Abstract
Butler’s satiric comment encapsulates the reductionistic spirit that made Darwinism objectionable to many in his own day, but has fared ever better as a prophetic characterization of the explanatory tenor of modern evolutionary biology. It preceded August Weismann’s doctrine of the continuity of the germ plasm advanced in his inaugural lecture in 1883 by some five years. As Weismann’s views became one of the anchor points of the modern ‘neo-Darwinian’ theory of evolution, they led to many modern recapitulations and elaborations of Butler’s epigram. Thus Richard Dawkins writes (1976, p. 21):
“A hen is but an egg’s way of making another egg.”
Samuel Butler
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Wimsatt, W.C. (1982). Reductionistic Research Strategies and Their Biases in the Units of Selection Controversy. In: Saarinen, E. (eds) Conceptual Issues in Ecology. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-7796-9_6
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