Prometheus, or, biology and the advancement of man / by H.S. Jennings.

  • Herbert Spencer Jennings
Date:
[1925]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Credit: Prometheus, or, biology and the advancement of man / by H.S. Jennings. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    THE ADVANCEMENT OF MAN There is nothing in the general principles of biology which says that increase and diffusion of knowledge shall or shall not do away with warfare, solve the problem of over-population, and otherwise bring to realization the dreams of reformers. These are questions of the special biology of Homo sapiens, on which knowledge of Amoeba, the oyster and the ant have no bearing. But environmental changes have another class of effects : through their selective action they alter the constitu¬ tion of later generations. As conditions become easier, combinations of genes that would have been eliminated survive, develop and propagate, so that the later population contains less resistant individuals than did the earlier ; saving the tubercular results in a popula¬ tion less resistant to tuberculosis. [75]