The Science and Philosophy of the Organism

inal views of Jean Baptiste Lamarck. Lamarckism is generally regarded as reducing all organic diversities to differences in the needs of individual life, but Lamarck himsel

their ultimate branches. Thus Lamarck, to a great extent at any rate, belongs to a group of authors that we shall have to study afterwards: authors who regard an unknown law of phylogenetic development as the real b

AS THE ST

he law that governs them. Indeed, it is assumed by Lamarckism that the organism is endowed with the faculty of responding to any change of the environment which may change its function by a morphologically expressed alteration of its functional state and form, which is adapted to the state of conditions imposed from without. Of course, as stated in this most general form, the assumption i

hat is nowhere known except in the organism. Lamarck himself is not very clear about this point, he seems to be afraid of certain types of uncritical vitalism in vogue in his days; but modern writers have most clearly seen what the logical assu

ONTINGENT VARIATIONS AS

little about adaptations, at least to a certain extent, and it was only about the sphere of the validity of a law, which was known to be at work in certain cases, that hypothetical additions were made. In the second group of the foundations of Lamarckism we

l, as in the case of adaptations: they are of a somewhat mysterious nature. A glance at the theory of the orig

clear that at least three fundamental phenomena are concerned in this theory of the origin of acts of volition: the liking and disliking, the keeping in mind, and the volition itself. The real act of volition, indeed, is always based upon a connection of all these factors, these factors now being connected in such a way that even their kind of connection may be said to be a fourth fundamental principle. In order that

eguard any sort of improvement which chance may effect in this primitive "eye." Such a view is said to hold well with respect to the origin of every new organ. And this psychological argument is also said to afford the real explanation of adaptation proper. Adaptation also is regarded not as a truly primary faculty of the organism, but as a retention or provoking of metabolic states which occurred by accident originally and were then found to be useful; no

ANCE OF ACQUIRED CHARACTE

psychological principles concerned in it-which in any case would need rather a great amount of epistemological si

of Lamarckism; and from this hypothesis our critical analysis is to start, disregarding

of phenomena: firstly, variations including mutations; secondly, disease or inj

properties of the mutation type are, in fact, known to be inherited: their inheritance does not present any problem of its own, but is included in the changes of the hereditary condition to which they are due altogether.148 All properties of the variation type, on the other hand, having been studied statistically, are known to be inherited, to a certain small extent, as we have seen already whilst studying Darwinism, though they are possibly alway

o deny the inheritance of acquired characters of the typical kinds. He could not imagine how the effect of any agent upon the adult, be it of the merely passive or of the adaptive kind, could have such an influence upon the germ as to force it to produce the same effect in spite of the absence of that agent. In fact, that is what the inheritance of acquired characters would render necessary, and a very strange phenomenon it would be, no doubt. But, of

there an

of his criticism. Indeed, it must fairly be granted that not one case is known which really proves the inheritance of acquired characters, and that injuries certainly are never found to be inherited. In spite of that, I do not believe that we are entitled to deny the possibility of the inher

tance and of morphogenesis, the former being present in the propagation cells, may be said to have been changed or destroyed by heat, and therefore, what seems to be inherited after the change of the body only, would actually be the effect of a direct influence of the temperature upon the germ itself.151 Let me be clearly understood: I do not say that it is so, but it may be so. What seems to me to be more important than everything and to have a direct bearing on the real discovery of the inheritance of acquired characters in the future, is this. In some instances plants which had been forced from without to undergo certain typical morphological adaptations, or at least changes through many generations, though they did not keep the acquired characters permanently in spite of the conditions being changed to another type, were yet found to lose the acquired adaptations not suddenly but only in the course of three or more generations. A cert

y before any function exists, as is known to be the case with the structures in the bones of vertebrates, for instance. Experiments are going on at Paris, and perhaps in other places of scientific research also, which, it is hoped, will show that animals reared in absolute darkness for many generations will lose their perfectly formed eyes, and that animals from the dark with very rudimentary

on" in some plants. This process shows us a way by which our problem may some day be solved; it allows us to introduce inheritance of acquired characters as a legitimate hypothesi

RINCIPL

ich are of the type of a true structural correspondence to their future functional life, might be regarded as explained, that is, as reduced to one and the same principle. But nothing more than an explanation of this kind of diversities is effected by our principle, and ver

tematic diversities by a reasoning similar to that by which we h

what may be called a partly positive result. The other is the supposed faculty of the organism to keep, to store, and to transfer those

IS OF STORING AND HANDING

arwinism and taking the place of its fluctuating variability, which was found not to do justice to the facts-th

view of the universe on its organic side. The word "materialism" must not necessarily be taken here in its metaphysical sense, though most materialists are dogmatic metaphysicians. It also can be understood as forming part of a phenomenological point of view. Materialism as a doctrine of science means simply this: that whether "nature" be reality or phenomenon, in any case there is but one ultimate principle at its base, a principle relating to the movements of particles of mat

rigin of Species." It would certainly be right to say so, at least with reference to Darwin personally; but in spite of that, it must be granted that Darwin's doc

s unable to disguise one main point which is common to both: and it is to this point, and to

a fixation of only one kind of such variations, all others being extinguished by selection. In other terms, the specific organised form, as understood by Darwinism, was a unit only to the extent that all its properties related to one and the same body, but for the rest it was a mere aggregation or summation. It may be objected to this statement, that by being inherited in its specificity the Darwinian form proved to be a unit in a higher sense of the word, even in the opinion of dogmatic Darwinians; and this objection, perhaps, holds good as far as inheritance is concerned. But on the other hand, it must never be forgotten that the word "unit" had quite a vague and empty m

t is quite an impossible basis of a theory of descent, since it would explain neither the first origin of an

tion, is according to the former performed actively by the organism, by means of a "judgment"-by the retention and handing down of chance variations. The specificity of the form as a whole is

t-hardly anything could be said against Lamarckism, except that inheritance of acquired characters is still an hypothesis of small and doubtful value at present. But that specific organisation proper is due to contingent variat

, and this faculty cannot possibly have originated by the process which Lamarckians156 assume. But if their principle fails in one instance, it fails as a general theory altogether. And now, on the other hand, as we actually see the individual organism endowed with a morphogenetic power, inexplicable by Lamarckism, but far exceeding the organogenetic faculty assumed by that theory, would it not be most reasonable to conclude from such facts, that there exists a cer

he whole organism. It might be said that these "needs" are not contingent but subject to an inherent destiny, but this plea is excluded by the Lamarckians themselves, when they say that the organism experiences no need until it has enjoyed the accidental fulfilment of the same. So the only thing in Lamarckian transformism which is not of a contingent character would be the psychological agent concerned in it, as being an agent endowed with the primary power of feeling needs

tebrates be due to contingent variations? How could that account for the harmony of the different kinds of cells in this very complicated organ with each other and with parts of the brain? And how is it to b

ve said already, it would lead to absurdities as great as in the case of dogmatic Darwinism, and indeed we already have mentioned that Lam

termites, and ants, there exists one type of individuals, or even several types, endowed with some very typical features of organisation, but at the same time absolutely excluded from reproduction: how could those morphological types have originated on the plan al

to stand criticism. But these two parts which survive criticism, one offered by Lamarck, the other by Darwin, are far from being a complete theory of transformism, even if taken together: they only cover a