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The following are quotes added to my Unclassified Quotes database in July 2006. The date format is dd/mm/yy. See copyright conditions at end.
[Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec]
2/07/2006
"Not everyone, however, was so easily misled. In 1872 the eleventh edition of Lyell's Principles of
Geology, a book which was one of the foundations of the new evolutionary theory, included a statement
'in justice to Lamarck'; that is to say in correction of Darwin. Similarly Haeckel's History of Creation in
1868 included the comment: 'The theory of development (i.e. evolution) ... is now generally (though not
altogether rightly) regarded as exclusively Mr Darwin's theory.' Further: 'We must distinguish clearly
(though this is not usually done) between ... the theory of descent (Lamarck) and Darwin's theory of natural
selection.' In other words we must distinguish, as Darwin usually failed to do, between the historical
question of what has happened and the experimental question of how or why it has happened. It was in the
light of these criticisms, according to Butler, that Darwin changed his style. 'My theory' appears forty-five
times in his first edition of the Origin of Species. In successive editions 'my' is gradually deleted. By the
sixth edition of 1872 it becomes 'the theory' in forty-four of the forty-five cases. This reconstruction of a
proposition must be unique in the history of literature. It is certain that it is uniquely important. For in the
same moment it reveals Darwin's character and it obscures for ever his mind and his meaning. There was still
nothing to show which of the two questions 'the theory' was referring to. This confusion, we may suppose,
was not only what Darwin wanted. Nobody noticed it, before Butler, and nobody cared. It was (and this is
the strangest circumstance in the story) a confusion which his friends and his enemies were obviously
agreed in wanting. How could this be so? Darwin's scientific friends wished to imagine that only Mr
Darwin's new illumination had convinced them of the absurdity of the creation theory which, like their
opponents, they had so long and so fondly held. And Darwin's enemies were glad enough to believe that
Mr Darwin was unique and original in his own absurd and dangerous opinions. And neither side (including
Darwin himself) knew what to do about the technical problem of heredity and variation which had to be dealt
with in asking how evolution had occurred. Thus in public the problem of whether evolution had occurred
(which should not have been Darwin's problem) gradually pushed into the background the problem of how
it had occurred (which should have been Darwin's problem). And Darwinism came to mean evolution not
natural selection." (Darlington, C.D., "Darwin's Place in History," Basil Blackwell: Oxford, 1959, pp.35-36)
2/07/2006
"At the beginning of the century, Galton's eugenics was well received. Most geneticists looked favorably
on the theory, among them some of the biggest names: Morgan, Fischer, Haldane, Muller, and others.
Several even sketched out scenarios that aimed to improve the common gene pool. Eugenics societies were
created in England and the United States. In the United States, programs were begun to sterilize several
thousand people described as "mental defectives" over a period of about twenty years. All these scientists
who had promoted eugenics, who had developed it into a theory and proposed ways to use it were no
doubt sincere. They believed in the soundness of their science. They wanted to use it in the service of
humankind. They didn't count on Hitler. It is hard to believe that the racist ideology of the Nazis wasn't fed
by ideas about eugenics that dated from the beginning of the century, as Daniel Kevles's book argues
convincingly. [Kevles, D.J., "In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity,"
University of California Press: Berkeley, 1986] Among the theory's influential proponents was the American
geneticist Charles B. Davenport, who founded Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory to study human evolution.
Irresistibly drawn by eugenics, Davenport wanted to protect the white population in the United States from
what he considered genetic pollution by blacks, Poles, and Italians. He was president of the International
Federation of Eugenic Organizations. In that capacity, he asked his friend Eugen Fischer, professor of
anthropology at the University of Berlin and the best human geneticist in Germany, to preside over the
Research Committee on Racial Cross-breeding. Fischer was also one of the authors of the manual on
Human Heredity and Racial Hygiene from which Hitler, in prison, had nourished his racism. Elected rector
of the University of Berlin, Fischer expressed satisfaction at the intervention of political power in the life of
the country exemplified in a biological population policy aimed at eliminating inferior beings. During the
same period, Konrad Lorenz compared the elimination of individuals who are asocial by reason of their
deficient constitutions with the elimination of a malignant tumor, an operation that seemed to him easier and
less risky in the first case than in the second. From Fischer we get to his student and successor, the
professor Count Otmar von Verschuer, specialist in internal medicine. And from him to his assistant, the
notorious Dr. Joseph Mengele, SS captain and physician of Auschwitz under the authority of Verschuer.
The German geneticist Benno Muller-Hill [Muller-Hill, B., "Murderous Science: Elimination by Scientific
Selection of Jews, Gypsies, and Others, Germany 1933-1945," Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1988] has
described how Verschuer and Mengele worked with the best scientists of Germany. Their so-called research
was conducted within the official scientific institutions. It benefited from program grants awarded by
specialized organizations. The research was described in regular progress reports. Everything was done
according to the usual scientific procedures. From Galton to Mengele, there was no discontinuity, no break.
There is an imperceptible progression from a well-intentioned scientist, theorizing in his laboratory, to the
criminal injecting formalin into the hearts of Jewish twins or gypsies so he could remove their multicolored
eyes, or inoculating children with typhoid so he could compare reactions in mono- or dizygotic twins."
