Darwin's Discovery: Design without a Designer

[RascalPuff]

DARWINISM AND SOCIOLOGY

By C. Bouglé
Professor of Social Philosophy in the University of Toulouse and Deputy-Professor at the Sorbonne, Paris

How has our conception of social phenomena, and of their history, been affected by Darwin's conception of Nature and the laws of its transformation? To what extent and in what particular respects have the discoveries and hypotheses of the author of The Origin of Species aided the efforts of those who have sought to construct a science of society?
To such a question it is certainly not easy to give any brief or precise answer. We find traces of Darwinism almost everywhere. Sociological systems differing widely from each other have laid claim to its authority; while, on the other hand, its influence has often made itself felt only in combination with other influences. The Darwinian thread is worked into a hundred patterns along with other threads.

Even the philosophy of the eighteenth century, materialistic as were for the most part the tendencies of its leaders, seemed to revere man as a being apart, concerning whom laws might be formulated à priori. To bring him down from his pedestal there was needed the marked predominance of positive researches wherein no account was taken of the "pride of man." There can be no doubt that Darwin has done much to familiarise us with this attitude. Take for instance the first part of The Descent of Man: it is an accumulation of typical facts, all tending to diminish the distance between us and our brothers, the lower animals. One might say that the naturalist had here taken as his motto, "Whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted." Homologous structures, the survival in man of certain organs of animals, the rudiments in the animal of certain human faculties, a multitude of facts of this sort, led Darwin to the conclusion that there is no ground for supposing that the "king of the universe" is exempt from universal laws. Thus belief in the imperium in imperio has been, as it were, whittled away by the progress of the naturalistic spirit, itself continually strengthened by the conquests of the natural sciences. The tendency may, indeed, drag the social sciences into overstrained analogies, such, for instance, as the assimilation of societies to organisms. But it will, at least, have had the merit of helping sociology to shake off the pre-conception that the groups formed by men are artificial, and that history is completely at the mercy of chance. Some years before the appearance of The Origin of Species, August Comte had pointed out the importance, as regards the unification of positive knowledge, of the conviction that the social world, the last refuge of spiritualism, is itself subject to determinism. It cannot be doubted[266] that the movement of thought which Darwin's discoveries promoted contributed to the spread of this conviction, by breaking down the traditional barrier which cut man off from Nature.

But Nature, according to modern naturalists, is no immutable thing: it is rather perpetual movement, continual progression. Their discoveries batter a breach directly into the Aristotelian notion of species; they refuse to see in the animal world a collection of immutable types, distinct from all eternity, and corresponding, as Cuvier said, to so many particular thoughts of the Creator. Darwin especially congratulated himself upon having been able to deal this doctrine the coup de grâce: immutability is, he says, his chief enemy; and he is concerned to show—therein following up Lyell's work—that everything in the organic world, as in the inorganic, is explained by insensible but incessant transformations. "Nature makes no leaps"—"Nature knows no gaps": these two dicta form, as it were, the two landmarks between which Darwin's idea of transformation is worked out. That is to say, the development of Darwinism is calculated to further the application of the philosophy of Becoming to the study of human institutions.

The philosophy of history, moreover, gave expression under various forms to the same tendency. Hegel declares that "all that is real is rational," but at the same time he shows that all that is real is ephemeral, and that for history there is nothing fixed beneath the sun. It is this sense of universal evolution that Darwin came with fresh authority to enlarge. It was in the name of biological facts themselves that he taught us to see only slow metamorphoses in the history of institutions, and to be always on the outlook for survivals side by side with rudimentary forms. Anyone who reads Primitive Culture, by Tylor,—a writer closely connected with Darwin—will be able to estimate the services which these cardinal ideas were to render to the social sciences when the age of comparative research had succeeded to that of à priori construction.

Let us note, moreover, that the philosophy of Becoming in passing through the Darwinian biology became, as it were, filtered; it got rid of those traces of finalism, which, under different forms, it had preserved through all the systems of German Romanticism. Even in Herbert Spencer, it has been plausibly argued, one can detect something of that sort of mystic confidence in forces spontaneously directing life, which forms the very essence of those systems. But Darwin's observations were precisely calculated to render such an hypothesis futile. At first people may have failed to see this; and we call to mind the ponderous sarcasms of Flourens when he objected to the theory of Natural Selection that it attributed to nature a power of free choice. "Nature endowed with will! That was the final error of last century; but the nineteenth no longer deals in personifications."[246] In fact Darwin himself put his readers on their guard against the metaphors he was obliged to use. The processes by which he explains the survival of the fittest are far from [268]affording any indication of the design of some transcendent breeder. Nor, if we look closely, do they even imply immanent effort in the animal; the sorting out can be brought about mechanically, simply by the action of the environment. In this connection Huxley could with good reason maintain that Darwin's originality consisted in showing how harmonies which hitherto had been taken to imply the agency of intelligence and will could be explained without any such intervention. So, when later on, objective sociology declares that, even when social phenomena are in question, all finalist preconceptions must be distrusted if a science is to be constituted, it is to Darwin that its thanks are due; he had long been clearing paths for it which lay well away from the old familiar road trodden by so many theories of evolution.

