The Principles of Biology, Volume 1 (of 2)Spencer, Herbert
Science
The Principles of Biology, Volume 1 (of 2)
Spencer, Herbert
Biology
While an aggregate of physiological units continues to grow by the
assimilation of matter which it moulds into other units of like type; and
while it continues to undergo changes of structure; no equilibrium can be
arrived at between the whole and its parts. Under these conditions, then,
an un-differentiated portion of the aggregate--a group of physiological
units not bound up into a specialized tissue--will be able to arrange
itself into the structure peculiar to the species; and will so arrange
itself, if freed from controlling forces and placed in fit conditions of
nutrition and temperature. Hence the continuance of agamogenesis in
little-differentiated organisms, so long as assimilation continues to be
greatly in excess of expenditure.
But let growth be checked and development approach its completion--let the
units of the aggregate be severally exposed to an almost constant
distribution of forces; and they must begin to equilibrate themselves.
Arranged, as they will gradually be, into comparatively stable attitudes in
relation to one another, their mobility will diminish; and groups of them,
partially or wholly detached, will no longer readily re-arrange themselves
into the specific form. Agamogenesis will be no longer possible; or, if
possible, will be no longer easy.
When we remember that the force which keeps the Earth in its orbit is the
gravitation of each particle in the Earth towards every one of the group of
particles existing 92,000,000 of miles off; we cannot reasonably doubt that
each unit in an organism acts on all the other units, and is reacted on by
them: not by gravitation only but chiefly by other energies. When, too, we
learn that glass has its molecular constitution changed by light, and that
substances so rigid and stable as metals have their atoms re-arranged by
forces radiated in the dark from adjacent objects;[41] we are obliged to
conclude that the excessively-unstable units of which organisms are built,
must be sensitive in a transcendant degree to all the forces pervading the
organisms composed of them--must be tending ever to re-adjust, not only
their relative attitudes but their molecular structures, into equilibrium
with these forces. Hence, if aggregates of the same species are differently
conditioned, and re-act differently on their component units, their
component units will be rendered somewhat different; and they will become
the more different the more widely the re-actions of the aggregates upon
them differ, and the greater the number of generations through which these
different re-actions of the aggregates upon them are continued.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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