(Jacob, F., "Of Flies, Mice, and Men," [1997], Weiss, G., transl., Harvard University Press: Cambridge MA,
1998, pp.118-119)
3/07/2006
"On the other hand, Glen [Glen, W., "The Road to Jaramillo: Critical Years of the Revolution in Earth
Science," Stanford University Press: Stanford CA, 1982] continued, the impact theory-even if we never
succeed in establishing this mechanism as a general theory, and even if such catastrophes remain confined
to explanations of particular events-directly fractured Lyellian uniformity, therefore penetrating far deeper in
its iconoclasm than the admittedly more comprehensive theory of plate tectonics could ever bore. In any
case, and in the terms and concerns of this book, the validation of a truly catastrophic triggering mechanism
for at least some events of mass extinction dramatically fractured the support that Darwin needed from the
kind of geological stage necessarily set for playing out his preferred game of life. The vital extrapolationist
premise of the third leg on the tripod of essential Darwinian logic must fail if global paroxysm can undo,
redirect, or even substantially impact a pattern of life's history that, in a fully Darwinian scheme of
explanation, must scale up in full continuity from the microevolutionary realities of competition in
observable ecological time. ... mass extinctions are more frequent, more rapid, more intense, and more
different in their effects than paleontologists had suspected, and that Lyellian geology and Darwinian
biology could permit." (Gould, S.J., "The Structure of Evolutionary Theory," Belknap: Cambridge MA, 2002,
Fifth Printing, pp.1312-1313. Emphasis original)
"Gould went on to summarize the massive book's [Gould, S.J., "The Structure of Evolutionary Theory,"
Belknap: Cambridge MA, 2002] thesis in a couple of short sentences. `Is the pure form of Darwinian
logic adequate to account for everything? My argument is that it is not,' he said. One of the ways
Gould departs from strict Darwinism is through his theory of `punctuated equilibrium,' the notion that
organisms evolve in sudden jumps followed by long periods when little or no change takes place. This
idea contradicts orthodox Darwinism, which posits slow, uniform change over long periods of time,
brought about exclusively through the mechanism of natural selection. Gould also diverges from
Darwin in his notion that natural selection can work on the level of species, not just individuals.
Darwin, he explained, insisted that natural selection only affected individual organisms because he was
trying to overthrow the theological argument of intelligent design, the idea that the intricate adaptation
of life forms to their environment implied the existence of a Creator. Darwin's model of how natural
selection worked, Gould said, was influenced by the theories of Adam Smith, the 18th century
economist who introduced the metaphor of the `Invisible Hand,' the mechanism that brings about
equilibrium in the economy through the unregulated struggles of individuals to maximize their gains. In
a similar fashion, individual organisms, engaging in the struggle for existence, live longer and
reproduce more successfully when they possess characteristics that help them to better exploit the
environment. Thus, organisms with these successful characteristics tend to predominate in the
population. According to Gould, however, species can be regarded as individuals under certain
circumstances, because, like individuals, they are born, persist over time, give birth to progeny
(subspecies), and die (become extinct)." (Gewertz, K., "Gould reads from latest opus: New book
evolved steadily over two decades," Harvard University Gazette, April 04, 2002)
3/07/2006
"In another article written in 1866 to criticize a brave new world that often forgot, and more frequently
disparaged, the discoveries of previous generations, von Baer made a rueful comment that deserves
enshrinement as one of the great aphorisms in the history of science. Invoking Agassiz, his younger friend
and boon companion in rejecting the new theory of mechanistic evolution, von Baer wrote: Agassiz says
that when a new doctrine is presented, it must go through three stages. First, people say that it isn't true,
then that it is against religion, and in the third stage, that it has long been known. (Author's translation)"
(Gould, S.J., "Abscheulich! (Atrocious!)," Natural History, Vol. 109, No. 2, March 2000, pp.42-49)
3/07/2006
"In 1868 Agassiz, age 61 and physically broken by an arduous expedition to Brazil, felt old, feeble, and
bypassed, especially in the light of his continued opposition to evolution (his own graduate students had
all `rebelled' and embraced the new Darwinian model). He particularly disliked Haeckel for his crass
materialism, his scientifically irrelevant and vicious swipes at religion, and his haughty dismissal of earlier
work (which he often shamelessly `borrowed' without attribution). And yet, in reading through Agassiz's
extensive marginalia, I sensed something noble about the quality of his opposition, however ill-founded in
the light of later knowledge." (Gould, S.J., Abscheulich! (Atrocious!)," Natural History, Vol. 109, No. 2,
March 2000, pp.42-49)
3/07/2006
"To be sure, Agassiz waxes bitter at Haeckel's excesses, as in his final note appended to the closing flourish
of Haeckel's book, including the author's gratuitous attack on conventional religion as `the dark beliefs and
secrets of a priestly class.' Agassiz writes sardonically: `Gegeben im Jahre I der neuen Weltordnung (given
in year one of the new world order). E. Haeckel.' But Agassiz generally sticks to the high road, despite ample
provocation, by marshaling the facts of his greatest disciplinary expertise (in geology, paleontology, and
zoology) to refute Haeckel's frequent exaggerations and rhetorical inconsistencies. Agassiz may have been
exhausted and discouraged, but he could still put up one whale of a fight, even if only in private. Agassiz
proceeded in generally measured prose until he came to page 240, where he encountered Haeckel's falsified
drawings of vertebrate embryology--a subject of extensive personal research and writing on Agassiz's part
(see page 45). He immediately recognized what Haeckel had done, and he exploded in fully justified rage.
