Emergent Evolution

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EMERGENT EVOLUTION- THE GIFFORD LECTURES DELIVERED IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ST. ANDREWS IN THE YEAR 1922 by C. LLOYD MORGAN. Originally published in 1923. PREFACE: HALF a century ago, as years run, a student was called on to take the chair at a dinner in connection with the Royal School of Mines. Members of the staff were present.

And the fortunate youth was honoured by the support of Professor Huxley. Which of the lines of science you have followed has chiefly engaged your interest Following up the thread of my reply, he drew from me the confession that an interest in philosophy, and in the general scheme of things, lay deeper than my interest in the practical applications of science to what then purported to be my bread-and butter training.

With sympathetic kindliness that soon dispelled my fear of him he led me to speak more freely, to tell him how this came about, what J had read, and so on. That such a man should care to know what Berkeley and Hume had done for me what I had got from Descartes Discourse how I was just then embrangled in difficulties over Spinoza filled me with glad surprise.

His comments were so ripe and they were made to help me Whatever else you may do, he said, keep that light burning. But remember that biology has supplied a new and powerful illuminant. Then speeches began. His parting words were When you have reached the goal of your course, why not come and spend a year with us at South Kensington So when I had gained the diploma of which so little direct use was to be made, and when my need of the illuminant, and my lack of intimate acquaintance with the facts on which the new lamp shed light, had been duly impressed on me during a visit to North America andBrazil, I followed his advice, attended his lectures, and worked in his laboratory.

On one of the memorable occasions when he beckoned me to come to his private room he spoke of St. George Mivart s Genesis of Species. I had asked him some questions thereon a few days before to which he was then too busy to reply and he gave me this opportunity of repeating them. Mivart had said If then such innate powers must be attributed to chemical atoms, to mineral species, to gemmules, and to physiological units, it is only reasonable to attribute such to each individual organism p. 260, I asked on what grounds this line of approach was unreasonable for even then there was lurking within me some touch of Pelagian heresy in matters evolutionary.

Far from snub bing a youthful heretic he dealt kindly with him. The question, he said, was open to discussion but he thought Mivarts position was based on considerations other than scientific. Any analogy between the growth of a crystal and the development of an organism was of very doubtful validity.

Yes, Sir 1 I said, save in this that both invite us to distinguish between an internal factor and the incidence of external conditions He then asked what I under stood by innate powers, saying that for Mivart they were the substantial forms of scholastic tradition. I ventured to suggest that the School men and their modern disciples were trying to explain what men of science must perhaps just accept on the evidence.

And I asked whether for an innate power in the organism one might substitute what he had taught us to call an internal metamorphic tendency which must be as distinctly recognised as that of an internal conservative tendency H. E. ii. p. 116. Ofcourse you may so long as you regard this merely as an ex pression of certain facts at present unexplained. n I then asked whether it was in this sense one should accept his statement that nature does make leaps ii. pp. 77, 97 and, if this were so, whether the difference on which Mivart laid so much stress that between the mental capacities of animals and of men might not be regarded as a natural leap in evolutionary progress.

This was the point to which I was leading up...