Problems of Metaphysics

Cosmological-Theological Problem

Theory of Development

In our time, with the spread of a new biological perspective, a new epoch begins in the interpretation of the problem; the theory of development offers a way out of the aforementioned dilemma. It shapes the natural or spontaneous emergence of living beings in a manner that allows it to be represented meaningfully. As is well known, it posits that animals and plants did not suddenly arise from inorganic matter, fully formed, on a fateful day, but views them as the result of a long process of education. Not only individuals develop, but also species; from one or a few primary forms of simple structure, diverse and complex entities gradually arose through the combined action of external and internal causes. Since this view can lead to a long series of facts pointing to this process, it is the first hypothesis that meets the formal requirements of scientific explanation. The previous means of resolution, which derived the species of animals and plants from the action of an external shaping intellect, is thus definitively eliminated, not through refutation but as any outdated theory is dispensed with: by the presence of a legitimate successor—a better theory.

The first to undertake the scientific elaboration of this viewpoint was the French biologist Lamarck in his Philosophie Zoologique (1809). In a related direction moved the thoughts of contemporary German natural philosophers—Schelling, Oken, Goethe. Initial inquiries into these bold hypotheses were met with considerable skepticism; the groundwork needed to be better prepared. This preparation primarily came about through the advancement of geology and paleontology. Numerous extinct life forms, gradually revealed to the light of day, substantiated the assumption that the organic world underwent enormous changes over the centuries. For the old anthropomorphic explanatory model, every new fact posed a complication; all these facts compelled the assumption of great catastrophes with repeated destruction of the organic world and equally frequent creation, an assumption that, culminating in anthropomorphism, naturally led it ad absurdum: extinct forms now appeared as unfit and discarded attempts. Simultaneously, geology deprived this notion of its foundation; under the guidance of Lyell, it transitioned to the view that the earth owes its shape not so much to individual catastrophic events but rather to the accumulation over long geological periods of regular actions of the same forces that continue to act even now.

Thus, the time was prepared for the great revolution in biological perspectives associated with the name of Charles Darwin. The work in which he first articulated the new theory (On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, 1859) marks the beginning of a new era not only in biology: it, along with the subsequent work (The Descent of Man, 1871), significantly influenced all worldviews, particularly in the historical sciences, including politics and ethics. I will attempt to outline the main points.

Darwin's merit lies not in the initial conception of the idea of development in general, nor even in the discovery of the causes of species change (in his introductory historical outline, he freely and joyously acknowledges the contributions of others, demonstrating his scientific character worthy of respect), but rather in the execution and testing of these thoughts against the entire world of facts. The combination of his genius for synthesis, critical reflection, and remarkable persistence enabled him to form a theory, or rather a principle of investigation, from scattered thoughts and facts, the productivity of which, even in the hands of others, serves as the best proof of its significance.

The principle of change that Darwin presents as the true driving force in the development of life forms is the struggle for existence and the natural selection based on it.

The fundamental question at hand (setting aside the first emergence for now) is this: can new species arise from existing ones? The old biology answered this question negatively; experience shows that offspring are always similar to their producers. Certainly, there are small deviations in form, size, coloration, etc.; but these represent fluctuations around a known mean that remains unchanged: this is the species type. Species types are constant: this is the fundamental law of old biology.

Darwin's attention was early drawn to the area where these mentioned small deviations play a significant role: that is, the realm of domesticated animals and plants. In domesticated animals and cultivated plants, deviations are not only numerous and significant but even become established as permanent types, hybrids, or breeds; horses, cattle, sheep, pigs, dogs, roosters, pigeons, as well as cultivated plants, fruit trees, flowers, and grains are found in the most diverse and varying forms, all of which point back to a single wild ancestral form as their common progenitor. Even now, under the hands of gardeners and breeders, new forms and new varieties of flowers, pigeons, dogs, etc., arise daily. How does this happen? As is known, through selection. Among the available individuals, those possessing certain desirable qualities to a greater extent—such as distinct plumage, fine wool, meat, speed, or strength—are chosen for reproduction. Among the offspring, which inherit parental traits, selection is again made in the same direction, and thus, in a relatively short time, through the accumulation of small differences, significant changes in form are achieved, as exemplified by English cattle, sheep, and pigs compared to their ancestral form.