Above the nearly identical pictures of dog and human embryos, Agassiz wrote: `Woher copiert?
Gekunstelte Ahnlichkeit mit Ungenauigkeit verbunden, z.b. Coloboma, Nabel, etc.' (Where were these copied
from? [They include] artistically crafted similarities mixed with inaccuracies, for example, the eye slit,
umbilicus, etc.) At least these two drawings displayed some minor differences. But when Agassiz came to
page 248, he noticed that Haeckel had simply copied the same exact figure three times (see page 46) in
supposedly illustrating a still earlier embryonic stage of a dog (left), a chicken (middle) and a tortoise (right).
He wrote above this figure: `Woher sind diese Figuren entnommen? Es gibt sowas in der ganzen Litteratur
nicht. Diese Identitat ist nicht wahr.' (Where were these figures taken from? Nothing like this exists in the
entire literature. This identity is not true.) Finally, on the next page, (see page 49) he writes his angriest note
next to Haeckel's textual affirmation of this threefold identity. Haeckel stated: `If you take the young
embryos of a dog, a chicken, and a tortoise, you cannot discover a single difference among them.' And
Agassiz sarcastically replied, `Naturlich--da diese Figuren nicht nach der Natur gezeichnet, sondern eine
von der andern copiert ist! Abscheulich.' (Naturally--because these figures were not drawn from nature, but
rather copied one from the other! Atrocious.)" (Gould, S.J., "Abscheulich! (Atrocious!)," Natural History,
Vol. 109, No. 2, March 2000, pp.42-49)
3/07/2006
"The viewpoint I will take is that consciousness, both perceptive and self-awareness, has arisen in the
course of the ascent of life from the primaeval brine because it confers spectacular survival advantage. The
ability to make the present congruent with the past, and to imagine future scenarios, carries vast dividends
in the struggle for survival. Notions can be tested in the mind, not in nature, and the animal reduces the
chances of being killed. Consciousness has been honed on the anvil of natural selection-an essentially
Darwinian viewpoint, and one not involving any external intervention or other-worldly influences." (Denton,
D.A., "The Pinnacle of Life: Consciousness and Self-Awareness in Humans and Animals," Allen & Unwin:
St. Leonards NSW, Australia, 1993, pp.xi-xii)
3/07/2006
"During the voyage of the Beagle I had been deeply impressed by discovering in the Pampean formation
great fossil animals covered with armour like that on the existing armadillos ; secondly, by the manner in
which closely allied animals replace one another in proceeding southwards over the Continent; and thirdly,
by the South American character of most of the productions of the Galapagos archipelago, and more
especially by the manner in which they differ slightly on each island of the group; none of these islands
appearing to be very ancient in a geological sense." (Darwin, C.R., in Barlow, N., ed., "The Autobiography
of Charles Darwin, 1809-1882: With Original Omissions Restored," [1958], W.W. Norton & Co: New York NY,
1969, reprint, p.118)
3/07/2006
"In discussing the truth of evolution, we should make a distinction, as Darwin explicitly did, between the
simple fact of evolution - defined as the genealogical connection among all earthly organisms, based on
their descent from a common ancestor, and the history of any lineage as a process of descent with
modification - and theories (like Darwinian natural selection) that have been proposed to explain the
causes of evolutionary change." (Gould S.J., "Introduction," in Zimmer C., "Evolution: The Triumph of an
Idea," HarperCollins: New York NY, 2001, p.x. Emphasis in original)
3/07/2006
"Today, with fresh denunciations issuing almost weekly from scientific societies and newspaper editorial
boardrooms alike, it might seem a trifle premature to declare victory. Yet, although the cultural dynamic is
still playing itself out, a decade after the publication of Darwin's Black Box the scientific argument for
design is stronger than ever. Despite the enormous progress of biochemistry in the intervening years,
despite hundreds of probing commentaries in periodicals as diverse as The New York Times, Nature,
Christianity Today, Philosophy of Science, and Chronicle of Higher Education, despite implacable
opposition from some scientists at the highest levels, the book's argument for design stands. Other than
updating the list of my children in the Acknowledgements (append Dominic, Helen, and Gerard), there is
very little of the original text I would change if I wrote it today." (Behe, M.J., "Darwin's Black Box: The
Biochemical Challenge to Evolution," [1996], Free Press: New York NY, 10th Anniversary Edition, 2006,
p.255)
3/07/2006
"For modern science, ten years is an eon. As an analogy, think of how the Internet has developed. In the
mid 1990s e-mail was clumsy and the Web was a shadow of what it has become. In the same time interval, by
some measures biochemistry has advanced as much as the Internet. A little over a decade ago the very first
genome sequence of a free living organism-a tiny bacterium named Haemophilus influenzae-had just been
published. ... Now hundreds of genomes have been sequenced ... Progress in elucidating genomes has been
matched by progress in understanding how the machinery of life works. ... The mechanisms cells use to
construct the cilia and flagella described in Chapter 4 were almost totally obscure when this book was first
written. Today they're known to be stunningly sophisticated molecular systems themselves, like automated
factories that make outboard motors. In short, as science advances relentlessly, the molecular foundation of
life is not getting any less complex than it seemed a decade ago; it is getting exponentially more complex. As
it does, the case for the intelligent design of life becomes exponentially stronger." (Behe, M.J., "Darwin's
Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution," [1996], Free Press: New York NY, 10th Anniversary
Edition, 2006, pp.256)
4/07/2006
"The future prospects for design are excellent, because they rest not on any person's or group's
