arguments are accumulated where they are of little or no avail, because the conclusions to which

the origin of Varieties, which is a distinct question, and one of subordinate importance and interest,

except to naturalists. Mr. Darwin has invented a new scheme of cosmogony, and finds that, like

other cosmogonies, it is a blank hypothesis, not susceptible either of proof or disproof, and needing

an eternity for its development. There is nothing new in such a speculation of what is possible in an

infinite lapse of years. This latest form of the speculation has no advantage over the one first

propounded some three thousand years ago; -- that a chaos of atoms, moving about fortuitously in

infinite space, may have happened, in an eternity, to settle into the present kosmos; for the chance

of order and fitness is at least one out of an infinite number of chances of disorder and confusion;

and in an infinite series of years, this solitary chance must sooner or later be realized....

natural science; he has unconsciously left the proper ground of physics and inductive science, and

busied himself with questions of cosmogony and metaphysics.

Livros Grátis