Adaptation

“ Animal and vegetable organisms have been analyzed, and 'the idea of adaptation developed into the conception that life itself, "is the definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive in correspondence with external co-existence and sequences."' Now to the masses who are pardonably curious concerning this problem of existence, is this result perfectly satisfactory? ”

“ Adaptation of means to an end may be produced in two ways that we at present know of; by processes of natural selection, and by the agency of an intelligence in which an image or idea of the end preceded the use of the means. In both cases the existence of the adaptation is accounted for by the necessity or utility of the end. ”

“ But the power of adaptation is mainly dependent on the power of thinking certain new things sufficiently like certain others to which we have been accustomed for us not to be too much incommoded by the change—upon the power, in fact, of mistaking the new for the old. ”

“ But now, as to the phenomenon of variation or adaptation in general, we must, as in the case of inheritance, view it as a quite universal, physiological fundamental quality of all organisms, without exception—as a manifestation of life which cannot be separated from the idea of organism. Strictly speaking, we must here also, as in the case of inheritance, distinguish between Adaptation itself and Adaptability. ”

“ But adaptation is not undergone for the benefit of the form, but more truly for the informing principle. It is the progression of the life-element which constitutes the adaptation of form to form and to their peculiar environs. The form is a tool or instrument of life which it discards the moment it fails to respond to its requirements. ”

“ Each nook and cranny of creation, down to our very skin and entrails, has its living inhabitants, with organs suited to the place, to devour and digest the food it harbors and to meet the dangers it conceals; and the minuteness of adaptation thus shown in the way of structure knows no bounds. ”

“ Adaptation is effected at every stage and for every part by the process of selection, for all parts of the same rank are ceaselessly struggling with one another, from the lowest vital units, the biophors, up to the highest, the persons. ”

“ Or if we return to our conception of the development of stable from unstable conditions, we may consider all evolution of higher function as increased adaptation, that is, as harmony with an ever wider circle of nature, the reason appearing as corresponding concomitant knowledge of this widening circle, to which the function of the organism is adjusted. ”

“ The truth is far better expressed by the word design than by the chaos which is the alternative idea in the average mind. In these later years we have come to use a different word. We now conjure in such connection with the word adaptation. In every animal and every plant the trained eye sees unending examples of adaptation ”

“ But where a special adaptation in some one variety of the same class of constructions is needful to accomplish an object peculiar to a new variety, the necessary amount of power never fails to be exerted. ”

“ In other words, the development of the stem, or race, is, in accordance with the laws of heredity and adaptation, the cause of all the changes which appear in a condensed form in the evolution of the fœtus. ”

“ But the thorough adaptation of the scheme to man's nature is greatly more appreciable, and lies fully within the reach of observation and experience. And how thorough that adaptation is, all who have really looked at the matter ought to be competent to say. ”

“ We have now to note how with the adaptation goes selection. Set amid these physical and organic surroundings, some helpful, some harmful, the individual has to spend his life in selecting and rejecting what will further or hinder his natural development. He has to reject much, for there is much that will harm him. ”

“ We follow the cycle of his reflection beginning with "adaptation" as the great mystery to be solved; in the middle and sanguine period of life, "adaptation" is regarded as fully explained by natural selection; in the closing and conservative period of life "adaptation" is again regarded in some of its phases as entirely beyond human powers of interpretation, not only in the evolution of the mental and spiritual nature of man, but in such marvelous manifestations as the scales of butterflies or the wings of birds. ”

“ The evidence of design afforded by the marks of adaptation in works of human competence is null and void in the case of creation itself . . . Nature is full of adaptations; but these are valueless to us as traces of design, unless we know something of the rival adaptations among which an intelligent being might have chosen. ”

“ It is but seldom that we are in a condition, in any individual case of variation, to judge how much of it belongs to direct and how much to indirect adaptation. We are, on the whole, still too little acquainted with these exceedingly important226 and intricate relations, and can only assert, in a general way, that the transformation of organic forms is to be ascribed either to direct adaptation alone, or to indirect adaptation alone, or lastly, to the co-operation of both direct and indirect adaptation. ”

“ Adaptation, accordingly, is the consequence of all those material variations which are produced in the change of substance of the organism by the external conditions of existence, or by the influences of the surrounding external world.
How very much every organism is dependent upon the whole of its external surroundings, and changed by their alteration, is, in a general way, well known to every one. Only think how much the human power of action is dependent upon the temperature of the air, or how much the disposition of our minds depends upon the colour of the sky. ”

“ Adaptation to environment, therefore, is no indication or test of progress, or of what is good or right or true or beautiful. Everything that exists [27] is shown, by the mere fact of its existence, to be adapted to its environment. If, therefore, such adaptation is evidence that the thing is ideally satisfactory, it will follow that whatever is, is right. ”

“ The concepts, formulated by scientific thought, are conditioned by the necessity of an adaptation to the given. Thought—both in its syntheses as well as in its analyses—is a case of biological adaptation. ”

“ Every successful life means adaptation. "Every animal which can maintain its life is in adaptation to its environment." The bare formula of adaptation means nothing more than the fact of existence. "Adaptation to the conditions as such teaches us nothing as to the nature of the organism ”

“ For 'adapted' we had better read 'adaptable,' because a variation which does not answer, which cannot be made use of, or, still more notably, is a hindrance or disadvantage, does not become an adapted feature. There is often a confusion between adaptation as an accomplished fact, a feature, [Pg 85] or resultant condition, and adaptation as the mode of fitting the organism to, or making the best of, the prevailing surroundings or circumstances. ”

