Abstract
THE text of the twelfth Huxley Memorial Lecture, delivered recently by Sir Arthur Keith, is published supplementarily to this issue. Its title, “The Adaptational Machinery concerned in the Evolution of Man's Body,” admirably defines the greatest of present biological problems, “infinite in extent and complexity,” and still affording scope for “many centuries of labour.” Such phrases measure the magnitude of Darwin's influence, exerted steadily for over sixty years. The Huxley lecturer, speaking from a vast knowledge of evolutionary biology, says that we know of no means by which the machinery of mechanical adaptation can be altered from without. With Huxley, he believes that the government which rules within the body of the embryo proceeds along its way altogether uninfluenced by occurrences or experiences which affect the body or brain of the parent. The machinery of adaptation has its “predetermined line “of action. We may carp at the word; but Huxley's meaning seems clear enough: be described a sequence in a natural order, not a consequence of a supernatural order. How far we have advanced along the thorny path which the great Darwinians mapped out for us may be judged fairly from the address itself. The question of use-inheritance is crucial; and while every failure to demonstrate its occurrence serves only to establish the Darwinian theory more firmly, there are those who still hope to find in the intricacies of the problem a door of escape from the position assumed by Darwin and Huxley and, we believe, the best and most philosophical workers in biology to-day. Man, even scientific man, does not seem altogether willing to assume his rightful place in the Universe; albeit the place which Darwinism assigns to him is fundamentally securer and philosophically grander than any other which individual or collective wit has designed. We are still far from plumbing the depth of wonder of the Universe of which we are a part, in which we “live, move, and have our being,” and the “many centuries “of Sir Arthur Keith that separate us from that aim is a phrase that is good only because it does not bring imagination to a halt. This aspect of the Darwinian theory is still not widely apprehended; none of the natural sciences comes so near to intriguing the personal prejudices of its votaries as biology; but as potent to confuse present work and thought is that sterilising influence of great ideas which, while they liberalise for a time, do so spasmodically. Many workers, all unconsciously, turn from Darwinism because it does for them not too little but too much. Forty, thirty, and even twenty years ago, comparative anatomy and embryology pressed forward irresistibly with Darwinian enthusiasm. During the “many centuries “ahead the present reaction will probably have less significance than appears now; but, for the clarification of present work, Sir Arthur Keith's advocacy is timely.
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Current Topics and Events. Nature 112, 245–247 (1923). https://doi.org/10.1038/112245a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/112245a0