Search Results - The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online

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A162 Book: Seward, A. C. ed. 1909. Darwin and modern science. Essays in commemoration of the centenary of the birth of Charles Darwin and of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The origin of species. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Text Image PDF

finally because of the influence it would exert on the whole conception of existence. He wrote in his note-book in the year 1837: My theory would give zest to recent and fossil comparative anatomy; it would lead to the study of instinct, heredity, and mind-heredity, whole [of] metaphysics1. We can distinguish four main points in which Darwin's investigations possess philosophical importance. The evolution hypothesis is much older than Darwin; it is, indeed, one of the oldest guessings of human

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A162 Book: Seward, A. C. ed. 1909. Darwin and modern science. Essays in commemoration of the centenary of the birth of Charles Darwin and of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The origin of species. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Text Image PDF

given. Evolutionism and systematism are opposing tendencies which can never be absolutely harmonised one with the other. Evolution may at any time break some form which the system-monger regards as finally established. Darwin himself felt a great difference in looking at variation as an evolutionist and as a systematist. When he was working at his evolution theory, he was very glad to find variations; but they were a hindrance to him when he worked as a systematist, in preparing his work on

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A162 Book: Seward, A. C. ed. 1909. Darwin and modern science. Essays in commemoration of the centenary of the birth of Charles Darwin and of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The origin of species. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Text Image PDF

. The former always remains to a great extent an artificial world. Inventions change the face of its institutions. New modes of production revolutionise not only modes of government, but modes even of collective thought. Therefore it is that the evolution of society is controlled by laws special to it, of which the spectacle of nature offers no suggestion. If, however, even in this special sphere, it can still be urged that the evolution of the material conditions of society is in accord with

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A162 Book: Seward, A. C. ed. 1909. Darwin and modern science. Essays in commemoration of the centenary of the birth of Charles Darwin and of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The origin of species. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Text Image PDF

Cleverness and eloquence on both sides certainly had their share in producing the very great and general disturbance of men's minds in the early days of Darwinian teaching. But by far the greater part of that disturbance was due to the practical novelty and the profound importance of the teaching itself, and to the fact that the controversy about evolution quickly became much more public than any controversy of equal seriousness had been for many generations. We must not think lightly of that

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A162 Book: Seward, A. C. ed. 1909. Darwin and modern science. Essays in commemoration of the centenary of the birth of Charles Darwin and of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The origin of species. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Text Image PDF

. Such an argument ought to be used not to discredit the confident reason, but to illuminate and dignify its dark beginnings, and to show that at every step in the long course of growth a Power was at work which is not included in any term or in all the terms of the series. I submit that the more men know of actual Christian teaching, its fidelity to the past, and its sincerity in face of discovery, the more certainly they will judge that the stimulus of the doctrine of evolution has produced in

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A162 Book: Seward, A. C. ed. 1909. Darwin and modern science. Essays in commemoration of the centenary of the birth of Charles Darwin and of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The origin of species. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Text Image PDF

sciences, we are entitled to say of it as Schleicher said of Darwin's theory of the origin of species, it depends upon observation, and is essentially an attempt at a history of development. Other questions there are in connection with language and evolution which require investigation—the survival of one amongst several competing words (e.g. why German keeps only as a high poetic word ross, which is identical in origin with the English work-a-day horse, and replaces it by pferd, whose congener the

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A162 Book: Seward, A. C. ed. 1909. Darwin and modern science. Essays in commemoration of the centenary of the birth of Charles Darwin and of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The origin of species. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Text Image PDF

3. In the first quarter of the nineteenth century the meaning of genetic history was fully realised. Genetic perhaps is as good a word as can be found for the conception which in this century was applied to so many branches of knowledge in the spheres both of nature and of mind. It does not commit us to the doctrine proper of evolution, nor yet to any teleological hypothesis such as is implied in progress. For history it meant that the present condition of the human race is simply and strictly

