Science and Morals and Other EssaysWindle, Bertram Coghill Alan, Sir
Religion
Science and Morals and Other Essays
Windle, Bertram Coghill Alan, Sir
Essays; Religion and science; Science
Let us take one particular example, a very remarkable one, which has
been cited by both writers--Wolff's experiment on the lens of the eye.
The lens is just behind the pupil or central aperture in the iris or
coloured ring at the front of the eye, and behind the cornea which is to
the eye what a watch-glass is to a watch. If the lens of the eye be
removed from a newt, as it is from human beings in the operation for
cataract, the animal will grow another one. How does it do it? In
certain cases a tiny fragment of the lens has been left behind after the
operation, and the new one grows from that. This is sufficiently
wonderful, but by no means so wonderful as what happens in other cases
in which the entire lens has been removed and the new lens grows from
the outer pigmented layer of the margin of the iris. To the unbiological
reader one source of origin will not seem more wonderful than the other,
but there is really a vast distinction between them. At an early stage
in the development of the embryo, the cells composing it become
divisible into three layers. It is even possible, as Loeb maintains,
that this differentiation is present in the unsegmented ovum, in which
case the facts to be detailed become still more remarkable and
significant. These layers are known as epi-, meso-, and hypo-blast; and
from each one of them arise certain portions of the body, and certain
portions only. It would be as remarkable to a biologist to find these
layers not breeding true as it would to a fowl-fancier to discover that
the eggs of his Buff Orpingtons were producing young turkeys or ducks.
Now the lens is an epiblastic structure, and the iris is mesoblastic.
Hence the wonder with which we are filled when we find the iris growing
a lens. Loeb attempts to explain this in the first instance by telling
us that the cells of the iris cannot grow and develop as long as they
are pigmented; that the operation wounds the iris, allows pigment to
escape, and thus permits of proliferation. We may accept this, and yet
ask why it takes on a form of growth familiar to us only in connection
with epiblast? The reply is: "Young cells when put into the optic cup
always become transparent, no matter what their origin; it looks as if
this were due to a chemical influence, exercised by the optic cup or by
the liquid it contains.
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.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account