THE FITNESS OF THE ENVIRONMENT, AN IN- 

 QUIRY INTO THE BIOLOGICAL SIGNIFI- 

 CANCE OF THE PROPERTIES 

 OF MATTER 1 



PROFESSOR LAWRENCE J. HENDERSON 

 Harvard University 



Darwinian fitness is compounded of a mutual relation- 

 ship between the organism and the environment. Of this, 

 fitness of environment is quite as essential a component 

 as the fitness which arises in the process of organic evo- 

 lution; and in fundamental characteristics the actual 

 environment is the fittest possible abode of life. Such 

 is the thesis which I seek to establish. This is not a novel 

 hypothesis. In rudimentary form it has already a long 

 history behind it, and it was familiar doctrine in the early 

 nineteenth century. It presents itself anew as a result 

 of the recent growth of the science of physical chemistry. 



In the study of fitness it has been the habit of biolo- 

 gists since Darwin to consider only the adaptations of the 

 living organism to the environment. For them in fact 

 the environment, in its past, present, and future, has been 

 an independent variable, and it has not entered into any 

 of the modern speculations to consider if by chance the 

 material universe also may be subjected to laws which are 

 m the largest sense important in organic evolution. Yet 

 fitness there must be, in environment as well as in the 

 organism. How, for example, could man adapt his civi- 

 lization to water power if no water power existed within 

 his reach? 



At first sight it may well seem that inquiry into such 



'Read at the Symposium on Adaptation at the meeting of the American 

 Society of Naturalists, Cleveland, January 2, 1913. 



1 This paper consists chiefly of excerpts from a book of the same title soon 

 to be published by the Macmillan Company. 



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