This anti-finalist doctrine, when fully worked out, was, moreover, calculated to aid in the needful dissociation of two notions: that of evolution and that of progress. In application to society these had long been confounded; and, as a consequence, the general idea seemed to be that only one type of evolution was here possible. Do we not detect such a view in Comte's sociology, and perhaps even in Herbert Spencer's? Whoever, indeed, assumes an end for evolution is naturally inclined to think that only one road leads to that end. But those whose minds the Darwinian theory has enlightened are aware that the transformations of living beings depend primarily upon their conditions, and that it is these conditions which are the agents of selection from among individual variations. Hence, it immediately follows that transformations are not necessarily improvements.
But if we are to estimate the influence of Darwinism upon sociological conceptions, we must not dwell only upon the way in which Darwin impressed the general notion of evolution upon the minds of thinkers. We must go into details. We must consider the influence of the particular theories by which he explained the mechanism of this evolution. The name of the author of The Origin of Species has been especially attached, as everyone knows, to the doctrines of "natural selection" and of "struggle for existence," completed by the notion of "individual variation." These doctrines were turned to account by very different schools of social philosophy. Pessimistic and optimistic, aristocratic and democratic, individualistic and socialistic systems were to war with each other for years by casting scraps of Darwinism at each other's heads.

It was the spectacle of human contrivance that suggested to Darwin his conception of natural selection. It was in studying the methods of pigeon breeders that he divined the processes by which nature, in the absence of design, obtains analogous results in the differentiation of types. As soon as the importance of artificial selection in the transformation of species of animals was understood, reflection naturally turned to the human species, and the question arose, How far do men observe, in connection with themselves, those laws of which they make practical application in the case of animals? Here we come upon one of the ideas which guided the researches of Gallon, Darwin's cousin. The author of Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development,[247] has [270]often expressed his surprise that, considering all the precautions taken, for example, in the breeding of horses, none whatever are taken in the breeding of the human species.

Best regards,
- RP

[leskey]

ENJOY THE PUN:

Toe to toe
Dancing very close
Barely breathing
Almost comatose
Wall to wall
People hypnotised
And they're stepping lightly
Hang each night in Rapture

[melanie]

The non-dual is the snake eating itself, from both tail and head__at once...

Something like a boa constrictor they swallow their prey whole, without chewing it.

There may be a lot more froth and bubble in the origin of the Universe thesis__but truthfully and logically__mans/woman's minds are incapable of the truth of that logic.
We only possess the assessment of the possible logic, iff fully guarded by esthetics...

The Iamness here is no different than all the other Iamnesses.

It gets frightened, angry, lustful...can be loving.....can offend others....sometimes feels lost and alone.

And it is known that the saints and sages are not essentially different than any other human animal.

It's experiential palate is completely human.

But no longer is it seen as the centre of the world.

And Life flows along easily with or without it's input.

No more chewing....

[RascalPuff]

DARWINISM & SOCIOLOGY, by C. Bougle, continued:

So we see that, according to the point of view, very different conclusions have been drawn from the application of the Darwinian idea of Selection to human society. Darwin's other central idea, closely bound up with this, that, namely, of the "struggle for existence" also has been diversely utilised. But discussion has chiefly centered upon its signification. And while some endeavour to extend its application to everything, we find others trying to limit its range. The conception of a "struggle for existence" has in the [273]present day been taken up into the social sciences from natural science, and adopted. But originally it descended from social science to natural. Darwin's law is, as he himself said, only Malthus' law generalised and extended to the animal world: a growing disproportion between the supply of food and the number of the living is the fatal order whence arises the necessity of universal struggle, a struggle which, to the great advantage of the species, allows only the best equipped individuals to survive. Nature is regarded by Huxley as an immense arena where all living beings are gladiators.[254]

Such a generalisation was well adapted to feed the stream of pessimistic thought; and it furnished to the apologists of war, in particular, new arguments, weighted with all the authority which in these days attaches to scientific deliverances. If people no longer say, as Bonald did, and Moltke after him, that war is a providential fact, they yet lay stress on the point that it is a natural fact. To the peace party Dragomirov's objection is urged that its attempts are contrary to the fundamental laws of nature, and that no sea wall can hold against breakers that come with such gathered force.

There were some who declared, like Brunetière, that the laws in question, valid though they might be for the animal kingdom, were not applicable to the human. And so a return was made to the classic dualism.