preferences, but on the data. The rise of the intelligent design hypothesis is not due to anything I or any
other individual has written or said, but to the great advance of science in understanding life. In Darwin's
day, the cell was thought to be so simple that first-rate scientists such as Thomas Huxley and Ernst Haeckel
could seriously think that it might arise spontaneously from sea mud, which would be quite congenial to
Darwinism. Even just fifty years ago it was a lot easier to believe that Darwinian evolution might explain the
foundation of life, because so much less was known. But as science quickly advanced and the astonishing
complexity of the cell became clear, the idea of intelligent design has become more and more compelling. The
conclusion of intelligent design is strengthened by each new example of elegant, complex molecular
machinery or system that science discovers at the foundation of life. In 1996 that elegance already could be
clearly seen, and in the past ten years it has greatly increased. There is no reason to expect it to level off any
time soon." (Behe, M.J., "Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution," [1996], Free Press:
New York NY, 10th Anniversary Edition, 2006, p.270)
4/07/2006
"FOR THE CELEBRITY scientists who relied on their science to promote their often astonishing views of
life, there was an elephant in the living room. It was right there in front of them for all to see. It was
menacing, allpowerful, able to pounce at any moment and trample on the carefully constructed nihilism of
the scientificphilosophers. `If I were a creationist,' wrote John Horgan of Scientific American, `I would cease
attacking the theory of evolution ... and focus instead on the origin of life.' [Horgan, J., "The End of
Science," [1996], Little, Brown & Co: London, 1997, reprint, p.138] Life's origins, how it all came into being,
was central to both religion and science. Religion took it on faith that God created life, while science took it
on faith that life came into being through a purely materialistic process in which inorganic molecules
somehow evolved into life. Often scientists would ignore or trivialize the enigma of life's origins, claiming
that answer would be `simple' once it was found. Many, however, tried to hide the fact that science couldn't
figure out life's beginnings; they couldn't just wave the white flag and admit like fumbling fools on the
witness stand that the answer was beyond the grasp of science. ... Scientists had a reason to be defensive.
Anyone who looked at them closely could see that when it came to the metaphysics of existence, they were
sinking fast in the quicksand. In laboratories all over the country, they had tried again and again to solve the
mystery of life, to discover a process that turns non-life into life. The distance between the two is not a
simple step like water to ice; it is a distance beyond human comprehension. `Between a living cell and the
most highly ordered non-biological system, there is a chasm as vast and absolute as it is possible to
conceive,' [Denton, M.J., "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis," Burnett Books: London, 1985, pp.249-250]
Australian biochemist Michael Denton wrote in Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, a seminal work, highly
criticized, that in the 1990s would inspire a group of other scientists to reexamine the premises of Darwinism.
Even bacteria, among the most simple forms of life, wrote Denton, `are exceedingly complex objects.'
[Denton, 1985, p.250] `The simplest bacterium is so damn complicated from the point of view of a chemist
that it is almost impossible to imagine how it happened,' said Harold P Klein, chairman of a committee formed
by the National Academy of Sciences to investigate origin-of-life research [Horgan J., "In The Beginning...,"
Scientific American, Vol. 264, No. 2, February 1991, pp.100-109, p.104]. ... To British astronomer Fred
Hoyle, the origin of life was about as probable as a tornado creating a 747 as it whirled through a junkyard-in
other words, so unlikely as to be impossible. [Hoyle, F., "The Intelligent Universe," Michael Joseph:
London, 1983, pp.18-19] But the ultra-reductionists had an answer in the ready, the same answer they gave
to every other troublesome issue raised by evolution: given enough time, they argued, `anything is
possible:' But that was it. The sum and substance of their science was itself based on religious faith.And so
the answer proved so elusive, the scientific guesses so unsatisfactory, that the great pillars of atheism
began to collapse. One wonders exactly what Richard Dawkins must have thought when a compatriot and
one-time Oxford colleague made his public turnabout, cracking the very foundations of atheism. In 2004,
philosopher Antony Flew-one of the world's most committed atheists-captured the international limelight
with an astonishing announcement: that because not in spite of science, he was no longer an atheist. In his
video `Has Science Discovered God?' Flew said that the investigation of DNA `has shown, by the almost
unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce life, that intelligence must have
been involved' [Ostling, R.N., "Atheist Philosopher, 81, Now Believes in God," LiveScience, 10 December
2004] Quite a betrayal from a man who for more than fifty years had taught at universities around the world
and in lectures, books, and articles that atheism was the only explanation for life." (Winnick, P.R., "A Jealous
God: Science's Crusade Against Religion," Nelson Current: Nashville TN, 2005, pp.168-170, 172. Emphasis
original)
4/07/2006
"Molecular biology has shown that even the simplest of all living systems on earth today, bacterial cells, are
exceedingly complex objects. Although the tiniest bacterial cells are incredibly small, weighing less than 10-12gms,
each is in effect a veritable microminiaturized factory containing thousands of exquisitely designed
pieces of intricate molecular machinery, made up altogether of one hundred thousand million atoms, far more
complicated than any machine built by man and absolutely without parallel in the non-living world."
