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Updated: May 6, 2025
So, too, there are innumerable forces in nature which can excite in man no adaptive response, since there exist in man no brain patterns tuned to their waves, as in the case of certain ethereal and radioactive forces. On this mechanistic basis the emotions may be explained as activations of the entire motor mechanism for fighting, for escaping, for copulating.
In these mortal conflicts between invaders and host, therefore, the issue is often in doubt, and sometimes one and sometimes the other will emerge victorious. We must believe that a similar adaptive response exists in all parasitic infections the cycles varying according to the stages in the development of the invaders.
If we consider, for instance, the squirrels, one of the best-known groups of tree-living animals, we find them to be members of the great order of rodents, whose native habitat is the land surface. Though the squirrels have taken to the trees, there has been no adaptive change in the structure of their limbs and feet. The same may be said of almost all tree-dwellers except the lemurs and apes.
There are as many kinds of truth as there are human experiences and temperaments. How adaptive is animal life! It adds a new touch of interest to the forbidding cactus to know that the cactus wren builds her nest between its leaves. The spines probably serve to protect the bird from her enemies. But are they not also a menace to her and to her young?
This is probably the teleological meaning of sleep in its psychological aspects, for in it we abandon diurnal adaptive thinking and retire to a world of fancy, very often solving our problems by “sleeping over them.” The innate desire for rest and a fresh start is almost as fundamental a human craving as is the tendency to seek release in death.
The robin knows its enemies, and it is quite certain, I think, that the cuckoo is one of them. What a hustler the robin is! No wonder he gets on in the world. He is early, he is handy, he is adaptive, he is tenacious.
The possibility of a Lamarckian explanation he does not even mention. He would doubtless assume that the antlers of stags arose as a mutation, without explaining how they came to be affected by the testicular hormone, and that when they arose the stags found them convenient as fighting weapons. But the complicated adaptive relations are not to be disposed of by the simple word mutation.
He has not to confine himself to ready-made business concepts, of the ordinary kind, suits cut to an average model, which fit nobody because they almost fit everybody; but he has to work to measure, incessantly renew his plant, continually recreate his mind, and meet each new problem with a fresh adaptive effort.
We have here, then, in the position of the testes in Mammalia a condition which is not in the slightest degree 'adaptive' in the ordinary sense that is, fulfilling any special function or utility. The condition must be regarded as distinctly disadvantageous, since the organs are more exposed to injury, and the abdominal wall is weakened, as we know from the risk of scrotal hernia in man.
In one concrete case, that of Dunfermline, I have already submitted definite suggestions towards the realisation of the civic Utopia, and even architectural designs towards its execution, so that these may at any rate suffice to show how local study and adaptive design are needed for each individual city, indeed for every point of it.
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