Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1914-08-15
HASANEW THEORY
As TO EVOLUTION
British Scientist Says Change
May Be From Complex
to Simple.
HITS TEACHING OF DARWIN
Prof. William Bateson in Address in
Australia Gives His Hear
ers Shock.

Melbourne. Aug. 15.-The scientific
world today received its perennial
shock when Professor William Bate
son, as president OF the British Assoc
citation for the Advancement of Sci
ence, declared, in an intensely inter
esting address before that organiza-
tion at its first meeting in Australia,
that the old view of variation in forms
of life proceeding from the simple to
the complex might be completely turn
ed about. The true process of evolu-
tiou might be from the complex to the
simple.
II will be remembered that at last
years meeting of this famous organi-
zation in Birmingham, Sir Oliver Lodge
startled the scientific world with the
bold Introduction of a proposal for
closer Investigation into the life after
death theory. Today, Professor Bate
son. with perhaps less pronounced
opinions, urged his fellow scientists to
open their minds to the possibility
that evolution came largely 'by loss"
rather than by addition.
Evolved BY Loss.
From a lay standpoint his observa-
lows: In contradiction of Darwin and
of most scientists who have accepted
the belief that contemporary varia-
tions in the forms of life have come
about wholly by crossing, and thus by
the addition of new factors of life. it
is probable the variations are due TO
the loss or suppression OF factors
present in the original species.
\ pointed sentence was this re-
mark: Il have confidence that the
artistic gifts of mankind will prove
70 be due not TO something added to
the makeup of the ordinary man, but
to the absence of factors which in the
normal person inherit the develop
ment of these gifts
Professor Bateson's subject was
'Heredity" OF this he has made a
particular study for many years. He
viii be remembered b. some il the
United States as Siminian lecturer at
Yale university seven years ago. The
stand he took III mis- address today
was not that of n propoUnder of
theory The time for the development
of theories of the origin of life had
not yet come. he said: the student of
seed-pa and the incubator
But in the face of what had been
learned since the time of Mendel. who
was the first to apply the process of
real analysis TO the offspring Of plants
and animals, the scope claimed for
natural selection, as determining fac
tor in the fxity OF the species, as pro
pounded by Darwin, must be great
y reduced"
The doctrine Of the survival of the
fttest." he said. us uadeniable so long
as it is applied TO the organism as .
whole, DUt u attempt h. this principle
t hnG value in ali dehniteness of
parts and functions, and in the name
of science 10 see fitness everywhere is
mere eighteenth-century optimism.
Ye; II was in application TO the parts.
to the details of specific difference. 10
the spots on the peacock'S tail, to the
ccloriag Of the orchid flower. and hosts
OF such examples, tina; the potency OF
natural selection was urged with
atronges, emphasis Shorn of these
pretensions the doctrine of the sur
vival o. iAgcfeG races is truism.
heipir vcttv &; al to account for
the divers s2e ies
Unls6 &c Gos Ccnstrictor.
AN my reading life says DR..
r-.t- r.4a...s. - DksI;.niror o.,I1,