Heredity and Memory |
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absolute continuity according to Weismann acquired characters acquisitions advance Amphimixis ancestral plasms Aristotle automatic begin biologist body and germ body-plasm and germ called CAMBRIDGE cell cestral chicken Clifford Allbutt complex organism conceivable connects successive connexion consentient Delage Discontinuity from body-plasm distinct divers degrees division of labour Dr Francis Darwin engrams environment evolution experience external relations fact feature of Weismann's forms functions genealogical ascent germinal continuity guidance habit HEREDITY AND MEMORY heritance higher organisms imaginary immortal immortal germ inconceivable individual inheritance of acquired intra-germinal selection JOHN CLAY Lamarck Lamarckian factor Lamarckian position larger secret Leibniz manifold Metazoa mingling of ancestral mnemic theory modus operandi multicellular organisms natural selection Neo-Darwinians nervous system ontogeny organic memory Palingenesis parents problem Professor progress implies Protozoa psychological recapitulatory process reducing division repetitions say-the shew stability of germ-plasm structure suffice unicellular organisms unicellular stage UNIVERSITY PRESS variations Weismann's germ-plasm Weismann's hypothetical
Popular passages
Page 44 - For example, through the blood there circulate certain secretions, called hormones, destined — as our Regius Professor of Medicine has said — "for the fulfilment of physiological equilibrium." "Thus," as he goes on to say, "the reciprocity of the various organs, maintained throughout the divisions of physiological labour, is not merely a mechanical stability, it is also a mutual equilibration in functions incessantly at work on chemical levels, and on those levels of still higher complexity which...
Page 6 - Now it is commonly taken for granted that on this great problem — the problem of Heredity — psychology can have nothing to say. But I have come at length to think that, provided we look at the world from what I would call a spiritualistic and not from the usual naturalistic standpoint, psychology may shew us that the secret of heredity is to be found in the facts of memory. But first of all, in accordance with the observation just quoted, it seems desirable to enounce a few general propositions...
Page 9 - It is clear," as GH Lewes once said, "that we should never rightly understand vital phenomena were we to begin our study of life by contemplating its simplest manifestations ... we can only understand the Amoeba and the Polype by a light reflected from the study of Man."1 Moreover if we begin from the material side we must keep to this side all through : if matter is to explain life at all, it must explain all life. But it is evidently impossible to describe the behaviour of the higher organisms...
Page 5 - ... in this university quaintly remarked: "Although it be a known thing subscribed by all ... that the egge is produced by the cock and henne, and the chicken out of the egge, yet neither the schools of physicians nor Aristotle's discerning brain have disclosed the manner how the seed doth mint and coin the chicken out of the egge.
Page 56 - The mnemic theory then, if it is to be worth anything, seems to me clearly to require not merely physical records or 'engrams' but living experience or tradition. The mnemic theory will work for those who can accept a monadistic or pampsychist interpretation of the beings that make up the world, who believe with Spinoza and Leibniz that "all individual things are animated albeit in divers degrees.
Page 47 - ... British Association in 1908. I am aware of no smallest detail in which the analogy between the two fails, and — in my opinion at all events — Dr Darwin was amply justified in contending, as Hering in his classic paper had done before him, "that ontogeny — the building up of the embryo — is actually and literally a habit." Further, as Dr Darwin goes on to remark, this socalled mnemic theory is "strongest precisely where Weismann's views are weakest — namely in giving a coherent theory...
Page 22 - ... the inheritance of acquired characters, enounced, I believe, by Aristotle, accepted alike by Lamarck and Darwin, was only seriously called in question some thirty years ago. But so rapidly has opinion swung round> that now the great majority of biologists — and especially of zoologists — reject this hypothesis, as they call it, altogether. If they are right, it is useless attempting to develope further the psychological theory I have been trying to suggest. At this point then we must pause...
Page 32 - Natural death occurs only among multicellular organisms, the single-celled forms escape it. There is no end to their development which can be likened to death, nor is the rise of new individuals associated with the death of the old. In the division the two portions are equal: neither is the older nor the younger. Thus there arises an unending series of individuals, each as old as the species itself, each with the power of living :on indefinitely, ever dividing, but never dying.
Page 40 - If acquired variations are transmitted there must be some unknown principle in heredity, if they are not transmitted there must be some unknown factor 1 Yves Delage, L'Htrtditi et les grands Problemes de la Biologie glntrale, 1903, p.
Page 41 - rehabilitation' of natural selection in the real Darwinian meaning and only fair application of the phrase the new theory has nothing whatever to do. It is, much more, a distinct admission of the inadequacy of natural selection to do what has long been claimed for it.