Darwin, and After Darwin, Volume 3 of 3: Post-Darwinian Questions: Isolation and Physiological SelectionRomanes, George John
Science
Darwin, and After Darwin, Volume 3 of 3: Post-Darwinian Questions: Isolation and Physiological Selection
Romanes, George John
Evolution (Biology); Heredity
So much, then, for the resemblances and the differences between the
two theories. It only remains to add that the two are
complementary. I have already shown some of the respects in which
the newer theory comes to the assistance of the older, and this in
the places where the older has stood most in need of assistance. In
particular, I have shown that segregation of the fit entirely
relieves survival of the fittest from the difficulty under which it
has hitherto laboured of explaining why it is that sterility is so
constantly found between species, while so rarely found between
varieties which differ from one another even more than many
species; why so many features of specific distinction are useless
to the species presenting them; and why it is that incipient
varieties are not obliterated by intercrossing with parent forms.
Again, we have seen that physiological selection, by preventing
such intercrossing, enables natural selection to promote diversity
of character, and thus to evolve species in ramifying branches
instead of in linear series--a work which I cannot see how natural
selection could possibly perform unless thus aided by physiological
selection. Moreover, we have seen that although natural selection
alone could not induce sterility between allied types, yet when
this sterility is given by physiological selection, the forms which
present it would be favoured in the struggle for existence; and
thus again the two principles are found playing, as it were, into
each other's hands. And here, as elsewhere, I believe that the
co-operation enables the two principles to effect very much more in
the way of species-making than either of them could effect if
working separately. On the one hand, without the assistance of
physiological selection, natural selection would, I believe, be all
but overcome by the adverse influences of free
intercrossing--influences all the more potent under the very
conditions which are required for the multiplication of species by
divergence of character. On the other hand, without natural
selection, physiological selection would be powerless to create any
differences of specific type, other than those of mutual sterility
and trivial details of structure, form, and colour--differences
wholly without meaning from a utilitarian point of view. But in
their combination these two principles appear to me able to
accomplish what neither can accomplish alone--namely, a full and
satisfactory explanation of the origin of species.
CHAPTER VI.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF OPINIONS ON ISOLATION AS A FACTOR OF ORGANIC
EVOLUTION.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account