Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited?

Changes gained through habit or training lie at the centre of W. P. Ball's examination of heredity. He challenges the view, held by Spencer and Darwin, that the effects of using or neglecting an organ can pass to later generations. His essay distinguishes improvements within an individual's lifetime from inherited traits, asking what evidence can establish a connection between them.

Ball works through examples involving animal structure, eyesight, the hands of infants and the thickening of skin. He repeatedly considers natural selection as an alternative explanation for effects attributed to inherited habit. The opening also links biological theories to social policy and uses period assumptions about human groups, placing the argument firmly in the history of science. For readers interested in how scientific claims are tested, the book offers a sustained exercise in separating observation from inference, alongside a record of disagreements within evolutionary thought.