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
Differentiation in multicellular organisms takes a similar course. Every
cell, by doubling division of the egg, receives all the rudiments of its
kind; of these rudiments, some in one set of cells, others in another,
come to develop, according to the part of the whole in which the cells come
to lie during the progress of the development, and according to the
relations to the whole they come to assume. Thus, here they assume the
characters of the external skin; there, they become gland-cells of the
intestine; here, muscle-fibres; there, sense-cells or nerve-cells; in one
place they serve the whole organism, in the form of blood-corpuscles, as
agents for nutrition and respiration; there, becoming connective tissue or
bone, they form skeletal elements of the body.
Thus, during the course of development, they are forces external to the
cells that bid them assume the individual characters appropriate to their
individual relations to the whole; the determining forces are not within
the cells, as the doctrine of determinants supposes. The cells develop
those characters that are suggested by their relation to the external world
and their places in the whole organism.
But I must insist here that the subordination of the cells to the whole
organism, in both multicellular animals and in plants, is much more
complicated than that of the units to the human state. In the latter case,
the individuals are separate from one another; they are independent
organisms and are bound together only in social relations. None the less,
consider how in a civilized state the apparently sovereign individual is
conditioned in all his circumstances; how each change in the general state
exercises an influence on the individual's disposition freedom of will, and
method of life (dwelling, food, institutions, health); then reflect how
much greater in the animal and the plant is the domination of the whole,
and the subordination of the units, as in them cell is directly joined to
cell--indeed, in most cases united materially by threads of protoplasm. In
such cases the self-sufficiency of the cell as an elementary, living
organism is so far prevented, that it becomes a subordinate part, with its
function in dependence on the whole.
One other point our comparison will make clearer: I refer to the relation
of the specific nature of the rudiment to the specific nature of the
product of the rudiment.
The different organisations and qualities of the communities formed by
different animals may be explained by the special characters of the animals
forming them. Those of the bee colonies depend on the nature of bees; of
ant colonies on the nature of ants; of the societies of men on the nature
of men; indeed, in the latter case we see how they differ as they are
formed by Italians, Germans, Slavs, Turks, Chinese, or Negroes. Similarly,
the specific organisation of the cell determines the kind of animal which
may be built up by it.
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