Here we have the explanation of the fact that among determined opponents of war partisans of the "struggle for existence" can be found: there are disciples of Darwin in the peace party. Novicow, for example, admits the "combat universel" of which Le Dantec[255] speaks; but he remarks that at different stages of evolution, at different stages of life the same weapons are not necessarily employed. Struggles of brute force, armed hand to hand conflicts, may have been a necessity in the early phases of human societies. Nowadays, although competition may remain inevitable and indispensable, it can assume milder forms. Economic rivalries, struggles between intellectual influences, suffice to stimulate progress: the processes which these admit are, in the actual state of civilisation, the only ones which attain their end without waste, the only ones logical. From one end to the other of the ladder of life, struggle is the order of the day; [275]but more and more as the higher rungs are reached, it takes on characters which are proportionately more "humane."

Reflections of this kind permit the introduction into the economic order of limitations to the doctrine of "laisser faire, laisser passer." This appeals, it is said, to the example of nature where creatures, left to themselves, struggle without truce and without mercy; but the fact is forgotten that upon industrial battlefields the conditions are different. The competitors here are not left simply to their natural energies: they are variously handicapped. A rich store of artificial resources exists in which some participate and others do not. The sides then are unequal; and as a consequence the result of the struggle is falsified. "In the animal world," said De Laveleye,[256] criticising Spencer, "the fate of each creature is determined by its individual qualities; whereas in civilised societies a man may obtain the highest position and the most beautiful wife because he is rich and well-born, although he may be ugly, idle or improvident; and then it is he who will perpetuate the species. The wealthy man, ill constituted, incapable, sickly, enjoys his riches and establishes his stock under the protection of the laws."

But we can go further still. Whence comes the idea that all measures inspired by the sentiment of solidarity are contrary to Nature's trend? Observe her carefully, and she will not give lessons only in individualism. Side by side with the struggle for existence do we not find in operation what Lanessan calls "association for existence." Long ago, Espinas had drawn attention to "societies of animals," temporary or permanent, and to the kind of morality that arose in them. Since then, naturalists have often insisted upon the importance of various forms of symbiosis. Kropotkin [276]in Mutual Aid has chosen to enumerate many examples of altruism furnished by animals to mankind. Geddes and Thomson went so far as to maintain that "Each of the greater steps of progress is in fact associated with an increased measure of subordination of individual competition to reproductive or social ends, and of interspecific competition to co-operative, association."[257] Experience shows, according to Geddes, that the types which are fittest to surmount great obstacles are not so much those who engage in the fiercest competitive struggle for existence, as those who contrive to temper it. From all these observations there resulted, along with a limitation of Darwinian pessimism, some encouragement for the aspirations of the collectivists.

And Darwin himself would, doubtless, have subscribed to these rectifications. He never insisted, like his rival, Wallace, upon the necessity of the solitary struggle of creatures in a state of nature, each for himself and against all. On the contrary, in The Descent of Man, he pointed out the serviceableness of the social instincts, and corroborated Bagehot's statements when the latter, applying laws of physics to politics, showed the great advantage societies derived from intercourse and communion. The extravagances of social Darwinism provoked a useful reaction; and thus people were led to seek, even in the animal kingdom, for facts of solidarity which would serve to justify humane effort.
On quite another line, however, an attempt has been made to connect socialist tendencies with Darwinian principles. Marx and Darwin have been confronted; and writers have [277]undertaken to show that the work of the German philosopher fell readily into line with that of the English naturalist and was a development of it. Such has been the endeavour of Ferri in Italy and of Woltmann in Germany, not to mention others. The founders of "scientific socialism" had, moreover, themselves thought of this reconciliation. They make more than one allusion to Darwin in works which appeared after 1859. And sometimes they use his theory to define by contrast their own ideal. They remark that the capitalist system, by giving free course to individual competition, ends indeed in a bellum omnium contra omnes; and they make it clear that Darwinism, thus understood, is as repugnant to them as to Dühring.

But it is at the scientific and not at the moral point of view that they place themselves when they connect their economic history with Darwin's work. Thanks to this unifying hypothesis, they claim to have constructed—as Marx does in his preface to Das Kapital—a veritable natural history of social evolution. Engels speaks in praise of his friend Marx as having discovered the true mainspring of history hidden under the veil of idealism and sentimentalism, and as having proclaimed in the primum vivere the inevitableness of the struggle for existence. Marx himself, in Das Kapital, indicated another analogy when he dwelt upon the importance of a general technology for the explanation of this psychology:—a history of tools which would be to social organs what Darwinism is to the organs of animal species. And the very importance they attach to tools, to apparatus, to machines, abundantly proves that neither Marx nor Engels were likely to forget the special characters which mark off the human world from the animal. The former always remains to a great extent an artificial world. Inventions change the face of its institutions. Therefore it is that the evolution of society is controlled by laws special to it, of which the spectacle of nature offers no suggestion.[278]

So far we have been mainly concerned to show the use that social philosophies have made of the Darwinian laws for practical purposes: in order to orientate society towards their ideals each school tries to show that the authority of natural science is on its side.