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A162 Book: Seward, A. C. ed. 1909. Darwin and modern science. Essays in commemoration of the centenary of the birth of Charles Darwin and of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The origin of species. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Text Image PDF

indications may suffice to show that the new efforts to interpret history which marked the first half of the nineteenth century were governed by conceptions closely related to those which were current in the field of natural science and which resulted in the doctrine of evolution. The genetic principle, progressive development, general laws, the significance of time, the conception of society as an organic aggregate, the metaphysical theory of history as the self-evolution of spirit,—all these ideas

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A162 Book: Seward, A. C. ed. 1909. Darwin and modern science. Essays in commemoration of the centenary of the birth of Charles Darwin and of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The origin of species. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Text Image PDF

homologous considerations in other fields of thought1, and I shall pass on thence to illustrations which will teach us something of the evolution of stellar systems. States or governments are organised schemes of action amongst groups of men, and they belong to various types to which generic names, such as autocracy, aristocracy or democracy, are somewhat loosely applied. A definite type of government corresponds to one of our types of motion, and while retaining its type it undergoes a slow

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A162 Book: Seward, A. C. ed. 1909. Darwin and modern science. Essays in commemoration of the centenary of the birth of Charles Darwin and of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The origin of species. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Text Image PDF

, he points out that for a gaseous star the agency which effects the separation will no longer be rotation alone; gravitation also will tend towards separation...From numerical results obtained in the various papers of my own,...I have been led to the conclusion that a gravitational instability of the kind described must be regarded as the primary agent at work in the actual evolution of the universe, Laplace's rotation playing only the secondary part of separating the primary and satellite

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A162 Book: Seward, A. C. ed. 1909. Darwin and modern science. Essays in commemoration of the centenary of the birth of Charles Darwin and of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The origin of species. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Text Image PDF

Longstaff, G. B., on the Scents of Butterflies, 296 Lorentz, 567 Lotsy, J. P., 1051, 2401, 2411 Love, A. E. W., 299, 300 Lovejoy, 861 Lubbock, 122 Lucas, K., 256 Lucretius, a poet of Evolution, 5 Lumholtz, C., 5041 Luteva macrophthalma, 284 Lycorea halia, 57 Lyell, Sir Charles, and Darwin, 18, 116, 358, 359, 380-384 —the influence of, 186, 338, 342, 346, 350, 351 —on geographical distribution, 320, 323 —on The Origin of Species, 324, 325, 350 —on the permanence of Ocean-basins, 300

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A297 Book: Darwin, Francis & E. Hamilton Acton. 1909. Practical physiology of plants. Cambridge: University Press. Text Image PDF

Deherain, on Boussingault's phosphorus method, 41 De Saussure, on absorption of water and salts by roots, 73; on succulents, 13 Desmodium gyrans, movements of, 332 Detlefsen, on the amount of light in rooms, 24 n. Detmer, on the appearance of chlorophyll, 56; on dialysis, 124; on diffusion of gas through epidermis, 49; on a drop-aspirator, 4 ; ou evolution of gas by water-plants, 35 ; on shortening of roots, 136 ; on spectroscopic examination of chlorophyll solu- tion, 52 ; ou succulents, 13; on

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A331 Book: Poulton, Edward Bagnall. 1909. Charles Darwin and the Origin of species: addresses, etc., in America and England in the year of the two anniversaries. London: Longmans, Green, and Co. Text Image

theory of, 127-8; Müller's theory opposed by, 129; Batesian mimicry defined, 149; Darwin's interest in, 123-6, 144-5; Protective resemblance and Batesian mimicry, 101, 146-7, 174-5; female of Arg. diana probable example of Batesian mimicry, 190-1, 207; N. American mimicry as a whole opposed to theory of, 174-7, 205, 207; Darwin to, 123-6, 141. Bateson, W., on de Vries's 'fluctuations', xi, 259-61; on an effect of the origin, 52; on discontinuity in evolution, 274; on causes of variation and

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A331 Book: Poulton, Edward Bagnall. 1909. Charles Darwin and the Origin of species: addresses, etc., in America and England in the year of the two anniversaries. London: Longmans, Green, and Co. Text Image

