Essays in scientific synthesis / by Eugenio Rignano.

  • Eugenio Rignano
Date:
[1918]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Essays in scientific synthesis / by Eugenio Rignano. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    32/264 page 28
    II THE SYNTHETIC VALUE OF THE EVOLUTION THEORY The theory of biological evolution or the transforma¬ tion of species has always exercised a powerful attraction upon minds of the synthetic order. No other theory, perhaps, has succeeded in bringing into one general survey so many : disparate phenomena, and in co- ordinating in one complete complex the numerous individual theories which hold their own in widely differing branches of science, and which, at first sight, seem to have nothing in common. It is just this synthetic power of the evolution theory in the sphere of biology that I propose to throw into relief in the following pages. It is a matter of common knowledge that the French zoologist Lamarck, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, was the first to propound a complete theory of the transformation of species. He suggested that continual change of environment leads to change in the requirements of living animals, and that the change of effort made to satisfy the new requirements produces in each species appropriate morphological modifications. As these modifications are transmitted to descendants,
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