Evolution Social and OrganicLewis, Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow)
Philosophy
Evolution Social and Organic
Lewis, Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow)
Evolution; Socialism; Sociology
Then Cesare Lombroso entered the arena leading a camel. According to
the Italian criminologist, the camel’s hump had been first acquired by
bearing loads and then transmitted by heredity. From the fact that the
camel and the llama, which is smooth backed, have something in common,
he concludes that camels are really llamas that have recently acquired
a hump in the performance of their labors. Lombroso also supported his
hump theory by some statements about Hottentot women having developed
callouses on their hips by carrying their children on their backs.
Unfortunately all Lombroso’s ingenuity was wasted for we happen to
possess the geological record of the camel in good condition, and from
this history we know that the “ship of the desert” had his hump before
the human race appeared when according to Lombroso he should have been
a smooth-backed llama. Disappointed as Weismann’s critics were it was
hardly feasible to argue that the camel had gotten his hump in those
early times by placing loads on his own back.
It was clearly seen that if a case of the transmission of a mutilation
could be established, Weismann’s theory would be thereby demolished. A
remarkable attempt was made in this direction in 1887 at the meeting
of the Association of the German Naturalists at Wiesbaden. To that
dignified gathering came Dr. Zacharias with a number of tailless
cats. It was asserted that these cats had no tails because their
mother had lost her tail through having it run over by a cart wheel.
The examination of these specimens proved an entertaining diversion
from the regular proceedings, and Prof. Eimer took them seriously
enough to refer to them in a later work as “a valuable instance of the
transmission of mutilations.”
Weismann, however, refused to be put down. He insisted that in the
absence of absolute certainty as to the cart wheel incident, they
did not fulfill the first condition of scientific evidence, and Dr.
Zacharias wisely admitted later, that this point was well taken.
Prof. Poulton had described certain cats with extra toes which he had
kept under surveillance for seven generations. “It would be equally
justifiable,” says Weismann, “to derive cats with extra toes from an
ancestor whose toes had been trodden on, as to derive the tailless cats
of the Isle of Man from an ancestor of which the tail had been cut off
by a cart passing over it, and thus to regard the existence of the race
as a proof of the transmission of mutilations.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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