Influences on Lloyd Morgan

Abstract

The development of emergent evolution involved the combination of two ideas: the first held that evolution was a general phenomena, sweeping through all domains of nature, while the second stated that at specific points of development, new levels of organization appeared, featuring novel qualities. Most theoreticians of the Darwinian tradition had opted for a mode of evolution characterized by quantitative or at best semi-qualitative change. Qualitative novelty had been fully accepted only by Wallace, but he had postulated a supernatural source for it. Moreover, qualitative change in species production was associated with the saltationist and anti-Darwinian views of Argyll, Owen, and Mivart. Le Conte, who came closest to an emergentist theory with his distinction between planes of reality, nonetheless adopted a saltationist view of the transition from one plane to another. As a result, the recognition of qualitative novelty in the evolutionary process, essential to the development of emergent evolution, was regarded with suspicion: either it was seen as a concession to saltationism, or as a concession to supernaturalism, both of which were unacceptable from a strict Darwinian point of view.