Internal Factors in Evolution

INTERNAL FACTORS IN EVOLUTION. By Lancelot Law Whyte. New York, George Braziller, Inc., 1965. 125 pp. $4.00. Because the author is a well-known physicist and philosopher who has published a dozen other books, this little text has been well printed and bound by an eminent publisher. Yet the tone and content of the essay is reminiscent of those pathetic pamphlets, always, it seems, with gray or puce paper covers which are printed "at the author's expense" and can be found mouldering on the shelves of libraries and second hand book shops. It has the same air of great personal courage and insight, coupled with a pessimistic foreknowledge that the ideas presented will probably be misunderstood and mocked, if read at all. It is, I suppose, of some solace to one who is ignored, that he had the intelligence to predict this. As to the idea itself (coyly hidden except for hints and peeks until halfway through the book) it is simply that Darwinian natural selection should really be termed "external selection," and that it alone is not enough to explain evolution. In addition, we need a new factor called "internal selection," which is defined as: