The Biological Problem of To-day: Preformation Or Epigenesis?

The Biological Problem of To-day: Preformation Or Epigenesis? - The Basis of a Theory of Organic Development

What is development? Does it imply preformation or epigenesis? This perplexing question of biology has reappeared recently as a problem of the day. Of late years there have been set forth contradictory doctrines, each seeking to explain the process by which the fertilised egg-cell, an apparently simple beginning, gives rise to the adult organism, which often is exceedingly complicated, and which has the capacity of producing new beginnings like that from which it itself arose. The opposing views of to-day were in existence centuries ago, and they are known in the history of science as the theory of preformation or evolution, and the theory of epigenesis. That most of the great biologists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were decided upholders of evolution was the natural result of the contemporary knowledge of facts. For they knew only the external signs of the process of development.[Pg 2] All they saw was the embryo becoming adult, the bud growing out into a blossom, as the result of a process in which nutrition transformed smaller to greater parts. And so they regarded development as a simple process of growth resulting from nutrition. Their mental picture of the germ or beginning of an organism was an exceedingly reduced image of the organism, an image requiring for its development nothing but nutrition and growth. That the material eye failed to recognise the miniature they attributed to the imperfection of our senses, and to the extreme minuteness and resulting opacity of the object. That it might satisfy our human craving for final causes, the theory of preformation had to be accompanied by a corresponding explanation of the origin of the miniatures. Biologists had already abandoned the error of such spontaneous generation as the origin of flies from decaying meat, and, in its place, had accepted the doctrine of the continuity of life, formulating it in the phrase, Omne vivum e vivo (Each life from a life), and in the similar phrase, Omne vivum ex ovo (Each life from an egg). One creature issued from another, within which it had lain as a germ, and the series was continuous. Thus, the theory of preformation gave rise to the conception that living things were a series of cases or wrappings, germ folded within germ. The origin of life was relegated to the beginning, at the creation of the world: it became the work of a supernatural Creator, who, when He formed the first creatures, formed with them, and[Pg 3] placed within them, the germs of all subsequent creatures. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 37221
Author: Hertwig, Oscar
Release Date: Aug 27, 2011
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Translator: Mitchell, P. Chalmers (Peter Chalmers), Sir, 1864-1945