The Science and Philosophy of the Organism

by Hans Driesch

But these needs are not of the actual type, brought forth by a change of the functional state of the individual, as in the case of adaptations: they are of a somewhat mysterious nature. A glance at the theory of the origin of the movements which are called acts of volition in the human child may serve to elucidate what is meant.

Acts of volition are said thus to originate in random movements of the new-born infant: certain of these accidental motions which happen to relieve some pain or to afford some pleasure are “remembered,” and are used another time quite consciously to bring forth what is liked or to remove what is disliked. So much for the present on a very difficult subject, which will occupy us next year at much greater length. It is clear that at least three fundamental phenomena are concerned in this theory of the origin of acts of volition: the liking and disliking, the keeping in mind, and the volition itself. The real act of volition, indeed, is always based upon a connection of all these factors, these factors now being connected in such a way that even their kind of connection may be said to be a fourth fundamental principle. In order that the particular effect may be obtained which is wanted because it is liked, the possible ways leading to it, which appeared among the random movements in the very beginning, are now regarded as “means” and may now be said to be “used.” But that is as much as to say that the “means” are judged with respect to their usefulness for the actual purpose, and therefore judgment is the fourth foundation of the act of volition.

In fact, Pauly does not hesitate to attribute judgment, along with the other psychological elements, to the organisms whilst undergoing their transformation. There has been formed, for instance, by accidental variation some pigment which by its chemical nature brings the organism into a closer connection with the light of the medium; the individual likes that, keeps the pigment for itself and produces it again in the next generation; and indeed it will safeguard any sort of improvement which chance may effect in this primitive “eye.” Such a view is said to hold well with respect to the origin of every new organ. And this psychological argument is also said to afford the real explanation of adaptation proper. Adaptation also is regarded not as a truly primary faculty of the organism, but as a retention or provoking of metabolic states which occurred by accident originally and were then found to be useful; now they are reproduced either in every single case of individual morphogenesis, without regard to actual requirements, or else only in response to such: in the first case they are “inherited,” in the second they only occur as regulations. Thus the process of judgment, together with all the other elemental factors of psychical life concerned in it, has been made to account for adaptation proper. The whole theory has accordingly become very uniform and simple.

CRITICISM OF THE “INHERITANCE OF ACQUIRED CHARACTERS” ASSUMED BY LAMARCKISM

In addressing ourselves to the criticism of Neo-Lamarckism we shall neglect as far as possible all the different psychological principles concerned in it—which in any case would need rather a great amount of epistemological sifting—and shall keep to those hypothetic facts which are supposed to be such as may be actually observed in nature.

All of you know that the so-called inheritance of acquired characters lies at the root of Lamarckism; and from this hypothesis our critical analysis is to start, disregarding a larger or smaller number of psychological principles that are brought into the field.

The name of “acquired characters” may a priori be given to three different types of phenomena: firstly, variations including mutations; secondly, disease or injuries; and thirdly, the results of the actual process of adaptation of every kind.

In the first of these groups, the true problem of the inheritance of “acquired” characters appears only with certain restrictions. All variations and mutations are indeed “acquired” by one generation so far as the earlier generation did not possess them, but mutations, at least, cannot be said to be acquired by the actual adult personality: they are innate in it from its very beginning, and therefore may better be called congenital.[147] Congenital properties of the mutation type are, in fact, known to be inherited: their inheritance does not present any problem of its own, but is included in the changes of the hereditary condition to which they are due altogether.[148] All properties of the variation type, on the other hand, having been studied statistically, are known to be inherited, to a certain small extent, as we have seen already whilst studying Darwinism, though they are possibly always liable to reversion. Modern science, as we know,[149] regards them as due to changes of nutrition, in the most general meaning of the word. Under such a view variations might indeed be said to belong to the acquired group of organic specifications; their inheritance, as will be seen later on, would hardly be quite a pure instance of what we are searching for. In no case can true variations claim to be of great importance in problems of transformism.