Darwinism To Day PDF Download

Excerpt from Darwinism to-Day: A Discussion of Present-Day Scientific Criticism of the Darwinian Selection Theories, Together With a Brief Account of the Principal Other Proposed Auxiliary and Alternative Theories of Species-Forming This book is written for the sake of presenting simply and concisely to students of biology and to general readers the present-day standing of Darwinism in biological science, and to outline for them the various auxiliary and alternative theories of species-forming which have been proposed to aid or to replace the selection theories. Our actual knowledge of the factors and mechanism of organic evolution and our hypotheses and theories which serve to fill in the present gaps in this knowledge have been greatly added to and modified in the last few years. Much that the general reader includes in his conception of organic evolution, based on his reading of Darwin and Wallace and Spencer, has been materially modified and some of it proved untenable by modern investigation; while much which had no place in this earlier general understanding of evolutionary method and process may now be confidently added to it. The present time is one of unprecedented activity and fertility both in the discovery of facts and in attempts to perceive their significance in relation to the great problems of bionomics. Both destructive criticism of old, and synthesis of new hypotheses and theories, are being so energetically carried forward that the scientific layman and educated reader, if he stand but ever so little outside of the actual working ranks of biology, is likely to lose his orientation as to the trend of evolutionary advance. Precisely at the present moment is this modification of the general point of view and attitude of philosophical biologists unusually important and far-reaching in its relation to certain long-held general conceptions of biology and evolution. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.