Abstract
THE philosopher of the forum is notorious for the looseness of his analogical arguments from biology, and biologists themselves deserve castigation for their lax terminology. Even a Galton can write: “Parents are very indirectly and only partially related to their own children.” Every word has its halo, and may be regarded according to one's point of view as either a potted poem or a tabloid theory. When the theory has been overturned, the use of the word in serious argument is dangerous. Then comes the critic to set us straight again, and so here is Dr. Johannsen putting such blessed words as “evolution,” “affinity,” “tradition,” and “inheritance” in their proper places. So far as he condemns the use of inexact analogy, especially as a method of proof, we shall all agree with him—at least theoretically. But an analogy, strict in its application, may be falsified by its premisses. Many such are rejected by Dr. Johannsen as incorrect presentations of the facts of organic life and history. But here he often seems a little too certain that his interpretation of nature is the only right one. Belonging to the strictest sect of the Mendelians, he believes that, though the organism may respond variously to external conditions, the constitution of the germ is unaffected thereby, and that any change in it is necessarily discontinuous. Hence, though individual growth is inevitably continuous, organic evolution must be discontinuous; and any analogy between race-history and individual history must be false. The idea that the latter recapitulates the former “cannot be applied to concrete instances.”
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BATHER, F. Inexact Analogies in Biology 1 . Nature 95, 178–179 (1915). https://doi.org/10.1038/095178b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/095178b0