Volume 16, Number 2 - Cantors Assembly

I Cuenot, L'Adaptation (Paris: Gaston Doin, 1925). pp. 135 ff. Gavin de Beer, Adaptation, Oxford
Biological Readers No. 22 (London: Oxford University Press, 1972).
8This concept of pre-adaptation doe-s not seem to be as popular as it used to be, to judge by the fact that no
standard modern textbook uses it. This may be because it apparently negates the role of natural selection (how
could an adaptation evolve if there were no environmental pressures favouring it?); or because it can be
included under the regular term ‘adaptation’. However, it seems to me to provide a vivid mental picture of one
of the stages of natural selection, and because of this has some usefulness. The term 'pre-adaptation' is one of
many expressions used in everyday speech (‘survival of the fittest’ is another) which can be objected to as being
meaningless or self-contradictory; but as long as we accept such terms as linguistic shorthand, such term do
have value in making an argument easier to present.
This story is included in: Mosbe Spiegel, trans., In This World and the Next: Selected Writings by I.L. Peretz
(N.Y.: Thomas Yoseloff, 1958) pp. 90-103.
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