Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited?: An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and DarwinBall, W. P. (William Platt)
Philosophy
Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited?: An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin
Ball, W. P. (William Platt)
Heredity; Variation (Biology)
After allowing for lost teeth and the consequent alveolar absorption,
and for a reduction proportional to that shown in the rest of the skull,
the difference in average weight in fifty European and fourteen
Australian male jaws at the College of Surgeons turned out to be less
than a fifth of an ounce, or about 5 per cent. This slight reduction may
be much more than accounted for by such causes as disuse in the
individual, human preference setting back the teeth, and partial
transference of the much more marked diminution seen in female jaws.
There is apparently no room for accumulated _inherited_ effects of
ancestral disuse. The number of jaws is small, indeed; but weighing them
is at least more decisive than Mr. Spencer's mere inspection.
The differences between Anglo-Saxon male jaws and Australian and
Tasmanian jaws are most easily explained as effects of human preference
and natural selection. We can hardly suppose that disuse would maintain
or develop the projecting chin, increase its perpendicular height till
the jaw is deepest and strongest at its extremity, evolve a side flange,
and enlarge the upper jaw-bone to form part of a more prominent nose,
while drawing back the savagely obtrusive teeth and lips to a more
pleasing and subdued position of retirement and of humanized beauty. If
human preference and natural selection caused some of these differences,
why are they incompetent to effect changes in the direction of a
diminution of the jaw or teeth? And if use and disuse are the sole
modifying agents in the case of the human jaw, why should men have any
more chin than a gorilla or a dog?
The excessive weight of the West African jaws at the College of Surgeons
is partly _against_ Mr. Spencer's contention, unless he assumes that
Guinea Negroes use their jaws far more than the Australians, a
supposition which seems extremely improbable. The heavier skull and
narrower molar teeth point however to other factors than increased use.
The striking variability of the human jaw is strongly opposed to the
idea of its being under the direct and dominant control of so uniform a
cause as ancestral use and disuse. Mr. Spencer regards a variation of 1
oz. as a large one, but I found that the English jaws in the College of
Surgeons varied from 1.9 oz. to 4.3 oz. (or 5 oz. if lost teeth were
allowed for); Australian jaws varied from 2 oz. to 4.5 oz. (with _no_
lost teeth to allow for); while in Negro jaws the maximum rose to over
5-1/2 oz.[4] In spite of disuse some European jaws were twice as heavy
as the lightest Australian jaw, either absolutely or (in some cases)
relatively to the cranium. The uniformity of change relied upon by Mr.
Spencer is scarcely borne out by the facts so far as male jaws are
concerned. The great reduction in the weight of _female_ jaws _and
skulls_ evidently points to sexual selection and to panmixia under male
protection.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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