214 NATURAL SCIENCE [March 



teleological explanation the ideal of human science, even though our science should not 

 now be (nor ever be) in the position to realise it in practice. But my article manifestly 

 attempted nothing so gigantic, though I trust it did not exhibit the deplorable blind- 

 ness to the complexity and scope of tlie questions at issue which appears in Mr Coste's 

 criticism. 



In addition, however, to condemning me for not imtting into my discussion what 

 it would have been mere folly to include in it, ^Ir Coste accuses me of various con- 

 fusions of language and so charges me with ' metaphysical sophisms ' and ' fallacious 

 ti'iHing with words.' This is, of course, a particularly discouraging reply to an honest 

 effort to insist on the distinction of ideas ordinarily confounded. It can, however, I 

 think, be easily shown that in this case the confusion of terms (and of thoughts) is Sir 

 Coste's and not mine. I am said to ' ' write as tliough evolutionism and Darwinism 

 were the same thing." I challenge Mr Coste to find a passage in which I do anything 

 of the sort ; while I could show him many where the two are implicitly and exi>licitly 

 distinguished (c/;. especially the first and last paragraphs of my article). Such a con- 

 fusion would indeed be strange in one who has long been conscious of being an evolu- 

 tionist without thinking Darwinism the Alpha and Omega of Evolution. 



Mr Coste, on the other hand, clearly succumbs to the popular fallacy of taking the 

 most prominent species as coextensive with the genus in at least two passages. (1) 

 After (quoting a passage in which I had spoken of " Darwinism qua Darwinism,' lie pro- 

 ceeds to say (p. 413) that if I had " possessed any acquaintance with Weismann's work," 

 &c. This surely involves a fusion of Darwinism with Weismannism, which, in spite of 

 the dependence of Weismann on Darwin, must be regarded as a very serious confusion. 

 (2) A little later Mr Coste complains that "metaphysicians who want to write about 

 evolution will not take the trouble to find out what evolutionism connotes at the pre- 

 sent day." Now I was writing about Darwinism, which (in my ignorance of "what 

 evolutionism connotes at the present day" !) I had imagined to be only one out of the 

 many possible theories about Evolution ; whereas Mr Coste here equates Darwinism 

 with evolutionism in a manner which seems to me destructive of all clear thinking. 

 But perhaps ' wliat evolutionism connotes ' in Mr Coste's eyes is equivalent to ' what it 

 is popularly and inaccurately confused with.' 



Again, I am accused of paltering with a double sense of 'adaptation.' The word 

 apparently = 'inherited structural adaptations' (p. 411). Well, if that were true, one 

 could only say that (like the ' elliptical ' sense of denial of design mentioned on p. 410) 

 it is not a good specimen of scientific precision of language. But in reality my ' fallacy ' 

 consisted only in proving that in a general sense the possibility of ' active adapting ' 

 [I. c, p. 869) could not be disputed. This was established by adducing the active 

 adaptings of conscious beings, and whether these result in inherited structural adapta- 

 tions or not is totally irrelevant. That is, Mr Coste fails to see that the point at issue is 

 whether 'adaptation' is wholly mechanical or also purposive, and confuses it with the 

 wholly irrelevant question whether purposive adaptations are inherited or only func- 

 tional ! If any one mixes up distinct senses of words, it is not myself. 



Lastly, I must allude to a very puzzling exhibition of Mr Coste's logic. On p. 410 

 he seems to consider it absurd that I should have been at pains to show that a com- 

 pletely logical working-out of Darwinian assumptions might deny the efficacy of intelli- 

 gence as such, and reduce all animals to automata. This simply shows his ignorance of 

 the length to which materialistic explanation can go and has gone, but does not make 

 it less necessary for me to j^rove at the outset that ''intelligence, i.e., action directed 

 to a purpose, has been at work." Which, accordingly, I did (Z. c, p. 871). Yet on the 

 next page I am told that I have ' not even attempted ' the proof of this proposition ! 

 And a little later we hear that ' we all know ' that this intelligent adajitation is a fact 

 (in which case surely it would have been superfluous to ' attempt ' a proof !). 



These specimens of Mr Coste's ratiocination go far to re-establish my conviction that 

 there is still room for philosophic criticism in science, even more than his admission 

 (p. 412-3) of the value and novelty of my contention as to the methodological character 

 of the Darwinian assumptions. I had, indeed, anticipated that this would prove to be 

 the most interesting part of my argument for the biologist ; but even here Mr Coste 

 fails to state its full import, which lies in the inevitable corollary (/. c., p. 880-1) that the 

 real inconsistency is not between Darwinism and design, still less between teleology 

 and the facts of organic history, but between design and an abstract application of the 

 calculus of i)robabilities. F. C. S. Schillek. 



MATHEMATICAL BIOLOGY 



The mathematical treatment of biological problems involves a certain danger ; we have 

 seen that about a year ago (see Nature, vol. Iv. ]>. 155), and we see it again in the case 

 of Mr Vernon's theory of " Reproductive Divergence." 



