EpiGenetics: The Death of the Genetic Theory of Disease Transmission by Joel Wallach

Author:Joel Wallach [Wallach, Joel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SelectBooks, Inc.
Published: 2014-05-20T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Center for the Biology of Natural Systems

As Aristotle walked wondering through his great zoological garden, he became convinced that the infinite variety of life could be arranged in a continuous series in which each link would be almost indistinguishable from the next. In all respects, whether in structure, or mode of life, or reproduction and rearing, or sensation and feeling, there are minute gradations and progressions from the lowest organisms to the highest. At the bottom of the scale we can scarcely divide the living from the “dead”; “nature makes so gradual a transition from the inanimate to the animate kingdom that the boundary lines which separate them are indistinct and doubtful”; and perhaps a degree of life exists even in the inorganic. Again, many species cannot with certainty be called plants or animals. And as in these lower organisms it is almost impossible at times to assign them to their proper genus and species, so similar are they; so in every order of life the continuity of gradations and differences is as remarkable as the diversity of functions and forms. But in the midst of this bewildering richness of structures certain things stand out convincingly: that life has grown steadily in complexity and in power; that intelligence has progressed in correlation with complexity of structure and mobility of form; that there has been an increasing specialization of function, and a continuous centralization of physiological control.

—Will Durant

The Story of Philosophy:

The Lives and Opinions of the World’s Great Philosophers

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