Spencer Heath Archive

Item 996

This material begins in a notebook with the numeral 12 at the top of the page, suggesting that 11 pages preceded this somewhere else

Fall 1939?

 

Original is in item 990.

 

 

 

In this view it seems that under an improving adaptive capacity on the part of its members there is a eugenic condition with a positive process for increasing the numbers of a population by postponement of death and hence of the need for so great frequency of birth. This may be called the phase of advancement and ascendency of the individuals in the population. But when this favorable phase passes, either by numbers advancing upon subsistence or other unfavorable conditions that must shorten the lives, then a dysgenic condition arises and a negative or reproductive process ensues. In this process the menace is met and the flow of vital energy maintained by the shortened lives resorting to a higher fecundity in proportion as they are individually cut down. This may be called the phase of degradation of the individuals, of their breaking up into briefer and inferior lives.

An increase in reproductivity does not therefore necessarily denote increasing population, for if it ensues upon that decrease in numbers which must otherwise result from any shortening of the span it may only prevent a decline. But if it goes no further than this there is indicated an evolutionary decline, for the greater frequency of replacement of the units of population cuts down the scope and amplitude of individual development and growth. And if the numbers should not increase, the expedient of multiplying numbers would fail to conserve the quantitative manifestation of life, for a given number of lives of any length, although they might be numerically replaced by them, could not possibly be quantitatively, much the less qualitatively, replaced by only an equal number of shortened lives. Moreover, without some numerical increase when the span is impaired, while there would be a greater frequency of the genetic process than before, there would be no numerical broadening of the field in which mutations and variations could occur and more adaptive individuals arise. But increased reproductivity does appear to increase numbers at a rate fully equal to that at which adversity shortens the span, thus providing not only a greater frequency but also a wider range within which it will be possible for favorable variation to arise and selection take place. There is the suggestion of a principle in the biological world, similar to the law of conservation of energy in the inorganic world, under which organic energy, when it meets obstacles to its extended flow, by its reproductive process disintegrates into larger numbers of smaller or briefer units and is thus transformed as an electric current is transformed, without being destroyed or dissipated into alien forms. And under this principle, conversely, those changes of circumstance or condition which facilitate the movement of a biological stream would tend to extend the duration of its units and, with its lessened need of reproductivity, to diminish the numbers of its units in a proportion relative to the lengthening of their lives.

By the operation of this assumed principle — this converse interrelationship between changes in the numbers of a population and in the duration of its lives — it seems possible to account for the evolution of the successful life forms and populations notwithstanding their inveterate tendency to diminish the nutritional and other resources of their environment while at the same time rapidly increasing their need for them.

 

/The material following this point seems to have been intended as an insert that grew in length and became the main stream of the paper, and an X mark suggests that the material originally to have followed was discarded. That brief material is the following:/

 

But it is not alone its own detrimental effects on its environment that each form of life must modify itself to withstand. Each species in a given habitat and each separated group, herd or tribe within the species press against the subsistence of the others. The rivalry for food becomes rivalry for life. Predatory forms and species are evolved; existence is at the cost of struggle; life is precarious to the conditions that surround it; pursuit of prey is as compulsive as the effort to escape; mere continuity is the goal and existence the prize. Throughout it all, the plant and animal forms under the compulsions and tyranny of environment are abjectly enslaved and as environment changes so must they change.

 

The multiplication of differing species, each taking its variant and specific structures while retaining and performing the same basic physiological functions that constitute the essential unity of life, established for each in addition to its physical also a biological environment to which the diverse types must make response and adaptation to preserve themselves. Just as primitive cells are conditioned by the presence and influence of others, so are the higher organisms in a state of mutual environment, and just as complex organisms result from their original components finding the presence and contacts of each other tolerable and advantageous, so do the biological groupings and social integrations result from the like advantages of organization and association. Biologists employ the term, symbiosis, to describe such association of organisms as yield mutual gain. The term has been extended to the association of cells in the higher organisms and it may well be applied to the biological and social groupings which in little or in great degree characterize /all/forms of life from the simplest to the most complex.

The relationships designated by the term symbiosis are unique in this: that these relationships are self-perpetuating, that they prepare the conditions for still further, higher and more complex relationships of the same kind. This gives them a reality, a potential universality under which we may well regard symbiosis as the essential principle of creation itself. This universal view of sym­biosis does not deny its opposite; parasitism is as evident as symbiosis. But it is self-limiting. The more successful and complete it is, the more the parasite is dependent upon the host it destroys and thus the relationship is dissolved. Disintegrative processes on every hand are apparent. But their effect is always that the structures involved are brought to a lower level of organization. They take place when conditions are critical, when integration is thwarted or blocked and the structures must revert to a condition of more numerous and less complex units having wider possibilities whence integration may again be resumed.

In all the fields of observation and induction, the disintegrative processes appear as limited and incidental and recognizable only by contrast with the ultimate and paramount trend. Disintegrative processes are not properly processes at all, for they are regressive. They inhibit functions and thus disintegrate structures. Nature’s record of cosmic and organic evolution reveals a story of progression towards complexity and diversity always dominant over its opposite. Moreover, regression depends always on previous progression as death depends on the stream of life that flowing in many directions is arrested but never wholly checked or reversed. The branches that fall from the tree of life only nourish its root and thus reappear in the strength of the central stem.

The general and prevailing cosmic phenomenon of integration into units composed of ever more complex systems of associative and functioning parts as it exhibits itself in the organic world is designated by the general term, symbiosis. When two or more living units assume a relationship that is so favorable to both that it tends to continue and to persist this is called disjunctive symbiosis so long as the several organisms maintain their separate identities without being structurally united or merged. When there is bodily union, the parts becoming a single structure, the association is called conjunctive symbiosis. Obviously, in the evolution of organisms the disjunctive must necessarily precede the conjunctive relationship. The mere proximity of two similar cells may be advantageous to both, but the symbiosis is more complete when the separate units become structurally differentiated and specialized to unlike functions reciprocally performed.

The symbiosis is most complete when in the higher organisms the components have become highly differentiated by groups into a congeries of special organs integrated in a single unitary structure. Just as similar cells enter into loose relationships in which they tend to perform reciprocal functions for each other and thereby increase their unlikeness in structure as well as in function until myriads are combined in well integrated unitary structures, so do these higher organisms themselves tend to associate by disjunctive symbiosis in family and blood-tie groups — flocks, herds, clans, tribes and finally, at the human level, in general societies based on community life as the necessary condition for exchanging highly specialized services. To be highly organized, the units in a symbiotic integration must be highly differentiated; therefore, the lower the organization the more similarity there is among its component units. The members of a family or social group practicing disjunctive symbiosis are vastly more similar to each other than are the conjunctive organs and parts that constitute the units in the social group. The social symbiosis does not extend beyond the disjunctive stage, but the further it develops the more specialized and unlike do its members become. Generally, the more primitive the society, the narrower the structural type, the more uniform the social bonds and behavior, the less differentiation of structure and conduct and the less division of labor and exchange. In the more developed societies the opposite condition obtains. Its members are more varied and individual in type, are more varied in function, practice more division of labor and mutual exchange and possess the maximum of individuality, freedom of conduct and spontaneous behavior. It may not be too much to say that the function of a society as regards its members is to mitigate the bonds of natural environment and liberate the individual in the direction of the unique self-realization attainment of which has been philosophy’s long-time dream.

 

The differentiation of the individual