Unconscious Memory(Fiscle Part-3) by Samuel Butler (best novels ever .TXT) 📖
- Author: Samuel Butler
Book online «Unconscious Memory(Fiscle Part-3) by Samuel Butler (best novels ever .TXT) 📖». Author Samuel Butler
Mathematical Deduction Which He Was Bound To Accept Without
Criticism.
Mr. William Bateson, Late Professor Of Biology In The University Of
Cambridge, As Early As 1894 Laid Great Stress On The Importance Of
Discontinuous Variations, Collecting And Collating The Known Facts In
His "Materials For The Study Of Variations"; But This Important Work,
Now Become Rare And Valuable, At The Time Excited So Little Interest
As To Be 'Remaindered' Within A Very Few Years After Publication.
In 1901 Hugo De Vries, Professor Of Botany In The University Of
Amsterdam, Published "Die Mutationstheorie," Wherein He Showed That
Mutations Or Discontinuous Variations In Various Directions May
Appear Simultaneously In Many Individuals, And In Various Directions.
In The Gardener's Phrase, The Species May Take To Sporting In Various
Directions At The Same Time, And Each Sport May Be Represented By
Numerous Specimens.
De Vries Shows The Probability That Species Go On For Long Periods
Showing Only Fluctuations, And Then Suddenly Take To Sporting In The
Way Described, Short Periods Of Mutation Alternating With Long
Intervals Of Relative Constancy. It Is To Mutations That De Vries
And His School, As Well As Luther Burbank, The Great Former Of New
Fruit- And Flower-Plants, Look For Those Variations Which Form The
Material Of Natural Selection. In "God The Known And God The
Unknown," Which Appeared In The Examiner (May, June, And July), 1879,
But Though Then Revised Was Only Published Posthumously In 1909,
Butler Anticipates This Distinction:-
"Under These Circumstances Organism Must Act In One Or Other Of These
Two Ways: It Must Either Change Slowly And Continuously With The
Surroundings, Paying Cash For Everything, Meeting The Smallest Change
With A Corresponding Modification, So Far As Is Found Convenient, Or
It Must Put Off Change As Long As Possible, And Then Make Larger And
More Sweeping Changes.
"Both These Courses Are The Same In Principle, The Difference Being
One Of Scale, And The One Being A Miniature Of The Other, As A Ripple
Is An Atlantic Wave In Little; Both Have Their Advantages And
Disadvantages, So That Most Organisms Will Take The One Course For
One Set Of Things And The Other For Another. They Will Deal Promptly
Introduction Pg 13With Things Which They Can Get At Easily, And Which Lie More Upon The
Surface; Those, However, Which Are More Troublesome To Reach, And Lie
Deeper, Will Be Handled Upon More Cataclysmic Principles, Being
Allowed Longer Periods Of Repose Followed By Short Periods Of Greater
Activity . . . It May Be Questioned Whether What Is Called A Sport Is
Not The Organic Expression Of Discontent Which Has Been Long Felt,
But Which Has Not Been Attended To, Nor Been Met Step By Step By As
Much Small Remedial Modification As Was Found Practicable: So That
When A Change Does Come It Comes By Way Of Revolution. Or, Again
(Only That It Comes To Much The Same Thing), It May Be Compared To
One Of Those Happy Thoughts Which Sometimes Come To Us Unbidden After
We Have Been Thinking For A Long Time What To Do, Or How To Arrange
Our Ideas, And Have Yet Been Unable To Come To Any Conclusion" (Pp.
14, 15). {0g}
We Come To Another Order Of Mind In Hans Driesch. At The Time He
Began His Work Biologists Were Largely Busy In A Region Indicated By
Darwin, And Roughly Mapped Out By Haeckel--That Of Phylogeny. From
The Facts Of Development Of The Individual, From The Comparison Of
Fossils In Successive Strata, They Set To Work At The Construction Of
Pedigrees, And Strove To Bring Into Line The Principles Of
Classification With The More Or Less Hypothetical "Stemtrees."
Driesch Considered This Futile, Since We Never Could Reconstruct From
Such Evidence Anything Certain In The History Of The Past. He
Therefore Asserted That A More Complete Knowledge Of The Physics And
Chemistry Of The Organic World Might Give A Scientific Explanation Of
The Phenomena, And Maintained That The Proper Work Of The Biologist
Was To Deepen Our Knowledge In These Respects. He Embodied His
Views, Seeking The Explanation On This Track, Filling Up Gaps And
Tracing Projected Roads Along Lines Of Probable Truth In His
"Analytische Theorie Der Organische Entwicklung." But His Own Work
Convinced Him Of The Hopelessness Of The Task He Had Undertaken, And
He Has Become As Strenuous A Vitalist As Butler. The Most Complete
Statement Of His Present Views Is To Be Found In "The Philosophy Of
Life" (1908-9), Being The Giffold Lectures For 1907-8. Herein He
Postulates A Quality ("Psychoid") In All Living Beings, Directing
Energy And Matter For The Purpose Of The Organism, And To This He
Applies The Aristotelian Designation "Entelechy." The Question Of
The Transmission Of Acquired Characters Is Regarded As Doubtful, And
He Does Not Emphasise--If He Accepts--The Doctrine Of Continuous
Personality. His Early Youthful Impatience With Descent Theories And
Hypotheses Has, However, Disappeared.
