Evolution by atrophy in biology and sociology / by Jean Demoor, Jean Massart, Émile Vandervelde ; translated by Mrs. Chalmers Mitchell.

  • Demoor, J. (Jean), 1867-1941.
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Evolution by atrophy in biology and sociology / by Jean Demoor, Jean Massart, Émile Vandervelde ; translated by Mrs. Chalmers Mitchell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    33/342 (page 17)
    tions.1 The result is an important one from the point of view of method. In biology, excepting in the case of individual adaptation of artificial selection, direct observation —the historical method, if we may so call it—is not available for the study of the origin and modification of organisms. Phylogeny, the science of organic kinship, resorts to other methods, and particularly to the comparative method in its various forms:— (a) Morphology, the science of determining the phylogeny of organs by comparing them with the organs of other creatures belonging to the same systematic group. (b) Palaeontology, which determines the direct ancestors of living creatures. (c) Embryology, which, so far as it is founded upon the principle of recapitulation, investigates the development of organs in the individual, and draws conclusions therefrom bearing upon its descent. 1 Among animals there is a special factor which gives a stability to the specific characters not found elsewhere—this is reproduction. Specific characters being common to the whole line of descent, arc very deeply enrooted in the organism. They are not easily modi- fied by the influence of new environments, but maintain their likeness to one another in spite of external conditions. They are regulated by an internal force, notwithstanding the importunities to variation offered from outside. This force is heredity, and heredity accounts for the precise way in which specific characters may be defined. In society this internal force is wanting. (Lcs /,'< git••udelamtthodesocioloyique. Durckheini, Paris, F. Alcan, 1895.) B