Competition is at its maximum between similars, Darwin had declared; different species, not laying claim to the same food, could more easily coexist. Here lay the explanation of the fact that upon the same oak hundreds of different insects might be found. Other things being equal, the same applies to society. He who finds some unadopted specialty possesses a means of his own for getting a living. It is by this division of their manifold tasks that men contrive not to crush each other. Here we obviously have a Darwinian law serving as intermediary in the explanation of that progress of division of labour which itself explains so much in the social evolution.

Best regards,
- RP

[SteveA]

...

Competition is at its maximum between similars, Darwin had declared; different species, not laying claim to the same food, could more easily coexist. Here lay the explanation of the fact that upon the same oak hundreds of different insects might be found. Other things being equal, the same applies to society. He who finds some unadopted specialty possesses a means of his own for getting a living. It is by this division of their manifold tasks that men contrive not to crush each other. Here we obviously have a Darwinian law serving as intermediary in the explanation of that progress of division of labour which itself explains so much in the social evolution.

Best regards,
- RP

Thanks for the post.

Mentally it's easy to envision symmetry, equality and quantities, but nature appears to deny perfect symmetry.

Learning and growth requires new, additional, more etc. and not same, equal, repetition (there's the expression "practice makes perfect" while mistakes are being made, but repetition is hell after that! LOL)

Something that occurred to me when I read your post is that this might actually be the "purpose" of time - to generate diversity. Not that it is inherently beneficial in itself, but that diversity is the foundation of everything else.

It seems symmetries could potentially exist, or maybe I should say that two or more things could exist as a single object in space, yet due to our perceptions appear as only a single object. So if we detect an electron, it need not actually be just a single electron from all perspectives, but instead could be a set of indistinguishable things.

A drop of water can appear in many ways as just a single object, yet it's composed of likely billions or trillions of atoms (and each of those could even be superimposed collections as well).

Why is it that nature appears to deny perfect symmetry? It may be that nature is specifically intended to deny it and in a sense the chaos could be similar to generating new forms of symmetry though these become embedded as superpositions of objects.

For example, in terms of possibilities, things are very symmetrical - a dice roll is uniformly a number from 1 to 6, but nature requires that this symmetry be broken. Similarly, we can imagine the concept of a perfect circle, but in time there's no way to get "from here" to "there".

An interesting thought is that, similar to logic not being able to create itself, symmetry can't grow without asymmetry ... could be the universe be a pseudo random number generator cooking up a few possibilities. Once again, that seems entirely possible.

(An interesting consideration is that asymmetries are in many ways just the orthogonal dimensions of a space - the potential volume of the interior of that grows quite quickly)

For example, if all we had was the letter A, then here's the single word we could construct:

AAA....

But if we "grew" something else, well then there's a bit more fun we could have and if you took every event in the universe that ever occurred and went through all the permutations, I'm certain you could find a decent storyline in there somewhere (and likely fit quite a few observers into it also ), and I think there are even a couple other tricks that could be tossed in to the mix too.

Just a thought .... Yes, I have fun being a little creative at times (still it does appear that nature almost intentionally generates asymmetries and that's an interesting consideration)

[labelwench]

Language confounds as much as it clarifies. The ability of words spoken to take on a life of their own ever amazes me, and the numerous meanings that can be drawn from a simple turn of phrase, especially when taken out of context, is phenomenal.

Darwin's Discovery: Design Without A Designer?

The addition of a simple punctuation turns the title into a working hypothesis.

An example of my opening statement.

Kind regards,

Lorrina

[Profpat]

That would be fine lw, a simple ? changes it from a statement of fact to a question, to which, the answer would be NO according to Darwin.

[leskey]

Steve, read this in the light of our last couple of PM exchanges...

FOUR PILLARS OF HEAVEN

It's just occurred to me that the notion of the 'cradle of civilization' may reach back many aeons in time, to the original, single continent which was bounded by four incredibly high mountains ('pillars of heaven'), which appeared to hold up the heavens (like tentpoles). What science has revealed here may be evidence of this concept:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/20...lab-graveyard/

Scientists have unearthed a new explanation for several low-gravity spots detected around the world. They’re blaming the anomalies on vast “slab graveyards” that lie buried deep near the planet’s core.

Scientists had previously noticed that gravity’s tug is smaller where tectonic plates, or large sections of Earth’s crust, once plunged below the surface...super-low values measured in four regions — in particular, areas south of Asia, along the coast of Antarctica south of New Zealand, in the northeastern Pacific and in the western Atlantic.

...less dense material is lying over a layer of very dense material. Most likely, the top layer’s relative buoyancy stems from its water-rich composition, the researchers contend.

