l6 READINGS IN EVOLUTION, GENETICS, AND EUGENICS 



g eneral ideas of evolution were comprehensive and summpd np the 

 b est features^ of all preceding writers, but he did not contribute an}'- 

 thing new to the pressing probl em of the causes of evolutio n. 



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. Thg ^earl iest of the eighteenth-century naturalists 

 we re still j j iticipators of Nature in that their theories ou tran their 

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



BoiiM j (1720-Q3 ) was an evolutionist only in the sense that he 

 belisYgd jhat 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. 



/ Ohp.n (Tyyf>-T SE;i) js known chiefly for his "Urschleim" do ctrin e 

 an d 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^REAT NATURALISTS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 



Three^g reat na mes st and out above all the rest during this pe riod : 

 th ose of Linna eus,~B'uffon, an d Erasmus Darwi n. 



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

 f acts rath er tJian theorie s: he i nvented our present s^ ^st em of bi nomial 

 nor nenclature of both anima ls and p lants, and a great many of his 

 generic and specific names still persist. Unfortunately he was an 

 ardent advnrai f ; nf \\\e. sporial-creation idea, holding that all of the 

 true sp ecies we re^creatgd J^s th'^}'- nre kn23vn_j_';;'df<3'', except that new 

 combinat ions may h ave__a ji^pTi t hrough h yb ridiznTf pn or through 

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

 a serious hindrance to the progress of the evolution idea. 



Buff on (i.7.^ ;:=83), b orn the same year as Linnaeus, has i)een 

 recognized as t he father of the m oder n applied form pi the e vohjtion 

 idea. He^atTempted to explain particular cases on an evolutionary 