(Denton, M.J., "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis," Burnett Books: London, 1985, p.250)
4/07/2006
"Molecular biology has also shown that the basic design of the cell system is essentially the same in all
living systems on earth from bacteria to mammals. In all organisms the roles of DNA, mRNA and protein are
identical. The meaning of the genetic code is also virtually identical in all cells . The size, structure and
component design of the protein synthetic machinery is practically the same in all cells. In terms of their
basic biochemical design, therefore no living system can be thought of as being primitive or ancestral with
respect to any other system, nor is there the slightest empirical hint of an evolutionary sequence among all
the incredibly diverse cells on earth. For those who hoped that molecular biology might bridge the gulf
between chemistry and biochemistry, the revelation was profoundly disappointing." (Denton, M.J.,
"Evolution: A Theory in Crisis," Burnett Books: London, 1985, p.250)
4/07/2006
"Recent studies of extremely old sedimentary rocks in Australia make it very probable that single-celled
organisms, perhaps similar to blue green algae were already present on the Earth about 3-6 billion
(thousand million) years ago. We know that the Earth accreted from lifeless dust and gases about 6
billion years ago. It seems, therefore, that life must have appeared on the Earth at some time during the
first billion or so years of its history. Theories that living organisms originated elsewhere in the
Universe and were transported to the Earth in one way or another have been put forward from time to
time. These theories cannot at present be tested, so they have had little influence on most thin king
about the origins of life. In this discussion I will follow a conservative course and suppose that life
evolved de novo on the primitive Earth. It seems unlikely that we will find fossils or other geological
relics of pre-life or the very earliest forms of life. Our ideas about the origins of life, therefore, are largely
based on inference from our knowledge of contemporary biochemistry, on one hand, and on laboratory
reconstructions of the supposed chemistry of the primitive Earth, prebiotic chemistry, on the other. "
(Orgel, L.E., "Darwinism at the very beginning of life," New Scientist, Vol. 94, 15 April 1982, pp.149-
151, p.149)
4/07/2006
"Recent work on the origins of life begins with the speculations of a Russian scientist, Aleksandr
Oparin, who believed that the early atmosphere of the Earth unlike its present atmosphere, was
strongly-reducing. He thought that the main components of the atmosphere were methane ammonia
and water, and that a pool of organic materials a prebiotic soup, was formed from them by the action of
ultraviolet light from the Sun, electrical storms, volcanoes, and so on. Oparin believed that life evolved
in the prebiotic soup through a series of chemical reactions of increasing complexity. The
demonstration that a prebiotic soup could have formed in much the way that Oparin suggested is the
major achievement of origins of life studies. How life could have evolved from such a soup is the main
question that remains to be answered. " (Orgel, L.E., "Darwinism at the very beginning of life," New
Scientist, Vol. 94, 15 April 1982, pp.149-151, p.149)
4/07/2006
"We do not yet understand in detail how the prebiotic soup on the primitive Earth was formed-there are
many possibilities. Some compounds may have been present in the dust from which the Earth accreted,
while others could have reached the Earth in meteorites and yet others formed in the Earth's primitive
atmosphere by the action of lightning. While the details remain a matter of speculation, the general
principle that important biochemicals are readily formed abiotically is well established. Amino acids and
nucleotide bases are the major components of our genetic system in part because they were abundant
components of the prebiotic soup. Prebiotic soup is easy to obtain. We must next explain how a
prebiotic soup of organic molecules, including amino acids and the organic, constituents of nucleotides
evolved into a self-replicating organism. While some suggestive evidence has been obtained, I must
admit that attempts to reconstruct the evolutionary process are extremely tentative." (Orgel, L.E.,
"Darwinism at the very beginning of life," New Scientist, Vol. 94, 15 April 1982, pp.149-151, p.150)
4/07/2006
"Amino acids have been polymerased to give short, almost random, polypeptides in a number of ways.
Sugars, nucleoside bases and phosphate can be combined to form the biologically important
nucleotides under prebiotic conditions. In addition, random polymerisation of nucleotides to give short
oligomers has been achieved experimentally. Thus relatively crude prebiotic syntheses of short random
polymers resembling proteins and nucleic acids are already known. The major difficulties, intellectual
and experimental, concern the biological organisation How did molecular replication begin? How did
the genetic code evolve? Were the first replicating systems surrounded by a membrane? If so, what
was it made of?" (Orgel, L.E., "Darwinism at the very beginning of life," New Scientist, Vol. 94, 15
April 1982, pp.149-151, p.150)
4/07/2006
"The ultimate objective of experiments of this kind is to develop a simple system, not dependent on
biological enzymes, in which a polynucleotide of arbitrary sequence will facilitate the efficient synthesis
of its complementary sequence. This would represent a major step towards understanding how nucleic-
acid replication could have evolved, and we have made substantial progress in this direction.
