Darwin also refers to the phosphorescent, or luminous, organs as a
supposed case of difficulty for his theory.
“The luminous organs which occur in a few insects, belonging to widely
different families, and which are situated in different parts of the
body, offer, under our present state of ignorance, a difficulty almost
exactly parallel with that of the electric organs.”
In this case also, as in that of the electric organs, the structures
appear in entirely different parts of the body of the insect in
different species, so that their occurrence in this group cannot be
accounted for on a common descent. In whatever way they have arisen,
they must have evolved independently in different species. Darwin
advances no explanation of the origin of the luminous organs, but states
that they “offer under our present state of ignorance a difficulty
almost exactly parallel with that of the electric organs.” It will be
noticed that the difficulty referred to rests on the assumption that
since the organs are well developed they must have some important use!
We may next consider “organs of little apparent importance as affected
by natural selection.” Darwin says:—
“As natural selection acts by life and death,—by the survival of the
fittest, and by the destruction of the less well-fitted individuals,—I
have sometimes felt great difficulty in understanding the origin or
formation of parts of little importance; almost as great, though of a
very different kind, as in the case of the most perfect and complex
organs.”
His answers to this difficulty are: (1) we are too ignorant “in regard
to the whole economy of any one organic being to say what slight
modifications would be of importance or not,”—thus such apparently
trifling characters as the down on fruit, or the colors of the skin and
hair of quadrupeds, which from being correlated with constitutional
differences or from determining the attacks of insects might be acted on
by natural selection; (2) organs now of trifling importance have in some
cases been of high importance to an early progenitor; (3) the changed
conditions of life may account for some of the useless organs; (4)
reversion accounts for others; (5) the complex laws of growth account
for still others, such as correlation, compensation of the pressure of
one part on another, etc.; (6) the action of sexual selection is
responsible for many characters not to be explained by natural
selection. Admitting that there may be cases that can be accounted for
on one or the other of these six possibilities, yet there can be no
doubt that there are still a considerable number of specific characters
that cannot be explained in any of these ways. I do not think that
Darwin has by any means met this objection, even if all these six
possibilities be admitted as generally valid.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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