| Search Help New search |
| Results 2521-2540 of 3313 for « +text:evolution » |
| 36% |
H ckel, Ernst, and D., 110; and evolution, 122; atheism, 219. Hartmann, K. R. E. von, and evolution, 233. Hegel, G. W. F., type, 53; and evolution, 233. Hell, obsolete, 227. History, D. and, 130, 131. Homer, on self-ignorance, 282. Hooker, Sir Joseph, on Darwin-Wallace paper, 94; and D., 101, 110. Hospitality, D.'s, 169. Humanity, and study of natural history, 40 43, 136; Sainte-Beuve's study, 267, 268. Humility, D.'s trait, 110; and scientific spirit, 257 61. Huxley, T. H., on D. and detailed
|
| 34% |
: 'In my opinion natural selection is the only cause of evolution which has thus far been discovered and demonstrated.'80 While from a more abstractly philosophical point of view the emphatic recently written words of Professor Ralph Barton Perry, give ample support to the general Darwinian posi 77. Science and the Modern World, p. 158. 78. What Evolution is, p. 17. 79. Evolution, p. 16. 80. The Earth Speaks, p. 19. [page] 12
|
| 34% |
the state in which we know it, but that it has gradually evolved through what, to our human estimate, seem enormously long periods of time.'22 And in Weisman's opinion, evolution would go on creating adequate moral ideals, as it has done in the past: 'The number of those who act in accordance with the ideals of purer, higher humanity, in whom the care for others and for the whole will limit care for self, will, it is my belief, increase with time and lead to higher ethical conceptions, as it
|
| 34% |
loss of the older religious and Biblical foundation of morals has been one of the chief causes of human decadence in conduct, in literature, and in art. This, however, is partly due to a complete misunderstanding of creative evolution, which is a process of ascent, not of descent.'25 Let us attempt to follow the workings of evolution in various phases of life and thought. Take, first, politics. We cannot perhaps establish two strongly opposed points of view in regard to the phenomena of political
|
| 34% |
moral. Ainsi finit la com die.'36 'Unexpectedly moral at that, It closes the comedy pat.' To be sure, there are persons to whom all this ecstasy seems more gorgeous than substantial. I 34. Evolution, p. 247. 35. Conklin, Evolution, p. 240. 36. La Grande Duchesse de G rolstein, act iv, scene 3. [page] 24
|
| 28% |
himself was contented to let God alone, so far as possible, the more ardent and zealous of Darwin's followers were inclined to hustle the Creator out of the universe altogether. This was especially true of the aggressive Darwinians in Germany. They extended the deductions of evolution to all the practical workings of human life in a fashion which Darwin distinctly disapproved: 'What a foolish idea seems to prevail in Germany,' he writes, 'on the connection between Socialism and Evolution through
|
| 28% |
an effort to dam the Mississippi with a sheet of paper. III When we turn from the popular acceptance of evolution and its workings, we may, if we choose, find plenty of interpretations of the theorists yielding a different result. Long before Darwin's day evolution, in the sense of a larger process of development and unfolding in the universe, had been foreshadowed and cherished by the philosophers. Not to speak of the Greeks, the successors of Kant in Germany had, each in his way, devised
|
| 28% |
of our own Emerson not only anticipates Darwin in such detail as the lines I have already quoted, 'And striving to be man, the worm Mounts through all the spires of form,' but is eminently suggestive of evolution in the intensely dynamic, developmental quality of his thought, which perhaps also, in its suggestion of a Pantheistic indifference to immortality, may be said to be as destructive to humbler human hopes as Darwin was. Also, there are the philosophers who, obviously coming within the
|
| 28% |
the world of evolving phenomena, was itself a thing of dynamic growth and force, able to create by its own native energy a future and a reality and a God that should embody its highest ideals. A parallel development appears in the 'Creative Evolution' of Bergson, the theory of the creative spirit perpetually evolving in richer, more splendid, more satisfying forms, through the eternal depths of a luminous future. From the day when Darwin's views were first announced up to this very moment, up
|
| 28% |
, though far more critical of Darwin, contrived to reconcile the general principles of evolution with a long adherence to the Catholic Church. In our day Sir Oliver Lodge has reconciled a life of scientific research with spiritualistic beliefs, and even Darwin's co-discoverer. Wallace, ardently advocated spiritualism to the end. Others who are not quite so extreme in their conclusions, yet insist that there is no conflict whatever between a firm belief in Darwinism and a spiritual hope. Especially