Theoretical studies show that no great increase in biological complexity could occur until the nucleic-
acid replication system became coupled to the synthesis of polypeptides. The original coupling may, of
course, have been far less precise than that which underlies the modern genetic code, but some
primitive form of coding seems to be needed for the evolution of early life." (Orgel, L.E., "Darwinism at
the very beginning of life," New Scientist, Vol. 94, 15 April 1982, pp.149-151, pp.150-151)
4/07/2006
"Complex biological systems could not survive unless they had a method of holding together their
constituent macromolecules. Nowadays, the cell membrane performs, this function, so it is not
surprising that a close analogue of the cell membrane has often been considered to be a necessary
early feature in the development of cellular life. This view is not without its-difficulties. Modern cell
membranes include channels and pumps which specifically control the influx and efflux of nutrients,
waste products, metal ions and so on. These specialised channels involve highly specific proteins,
molecules that could not have been present at the very beginning of the evolution of life. An
impermeable membrane, without specific channels, would have been a disadvantage rather than an
advantage early in the history of life, because it would have kept the useful components of the pre-
biotic medium outside and beyond the reach of the `cell's' machinery. It seems likely, therefore, that the
macromolecular constituents of the earliest forms of biological organisation stayed together by some
sort of self-aggregation, perhaps stuck to mineral surfaces, in a form that permitted ready access to
nutrients in the `external environment.' The development of a continuous membrane probably occurred
relatively late, after complex-metabolic pathways had evolved. Once a self-sufficient system of nucleic
acids and proteins enclosed in an impermeable membrane had evolved, we enter the realm of
evolutionary theory and all that that entails." (Orgel, L.E., "Darwinism at the very beginning of life,"
New Scientist, Vol. 94, 15 April 1982, pp.149-151, p.151)
4/07/2006
"There is a deep personal drive behind the search for human origins. True, paleoanthropology can be as
technical in its approach as many another scientific discipline: from statistical analysis to the arcane data of
molecular biology, the pursuit of human origins is intellectually demanding and rigorous. But it is more than
that. Because the target of the search is ourselves, the enterprise takes on a dimension absent from other
sciences. It is in a sense extrascientific, more philosophical and metaphysical, and it addresses questions
that arise from our need to understand the nature of humanity and our place in the world. Each time I give a
public lecture, I am reminded of this need to know about ourselves. The audiences that come to hear me are,
I often feel, seeking a kind of reassurance. I talk about fossils and anthropological theories, and the people
ask me whether monkeys can know the meaning of sin and what will happen next. Once, about ten years
ago, an elderly lady, clearly concerned, wanted me to tell her whether it was true, as she had heard, that
`humans are only a historical accident.' I could tell her about Earth history and the fossil record. I could
discuss chance and evolution. And I could describe alternative worlds, without humans, perfectly plausible
worlds. But it was clear that she really wanted to be told that no, humans are not a biological accident;
Homo sapiens was bound to happen. Her humanness, her urge to make sense of her world, seemed to
demand that it be so. Paleoanthropology, therefore, has a mixture of scientific and extrascientific elements.
Most of the time, of course, we professionals are concerned with the bones themselves: how anatomical
constellations in one cranium may relate to similar constellations in another, the two perhaps being
separated by a million years of evolutionary history. It is an absorbing occupation, one that tests our
abilities to recognize genetic links in the most meager of physical evidence. The philosophical element is
always present, but usually as an unspoken rhythm to our work." (Leakey, R.E. & Lewin, R., "Origins
Reconsidered: In Search of What Makes Us Human," [1992], Abacus: London, 1993, reprint, p.xvi)
4/07/2006
"Personification Man projects himself into nature: animism is found everywhere in the world. Primitive
peoples almost universally attribute human characteristics to natural phenomena. Storms are conceived of
as angry gods, perhaps gods that can be propitiated. This leads to ceremonies which give the feeling of
dealing with a recalcitrant nature. At the same time, since nature is made over in man's image, man is able to
feel the security of kinship. Nature becomes humanized, she can be dealt with, understood. Events on Earth
cease to be pitiless and inexorable; they respond to the will of gods, who also exhibit all the passions from
anger to love. So one may make his way through life's dangers by staying on the right side of the gods,
propitiating them when they seem displeased, playing one god against another, seeking their help against
enemies (who need no personifying) or against illness which is usually conceived as possession by spirits
or devils. By animism man escapes his aloneness in an indifferent world. Allegedly civilized people differ
from primitive men in projecting themselves into nature chiefly in the degree to which they believe in their
personifications. Children people the dark with terrors, and they build castles in the clouds. Still, the child
who sees a dreadful thing in the ink-blot is not much different from the adult who sees a menace in the
forces of nature (the "pathetic fallacy") or endless conspiracy in the hearts of men ("paranoia"). There are
less dramatic forms of projection. If we interpret the activities of ants, say, in terms of concepts derived from
human society, we are misapplying the concepts in a fanciful way. The nature-lover who praises the
"industry" of the ants, or complains of the "cruelty" of weasels, the "matriarchy" in a beehive or the
"neglect of maternal obligations" of the cuckoo, is either playful or foolish. Strictly, "animism" refers to the
primitive belief that rocks, trees, etc., have independent life and soul, but the term currently applies to a more
general projection of soul into nature: like man, the world and its parts live, feel, strive. Striving, motivation,
purpose, desire are human traits. It is risky to attribute them to other creatures, however much they may at
times seem to behave like people." (Fearnside, W.W. & Holther, W.B., "Fallacy: The Counterfeit of
Argument," Prentice-Hall: Englewood Cliffs NJ, 1959, Eleventh Printing, pp.115-116. Emphasis original)
4/07/2006
"The process at work in hypostatization is similar to personification. To personify is to ascribe to things
or animals properties that only human beings possess. It is to speak of things or creatures that are not
persons as if they were persons. For example, we personify if we complain of the `cruelty of weasels'
because weasels being innocent creatures, cannot be considered either kind or cruel. To be cruel is to intend
and plan some harm, knowing that it will cause pain, whereas weasels are not capable, as far as we I know, of
entertaining such designs. They simply are as they are and do as they do. The same applies to expressions
such as `the cruel sea.' Understood literally, this personification is simply false. To hypostatize is to speak of
abstract entities in terms that are similarly appropriate only for persons. It is thus that we may say, `The
state can do no wrong,' or `Science makes progress,' or `Nature decrees what is right.' Since no one of the
three-the state, science, or nature-is capable of thought or intention, it is absurd to suppose that such
abstractions are capable of the activities attributed to them in the statements above. Only persons, not the
state, can be said to do right or wrong, only scientists can make progress, and nature has no voice with
which to utter decrees. To be sure, we do not usually lose sight of reality in most instances when we resort
to hypostatization. ... As an indication of the dangers inherent in hypostatization, consider this argument: ...
