16 READINGS IN EVOLUTION, GENETICS, AND EUGENICS 



general ideas of evolution were comprehensive and summed up the 

 best features of all preceding writers, but he did not contribute any- 

 thing new to the pressing problem of the causes of evolution. 



Real progress was not to be made through further speculation. 

 What was most needed was facts, and it was the task of the naturalists 

 to furnish these. The earliest of the eighteenth-century naturalists 

 were still anticipators of Nature in that their theories outran their 

 facts. Of these the names of Bonnet and Oken are the best known. 



Bonnet (1720-93) was an evolutionist only in the sense that he 

 believed that the adult organism is present in the egg and evolves from 

 it by a process of unfolding or expansion. He was a zoological 

 observer of some note, however, and made some of the most important 

 contributions of his time to the general subject. He believed "that 

 the globe had been the scene of great revolutions, and that the chaos 

 described by Moses was the closing chapter of one of these; thus the 

 Creation described in Genesis may be only a resurrection of animals 

 previously existing." This theory admits of no progress and is 

 scarcely worthy of the name evolution. 



Oken (1776-1851) is known chiefly for his "Urschleim" doctrine 

 and his ideas of cells as vesicular units of life. According to him, 

 "Every organic thing has arisen out of slime and is nothing but slime 

 in various forms. This primitive slime originated in the sea from 

 inorganic matter." These ideas are purely speculative, but suggest 

 our modern ideas of protoplasm and cells. 



THE GREAT NATURALISTS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 



Three great names stand out above all the rest during this period: 

 those of Linnaeus, Buffon, and Erasmus Darwin. 



Linnaeus (1707-78) was the father of taxonomy. He contributed 

 facts rather than theories; he invented our present system of binomial 

 nomenclature of both animals and plants, and a great many of his 

 generic and specific names still persist. Unfortunately he was an 

 ardent advocate of the special-creation idea, holding that all of the 

 true species were created as they are known today, except that new 

 combinations may have arisen through hybridization or through 

 degeneration. His influence was great, but was reactionary and proved 

 a serious hindrance to the progress' of the evolution idea. 



Buffon (1707-88), born the same year as Linnaeus, has been 

 recognized as the father of the modern applied form of the evolution 

 idea. He attempted to explain particular cases on an evolutionary 



