Impressions of great naturalists : reminiscences of Darwin, Huxley, Balfour, Cope and other / by Henry Fairfield Osborn ... illustrated with portraits.

  • Henry Fairfield Osborn
Date:
1924
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Impressions of great naturalists : reminiscences of Darwin, Huxley, Balfour, Cope and other / by Henry Fairfield Osborn ... illustrated with portraits. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    103/280 (page 63)
    There can be no question, however, that Darwin did love his selection theory and somewhat overestimated its importance. His conception of selection in nature may be com¬ pared to a series of concentric circles con¬ stantly narrowing from the largest groups down to the minutest structures. In the operations of this intimate circle of minute variations within organisms he was inclined to believe two things: first, that the fit or adaptive always arises out of the accidental, or that out of large and minute variations without direction selection brings direction and fitness; second, as a consistent pupil of Lyell, he was inclined to believe that the chief changes in evolution are slow and continuous. The psychology of Darwin was in a reac¬ tion state from the prevailing false teleology; he was not expecting that purposive or teleo¬ logical or even orthogenetic laws of variation would be discovered. William James has thus recently expressed and endorsed the spirit of Darwinism as a new natural phi¬ losophy in the following words: It is strange, considering how unanimously our ancestors felt the force oi this argument [that is, the teleological], to see how little it counts for