The Order of Nature: An Essay

Excerpt from The Order of Nature an Essay : The study of adaptation, of which Lamarck is the great originator, has not yet won for itself a secure scientific foundation or led to clear and unequivocal interpretations of nature. Although the facts which this study presents are both universal and important, biologists have neither agreed upon their place in the theory of evolution nor discovered any principle by which they may be even unified. This failure of our modem science is not hard to understand, and may fairly be attributed, in part at least, to the lack of a systematic study of adaptability, which at bottom is a physical and chemical problem, uncomplicated by the riddle of life. —- ISBN: 9780674186958