At the Deathbed of Darwinism: A Series of PapersDennert, Eberhard
Philosophy
At the Deathbed of Darwinism: A Series of Papers
Dennert, Eberhard
Evolution; Natural selection
The whole theory of struggle, as formulated by Darwin, is,
therefore, a violent assumption. Men of science now recognize that
"egoism and struggle play a very subordinate part in organic
development, in comparison with co-operation and social action." What,
indeed, but a surrender of the paramountcy of struggle for life, is
Huxley's celebrated Romanes lecture in which he supplants the cosmic
process by the ethical? The French free-thinker, Charles Robin, gave
expression to the verdict of exact science when he declared: "Darwinism
is a fiction, a poetical accumulation of probabilities without proof,
and of attractive explanations without demonstration."
2. The hopeless inadequacy of the struggle for life to account for
adaptive structures has been dealt with at considerable length by
Professor Morgan in the concluding chapters of the work already
mentioned. We cannot here follow him in his study of the various kinds
of adaptations, e.g., form and symmetry, mutual adaptation of colonial
forms, protective coloration, organs of extreme perfection, tropisms
and instincts, etc., in regard to the origin of each of which he is
forced to abandon the Darwinian theory. It will suffice to call
attention to his conclusions concerning the phenomena of regeneration
of organs. By his research in this special field Professor Morgan has
won international recognition among men of science. It was while
prosecuting his studies in this field that he became impressed with
the utter bankruptcy of the theory of natural selection which
Darwinians put forward to explain the acquisition by organisms of this
most useful power of regeneration. It is not difficult to show that
regeneration could not in many cases, and presumably in none, have
been acquired through natural selection (p. 379). If an earth worm
(_allolobophora foctida_) be cut in two in the middle, the posterior
piece regenerates at its anterior cut end, not a head but a tail. "Not
by the widest stretch of the imagination can such a result be accounted
for on the selection theory." Quite the reverse case presents itself
in certain planarians. If the head of _planaria lugubris_ is cut
off just behind the eyes, there develops at the cut surface of the
head-piece another head turned in the opposite direction. "These and
other reasons," concludes Professor Morgan (p. 381), "indicate with
certainty that regeneration cannot be explained by the theory of
natural selection."
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