And so, says Darwin, nature acts similarly on a grand scale; she is the greatest master of selection. She selects individuals for the reproduction of species; of course, the selection is not carried out in a conscious manner, and the guiding principle is not external utility for humans, as in the domestic context, but inherent utility—namely, for the preservation of the individual and the species.

Natural selection occurs in the following manner. Life is a constant competition for living conditions among living beings. The number of creatures wishing to live and survive always exceeds the number of places at nature's table, a consequence of the lavish production of life embryos. The fecundity of species varies greatly; yet there is no species whose one pair, under favorable conditions, could not, within a few centuries, populate the earth with its offspring. If this result does not occur, the cause lies in the scarcity of living conditions; in the ensuing struggle, a vast majority perish prematurely. Furthermore, individuals of a given species engage in competition with not entirely equal strengths; there are various small deviations. Consequently, those individuals whose deviations confer advantages have the greatest chances of successfully enduring the struggle; superiority acts in a life-preserving manner. The attributes that establish such superiority can be quite varied: a bit more strength, speed, cleverness, an advantage in defensive or offensive weaponry, less visibility, or greater resilience to various forms of damage; each of these advantages can make its possessor stronger in battle, aid in flight, or render them resilient to cold and hunger, while the less endowed perish. Precisely because of this, those same individuals also have the greatest chances of leaving behind numerous offspring, and since the latter inherit their traits, what was initially an individual advantage gradually becomes a species property: individuals best adapted to the living conditions define the type of the species. One-sided excessive development of known properties, such as size, weaponry, or speed, cannot arise, as it would disrupt the overall balance and diminish viability; animal economy, akin to economic or political economy, must distribute its resources among various functions according to their importance: defense, mobility, nervous activity, etc.

Thus, improvement may indeed occur in the sense of immanent purposefulness, a gradual development, without the need to resort to an externally intervening intellect for its explanation. Concurrently with this improvement, there also occurs the differentiation of types. Through the division into heterogeneous types with different needs and various organizations, the possible maximum of life at any given time increases; a greater number of individuals of different species can find a place side by side than of the same species, as they can occupy available niches with greater conservation of space. Darwin demonstrates how this law operates in the plant world. Deviations from the mean form according to living conditions represent a preserving and thus species-forming advantage. This is associated with the disappearance of median forms; extremes do not face such sharp competition. Here, too, a state of equilibrium is gradually achieved, in which the possible maximum of life under a given set of living conditions is preserved.

Alongside the principle of natural selection, which Darwin prominently posits, he acknowledges, however, other principles that contribute to the first. For instance, the principle that Lamarck regards as the primary cause of deviations: changes in the relationships of the Earth's surface; by altering living conditions, these changes compel modifications in function, and the altered use of organs ultimately leads to changes in organization. Similarly, migrations induced by the struggle for existence drive expansion. The second principle that Darwin identifies as jointly operative in the formation of species is that of correlational changes. An organism exists as a singular entity that cannot be altered at any point without necessitating compensatory changes in other parts. Just as one cannot modify a side or angle of a triangle without altering the other sides and angles, in an organism, no part can be changed independently of the others. For example, the enhancement of a particular skeletal part necessitates corresponding changes in other parts, if only to restore external equilibrium. Certainly, relationships often exist here whose necessity is not entirely clear to us; for instance, the connection between the development of reproductive organs and concurrent changes in the general structure and external appearance.

Such would be the proposed beginnings of change according to the new theory. Does this resolve the problem of the emergence of species?

