and that a larger number of representative specimens would have to be
accurately sectioned, strained, examined and interpreted, before any
reliable conclusion could be drawn.[5]
[5] This transitory lymphatic, or tracheal venation appearing
in the appendages at the stenogastric stage may not have the
particular significance that Father Wasmann assigns. Such
venation, even if vestigial and aborted, need not necessarily
be a vestige of former _wing_ venation. To demonstrate the
validity of the atavistic interpretation, all other possible
interpretations would have to be definitively excluded.
Such, in its most general aspect, is the atavistic solution of the
problem presented by the homology of types. In it, similarity and
diversity are harmoniously reconciled, in the sense that they affect,
respectively, different structural, or different developmental, levels.
It is futile, therefore, to look for contradictions where they do not
exist. In a word, the attempt to create opposition between a group of
basic and correlated uniformities, on the one hand, and some particular
external difference, on the other, is not only abortive, but absolutely
irrelevant as well. The reason is obvious. Only when likeness is
associated with unlikeness is it an argument for Transmutation.
Likeness alone would demonstrate Immutability by indicating a process
of pure inheritance as distinguished from the process of variation.
Hence evolutionists do not merely concede the coëxistence of diversity
with similarity, they gladly welcome this fact as vitally necessary to
their contention.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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