Cilacap Education System

The Cell and Organic Evolution

Moebius and Gates are convinced that the single cell possesses memory, for having once encountered anything dangerous, it knows enough to avoid it when presented under similar circumstances. And having once found food in a certain place, it will afterwards make a business of looking for it in the same place.

And, finally, Verwörn and Binet have found in a single living cell manifestations of the emotions of surprise and fear and the rudiments of an ability to adapt means to an end.

Let us now consider pluricellular organisms and consider them particularly from the standpoint of organic evolution. The pluricellular organism is nothing more nor less than a later development, a confederated association of unicellular organisms. Mark the development of such an association.

Evolutionary Differentiations

Originally each separate cell performed all the functions of a separate life. The bonds that united it to its fellows were of the most transient character. Gradually the necessities of environment led to a more and more permanent grouping, until at last the bonds of union became indissoluble.

Meanwhile, the great laws of “adaptation” and “heredity,” the basic principles of evolution, have been steadily at work, and slowly there has come about a differentiation of cell function, an apportionment among the different cells of the different kinds of labor.

By: Warren Hilton

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