“ Such a view simply takes variation for granted, and stipulates it as a something a priori, without raising the further necessary question, why there should be any variations at all. Why, indeed, unless they are caused by external influences? Haeckel elucidated this by the conception of adaptation as explained in the foregoing pages.
These and kindred speculations have produced some rather curious discussions, which not infrequently end in conundrums. If we speak of a case of adaptation as a condition, a fact, we easily run the risk of getting into confusion about cause and effect. ”

“ Allowing for some original specific difference which we can hardly hope to discover, the changes that have taken place may be considered as the result of adaptation to those habits of life under which our species (now ranking zoologically as a Family) has been developed. And this adaptation I shall assume to have been brought about under conditions of natural selection: human races, as we now see them, being the survivors of many variations, more or less successful, and the others having been destroyed. ”

“ There is another aspect of the Adaptation problem to which I can only allude very briefly. May not our present ideas of the universality and precision of Adaptation be greatly exaggerated? The fit of organism to its environment is not after all so very close—a proposition unwelcome perhaps, but one which could be illustrated by very copious evidence. Natural Selection is stern, but she has her tolerant moods. ”

“ To effect a modification and new adaptation to changes in the environment the moments of the desultory type have no other mode of modification but by the slowly working factors of spontaneous variations and natural selection, a process of adaptation and useful modification prolonged throughout the course of generations. ”

“ But further, it would seem that the theory of evolution itself is not fairly represented by a view which emphasises the fact of adaptation to environment to the exclusion of that of variation. The latter is as necessary to progressive development as the former. ”

“ No response to external formative stimuli is in itself an example of adaptation, nor are processes dependent for their existence on any kind of condition or means to be called, simply because they are dependent on them, adaptations to those agents. ”

“ As far as I can gather, you are spontaneously following in the footsteps of Asa Gray, Nägeli, and some other botanists. But, it seems to me, this self-adaptation doctrine is equivalent to an a priori abandoning of all hope to obtain any naturalistic explanation of the phenomena in question. It simply refers the facts of adaptation immediately to some theory of design, and so brings us back again to Paley, Bell, and Chalmers. As when a child asks why a flower closes at night, and we answer him: Because God has made it so, my dear. C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la science. ”

“ Many naturalists, and especially many botanists, regard adaptation as something secondary, something given to species by the way, to improve the conditions of their existence, but not affecting their nature—comparable perhaps to the clothing worn by man to protect himself from cold ”

“ The old view of creation, which represented it as single and instantaneous, made each creature or each organ seem like a mere piece of molded mechanism, with no history, no puzzle, and no recognizable relation to its like elsewhere. But the new view, which represents creation as continuous, progressive, and regular, teaches lis to see in every species or every structure a result of previous causes, an adaptation to preexisting needs. ”

“ The general state has been one in which steady, slow progress has been achieved. Progress, like adaptation, is in pre-human evolution almost entirely the resultant of blind chance and blind necessity. ”

“ I allude to the complete mutuality of adaptation. For example; in human constructions a particular cause has a particular effect; a particular intention brings to pass a particular object; but this is all; we see no reciprocity. ”

“ It is adaptation as a process, rather than as a product, which perhaps interests him most, and emphasis needs to be placed upon this distinction. The problem of adaptation as a process may be a different and separate one from that of evolution, but individual [Pg 10] animals must have shown adjustive adaptation, or there could have been no perpetuation to continue the struggle of adjustment. ”

“ As has already been remarked in direct or actual adaptation, the transforming influence of the external cause affects the form of the organism itself, and does not only manifest itself in that of the descendants. ”

“ We may return to the consideration of pleasure and pain as connected with function in general, with a view to a solution, if possible, of the problem of its especial connection with the will. The brain may be defined, from the point of view of the theory of evolution, as the organ of centralization through which the unity of the organism is established, and the adaptation of parts or the development of special function becomes the adaptation or function of the whole. ”

“ The two aspects that difference and change resolve themselves into when expressed in an evolutionary formula are, in the inorganic world, equilibrium, and, in the organic world, adaptation. Of course, equilibrium also applies to the organic world, I merely put it this way for the purpose of clarity. Now, if we confine our attention to the world of animal forms, what we have expressed, primarily, is the fact of adaptation. ”

“ Adaptation.—Wherever we look in the world of organisms we find examples of adaptation; we see form suited for different kinds of motion, organs suited for their uses, constitution suited to circumstances in such external features as colouring and in such internal adjustments as the regulation of temperature; we find effective weapons and effective armour, flowers adapted to insect visitors and insect visitors adapted to flowers, one sex adapted in relation to the other, the mother adapted to bearing and rearing offspring, the embryo adapted to its pre-natal life ”

“ If cumulative adaptation is considered from the first point of view alone, and the transforming actions of the permanent external conditions of life are traced to those conditions solely, then the principal stress is laid unduly upon the external factor, and the necessary internal reaction of the organism is not taken into proper consideration. ”

“ It was found, in fact, that the idea of a reasonable adaptation of means to ends, useful as it had been in its proper sphere, could yet not be called universal, or applied to the order of Nature as a whole. ”

“ Thus, each life-habit has its advantages and its disadvantages; and we may conclude from this that a change from a long-lived to a short lived form, or the reverse, may take place in consequence of adaptation to changes in outer circumstances. ”