Herbert Spencer

Name: The Principles of Biology — Appendix C
Author: Herbert Spencer

The Principles of Biology — Appendix C (1898)

Summary

“The Principles of Biology — Appendix C”, published in 1898, is a work by Herbert Spencer. It explores elements such as natural selection, hypothesis and evidence.

Quotes from The Principles of Biology — Appendix C (Herbert Spencer)

Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Biology — Appendix C (1898)

“ Now let us consider the position of those Darwinians who dissent from Darwin, and who make light of all this evidence. We might naturally suppose that their own hypothesis is unassailable. Yet, strange to say, they admit that there is no direct proof that any species has been established by natural selection. The proof is inferential only.
The certainty of an axiom does not give certainty to the deductions drawn from it. That natural selection is, and always has been, operative is incontestable. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Biology — Appendix C (1898)

“ Development of the musical faculty in the successive members of families from which the great composers have come, as well as in the civilized races at large, is not to be explained by natural selection. Even when it is great, the musical faculty has not a life-saving efficiency as compared with the average of faculties; for the most highly gifted have commonly passed less prosperous lives and left fewer offspring than have those possessed of ordinary abilities. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Biology — Appendix C (1898)

“ The general argument proceeds upon the analogy between natural selection and artificial selection. Yet all know that the first cannot do what the last does. Natural selection can do nothing more than preserve those of which the aggregate characters are most favourable to life. It cannot pick out those possessed of one particular favourable character, unless this is of extreme importance.
(2) In many cases a structure is of no service until it has reached a certain development ”

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Source: Wikisource

Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Biology — Appendix C (1898)

“ When to uncertainties in the arguments supporting the hypothesis we add its inability to explain facts of cardinal significance, as proved above, there is I think ground for asserting that natural selection is less clearly shown to be a factor in the origination of species than is the inheritance of functionally-wrought changes. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Biology — Appendix C (1898)

“ Facts of another class are yielded by the blind inhabitants of caverns. One who studies the memoir by Mr. Packard on The Cave Fauna of North America, &c., will be astonished at the variety of types in which degeneration or loss of the eyes has become a concomitant of life passed in darkness. A great increase in the force of this evidence will be recognized on learning that absence or extreme imperfection of visual organs is found also in creatures living in perpetual night at the bottoms of deep oceans. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Biology — Appendix C (1898)

“ Obviously I should be the last person to deny that survival of the fittest is a necessity: its negation is inconceivable. The Neo-Darwinians, however, judging from their attitude, apparently assume that firmness of the basis implies firmness of the superstructure. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Biology — Appendix C (1898)

“ Kindred evidence is yielded by decrease of the jaws in those races which have had diminished use of them—mankind and certain domestic animals. Relative smallness in the jaws of civilized men, manifest enough on comparison, has been proved by direct measurement. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Biology — Appendix C (1898)

“ Though artificial selection has come into play where drooping has become a curious trait (as in rabbits) , and has probably caused the greater size of ears which has in some cases gone along with diminished muscular power over them ”

Herbert Spencer

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Quotes from The Principles of Biology — Appendix C (Herbert Spencer)

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