Akkadian Literature

The Gilgamesh Epic Tells how Gilgamesh’s search for eternal life leads him on a long journey up to heaven. On his journey he comes to the mountains of Mashu which are described as follows:

When [he arrived] at the mountain range of Mashu,

Which daily keeps watch over sun[rise and sunset]-
Whose peaks [reach to] the vault of heaven
(And) whose breasts reach to the nether world below. (ANET, 88; Heidel 1946, 65).

There is a limestone kudurru that was found at Susa that pictures the sea as a coiled serpent (Keel 1978, 46). There are several pillars that rest on the serpent, and support the ground above. These pillars were thought to hold up the earth. The base of the pillars rested a the bottom of the sea.

Ugaritic Literature

There are two mountains, trgzz and trmg, that are said to gsr `ars, bind the earth (CTA, Herdner, 4:viii,4). Gibson (66) says that these twin mountains were founded in the earth-encircling ocean, and held up the firmament, and also marked the entrance to the underworld.

It seems likely that the Akkadian twin mountain Mashu and the Egyptian Manu is parallel with the twin mountains trgzz and trmg in Ugaritic. Probably these mountains stretch from East to West undergirding the whole earth, and confining the underworld.
In the Near East certain mountains are given special religious significance which some term as cosmic mountains. Clifford (1972, 38-39) says:

These heights can be the meeting place of the gods, the source of water and fertility, the battleground of conflicting natural forces, the meeting place of heaven and earth, the place where effective decrees are issued. In these senses, the mountains are cosmic, that is, involved in the government and stability of the cosmos.

Egyptian Literature

There is an interesting text that is taken from Middle Kingdom coffins that has survived in the Book of the Dead. It is Coffin Text 160 called The Repulsing of the Dragon which tells us that the western mountains named Bakhu support heaven. A serpent lives there who tries to swallow or destroy the sun. The texts says:
I know that mountain of Bakhu upon which the sky leans. Of crystal (?) it is, 300 rods in it length, 120 rods in its width. On the east of this mountain is Sobek, Lord of Bakhu. Of carnelian is his temple. On the east of that mountain is a serpent, 30 cubits in his length (COS, 32; ANET, 12). The size of the mountain is about 10 by 4 miles and is made of "crystal" (ti-iaat). The temple is made of "carnelian" which is red in color. This is probably parallels the reddish sunset. The serpent is over 50 feet long.

There are a number of places in Egyptian literature that mention the four pillars of heaven that hold up the sky...

There is another phrase concerning the word "ocean" from an inscription of Amenophis II on the pillars of the wall containing the obelisks of Hatshepsut. It says, "the eye of his uraeus encircles, all lowlands, all hill countries, all that the ocean encircles" (Cumming 1982, 39).

Jewish Literature
The heavens and earth are said to have pillars that uphold them. The same Hebrew word for pillars ydwmu is used for both the heavens and the earth.

Derek Erez Zuta (9:13) says, "This world is likened to a person’s eyeball; the white of the eye corresponds to the ocean which surrounds the whole world; the iris to the inhabited world" (Franxman, 1979, 42 n.13).

Greek Literature

Herodotus in Book 4:184,3 sarcastically writes, "The natives say that this (mountain called Atlas) is a pillar of heaven (Hude 1979, 4:184,3). The mountain was so high up that they thought it reached heaven and that it held up the sky. Herodotus used the Greek word kiwn while the LXX used the word stuloi to refer to the pillars of heaven.

In the Odyssey (book 1:53) it says, "and himself (Atlas) holds the tall pillars which keep earth and heaven apart" (LCL 1919, 7). Hesiod in Theogony (517) says, "And Atlas through hard constraint upholds the wide heaven with unwearying head and arms, standing at the borders of the earth" (LCL 1914, 117).
Mount Olympus was thought to reach up past the sky into the pure ether. It was the home of the gods (L&S 1857, 106.

[RascalPuff]

Excerpts from THE OUTLINE OF SCIENCE, by J. Arthur Thomson, Copyright 1922:

DIAGRAM OF AMŒBA
(Greatly magnified.)
The amœba is one of the simplest of all animals, and gives us a hint of the original ancestors. It looks like a tiny irregular speck of greyish jelly, about 1/100th of an inch in diameter. It is commonly found gliding on the mud or weeds in ponds, where it engulfs its microscopic food by means of out-flowing lobes (PS). The food vacuole (FV) contains ingested food. From the contractile vacuole (CV) the waste matter is discharged. N is the nucleus, GR, granules.


