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Professor Haeckel has invented a new and convenient name "Dysteleology," for the study of the "purposelessnesses" which are observable in living organisms such as the multitudinous cases of rudimentary and apparently useless structures. I confess, however, that it has often appeared to me that the facts of Dysteleology cut two ways.
At least, it would appear that in Darwinian evolution we may have a theory that accords with if it does not explain the principal facts, and a teleology that is free from the common objections. But is it a teleology, or rather to use the new-fangled term a dysteleology? That depends upon how it is held.
Professor Haeckel has invented a new and convenient name, "Dysteleology," for the study of the "purposelessnesses" which are observable in living organisms such as the multitudinous cases of rudimentary and apparently useless structures. I confess, however, that it has often appeared to me that the facts of Dysteleology cut two ways.
All the interesting phenomena that we meet in ontogeny and paleontology, comparative anatomy and dysteleology, the distribution and habits of organisms all the important general laws that we abstract from the phenomena of these sciences, and combine in harmonious unity are the broad bases of our great biological induction.
It is an indispensable foundation of the theory of evolution. Of the many and weighty arguments for the truth of this conception of evolution I will for the moment merely point to the invaluable evidence of dysteleology, the science of rudimentary organs.
I have reprinted the considerations about the reconciliation of Teleology with Morphology, about "Dysteleology," and about the struggle for existence within the organism, because it has happened to me to be charged with overlooking them. By A. R. Wallace. 1870. 2. The Genesis of Species. By St. George Mivart, F.R.S. Second Edition. 1871. 3. Darwin's Descent of Man.
By the time I was fully convinced that teleology was as dead as the Ptolemaic theory, and that 'wings were not planned for flight, but that flight has produced wings', hence that Haeckel's gospel of 'Dysteleology' or purposelessness in Nature satisfactorily explained creation a great wave of oriental theosophy overflowed us; and a revival of Buddhism invited me to seek Nirvana as the final beatitude, where
Haeckel went so far as to propose to describe by the term "dysteleology" that part of the science of Biology which collected the facts that gave direct contradiction to the idea of beneficial "purposive arrangement."
Yet all the treatises on natural theology that have ever been written have barely succeeded in establishing a low degree of scientific probability for this belief. In spite of the eight Bridgewater Treatises, and the "Ninth" beside, dysteleology still holds full half the field as against teleology.
He is clearly a theistic Darwinian without misgiving, and the arguments for that hypothesis and for its religious aspects obtain from him their most favorable presentation, while he combats the dysteleology of Hackel, Buchner, etc., not, however, with any remarkable strength. Dr.
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