In The Next Work The Influence Of Hering And Butler Is Definitely
Present And Recognised. In 1906 Signor Eugenio Rignano, An Engineer
Keenly Interested In All Branches Of Science, And A Little Later The
Founder Of The International Review, Rivista Di Scienza (Now Simply
Called Scientia), Published In French A Volume Entitled "Sur La
Transmissibilite Des Caracteres Acquis--Hypothese D'un Centro-
Epigenese." Into The Details Of The Author's Work We Will Not Enter
Fully. Suffice It To Know That He Accepts The Hering-Butler Theory,
And Makes A Distinct Advance On Hering's Rather Crude Hypothesis Of
Persistent Vibrations By Suggesting That The Remembering Centres
Store Slightly Different Forms Of Energy, To Give Out Energy Of The
Introduction Pg 14Same Kind As They Have Received, Like Electrical Accumulators. The
Last Chapter, "Le Phenomene Mnemonique Et Le Phenomene Vital," Is
Frankly Based On Hering.
In "The Lesson Of Evolution" (1907, Posthumous, And Only Published
For Private Circulation) Frederick Wollaston Hutton, F.R.S., Late
Professor Of Biology And Geology, First At Dunedin And After At
Christchurch, New Zealand, Puts Forward A Strongly Vitalistic View,
And Adopts Hering's Teaching. After Stating This He Adds, "The Same
Idea Of Heredity Being Due To Unconscious Memory Was Advocated By Mr.
Samuel Butler In His "Life And Habit."
Dr. James Mark Baldwin, Stuart Professor Of Psychology In Princeton
University, U.S.A., Called Attention Early In The 90's To A Reaction
Characteristic Of All Living Beings, Which He Terms The "Circular
Reaction." We Take His Most Recent Account Of This From His
"Development And Evolution" (1902):- {0h}
"The General Fact Is That The Organism Reacts By Concentration Upon
The Locality Stimulated For The Continuance Of The Conditions,
Movements, Stimulations, Which Are Vitally Beneficial, And For The
Cessation Of The Conditions, Movements, Stimulations Which Are
Vitally Depressing."
This Amounts To Saying In The Terminology Of Jenning (See Below) That
The Living Organism Alters Its "Physiological States" Either For Its
Direct Benefit, Or For Its Indirect Benefit In The Reduction Of
Harmful Conditions.
Again:-
"This Form Of Concentration Of Energy On Stimulated Localities, With
The Resulting Renewal Through Movement Of Conditions That Are
Pleasure-Giving And Beneficial, And The Consequent Repetition Of The
Movements Is Called 'Circular Reaction.'"
Of Course, The Inhibition Of Such Movements As Would Be Painful On
Repetition Is Merely The Negative Case Of The Circular Reaction. We
Introduction Pg 15Must Not Put Too Much Of Our Own Ideas Into The Author's Mind; He
Nowhere Says Explicitly That The Animal Or Plant Shows Its Sense And
Does This Because It Likes The One Thing And Wants It Repeated, Or
Dislikes The Other And Stops Its Repetition, As Butler Would Have
Said. Baldwin Is Very Strong In Insisting That No Full Explanation
Can Be Given Of Living Processes, Any More Than Of History, On Purely
Chemico-Physical Grounds.
The Same View Is Put Differently And Independently By H. S. Jennings,
{0i} Who Started His Investigations Of Living Protista, The Simplest
Of Living Beings, With The Idea That Only Accurate And Ample
Observation Was Needed To Enable Us To Explain All Their Activities
On A Mechanical Basis, And Devised Ingenious Models Of Protoplastic
Movements. He Was Led, Like Driesch, To Renounce Such Efforts As
Illusory, And Has Come To The Conviction That In The Behaviour Of
These Lowly Beings There Is A Purposive And A Tentative Character--A
Method Of "Trial And Error"--That Can Only Be Interpreted By The
Invocation Of Psychology. He Points Out That After Stimulation The
"State" Of The Organism May Be Altered, So That The Response To The
Same Stimulus On Repetition Is Other. Or, As He Puts It, The First
Stimulus Has Caused The Organism To Pass Into A New "Physiological
State." As The Change Of State From What We May Call The "Primary
Indifferent State" Is Advantageous To The Organism, We May Regard
This As Equivalent To The Doctrine Of The "Circular Reaction," And
Also As Containing The Essence Of Semon's Doctrine Of "Engrams" Or
Imprints Which We Are About To Consider. We Cite One Passage Which
For Audacity Of Thought (Underlying, It Is True, Most Guarded
Expression) May Well Compare With Many Of The Boldest Flights In
"Life And Habit":-
"It May Be Noted That Regulation In The Manner We Have Set Forth Is
What, In The Behaviour Of Higher Organisms, At Least, Is Called
Intelligence [The Examples Have Been Taken From Protista, Corals, And
The Lowest Worms]. If The Same Method Of Regulation Is Found In
Other Fields, There Is No Reason For Refusing To Compare The Action
To Intelligence. Comparison Of The Regulatory Processes That Are
Shown In Internal Physiological Changes And In Regeneration To
Intelligence Seems To Be Looked Upon Sometimes As Heretical And
Unscientific. Yet Intelligence Is A Name Applied To Processes That
Actually Exist In The Regulation Of Movements, And There Is, A
Priori, No Reason Why Similar Processes Should Not Occur In
Regulation In Other Fields. When We Analyse Regulation Objectively
There Seems Indeed Reason To Think That The Processes Are Of The Same
Character In Behaviour As Elsewhere. If The Term Intelligence Be
Reserved For The Subjective Accompaniments Of Such Regulation, Then
Of Course We Have No Direct Knowledge Of Its Existence In Any Of The
Fields Of Regulation Outside Of The Self, And In The Self Perhaps
Only In Behaviour. But In A Purely Objective Consideration There
Seems No Reason To Suppose That Regulation In Behaviour
(Intelligence) Is Of A Fundamentally Different Character From
Comments (0)