From ancient times it has been a favourite answer that the dust of the earth may have become living in a way which is outside scientific description. This answer forecloses the question, and it is far too soon to do that. Science must often say "Ignoramus": Science should be slow to say "Ignorabimus."
A second position held by Helmholtz, Lord Kelvin, and others, suggests that minute living creatures may have come to the earth from elsewhere, in the cracks of a meteorite or among cosmic dust. It must be remembered that seeds can survive prolonged exposure to very low temperatures; that spores of bacteria can survive high temperature; that seeds of plants and germs of animals in a state of "latent life" can survive prolonged drought and absence of oxygen. It is possible, according to Berthelot, that as long as there is not molecular disintegration vital activities may be suspended for a time, and may afterwards recommence when appropriate conditions are restored. Therefore, one should be slow to say that a long journey through space is impossible. The obvious limitation of Lord Kelvin's theory is that it only shifts the problem of the origin of organisms (i.e. living creatures) from the earth to elsewhere.
The third answer is that living creatures of a very simple sort may have emerged on the earth's surface from not-living material, e.g. from some semi-fluid carbon compounds activated by ferments. The tenability of this view is suggested by the achievements of the synthetic chemists, who are able artificially to build up substances such as oxalic acid, indigo, salicylic acid, caffeine, and grape-sugar. We do not know, indeed, what in Nature's laboratory would take the place of the clever synthetic chemist, but there seems to be a tendency to complexity. Corpuscles form atoms, atoms form molecules, small molecules large ones.[Pg 62]

Various concrete suggestions have been made in regard to the possible origin of living matter, which will be dealt with in a later chapter. So far as we know of what goes on to-day, there is no evidence of spontaneous generation; organisms seem always to arise from pre-existing organisms of the same kind; where any suggestion of the contrary has been fancied, there have been flaws in the experimenting. But it is one thing to accept the verdict "omne vivum e vivo" as a fact to which experiment has not yet discovered an exception and another thing to maintain that this must always have been true or must always remain true.

If the synthetic chemists should go on surpassing themselves, if substances like white of egg should be made artificially, and if we should get more light on possible steps by which simple living creatures may have arisen from not-living materials, this would not greatly affect our general outlook on life, though it would increase our appreciation of what is often libelled as "inert" matter. If the dust of the earth did naturally give rise very long ago to living creatures, if they are in a real sense born of her and of the sunshine, then the whole world becomes more continuous and more vital, and all the inorganic groaning and travailing becomes more intelligible.
§ 4

The First Organisms upon the Earth

We cannot have more than a speculative picture of the first living creatures upon the earth or, rather, in the waters that covered the earth. A basis for speculation is to be found, however, in the simplest creatures living to-day, such as some of the bacteria and one-celled animalcules, especially those called Protists, which have not taken any very definite step towards becoming either plants or animals. No one can be sure, but there is much to be said for the theory that the first creatures were[Pg 63] microscopic globules of living matter, not unlike the simplest bacteria of to-day, but able to live on air, water, and dissolved salts. From such a source may have originated a race of one-celled marine organisms which were able to manufacture chlorophyll, or something like chlorophyll, that is to say, the green pigment which makes it possible for plants to utilise the energy of the sunlight in breaking up carbon dioxide and in building up (photosynthesis) carbon compounds like sugars and starch. These little units were probably encased in a cell-wall of cellulose, but their boxed-in energy expressed itself in the undulatory movement of a lash or flagellum, by means of which they propelled themselves energetically through the water. There are many similar organisms to-day, mostly in water, but some of them—simple one-celled plants—paint the tree-stems and even the paving-stones green in wet weather. According to Prof. A. H. Church there was a long chapter in the history of the earth when the sea that covered everything teemed with these green flagellates—the originators of the Vegetable Kingdom.

On another tack, however, there probably evolved a series of simple predatory creatures, not able to build up organic matter from air, water, and salts, but devouring their neighbours. These units were not closed in with cellulose, but remained naked, with their living matter or protoplasm flowing out in changeful processes, such as we see in the Amœbæ in the ditch or in our own white blood corpuscles and other amœboid cells. These were the originators of the animal kingdom. Thus from very simple Protists the first animals and the first plants may have arisen. All were still very minute, and it is worth remembering that had there been any scientific spectator after our kind upon the earth during these long ages, he would have lamented the entire absence of life, although the seas were teeming. The simplest forms of life and the protoplasm which Huxley called the physical basis of life will be dealt with in the chapter on Biology in a later section of this work.[Pg 64]
FIRST GREAT STEPS IN EVOLUTION

THE FIRST PLANTS—THE FIRST ANIMALS—BEGINNINGS OF BODIES—EVOLUTION OF SEX—BEGINNING OF NATURAL DEATH

§ 1

The Contrast between Plants and Animals

However it may have come about, there is no doubt at all that one of the first great steps in Organic Evolution was the forking of the genealogical tree into Plants and Animals—the most important parting of the ways in the whole history of Nature.
Typical plants have chlorophyll; they are able to feed at a low chemical level on air, water, and salts, using the energy of the sunlight in their photosynthesis. They have their cells boxed in by cellulose walls, so that their opportunities for motility are greatly restricted. They manufacture much more nutritive material than they need, and live far below their income.

