CHAPTER TEN
The Integration and Adaptation
(Structure and Function) in
Ontogeny and Phylogeny:
Historical Constraints and the
Evolution of DevelopmentConstraint As a Positive Concept
TWO KINDS OF POSITIVITYAn etymological introduction
After Job has endured, and countered with remarkable success in his straightened
circumstance, three cycles of argument from each of his three supposed friends and
comforters, a fourth participant in this moral and intellectual debate for the ages—the
problem of theodicy, or why should the righteous suffer as much bodily torment and
material deprivation as the unjust? —steps forward to make his pitch. Elihu, the son
of Barachel the Buzite, offers an only slightly more comforting argument in admitting
that Job's suffering may well be undeserved, but urging that Job view his distress as a
salutary discipline leading to reconciliation with God (no physical relief, to be sure,
but a damned sight more encouraging than the previous insistence of Zophar, Eliphaz
and Bildad that Job must have sinned if God had so punished him).
Elihu states that he had hesitated to intervene previously because his youth
demanded forbearance. (Modern Biblical scholars, on the other hand, regard Elihu's
argument as so inconsistent with the rest of the book, in both style and content, that
these late chapters probably represent a subsequent interpolation, thus explaining the
curious fact that Elihu's name appears nowhere else in the entire book. Elihu probably
"waited" his turn until the end because he didn't exist in the original story.) But he
will now speak because he must. An internal force demands that he remain silent no
longer: "I also will shew mine opinion. For I am full of matter; the spirit within me
constraineth me. Behold my belly is as wine which hath no vent; it is ready to burst"
(Job 32:17- 1 9).
I choose this unconventional mode of beginning a scientific discussion with
Biblical exegesis because this chapter (and a central theme in the logic of this entire
book) rests upon a particular definition and construction of the concept of
constraint—a meaning easily defended both terminologically and factually,
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