Darwin, and After Darwin, Volume 2 of 3: Post-Darwinian Questions: Heredity and Utility — John Shaqi
Darwin, and After Darwin, Volume 2 of 3: Post-Darwinian Questions: Heredity and UtilityRomanes, George John
Science
Darwin, and After Darwin, Volume 2 of 3: Post-Darwinian Questions: Heredity and Utility
Romanes, George John
Evolution (Biology); Heredity
[28] Mr. Platt Ball has, indeed, argued that "use-inheritance would
often be an evil," since, for example, "the condyle of the
human jaw would become larger than the body of the jaw, because
as the fulcrum of the lever it receives more pressure"; and
similarly as regards many other hypothetical cases which he
mentions. (_The Effects of Use and Disuse_, pp. 128-9 _et
seq._) But it is evident that this argument proves too much.
For if the effects of use and disuse as transmitted to progeny
would be an evil, it could only be because these effects as
they occur in the parents are an evil--and this they most
certainly are not, being, on the contrary and as a general
rule, of a high order of adaptive value. Moreover, in the race,
there is a superadded agency always at work, which must
effectually prevent any undue accumulation of these
effects--namely, natural selection, which every Darwinist
accepts as a controlling principle of all or any other
principles of change. Therefore, if, as first produced in the
life-time of individuals, the effects of use and disuse are not
injurious, much less can they become so if transmitted through
the life-time of species. Again, Mr. Wallace argues that, even
supposing use-inheritance to occur, its adapting work in the
individual can never extend to the race, seeing that the
natural selection of fortuitous variations in the directions
required must always produce the adaptations _more quickly_
than would be possible by use-inheritance. This argument, being
one of more weight, will be dealt with in a future chapter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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