HUMAN ORGANIC EVOLUTION: FACT OR FANCY? 



more important role. It seems well established now, that these 

 mechanisms do in fact produce new races, and eventually also 

 new species. No doubt other mechanisms are at work but, at 

 present, these seem to be the most important ones for the 

 understanding of man's development and the differentiation 

 that has taken place and continues to operate in the formation 

 of ever new races. 



The theory of evolution as sketched here then has 

 progressed a long way from that proposed by Darwin a 

 hundred years ago. This is not to suggest that Darwin was 

 wrong, but rather that the trend has been to confirm the rough 

 outlines that he drew in his Origin of Species. His greatest 

 theoretical contribution was in his recognition of the function 

 of natural selection, though he could not know what its 

 mechanisms actually were. The other factors which he thought 

 operative were: Inherited effects of use and disuse, inherited 

 direct action on the organism by external conditions, spon- 

 taneous variation. These have been proven to be not so wrong, 

 but ill-defined in terms of what is now known about the 

 genetic mechanisms of inheritance and the causes for variation. 



The burning question, however, remains. To what extent 

 does natural selection operate in man, when one considers the 

 fact that man is in a position to make choices, to distinguish 

 between good and evil, is capable of rational thought, and 

 able to symbolize. Some over-enthusiasts have suggested that 

 man is nothing but an ape with a special number of tricks 

 added on. But such famous evolutionists as Huxley and 

 Simpson24 disclaim that man is "nothing but." Rather, Simpson 

 states: "It is a fact that man is an animal, but it is not a 

 fact that he is nothing but an animal." And he goes on to list 

 what he considers the most important features: "... the inter- 

 related factors of intelligence, flexibility, individualization, and 

 socialization. ...in Man all four are carried to a degree in- 

 comparably greater than any other sort of animal. "^5 Further 

 he points out that man is exceptional in that he is the most 

 adaptive organism, one of the dominant forms of life which 

 has successfully displaced competing forms, and yet he is the 



-^ George Gaylord Simpson, The Meaning of Evolution, New Haven, 



1950. p. 283. 

 25 Op. ciU, p. 284. 



50 



