The Biological Problem of To-day: Preformation Or Epigenesis?: The Basis of a Theory of Organic DevelopmentHertwig, Oscar
Science
The Biological Problem of To-day: Preformation Or Epigenesis?: The Basis of a Theory of Organic Development
Hertwig, Oscar
Developmental biology; Embryology; Genetics
Thus, in a slightly altered fashion, we come again to the position of the
evolutionists of last century, for whom the germ was an extremely small
miniature of the adult creature. The new evolution, as Weismann in especial
has established it, seems to me to differ from the old doctrine only in two
important points; and these must be placed to the credit of the greater
scientific knowledge of our century. The first point concerns the relative
positions of the parts in the patent and latent conditions. The older
evolutionists assumed that these were identical, that the germ was a true
miniature. It is true that Weismann regards his almost countless germinal
particles as being held together in an architectural structure of almost
inconceivable complexity. For him the germ is an exceedingly complicated
living being, a microcosm in the truest sense, in which every independently
variable part that ever appears throughout the whole life is represented by
a living particle, and in which each of the living particles is endowed
with a definite, inherited position, a constitution, and the power of rapid
multiplication. It is upon the qualities of these ultimate particles that
he makes depend the qualities of the corresponding parts of the adult, the
parts that are cells as well as the parts built of many cells. As, however,
during visible development the parts of the embryo undergo many changes of
position and metamorphoses, Weismann is compelled to make the assumption
that the germ, as a micro-organism, is not simply a miniature of the adult,
but that its minute particles have an arrangement totally different from
that of the corresponding parts in the adult organism.
The second point is the origin of each new generation. To explain the
continuity of development, the old evolutionists held that the generations
lay enfolded one within another. Weismann avoids this difficulty by
endowing his germs with divisibility, but he gives us no proof that
division could possibly take place in the case of structures composed of
innumerable particles built up into a definite and most complicated
architectural system.
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