Animals, on the other hand, feed at a high chemical level, on the carbohydrates (e.g. starch and sugar), fats, and proteins (e.g. gluten, albumin, casein) which are manufactured by other animals, or to begin with, by plants. Their cells have not cellulose walls, nor in most cases much wall of any kind, and motility in the majority is unrestricted. Animals live much more nearly up to their income. If we could make for an animal and a plant of equal weight two fractions showing the ratio of the upbuilding, constructive, chemical processes to the down-breaking, disruptive, chemical processes that go on in their respective bodies, the ratio for the plant would be much greater than the corresponding ratio for the animal. In other words, animals take the munitions which plants laboriously manufacture and explode them in locomotion[Pg 65] and work; and the entire system of animate nature depends upon the photosynthesis that goes on in green plants.
From the Smithsonian Report, 1917
A PIECE OF A REEF-BUILDING CORAL, BUILT UP BY A LARGE COLONY OF SMALL SEA-ANEMONE-LIKE POLYPS, EACH OF WHICH FORMS FROM THE SALTS OF THE SEA A SKELETON OR SHELL OF LIME
The wonderful mass of corals, which are very beautiful, are the skeleton remains of hundreds of these little creatures.


Photo: J. J. Ward, F.E.S.
THE INSET CIRCLE SHOWS A GROUP OF CHALK-FORMING ANIMALS, OR FORAMINIFERA, EACH ABOUT THE SIZE OF A VERY SMALL PIN'S HEAD
They form a great part of the chalk cliffs of Dover and similar deposits which have been raised from the floor of an ancient sea.
THE ENORMOUSLY ENLARGED ILLUSTRATION IS THAT OF A COMMON FORAMINIFER (POLYSTOMELLA) SHOWING THE SHELL IN THE CENTRE AND THE OUTFLOWING NETWORK OF LIVING MATTER, ALONG WHICH GRANULES ARE CONTINUALLY TRAVELLING, AND BY WHICH FOOD PARTICLES ARE ENTANGLED AND DRAWN IN
Reproduced by permission of the Natural History Museum (after Max Schultze).

Best regards,
- RP

[RascalPuff]

Excerts from THE OUTLINE OF SCIENCE, by J. Arthur Thomson, copyright 1922; continued:

As the result of much more explosive life, animals have to deal with much in the way of nitrogenous waste products, the ashes of the living fire, but these are usually got rid of very effectively, e.g. in the kidney filters, and do not clog the system by being deposited as crystals and the like, as happens in plants. Sluggish animals like sea-squirts which have no kidneys are exceptions that prove the rule, and it need hardly be said that the statements that have been made in regard to the contrasts between plants and animals are general statements. There is often a good deal of the plant about the animal, as in sedentary sponges, zoophytes, corals, and sea-squirts, and there is often a little of the animal about the plant, as we see in the movements of all shoots and roots and leaves, and occasionally in the parts of the flower. But the important fact is that on the early forking of the genealogical tree, i.e. the divergence of plants and animals, there depended and depends all the higher life of the animal kingdom, not to speak of mankind. The continuance of civilisation, the upkeep of the human and animal population of the globe, and even the supply of oxygen to the air we breathe, depend on the silent laboratories of the green leaves, which are able with the help of the sunlight to use carbonic acid, water, and salts to build up the bread of life.
§ 2

The Beginnings of Land Plants

It is highly probable that for long ages the waters covered the earth, and that all the primeval vegetation consisted of simple Flagellates in the universal Open Sea. But contraction of the earth's crust brought about elevations and depressions of the sea-floor, and in places the solid substratum was brought near enough the surface to allow the floating plants to begin to settle down without getting out of the light. This is how Professor[Pg 66] Church pictures the beginning of a fixed vegetation—a very momentous step in evolution. It was perhaps among this early vegetation that animals had their first successes. As the floor of the sea in these shallow areas was raised higher and higher there was a beginning of dry land. The sedentary plants already spoken of were the ancestors of the shore seaweeds, and there is no doubt that when we go down at the lowest tide and wade cautiously out among the jungle of vegetation only exposed on such occasions we are getting a glimpse of very ancient days. This is the forest primeval.
The Protozoa

Animals below the level of zoophytes and sponges are called Protozoa. The word obviously means "First Animals," but all that we can say is that the very simplest of them may give us some hint of the simplicity of the original first animals. For it is quite certain that the vast majority of the Protozoa to-day are far too complicated to be thought of as primitive. Though most of them are microscopic, each is an animal complete in itself, with the same fundamental bodily attributes as are manifested in ourselves. They differ from animals of higher degree in not being built up of the unit areas or corpuscles called cells. They have no cells, no tissues, no organs, in the ordinary acceptation of these words, but many of them show a great complexity of internal structure, far exceeding that of the ordinary cells that build up the tissues of higher animals. They are complete living creatures which have not gone in for body-making.
In the dim and distant past there was a time when the only animals were of the nature of Protozoa, and it is safe to say that one of the great steps in evolution was the establishment of three great types of Protozoa: (a) Some were very active, the Infusorians, like the slipper animalcule, the night-light (Noctiluca), which makes the seas phosphorescent at night, and the deadly Trypanosome, which causes Sleeping Sickness.[Pg 67] (b) Others were very sluggish, the parasitic Sporozoa, like the malaria organism which the mosquito introduces into man's body. (c) Others were neither very active nor very passive, the Rhizopods, with out-flowing processes of living matter.
The Making of a Body

