PROVOCATIVE BIOLOGICAL THEORIES 87 



is as much in the dark as ever, as is also the philosophical 

 question of "Why" the laws are what they are. 



The Theory of Emergent Evolution. The preceding 

 theories are the work of laboratory men philosophizing 

 on their respective experimental findings. Now we come 

 to the work of a philosopher who attempts to bring order 

 out of chaos in the laboratory world. Only one who has 

 spent a lifetime in the study of fundamental problems 

 confronting man in all its modern aspects, philosophical, 

 psychological, and biological, and who at the same time 

 is familiar with laboratory findings, could hope to bring 

 about a valid synthesis and to work that synthesis out as 

 a unified whole. C. Lloyd Morgan, encouraged by Huxley 

 in the problem he had set for himself a half century ago, 

 has built up his theory of Emergent Evolution in such a 

 way that it has made converts of the greater part of the 

 foremost American biologists, and they look to this theory 

 as the solvent of both mechanistic and vitalistic diffi- 

 culties. 



Beginning with the organism, it was noted that a com- 

 bination of elements forming such organism not infre- 

 quently brought forth a totally different set of attributes 

 at different times under apparently the same external con- 

 ditions. In other words, something not previously known 

 to be there had emerged. The newly emerged attribute 

 was potentially there, of course, but Professor Morgan 

 (1923) set himself to explain how this emergence occurs. 



Two fundamental ideas have been emphasized for a 



