Treviranus[22] (1776-1837), whom Huxley ranked beside Lamarck, was on
the whole Buffonian, attaching chief importance to the influence of a
changeful environment both in modifying and in eliminating, but he was
also Goethian, for instance in his idea that species like individuals
pass through periods of growth, full bloom, and decline. "Thus, it is
not only the great catastrophes of Nature which have caused
extinction, but the completion of cycles of existence, out of which
new cycles have begun." A characteristic sentence is quoted by Prof.
Osborn: "In every living being there exists a capability of an endless
variety of form-assumption; each possesses the power to adapt its
organisation to the changes of the outer world, and it is this power,
put into action by the change of the universe, that has raised the
simple zoophytes of the primitive world to continually higher stages
of organisation, and has introduced a countless variety of species
into animate Nature."
Goethe[23] (1749-1832), who knew Buffon's work but not Lamarck's, is
peculiarly interesting as one of the first to use the evolution-idea
as a guiding hypothesis, e.g. in the interpretation of vestigial
structures in man, and to realise that organisms express an attempt to
make a compromise between specific inertia and individual change. He
gave the finest expression that science has yet known--if it has known
it--of the kernel-idea of what is called "bathmism," the idea of an
"inherent growth-force"--and at the same time he held that "the way of
life powerfully reacts upon all form" and that the orderly growth of
form "yields to change from externally acting causes."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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