First and foremost, it is essential to point out a circumstance that does not seem to receive adequate attention: the initial premise of any development, without which the aforementioned principles would have no foundation for action, is undoubtedly the will to live, the will to struggle for existence in all beings involved in development. They do not passively undergo development; they are not mechanically molded into a new form by external causes, like pebbles in a stream. Rather, their own inner activity constitutes the absolute condition for the operation of natural selection. The struggle for existence is not imposed upon them from without; it is their own will, and without this will—the will to preserve and manifest one’s own life, and to produce and sustain offspring—there could be no question of a struggle for existence at all. Moreover, this will to live is the absolutely primary assumption; it cannot be derived from natural selection, for in that case one would have to assume that organic formations initially arose in which it did not yet exist, which were indifferent to the preservation of their own lives and the life of the species. It would then follow that later, due to random variation, individuals with the first inklings of such inclinations arose and became capable of displacing others who lacked such inclinations toward sustenance and reproduction.

A tendency to overlook this is evident among some Darwinists. A favored schematic representation of natural selection is the model of purely mechanical selection, as seen, for instance, in the adaptation of certain insects to their food sources, in coloration, shape, and patterns (so-called mimicry). In this scenario, insects undergo a transformation of species type purely passively; the most distinctly marked among them are consistently eliminated, resulting in the eventual predominance of uniformly colored insects. Similarly, it appears that beetles on Madeira have lost their wings: "the beetle that flew the least—whether because its wings were the least developed or because it was the laziest—had the greatest chances of surviving, as it was not blown into the sea, while those beetles that flew eagerly were the first to end up in the sea and perish" (The Origin of Species, German ed. p. 161). Since there can hardly be talk of a striving to avoid danger through passive sitting, the transformation of species type appears to occur through a process of purely passive eradication. However, this is evidently only one form of natural selection, and here the struggle for existence is a mere metaphor. It does not hold true everywhere; rather, as a general rule, the premise of preservation is a striving for conservation, whether in competition with rivals or not. To those who overlook this, one might remind them of Goethe’s words, which were not originally directed at them:

“There can be no stranger oversight Than to throw a feast for someone and not invite them.”

Of course, when speaking of will, one should not conceive of something supernatural, accidentally and mysteriously intervening in the physical world. According to the ontological reflections previously outlined, one could physically conceive the matter as follows: the will to live is the same as that which, viewed from the inside, presents itself to physics as a body organized in a certain manner. The physical fact denoted by the expression "will to live," the drive toward sustenance and reproduction, represents a tendency of the organic body to react to specific stimuli with movements and internal activities that serve to preserve the given system, the individual body, and the species. The task of depicting the nature of such a system in concreto is entrusted to physiologists; its reality is beyond doubt, manifesting tangibly before us in every grain, in every fertilized egg; it is nothing more than a concrete tendency toward development, i.e., a system of forces that, once certain external conditions are provided—such as warmth, moisture, etc.—express their activity in a predetermined direction. Whether it will ever be possible to uncover that unique combination of molecular forces contained within a grain of wheat or in a chicken’s egg remains unresolved. That this task has already been addressed, that in Darwin appeared what Haeckel refers to as the "Newton of the grass blade," which Kant denies at one point, is something that Darwin would certainly categorically reject.

And here arises a further question: can the immanent striving also, by itself, instigate development and the improvement of the species type, or does it always presuppose the struggle for existence and natural selection? I see no obstacle to positing the first of these assumptions. For, in the individual, nothing occurs along those lines, without a doubt. The internal disposition spontaneously determines development in a predetermined direction. An individual, beginning life in an unformed state, attains its complete form primarily through the manifestation of its powers and predispositions, to which it is led by its spontaneous impulse. This applies to both plant and animal functions; through exercise, the organs innate in the newborn achieve their completed formation. Moreover, there is no necessity for this exercise to be provoked by any external necessity; it emerges from within, often initially in the form of play, with circumstances merely acting as conditions that stimulate and provide the opportunity for the expression of powers. Should not the immanent striving in the development of a species, similar to what occurs in the development of an individual, be considered not simply a constant assumption of development, but also a sufficient condition in itself to initiate an evolving progression? Could the transition to a new, more perfected, and elevated formation occur even if the struggle for existence and natural selection did not come into play? I believe it could.

