Professor Steinmann has recently done so in Freiburg in Breisgau, on the occasion of an address as Rector of the University. What conclusions did he reach?
Steinmann declares it to be the primary task of post-Darwinian palaeontology "to arrange the fossil animal and plant-remains in the order of descent and thus to build up a truly natural, because historically demonstrable, classification of the animal and plant-world." At the outset it is to be noted that for various reasons palaeontology is unable to execute this momentous task in its full extent. The evidence of palaeontology is deficient, if for no other reason than that many animal organisms could not be preserved at all on account of their soft bodies; many animal groups have, nevertheless, received an unusual increase (mollusks, radiata, fish, saurians, vertebrates, and dendroid plants).
As regards the attempt made in the sixties to draw up lines of descent, Steinmann repudiates, without, of course, mentioning names, the family tree constructed by Haeckel and his associates as wholly hypothetical and hence unjustified; he rightly remarks that their method smacks of the closet. He finds fault with them chiefly because they predicated actuality of this imaginary family-tree and fancied that the historical research of the future would have but isolated facts to establish.
In speaking of the palaeontological research of the last few decades, Steinmann says: "In the light of recent research, fossil discoveries have frequently appeared less intelligible and more ambiguous than before, and in those cases in which an attempt has been made to bring the descent-system into agreement with the actual facts, the incongruity between the two has become obvious." Thus, for instance, the well-known archaeopteryx is not, as was maintained, a connecting link between reptile and bird, but a member of a blindly ending side branch. In fact palaeontological research has proven incapable of finding the transitions between different species, clearly determined by the theory. But the overwhelming abundance of matter called for new endeavors to master it. It was then further discovered—Steinmann finds an illustration of this fact in the echinodermata—that the well-known "fundamental law of biogenesis" of Haeckel can be accepted only in a very restricted sense and may even lead to conclusions absolutely false. We desire to remark here that a "fundamental principle" should never mislead; if it does so, it is not a fundamental principle.
It is of importance to know that according to palaeontological investigation, empiric systematizing and phylogenetic classification do not always coincide, as, for instance, in the case of the ammonites. Acording to palaeontological investigation the great systematic categories are only grades of organization. Hence present day systematizing is being more and more discarded, and the said categories—as indeed also the lesser groups of forms—must be of polyphyletic origin, that is, they must have descended from different primitive stocks. It may be asked: What bearing has this principle of multiple origins? For a long time reptiles were the predominating vertebrates; when mammals and birds appeared, numerous, varied and strange saurians inhabited land and sea; but "with the end of the chalk-period most saurians seem to have vanished suddenly from the scene, and soon we behold the mainlands and oceans inhabited by mammals of most diverse kinds." The saurians have become almost extinct and the mammal-tribe suddenly shows a most extraordinary variability and power of development. How is either phenomenon to be explained?
"The disappearance of a group of organisms has been preferably explained since the time of Darwin, by defeat in the struggle with superior competitors. If ever an explanation lacked pertinency, it does so in this case, in which the succumbing group is represented by gigantic and well preserved animal forms, widely distributed and accustomed to the most varied methods of nutrition, whereas the competitor appears in the form of small, harmless marsupials. It would be equivalent to a struggle between the elephant and the mouse."
We acknowledge with pleasure this clear rejection of Darwinism on the part of Steinmann.
Steinmann also rejects the natural extinction of those forms, perhaps from the weakness of old age; whether he is wholly warranted in doing so, seems somewhat doubtful. He tries to explain the phenomenon on the basis of the multiple origin of the mammals; and in fact there is already speculation regarding triple origin, viz: tambreets, marsupials, and the other mammals. Now if the latter also possessed a multiple origin, the problem of the extinction of the saurians would, according to Steinmann solve itself. One would not need to consider the number of extinct forms as large as is now done. However, he does not enter upon any closer consideration of this question. But he points out, for instance, that to-day the shells of mollusks (snails and conchylia) are regarded as structures that were acquired only in the course of time for the sake of protection, the disappearance of which, therefore, implied a disadvantage for the respective organisms. This transition would be something extraordinary—"but if on the contrary, one regards the shells as the necessary products of a special kind of assimilation and of the immoveableness of certain parts of the body, the gradual disappearance might well be considered a process which may take place in various animal-groups with a certain regularity in the course of the phyletic development." The snails devoid of shells, for instance, may be derived with certainty from those possessed of shells; this process has very probably also taken place in different genetic lines.
This view is well worth consideration; it stands in sharp opposition, in fundamental principles, to the Darwinian explanation. This calls for special emphasis here. How should one explain the origin of uncrusted mollusks from crusted ones through the struggle for existence, since in such a contest the latter must have had far greater prospect of survival than the former?
This view together with the principle of multiple origin opens up, according to Steinmann, "the prospect of an altered conception of the process of formation of the organic world." According to the new conception, the many extinct forms of antiquity are not, as Darwin supposed, "unsuccessful attempts and continued aberrations of nature"—how this reminds one of that old, naive, much-ridiculed idea that fossils were models that God had discarded as unserviceable—but would gain new life and assume hitherto unsuspected relationship to the present organic creation.