Front-Loaded Evolution, circa 1914

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What's new in Cosmic Ancestry gives us William Bateson, in the Presidential Address at the Australian meeting of the British Assiociation for the Advancement of Science, 1914:

We must begin seriously to consider whether the course of Evolution can at all reasonably be represented as an unpacking of an original complex which contained within itself the whole range of diversity which living things present.

Very interesting. It appears that he also didn't see any positive evidence for accumulations of random mutations constructing things.