Nature produces improvements in a race by eliminating the unfit and preventing them from polluting the
gene pool of the fit. Therefore it is only right for us to eliminate these unfit people. Nature is especially
favored as a subject for hypostatization, perhaps because it is such a complicated abstraction that we have
difficulty speaking of it at all without concretizing it. In argument a above, nature is endowed with an ability
to know what is an `improvement' and what is not, what is `fit' and what is `unfit,' although it is unrealistic to
impute to nature any humanlike intelligence or intention." (Engel, S.M., "With Good Reason: An
Introduction to Informal Fallacies," St. Martin's Press: New York NY, Fourth Edition, 1990, pp.89-90.
Emphasis original)
5/07/2006
"In another article written in 1866 to criticize a brave new world that often forgot, and more frequently
disparaged, the discoveries of previous generations, von Baer made a rueful comment that deserves
enshrinement as one of the great aphorisms in the history of science. Invoking Agassiz, his younger friend
and boon companion in rejecting the new theory of mechanistic evolution, von Baer wrote:`Agassiz says
that when a new doctrine is presented, it must go through three stages. First, people say that it isn't true,
then that it is against religion, and in the third stage, that it has long been known.' (Author's translation)"
(Gould, S.J., "Abscheulich! - Atrocious! - the precursor to the theory of natural selection," Natural
History, Vol. 109, No. 2, March 2000, pp.42-49)
5/07/2006
"In October 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic enquiry, I happened to read for
amusement Malthus on Population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence
which everywhere goes on from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once
struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and
unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species. Here, then, I
had at last got a theory by which to work; but I was so anxious to avoid prejudice, that I determined not for
some time to write even the briefest sketch of it. In June 1842 I first allowed myself the satisfaction of writing
a very brief abstract of my theory in pencil in 35 pages; and this was enlarged during the summer of 1844
into one of 230 pages, which I had fairly copied out and still possess." (Darwin, C.R., in Barlow N., ed., "The
Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809-1882: With Original Omissions Restored," [1958], W.W. Norton &
Co: New York, 1969, reprint, p.120)@
5/07/2006
"But at that time I overlooked one problem of great importance ; and it is astonishing to me, except on the
principle of Columbus and his egg, how I could have overlooked it and its solution. This problem is the
tendency in organic beings descended from the same stock to diverge in character as they become modified.
That they have diverged greatly is obvious from the manner in which species of all kinds can be classed
under genera, genera under families, families under suborders, and so forth; and I can remember the very
spot in the road, whilst in my carriage, when to my joy the solution occurred to me; and this was long after I
had come to Down. The solution, as I believe, is that the modified offspring of all dominant and increasing
forms tend to become adapted to many and highly diversified places in the economy of nature." (Darwin
C.R., in Barlow N., ed., "The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809-1882: With Original Omissions
Restored," [1958], W.W. Norton & Co: New York, 1969, reprint, pp.120-121)
5/07/2006
"Early in 1856 Lyell advised me to write out my views pretty fully, and I began at once to do so on a scale
three or four times as extensive as that which was afterwards followed in my Origin of Species; yet it was
only an abstract of the materials which I had collected, and I got through about half the work on this scale.
