Luck, or Cunning, as the Main Means of Organic Modification — John Shaqi
Luck, or Cunning, as the Main Means of Organic ModificationButler, Samuel
Philosophy
Luck, or Cunning, as the Main Means of Organic Modification
Butler, Samuel
Evolution; Natural selection
To Lamarck, therefore, I naturally turned, and soon saw that the theory
on which I had been insisting in “Life and Habit” was in reality an easy
corollary on his system, though one which he does not appear to have
caught sight of. I saw also that his denial of design was only, so to
speak, skin deep, and that his system was in reality teleological,
inasmuch as, to use Isidore Geoffroy’s words, it makes the organism
design itself. In making variations depend on changed actions, and
these, again, on changed views of life, efforts, and designs, in
consequence of changed conditions of life, he in effect makes effort,
intention, will, all of which involve design (or at any rate which taken
together involve it), underlie progress in organic development. True, he
did not know he was a teleologist, but he was none the less a teleologist
for this. He was an unconscious teleologist, and as such perhaps more
absolutely an upholder of teleology than Paley himself; but this is
neither here nor there; our concern is not with what people think about
themselves, but with what their reasoning makes it evident that they
really hold.
How strange the irony that hides us from ourselves! When Isidore
Geoffroy said that according to Lamarck organisms designed themselves,
{20a} and endorsed this, as to a great extent he did, he still does not
appear to have seen that either he or Lamarck were in reality
reintroducing design into organism; he does not appear to have seen this
more than Lamarck himself had seen it, but, on the contrary, like
Lamarck, remained under the impression that he was opposing teleology or
purposiveness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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