My Web Site Page 355 Ovations 06Cake Placebo chose the topics covered by My Web Site Page 355 without reflecting upon the choices others have made. Flapping your arms and quacking like a duck when people try to run you over in their SUVs is another way to look at things in a different light. |
OvationsOvation 01Ovation 02 Ovation 03 Ovation 04 Ovation 05 Ovation 06 Ovation 07 Ovation 08 Ovation 09 Ovation 10 Ovation 11 Ovation 12 Ovation 13 Ovation 14 Ovation 15 Ovation 16 Ovation 17 Ovation 18 Ovation 19 Ovation 20 Ovation 21 Ovation 22 Ovation 23 Ovation 24 SitemapsSitemap 1Sitemap 2 Sitemap 3 |
Lamarck[21] (1744-1829) seems to have thought out his theory of evolution without any knowledge of Erasmus Darwin's which it closely resembled. The central idea of his theory was the cumulative inheritance of functional modifications. "Changes in environment bring about changes in the habits of animals. Changes in their wants necessarily bring about parallel changes in their habits. If new wants become constant or very lasting, they form new habits, the new habits involve the use of new parts, or a different use of old parts, which results finally in the production of new organs and the modification of old ones." He differed from Buffon in not attaching importance, as far as animals are concerned, to the direct influence of the environment, "for environment can effect no direct change whatever upon the organisation of animals," but in regard to plants he agreed with Buffon that external conditions directly moulded them. |
The Darwinian doctrine of evolution depends essentially on _the cumulative augmentation_ of minute variations in the direction of utility. But can such minute variations, which are undoubtedly continually appearing among the individuals of the same species, possess any selection-value; can they determine which individuals are to survive, and which are to succumb; can they be increased by natural selection till they attain to the highest development of a purposive variation? To many this seems so improbable that they have urged a theory of evolution by leaps from species to species. Koelliker, in 1872, compared the evolution of species with the processes which we can observe in the individual life in cases of alternation of generations. But a polyp only gives rise to a medusa because it has itself arisen from one, and there can be no question of a medusa ever having arisen suddenly and _de novo_ from a polyp-bud, if only because both forms are adapted in their structure as a whole, and in every detail to the conditions of their life. A sudden origin, in a natural way, of numerous adaptations is inconceivable. Even the degeneration of a medusoid from a free-swimming animal to a mere brood-sac (gonophore) is not sudden and saltatory, but occurs by imperceptible modifications throughout hundreds of years, as we can learn from the numerous stages of the process of degeneration persisting at the same time in different species. |
|
We found that day a palm with a bunch of small nuts which Benedicto called _coco do matto_; he said they were delicious to eat, so we proceeded to cut down the tall palm tree. When we came to split open the small _cocos_ our disappointment was great, for they merely contained water. There was nothing whatever to eat inside the hard shells. We spent some two hours that evening cracking the _cocos_--some two hundred of them--each nut about the size of a cherry. They were extremely hard to crack, and our expectant eyes were disappointed two hundred times in succession as we opened every one and found nothing whatever to eat in them. | ||
This page is Copyright © Cake Placebo. All Rights Reserved. My Web Site Page 355 is a production of Cake Placebo and may not be reproduced electronically or graphically for commercial uses. Personal reproductions and browser or search engine caching are acceptable. | ||