The Fitness of the Environment 



BY LAWRENCE J. HENDERSON 



Assistant Professor of Biological Chemistry in Harvard University 

 Cloth, ismo, $f.jo net 



"Darwinian fitness is compounded of a mutual relation- 

 ship between the organism and the environment. Of this, 

 fitness of environment is quite as essential a component as 

 the fitness which arises in the process of organic evolution; 

 and in fundamental characteristics the actual environment is 

 the fittest possible abode of life." Such is the thesis which 

 this work seeks to establish through discussions of the physi- 

 cal and chemical characteristics of life and cosmogony, and 

 through critical study of the properties of matter in their 

 biological relations. 



Water and carbonic acid are shown to be the primary 

 constituents of the environment. Analysis shows their prop- 

 erties, together with those of the component elements, hy- 

 drogen, oxygen, and carbon, to make up a series of maxima, 

 among all known compounds and elements, so numerous, so 

 varied, and so highly favorable, to the organic mechanism 

 that the fitness of the world for life assumes an importance 

 not less than the fitness which has been won by adaptation 

 in the course of organic evolution. 



A final chapter discusses the bearing of these conclusions 

 upon theories of organic evolution, modern vitalism, includ- 

 ing the views of M. Bergson, and the old natural theology, 

 and seeks to harmonize implications of design with the 

 mechanistic view of nature. 



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