FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152  
153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   171   172   173   174   175   176   177   >>   >|  
amplification of his theory of selection is, in my opinion, the work of Richard Semon: _Die Mneme als erhaltendes Prinzip im Wechsel des organischen Geschehens_.[133] He offers a psychological explanation of the facts of heredity by reducing them to a process of (unconscious) memory. The physiologist Ewald Hering had shown in 1870 that memory must be regarded as a general function of organic matter, and that we are quite unable to explain the chief vital phenomena, especially those of reproduction and inheritance, unless we admit this unconscious memory. In my essay _Die Perigenesis der Plastidule_[134] I elaborated this far-reaching idea, and applied the physical principle of transmitted motion to the plastidules, or active molecules of plasm. I concluded that "heredity is the memory of the plastidules, and variability their power of comprehension." This "provisional attempt to give a mechanical explanation of the elementary processes of evolution" I afterwards extended by showing that sensitiveness is (as Carl Naegeli, Ernst Mach, and Albrecht Rau express it) a general quality of matter. This form of panpsychism finds its simplest expression in the "trinity of substance." To the two fundamental attributes that Spinoza ascribed to substance--Extension (matter as occupying space) and Cogitation (energy, force)--we now add the third fundamental quality of Psychoma (sensitiveness, soul). I further elaborated this trinitarian conception of substance in the nineteenth chapter of my _Die Lebenswunder_ (1904),[135] and it seems to me well calculated to afford a monistic solution of many of the antitheses of philosophy. This important Mneme-theory of Semon and the luminous physiological experiments and observations associated with it not only throw considerable light on transformative inheritance, but provide a sound physiological foundation for the biogenetic law. I had endeavoured to show in 1874, in the first chapter of my _Anthropogenie_,[136] that this fundamental law of organic evolution holds good generally, and that there is everywhere a direct causal connection between ontogeny and phylogeny. "Phylogenesis is the mechanical cause of ontogenesis;" in other words, "The evolution of the stem or race is--in accordance with the laws of heredity and adaptation--the real cause of all the changes that appear, in a condensed form, in the development of the individual organism from the ovum, in either the embryo or the larva
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152  
153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   171   172   173   174   175   176   177   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

memory

 

evolution

 

matter

 

substance

 

fundamental

 

heredity

 

unconscious

 
sensitiveness
 

plastidules

 

elaborated


physiological

 

inheritance

 

mechanical

 

organic

 

general

 

explanation

 
quality
 

theory

 

chapter

 

philosophy


antitheses

 

luminous

 

important

 

energy

 

Cogitation

 

Extension

 
occupying
 

observations

 

experiments

 

afford


trinitarian

 

conception

 

nineteenth

 

Lebenswunder

 

calculated

 

monistic

 

Psychoma

 

solution

 
accordance
 

adaptation


phylogeny
 
Phylogenesis
 

ontogenesis

 
embryo
 

organism

 
condensed
 

development

 

individual

 

ontogeny

 

foundation