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Home > Catholic Encyclopedia > A > Atavism


ATAVISM

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(Latin, atavus, a great-grandfather's grandfather, an ancestor).

Duchesne introduced the word to designate those cases in which species revert
spontaneously to what are presumably long-lost characters. Atavism and reversion
are used by most authors in the same sense.

I. The term atavism is employed to express the reappearance of characters,
physical or psychical, in the individual, or in the race, which are supposed to
have been possessed at one time by remote ancestors. Very often these suddenly
reappearing characters are of the monstrous type, e.g. the three-toed horse. The
appearance of such a monster is looked upon as a harking back to Tertiary times,
when the ancestor of the modern horse possessed three toes. The threetoed
condition of the monstrous horse is spoken of as atavistic. The employment of
the term in connection with teratology is often abused; for many cases of
so-called atavistic monstrosities have little to do with lost characters, e.g.
the possession by man of supernumerary fingers and toes.

II. Atavism is also used to express the tendency to revert to one of the parent
varieties or species in the case of a hybrid; this is the atavism of breeders.
Crossed breeds of sheep, for example, show a constant tendency to reversion to
either one of the original breeds from which the cross was formed. De Vries
distinguishes this kind of atavism as vicinism (Latin vicinus, neighbour), and
says that it "indicates the sporting of a variety under the influence of others
in the vicinity."



III. Atavism is employed by a certain school of evolutionistic psychologists to
express traits in the individual, especially the child, that are assumed to be,
as it were, reminiscences of past conditions of the human race or its
progenitors. A child by its untruthfulness simply gives expression to a state
that long since was normal to mankind. Also in the child's fondness for
splashing about in water is exhibited a recrudescence of a habit that was quite
natural to its aquatic ancestors; this latter is called water-atavism. Many such
atavisms are distinguished, but it hardly needs to be said that they are in many
instances highly fantastic. Atavism is commonly supposed to be a proof of the
evolution of plants and animals, including man. Characters that were normal to
some remote ancestor after having latent for thousands of generations suddenly
reappear, thus give a clue to those sources to which the present living forms
are to be traced back. That a character may lie dormant for several generations
and then reappear, admits of no doubt; even ordinary observation tell us that a
grandchild may resemble its grandparent more than either of its immediate
parents. But the sudden appearance of a tailed man, for instance, cannot be said
to prove the descent of man from tailed forms. Granting that man has descended
from such ancestors, the phenomenon is more intelligible than it would be were
no such connection admitted. But the proving force of atavism is not direct,
because teratological phenomena are so difficult to interpret, and admit of
several explanations. Darwin, pointing to the large canine teeth possessed by
some men as a case of atavism, remarks: "He who rejects with scorn the belief
that the shape of his canines, and their occasional great development in other
men, are due to our early forefathers having been provided with these formidable
weapons, will probably reveal, by sneering, the line of his own descent".

Atavism is appealed to by modern criminologists to explain certain moral
aberrations, that are looked upon as having been at one time normal to the race.
Accepting the doctrine that man has by low progress, come up to his present
civilized state from brute conditions, all that is brutish in the conduct of
criminals (also of the insane), is explained by atavism. According to this
theory degeneracy is a case of atavism. The explanation offered for the sudden
reappearance of remote ancestral characters is so intimately connected with the
whole system of heredity that it is impossible to do more than indicate that
most writers on heredity seek this explanation in the transmission from
generation to generation of unmodified heredity-bearing parts, gemmules
(Darwin); pangenes (De Vries); determinants (Weisman). (See HEREDITY.)




ABOUT THIS PAGE

APA citation. Herrick, J. (1907). Atavism. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New
York: Robert Appleton Company. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02032c.htm

MLA citation. Herrick, Joseph. "Atavism." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 2. New
York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907.
<http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02032c.htm>.

Transcription. This article was transcribed for New Advent by Joseph P. Thomas.

Ecclesiastical approbation. Nihil Obstat. 1907. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor.
Imprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York.

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