No single idea in human history, no material | invention, no discovery of new worlds, has ever had | so deep-seated and far-reaching effects upon human | beliefs, and practices as the mighty concept to which | we have applied the term "evolution." It is the magic | touchstone that has converted unorganised knowledge | into science. It is the Ariadne's clue that has led | us finally out of the labyrinth of the Dark Ages into | the Dawn of the Age of Reason. It is the re-born | Prometheus who steals for us new fires from heaven. | It is the faithful guide who has set our feet upon | virgin tracks, the open sesame to forbidden doors, | the stern monitor who bids us live as men lest the | past, which is hell, be reborn in our midst.
| If, as some who do not understand, and, not
| understanding, mistrust it, would have, it robs us of
| the romance of magic and the supernatural,
|
it gives us
| in their place a grander romance of reality. For from
| reducing the universe to a dead mechanism, it has
| transformed it from a pointless fairy tale into a
| sublime epic.
|
Like all great ideas, Evolution has been, and is, | much maligned by its foes, and perhaps even more | abused by its badly informed friends. It is | laughable, and pitiable, if not tragic, to listen to | a would-be champion of modern science, and an | ordinary "bone-head," in controversy.
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That such naive notions of the scheme of animal | evolution are not confined entirely to bone-head | circles is evidenced by verses like these:
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Of course, there is no more possibility of the | human family having descended from wolves than of a | younger brother being the son of the elder brother, | for such, roughly speaking, is the relationship that | exists.
|Turning from our misguided friends to our | opponents, we find that, perhaps, the most common | objection is that "Darwin is discredited by modern | science." And, really, if it were so, we have our | friends to thank again, for using the term | "Darwinism" as though it meant "Evolution."
|Evolution was an accepted fact before Darwin's | epoch-making discoveries. Evolution of the earth, and | the whole solar system, from a mass of whirling gas, | evolution of continents and oceans, mountains, plain | and table-land from a world without form, were | generally accepted, and the processes understood. The | fact that forms of life had evolved from simpler, | pre-existing forms, was also largely accepted. But | the puzzle was, how did this come about? Even as far | back as the time of the Greek philosophers | intelligent men recognised that complex living | species probably evolved from germs, just as | individual animals grow into being from minute | embryos. St Augustine, the famous early Christian | philosopher adopted the same view, but, so far as | English thought is concerned, we have to blame poor | old blind Milton from the belief that held sway from | his day until the dawn of the scientific era, viz: | that all animal and plant species exist today in | exactly the same form as they left the hands of the | Creator six thousand years ago.
|In the stormy times of the French Revolution lived | a man of science named La Marck. He was one of the | pioneers of evolution in the modern world. Buffon, | Erasumus Darwin (the father of the great Charles | Darwin), and Goethe, also rank among the pioneers, | but they merely expressed a belief in evolution, | based upon the physiological similarity, and | gradually increasing complexity of animal forms, from | the lowest to the highest. But La Marck hit upon a | theory which seemed to show HOW these gradual changes | could come about. His was the theory of "use and | disuse," which stated that an animal that used a | certain organ would develop it largely, and pass on | the development to its offspring. Similarly, an | unused organ would gradually vanish. Nobody took much | notice of La Marck's theory, at the time, but it was | revived at a later date by pre-Darwinian scientists, | and finally rejected, on the ground that, | unfortunately, no evidence could be found in support | of the view that the off-spring could inherit its | parents' acquired characters. Suppose, for example, | that Bill Smith desires to learn Greek, and after | years of study becomes a master of the language. Then | Bill Smith, junior, appears on the scene. Now despite | the elder Smith's efforts, the young Smith won't know | a word of Greek. He cannot inherit a character that | his father acquired. But if the elder Smith happened | to be naturally adapted for the study of Greek, he | would, in nine cases out of ten, pass on the inborn | character to his son. But that would not explain | Evolution, in fact, on the surface it would appear to | be a solid argument against it, and as such was | largely accepted until 1858.
| La Marck's theory is expressed in a verse that
| runs something like this. In 1838 Charles Darwin
| commenced his investigations by travelling round the
| world on H.M.S. Beagle, and for twenty years his
| researches continued. At the same time, Alfred
| Russell Wallace was engaged on the natural history of
| the Malay Archipelago. These two men were working in
| complete ignorance of one another's investigations,
| but by a remarkable coincidence, each submitted his
| conclusions to the scientific world on practically
| the same date. Their discovery was the principle of
| natural selection, and the survival of the fittest.
| Every one has noticed that no two children of the
| same parents are alike. There are small variations.
| Now Darwin and Wallace concluded that in cases where
| a variation arose that was favorable to the
| individual
The only difficulty with this explanation is that | it would require an unheard of lapse by ages to | change, say an arm, or a foreleg into a wing, or a | flapper (like that of a seal). Nevertheless, the | theory after being put to the severest tests | imaginable, was universally accepted, and remains, in | its essentials the accepted theory at the present | day.
|But when we hear of Darwin being "discredited" it | is just as well to know what these statements mean. | At about the same time as Darwin there lived a monk | named Mendel who was a great student of heredity in | plants. He noticed that successive generations of | sweet peas changed color in a remarkable manner. | "Freaks" appeared, then were lost for generations, | and later reappeared again. Now, Darwin had noticed | the occurrence of freaks, but thought that they could | not survive, because they could not find mates. | Mendel, however, discovered that it was possible for | the freak variations to survive, even though mated | with normal individuals. So that, far from | discrediting Darwin his work proved that big | variations, as well as almost imperceptibly small | ones, might be selected and survive. Thus the one | possible objection to Darwin's theory, that of the | great length of time required, was removed.
|Mendel's work was not published, nor, indeed, was | it discovered until the year 1910. His principles of | heredity are now generally accepted under the name of | "Mendilism."
|Well this doesn't read much like a |
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