We have drawn a sharp line between causes and means of morphogenesis,
applying the term “means” to those conditions of the morphogenetic
process which relate neither to the specificity nor to the localisation
of its constituents, though they are necessary for the accomplishment
of the process in the most thorough manner. Would it be possible to
connect our new concept of an adaptation with our well-established
concept of a means of morphogenesis in such a way that we might speak
of a morphological “adaptation” whenever any specific feature about
morphogenesis proves to be immediately dependent for its success on some
specific means, though it does not owe its localisation to that means
as its “cause”? It seems to me that such a view would also fall wide
of the mark. It is well known, for instance, that the flowers of many
plants never fully develop in the dark; light is necessary for their
morphogenesis. Is, therefore, their growth in the presence of light to
be called a morphological “adaptation” to light? Certainly not: they
simply *cannot* originate without light, because they require it for
some reason. It is precisely here that our conception of light as a
“means” of morphogenesis is most fully justified. There are many[77]
such cases; and there are still others of an apparently different
type, but proving the same. All pathological forms produced in plants
by animal parasites or by parasitic fungi could hardly be called
adaptations, but must be attributed to some abnormality of means or of
stimuli. It may be that the organism reacts as well as possible in these
cases, and that if it reacted otherwise it would die--we know absolutely
nothing about this question. But even then there would only be some sort
of regulation *in* the process of pathological morphogenesis, but *the
process* itself could hardly be called adaptive.
[77] Klebs has suppressed the reproductive phase of organisation
altogether, in fungi as well as in flowering plants, or has made it
occur abnormally early, merely by changing the “external conditions”
and by altering the “internal” ones correspondingly. There is hardly
anything like an adaptation in these cases, which, by the way, offer
certain difficulties to analysis, as the boundaries between “cause” and
“means” are not very sharp here.
So far we have only learned what is not to be regarded as morphological
adaptation. No response to external formative stimuli is in itself an
example of adaptation, nor are processes dependent for their existence
on any kind of condition or means to be called, simply because they are
dependent on them, adaptations to those agents. What then, after all, is
a morphological adaptation?
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