|
| 20% |
the first the subject of fierce controversy, and in many details they are still so, and will continue to be. But it may safely be said that in the scientific world the evolution of life, or more technically, modification by descent, which is so inseparably associated with Darwin's name, is an accepted principle, and Darwin himself had the great and satisfying triumph of living until this acceptance was perceived to be general, if not universal. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, close to the
|
| 20% |
because he feels that he may be wrong himself. It is profitable to examine a little more in detail some illustrations of Darwin's scientific theorizing. The great central doctrine of evolution, with its buttressing support of natural selection, will fill our next chapter, but there are several lesser developments of speculation which deserve notice. I need hardly say that we are not in any way discussing the validity of the theories in the abstract, but simply Darwin's fashion of framing, holding
|
| 20% |
trine of pangenesis. Darwin's general theory of evolution which dealt so much with heredity, was closely complicated with the difficulty of understanding how one minute reproductive cell could transmit by inheritance all the complicated variety of organs and functions in a highly developed plant or animal. To meet this difficulty he devised the explanation of pangenesis (he doubts about the name, because 'my wife says it sounds wicked, like pantheism'),59 that is, the idea that the primitive
|
| 20% |
which he calls Th tige Skepsis active doubt. It is doubt which so loves truth that it neither dares rest in doubting nor extinguish itself by unjustified belief.'64 63. August Weisman, The Evolution Theory (translation Thomson), vol. I, p. 242. 64. Darwiniana, p. 20. [page] 7
|
| 20% |
CHAPTER III DARWIN: THE DISCOVERER I THE word 'evolution' is so popularly accepted and so generally employed in connection with Darwin's theories that it will never be displaced; but it is not wholly satisfactory, because it always suggests progress from a lower to a higher and hence involves a difficult and invidious definition of terms. Some such phrase as 'descent with modification' would probably be more exact. But whatever the term used, to associate it as a scientific theory or discovery
|
| 20% |
vast pains that Darwin took to substantiate this view, together with his particular explanation of how the process came about, have forever bound up the idea of evolution with his name, but he did not originate it nor did he claim to have done so. The various hints and manifestations of earlier evolutionary theory are admirably elucidated in Professor Osborn's 'From the Greeks to Darwin.' The vast curiosity and reflection of Aristotle anticipated here, as everywhere, and some of his sentences
|
| 20% |
understand. That Darwin in his earlier thinking as * Investigators have of course worked constantly and persistently upon this point and I find Professor William McDougall quoted in a Boston Herald editorial of August 16, 1926, as saying: 'Species may change and undergo evolution through the efforts of the individual parents to adapt themselves to conditions.' [page] 8
|
| 20% |
co rdinated, as we see in the animals around us. Hence I have spoken of selection as the paramount power, whether applied by man to the formation of domestic breeds, or by nature to the production of species.'15 It is not to be supposed that the first grasp of evolution through variation and natural selection could have carried with it the full foresight of the enormous changes, mental, moral, and spiritual, that such a theory was likely to produce. Still, a mind so keen and active as Darwin's
|
| 20% |
mean to say that a favorable review or a large sale of my books did not please me greatly, but the pleasure was a fleeting one, and I am sure that I have never turned one inch out of my course to gain fame.'30 We certainly have here no extreme or morbid case of notoriety-seeking. IV Thus, in 1859, 'The Origin of Species' startled the world with the theory of evolution through natural selection, a theory which immediately raised a storm that in some of its aspects is still raging. It is
|
| 20% |
favorably disposed to evolution and to Darwin than was his father, remarks on this point of candor: 'I was somewhat surprised in Darwin's Life to see the element of wishing his cause to succeed as a cause brought out so prominently. The one thing always claimed by Darwin's friends had been his absolute impartiality to his own case. Certainly his correspondence with Hooker, Huxley, and Gray shows no such thing.'36 And others, distinctly more hostile, are much more severe, declaring that
|