100 YEARS AGO

Doubts about Darwinism. By a Semi-Darwinian. Pp. vi+115. (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1903.) Price 3s. 6d.

The preface of this work informs us that its author has endeavoured to conform strictly to the principle laid down by Lord Kelvin, as follows:— “If a probable solution, consistent with the ordinary course of nature, can be found, we must not invoke an abnormal act of Creative Power.” Unfortunately the “Semi-Darwinian's” practice is not in accord with his profession. Whenever he meets with a problem in evolution which appears to him inexplicable on the lines of natural selection, so far from seeking a “probable solution, consistent with the ordinary course of nature,” he resorts at once to the intervention, by a direct creative act, of “a Being possessing intelligence, intention and power.” This is bad science, and we much doubt whether it is good theology.

ALSO

Dr. Alcock, in his recent paper at the Royal Society, finds the rate of transmission of nerve impulses in man to be 66 metres per second. Sir Michael Foster, in his “Physiology” (1888, part i. p. 76), gives it as 33 metres per second. The difference is considerable, and places us in a dilemma :— (1) either Sir Michael Foster or Dr. Alcock is widely wrong; or (2) the rate of transmission has become greatly accelerated during the last fifteen years. Of the two, the latter seems to me the simpler explanation.

From Nature 3 December 1903.

50 YEARS AGO

One of the most fundamental problems, both for genetics and embryology, is that of whether the genes in the nuclei of differentiated tissues retain their full range of capacities, or whether some irreversible alteration affects them. The most direct method of investigating this is to develop techniques which permit the transplantation of nuclei from differentiated cells of one kind into enucleated cells of different developmental potentialities. Briggs and King have reported some attempts in this direction... We have carried out somewhat similar experiments with the eggs of the newt Triturus palmatus... A reasonably high proportion of injected eggs cleaved, but none of them succeeded in completing gastrulation, even when the injected nucleus came from a blastula.

From Nature 5 December 1953.