Fechner outlines a particular consideration. A rooster possesses spurs, a feathered crest, and a comb, while a hen lacks these traits. Darwin explains this phenomenon as follows: the organs, arising from random variation, granted their possessor superiority in the struggle; since for many generations the best-armed roosters consistently bested their opponents, a gradual eradication of the unarmed type occurred, leading to the fixation of the current form. Fechner suggests that if all purposeful adaptations of animals, including internal ones, were to be explained solely through the summation of random variations, one would soon find such an explanation bewildering. "I would rather think that when the organization was still more amenable to change, the mental impulse to fiercely attack an opponent, the anger that still prompts the spur into action, had the potential, through changes in the educational process, to induce these parts in ready roosters, if not to evoke them outright, at least to implant a predisposition toward them in the embryos, and thus into the offspring, regarding which I view the mental impulses merely as internal phenomena of the physical-organic."

Indeed, I find no obstacle to such a perspective. The impetus to exercise the inherent potentiality simultaneously acts as an impetus for the formation of shape; the individual acquires its expressed, ready form through exercise. If then the inheritance of acquired traits occurs—though such inheritance cannot be entirely obliterated, even if the acquired traits play a modest role in comparison to the inherited—if, therefore, the acquired parental disposition exerts a co-defining influence on the embryo, and thus on the development of its offspring, then it follows that the striving and manifestation of activity among all individuals over a long succession of generations would ultimately determine the species type; natural selection, in this case, would merely serve as a supportive and accelerating factor in this process.

This idea is not foreign to Darwin. He does not delve into the question of where individual variations arise, which serve as the starting point for natural selection. He sees no impediment to assuming that these variations do not occur absolutely randomly but are rather, in a sense, intentional; that is, they trend toward adaptation and the enhancement of the species type. Roosters have never shown a propensity to vary in such a way as to give rise to the rudiments of fins and hooves, which would then be destined to perish again in the struggle for existence as unfavorable variations. Conversely, variations occur in a direction that is purposeful. The “telos” of the individual, manifesting, without doubt, in all its activities, extends also to species types. Just as an egg or a young individual is predisposed to develop in a specific direction, guided by its own volition, so one might say of species types in statu nascendi: they are predisposed to develop in a particular direction and are directed by will. This will—unforeseen and guided by intentions, manifesting in impulses—operates in all individuals of a given species and would ultimately serve as the shaper of form. Just as the visage and overall disposition of an adult person constitute, in a certain sense, their own creation (the habitual gestures, mannerisms, and activities), so too would organic form universally represent, in a certain sense, the product of will.

Wundt elaborated on this idea (in System der Philosophie, pp. 325 and following). All organic activities are initially manifestations of will. In the earliest formations, plant functions are based on actions triggered by impulses; “the protozoon is a being that acts in all its parts according to the impulses of will: just as almost every part is equivalent to another, so in the mass of its body, it represents a single organism, determined by uniform acts of will.” However, since activity leaves behind a certain disposition and is fixed within the organism as habitus, it produces enduring and heritable structural changes. In this way, this activity becomes mechanized, freeing will for new, higher activity, similar to how even at the highest stage of development, initially voluntary actions transition into habitual and ultimately automatic behaviors. Thus, organization might be viewed as a sort of hardened activity of will. Certainly, these results did not exist in conception before intention; will, at any given moment, was directed solely toward this activity; yet actions transcended immediate goals—this relationship recurs even at the highest levels of development, in spiritual-historical life, where actions similarly regularly exceed the nearest desired objective. Thus arise customs, legal norms, enduring life forms of every kind; will is directed only at the immediate, present aim, but through exercise, it brings with it, as an unintended result, habit, predisposition, habitus, and ultimately a durable, transmissible form. Wundt coined the term “heterogony of ends” for this peculiar relationship.