The great naturalist Louis Agassiz once said that the biggest gulf in Organic Nature was that between the unicellular and the multicellular animals (Protozoa and Metazoa). But the gulf was bridged very long ago when sponges, stinging animals, and simple worms were evolved, and showed, for the first time, a "body." What would one not give to be able to account for the making of a body, one of the great steps in evolution! No one knows, but the problem is not altogether obscure.

When an ordinary Protozoon or one-celled animal divides into two or more, which is its way of multiplying, the daughter-units thus formed float apart and live independent lives. But there are a few Protozoa in which the daughter-units are not quite separated off from one another, but remain coherent. Thus Volvox, a beautiful green ball, found in some canals and the like, is a colony of a thousand or even ten thousand cells. It has almost formed a body! But in this "colony-making" Protozoon, and in others like it, the component cells are all of one kind, whereas in true multicellular animals there are different kinds of[Pg 68] cells, showing division of labour. There are some other Protozoa in which the nucleus or kernel divides into many nuclei within the cell. This is seen in the Giant Amœba (Pelomyxa), sometimes found in duck-ponds, or the beautiful Opalina, which always lives in the hind part of the frog's food-canal.

Two points should be noticed, that body-making is not essentially a matter of size, though it made large size possible. For the body of a many-celled Wheel Animalcule or Rotifer is no bigger than many a Protozoon. Yet the Rotifer—we are thinking of Hydatina—has nine hundred odd cells, whereas the Protozoon has only one, except in forms like Volvox. Secondly, it is a luminous fact that every many-celled animal from sponge to man that multiplies in the ordinary way begins at the beginning again as a "single cell," the fertilised egg-cell. It is, of course, not an ordinary single cell that develops into an earthworm or a butterfly, an eagle, or a man; it is a cell in which a rich inheritance, the fruition of ages, is somehow condensed; but it is interesting to bear in mind the elementary fact that every many-celled creature, reproduced in the ordinary way and not by budding or the like, starts as a fertilised egg-cell.

The Beginning of Sexual Reproduction
A freshwater Hydra, growing on the duckweed usually multiplies by budding. It forms daughter-buds, living images of itself; a check comes to nutrition and these daughter-buds go[Pg 69] free. A big sea-anemone may divide in two or more parts, which become separate animals. This is asexual reproduction, which means that the multiplication takes place by dividing into two or many portions, and not by liberating egg-cells and sperm-cells. Among animals as among plants, asexual reproduction is very common. But it has great disadvantages, for it is apt to be physiologically expensive, and it is beset with difficulties when the body shows great division of labour, and is very intimately bound into unity. Thus, no one can think of a bee or a bird multiplying by division or by budding. Moreover, if the body of the parent has suffered from injury or deterioration, the result of this is bound to be handed on to the next generation if asexual reproduction is the only method.
Photos: J. J. Ward, F.E.S.
A PLANT-LIKE ANIMAL, OR ZOOPHYTE, CALLED OBELIA
Consisting of a colony of small polyps, whose stinging tentacles are well shown greatly enlarged in the lower photograph.


Reproduced by permission of "The Quart. Journ. Mic. Sci."
TRYPANOSOMA GAMBIENSE
(Very highly magnified.)
The microscopic animal Trypanosome, which causes Sleeping Sickness. The study of these organisms has of late years acquired an immense importance on account of the widespread and dangerous maladies to which some of them give rise. It lives in the blood of man, who is infected by the bite of a Tse-tse fly which carries the parasite from some other host.


VOLVOX
The Volvox is found in some canals and the like. It is one of the first animals to suggest the beginning of a body. It is a colony of a thousand or even ten thousand cells, but they are all cells of one kind. In multicellular animals the cells are of different kinds with different functions. Each of the ordinary cells (marked 5) has two lashes or flagella. Daughter colonies inside the Parent colony are being formed at 3, 4, and 2. The development of germ-cells is shown at 1.


PROTEROSPONGIA
One of the simplest multicellular animals, illustrating the beginning of a body. There is a setting apart of egg-cells and sperm-cells, distinct from body-cells; the collared lashed cells on the margin are different in kind from those farther in. Thus, as in indubitable multicellular animals, division of labour has begun.


Splitting into two or many parts was the old-fashioned way of multiplying, but one of the great steps in evolution was the discovery of a better method, namely, sexual reproduction.

Best regards,
- RP