Euripus, as mimics, 133. Eutresis imitatrix, a mimic, 153. Evans, Sir John, on Archaeopteryx, 30. Evening Primroses, de Vries and, xi, 276. Evidences of Christianity, Paley, Darwin and, 100. Evolution, rate of, 46-7, 50, 51; continuous or discontinuous, 43-4, 48-51, 138-9, 200, 208, 254-6 (see also 'Mutation'); mimicry and, 145-9, 200, 203, 208. Examinations, evils of, 88-9. Exotic Butterflies, Hewitson, 237. 'External causes', as interpretation of mimicry, 148; negatived by the facts, 173-4

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A162 Book: Seward, A. C. ed. 1909. Darwin and modern science. Essays in commemoration of the centenary of the birth of Charles Darwin and of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The origin of species. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Text Image PDF

forth in his own words the inception in his mind of the problems, geological, zoological and botanical, hypothetical and theoretical, which he set himself to solve and the steps by which he proceeded to investigate them with the view of correlating the phenomena of life with the evolution of living things. In his letters he expressed himself in language so lucid and so little burthened with technical terms that they may be regarded as models for those who were asked to address themselves primarily

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A162 Book: Seward, A. C. ed. 1909. Darwin and modern science. Essays in commemoration of the centenary of the birth of Charles Darwin and of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The origin of species. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Text Image PDF

outside the range of ordinary phenomena. A special branch of inquiry, that of Teratology, was devoted to them, but it constituted a science by itself, sometimes connected with morphology, but having scarcely any bearing on the processes of evolution and heredity. Darwin was the first to take a broad survey of the whole range of variations in the animal and vegetable kingdoms. His theory of Natural Selection is based on the fact of variability. In order that this foundation should be as strong

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A162 Book: Seward, A. C. ed. 1909. Darwin and modern science. Essays in commemoration of the centenary of the birth of Charles Darwin and of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The origin of species. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Text Image PDF

theory of transformation which he had erected on a broad inductive basis; and he had sufficient penetration to detect the agencies that had been at work in the evolution of the erect bimanous man from the arboreal and quadrumanous ape. He had, however, few empirical arguments to advance in support of his hypothesis, and it could not be established until the further development of the biological sciences—the founding of comparative embryology by Baer (1828) and of the cell-theory by Schleiden

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A162 Book: Seward, A. C. ed. 1909. Darwin and modern science. Essays in commemoration of the centenary of the birth of Charles Darwin and of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The origin of species. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Text Image PDF

, governed by unalterable and eternal laws. In my philosophical book Die Weltr tsel (1899)1 and in the supplementary volume Die Lebenswunder (1904)2, I have endeavoured to show that this pure monism is securely established, and that the admission of the all-powerful rule of the same principle of evolution throughout the universe compels us to formulate a single supreme law—the all-embracing Law of Substance, or the united laws of the constancy of matter and the conservation of energy. We should never

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A162 Book: Seward, A. C. ed. 1909. Darwin and modern science. Essays in commemoration of the centenary of the birth of Charles Darwin and of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The origin of species. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Text Image PDF

theory. At the present day the whole subject of palaeobotany is a study in evolution, and derives its chief inspiration from the ideas of Darwin and Wallace. In return it contributes something to the verification of their teaching; the recent progress of the subject, in spite of the immense difficulties which still remain, has added fresh force to Darwin's statement that the great leading facts in palaeontology agree admirably with the theory of descent with modification through variation and

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A162 Book: Seward, A. C. ed. 1909. Darwin and modern science. Essays in commemoration of the centenary of the birth of Charles Darwin and of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The origin of species. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Text Image PDF

colours, but that they may be an incidental result of chemical or physical structure. Thus he wrote to T. Meehan, Oct. 9, 1874: I am glad that you are attending to the colours of 1 Poulton, Essays on Evolution, Oxford, 1908, pp. 293-382. [page] 27