In this sense, one can now designate the form of living beings as the result of purposeful activity, namely the purposeful activity of all individuals participating in development. At no point in development was there a conception of the future form, yet it is nonetheless the result of will and striving, and insofar as the aim of the latter has always been directed toward an objectively achieved common end, this aim is also subjectively desired.

What we assume in an indeterminate manner and schematically construct in the lower world emerges before us in the realm of spiritual history more clearly and fully. In the human world, will undoubtedly determines the form of the being; moreover, the form is presented here, at least in broad outlines, as a representation, as an aim: we refer to it as the ideal. To both the individual and the people, a more or less defined ideal of perfect formation is presented, and this ideal shapes the development of the being itself, and through education, influences the form of the offspring's life. Thus, the will itself is realized, embodying the idea of its essence.

Moreover, this perspective is not alien to Darwin. It can be found prefigured in the principle that plays such a significant role in his second major work (The Descent of Man), namely, in sexual selection. Here is juxtaposed a vast array of facts that lead to the view that the characteristics of species and the phenomena of the male are the result of choice exercised by the female among suitors. In the female, there is thus an unconscious presence of the ideal of the species, which manifests in her preference for males that most closely approach it. This very same idea may then also exert a formative influence on the formation of the embryo; again, it is left to physiologists to construct the “idea” physiologically as a specific arrangement of the nervous system, manifested in certain reactions against suitors, in specific impacts on the processes of embryonic life.

This shall suffice here to characterize the new perspective on the origin of the organic world. Numerous questions and difficulties are still associated with it. How can we conceive the emergence of the first living beings? How does inheritance occur? How can we explain the absence in paleontological formations of countless extinct intermediate forms that, by hypothesis, should have existed? Must we not allow, alongside gradual change through minute transitions, for transformations in the form of leaps to explain the significant morphological differences among various types? Such a change in schema resembling a leap could most coherently be envisaged as an occurrence of some deviation from the parental type amid extraordinary life conditions (the so-called heterogeneous generation). To delve further into these matters lies beyond my competence. Some mysteries will be resolved with time, while others may remain forever unsolvable. It is crucial not to perceive unresolved problems as refutations of the theory. The theory of evolution does not represent, nor likely ever will represent, a theory in the sense of being able to provide entirely satisfactory answers to all questions that may be raised regarding the formation of organic beings. An impeccable history of the development of the organic world on our planet will likely never exist; the evidence of evolution before us is far too scant. Understanding general principles and sketching a history of formation, where the guiding thread is also the empirical observation that the development of the individual is a condensed repetition of species development—this is approximately all that one can hope for here. However, the same is true in other domains; geology cannot explain every uplift and depression of the earth’s crust, nor can meteorology account for every fluctuation in the atmospheric air. Ultimately, the task of any science is infinite. Darwin not only did not conclude biology but rather set it enormous new tasks. Yet one can assert the following: the theory of evolution is indeed a theory in the sense that it has established a principle for subsequent investigation, leading to genuine scientific discoveries in this domain. This cannot be said of the old hypothesis that explained everything by the actions of reason, according to intentions imposed from without; it has never been anything but a means of escaping the predicament imposed by the hopeless dilemma mentioned above: the emergence through the random collision of atoms or the formation by the action of reason. What it truly achieved was the same as what words accomplish in other contexts: it soothed the initial astonishment and the first curiosity—an unenviable feat for a scientific hypothesis. The new hypothesis proves its worth precisely by posing new and ever-new questions and compelling their resolution. Alongside the ancient Xenophanes, Darwin might say:

“The gods have not shown all things to mortals from the beginning;
But they themselves seek everything and gradually find what is better.”