Problems of biology / [George Sandeman].

  • Sandeman, George
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Problems of biology / [George Sandeman]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    mere dogmatic assertion as of a fact, of the abstraction of structure from function. Consider, for instance, a merely vestigial and functionless element in the morphological plan of an organism, such as is often given to us in the fibula or in certain phalanges. It represents, let us say, a structure, which, in other forms of a similar type, and certainly in the ancestors of the form in question, is and was functional, but which, modified as we see it, is useless. It persists, there- fore, by the mere force of inheritance; it shows the particular relationships of its descent, and its inheritance and long per- sistence is independent of that of the functional parts. For the bone is not necessary to the rest of the body, and it is in no sense one with it. If it were thus necessary to, and one with, the other parts, it would, although mediately, subserve their functions. If it had arisen and if it were maintained by any reciprocal reactions with them, and if it were therefore due to anything else than an immediate action of a mysterious process of inheritance, it would be at once the object and the means of their functions, and thus it would not itself be functionless. We might in this way start by saying that the structure is functionless, and pass on to regard it as useless, and finally deny to it any relations of necessity with the rest of the organism, implying that there may be in an organism useless and, therefore, independent parts; and though we should be doing no more than simply to articu- late a movement of thought which is everywhere present in biological hypotheses, we should be utterly confounding two distinct conceptions. A functionless part of an organism is not useless, it is merely useless in a certain manner. It subserves ends, but it does not subserve this or that end. Nothing organic is functionless except for a special abstract point of view. The phalanx which does not project from the body, and the fibula which does not reach from end to end of the leg, nor enters into functional articulation,— these are not functionless except under those names, and except when each of them is considered as a thing by itself.
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