Author: Plate, L. [H.]
Title: Ueber Bedeutung und Tragweite des Darwin'schen Selectionsprincips.
Description: Leipzig, Wilhelm Engelmann, 1900. Large 8vo. 153 pp. Later burgundy buckram with gilt title on the spine. Original printed wrappers bound in. = A seminal work by the German zoologist and Darwinist Ludwig Hermann Plate (1862-1937), a "disciple of Ernst Haeckel. He wrote a "thorough and extensive defence" of Darwinism, but before Mendel's work had been assimilated in the modern synthesis ...Plate was a proponent of what he called old-Darwinism or orthoevolution, which included a supposedly directed form of natural selection, orthoselection. According to Plate, old-Darwinism follows the ideas of Charles Darwin but also integrates other mechanisms of evolution. He attempted to combine Lamarckism, natural selection and orthogenesis into a unified framework. Many of the factors of the modern synthesis of the early 20th century were first mentioned by Plate. He held that random mutation and natural selection have a major role in evolution. He also acknowledged population thinking. ... He differed from the modern synthesis in accepting non-Darwinian mechanisms of evolution such as the Lamarckian inheritance of acquired characteristics and orthogenesis. Plate coined the term orthoselection. This term was later used by modern synthesis theorists such as Julian Huxley and Bernard Rensch" (Wikipedia). An offprint from the Verhandlungen der deutchen Zoologischen Gesellschaft. Uncut. Small private owner's stamp of the eugenicist - a fancy word for racist - Samuel Jackson Holmes (1868-1964) on title and some pencil underlining. "Holmes was a vocal proponent of eugenics, particularly in reference to immigration to the United States from Mexico and parts of Asia. In 1925, at a major conference on race relations along the Pacific Coast at Stanford University, Holmes told an audience of social scientists and public officials that, "the Mexican problem is by far the greatest race problem which confronts the people of California at the present time. .. We are in a considerable amount of trouble before we see the amicable adjustment of the whole Mexican situation. The Mexican problem urgently needs to be studied very thoroughly." His later work advocated for the sterilization of citizens and immigrants who might diminish the genetic quality of America. He was one of the original incorporators of the Human Betterment Foundation. ... In his book Life and Morals, Holmes claimed that morals had a natural origin but, Darwinian evolution "does not logically compel me to adopt any one standard of conduct rather than another" (Wikipedia). Wrapper a bit creased, otherwise very good, clean copy. Cat. BM(NH) Suppl., p. 1014 (noted as "Wanting").

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