Abstract
THE Fortnightly Review for March contains an admirable article, by Dr. A. Russel Wallace, on “The World of Life, as Visualised and Interpreted by Darwinism.” The veteran author argues with all his old vigour and eloquence in favour of the theory of the origin of species by natural selection, bringing out the facts of extensive and independent variation under natural conditions, emphasising the reality of the struggle for life, and insisting on the facts of adaptation as inexplicable under any other hypothesis than that of Darwin. He shows how the commonest of the popular objections to the theory “rests upon the strange belief that variation is a rare phenomenon, that favourable variations occur singly and at long intervals, and, therefore, can have no effect in producing any important change”—an idea which is entirely-at variance with the actual facts of nature. But while strenuously upholding the sufficiency of the Darwinian explanation of the phenomena of life within its own sphere, he still allows that “neither Darwinism nor any other theory in science or philosophy can give more than a secondary explanation of phenomena.”
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Recent Papers on Darwinism . Nature 80, 142–143 (1909). https://doi.org/10.1038/080142b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/080142b0