But my plans were overthrown, for early in the summer of 1858 Mr Wallace,' who was then in the Malay
archipelago, sent me an essay On the Tendency of Varieties to depart indefinitely from the Original Type;
and this essay contained exactly the same theory as mine. Mr Wallace expressed the wish that if I thought
well of his essay, I should send it to Lyell for perusal." (Darwin, C.R., in Barlow N., ed., "The Autobiography
of Charles Darwin, 1809-1882: With Original Omissions Restored," [1958], W.W. Norton & Co: New York,
1969, reprint, p.121)
5/07/2006
"The circumstances under which I consented at the request of Lyell and Hooker to allow of an extract from
my MS., together with a letter to Asa Gray, dated September 5, 1857, to be published at the same time with
Wallace's Essay, are given in the Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society, 1858, p.45. I was at
first very unwilling to consent, as I thought Mr Wallace might consider my doing so unjustifiable, for I did
not then know how generous and noble was his disposition. The extract from my MS. and the letter to Asa
Gray had neither been intended for publication, and were badly written. Mr Wallace's essay, on the other
hand, was admirably expressed and quite clear." (Darwin, C.R., in Barlow N., ed., "The Autobiography of
Charles Darwin, 1809-1882: With Original Omissions Restored," [1958], W.W. Norton & Co: New York, 1969,
reprint, pp.121-122)
6/07/2006
"AFTER the Origin of Species was published in 1859, Darwin wrote to the Reverend Baden Powell, `If I
have taken anything from you, I assure you it has been unconsciously.' [Darwin, C.R., in de Beer, G.R., ed.,
"Some Unpublished Letters of Charles Darwin," Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, Vol.
14, No.1, June 1959, p.53] This was in response to a letter in which Powell had reproved Darwin for not
referring to one of his works. ... Darwin's own excuse of the `unconscious' has been increasingly used in
recent years by defenders of the great biologist in considering the problem of Darwin's meager attention to
his predecessors. If Darwin `unconsciously' borrowed material without acknowledgment, some scholars
imply that no blame can be attributed to him. Rather, they frown upon those historians of science who
persist in probing beneath the insights of genius in order to seek the sources of their inspiration. Yet we
must still ask, was the one man who should know where he got the idea of his famous theory unconscious
of where he got it? Or did he consciously draw a veil over one predecessor in particular, rationalizing,
perhaps, as he is known to have done on one occasion, when he implied that the man who successfully
convinces the public of a new idea deserves all the credit which may accrue to him. [Darwin, C.R., in Barlow,
N., ed., "The Autobiography of Charles Darwin," Norton: New York, 1958, p.125]." (Eiseley, L.C., "Darwin,
Coleridge, and the Theory of Unconscious Creation," in "Darwin and the Mysterious Mr. X," E.P. Dutton:
New York NY, 1979, pp.81-82. Emphasis original)
6/07/2006
"The theory of the `unconscious' has been emphasized by Darwinian defenders particularly following the
publication in 1959, in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, of my article exploring the
possible role played by Edward Blyth in the formulation of the theory of natural selection. [Eiseley, L.C.,
"Charles Darwin, Edward Blyth, and the Theory of Natural Selection,", Proceedings of the American
Philosophical Society Vol. 103, No. 1, February 1959, pp.94-114] The publication of Darwin's Notebooks on
Transmutation of Species [de Beer, G., ed., "Darwin's Notebooks on Transmutation of Species," Bulletin of
the British Museum (Natural History), Historical Series, Vol. 2, Nos. 2-5, 1960], in 1960, showed clearly that
Darwin was aware of Blyth's writings on natural selection. In the second notebook [Ibid., Second Notebook,
Part II, Vol. 2, No. 3, p. 106] never intended for publication, reference is made to the article of 1837 in which
Blyth writes, after having earlier described the conservative effects of natural selection: `May not, then, a
large proportion of what are considered species have descended from a common parentage?' [Blyth, E., "On
the Psychological Distinctions Between Man and All Other Animals," The Magazine of Natural History,
Vol. 10, 1837, pp.131-141] Several who are unwilling to credit Blyth with influencing Darwin refuse to quote
this line of 1837-the very year that Darwin conceived of the role of natural selection in evolution. Sir Gavin
de Beer, who edited the notebooks, footnotes Blyth's article as mentioned by Darwin in the second
notebook, but fails to point out its obvious import. In a brief discussion of Blyth in the introduction to the
first notebook he at first remarks that Darwin probably owed nothing to Blyth so far as the construction of
his theory is concerned. [de Beer, Introduction to First Notebook, Part I, Vol. 2, No. 2, p.36] He confesses,
however, in the same paragraph; that `there is nothing improbable in his [Darwin's] having copied some from
Blyth.' He then cautiously concedes that `Darwin (and others) may have been wrong in thinking that he
owed him [Blyth] or them nothing on this score.' Four years later, in 1964, in his biography of Darwin, de
Beer again retreated from a direct confrontation of the full nature of Blyth's speculations when he says that
although Blyth `had been playing with the very tools that Darwin so successfully used, it is difficult to see
that Darwin was indebted to him, for his conclusions were the exact negation of what Darwin was trying to
prove.' [de Beer, G., "Charles Darwin: Evolution by Natural Selection," New York, 1964, p.102] Concerning
this statement it is of interest to note that George Wald, writing on `Innovation in Biology,' in the Scientific
American, remarks that 'all great ideas come in pairs, the one the negation of the other, and both containing
elements of truth.' [Wald, G., "Innovation in Biology," Scientific American, Vol. 199, No. 3, September
1958, p.100] Edward Blyth, as we have seen, in a moment of insight glimpsed momentarily both faces of
natural selection. It was enough to give an astute mind like Darwin's the clue that he was seeking." (Eiseley,
L.C., "Darwin, Coleridge, and the Theory of Unconscious Creation," in "Darwin and the Mysterious Mr. X,"
E.P. Dutton: New York NY, 1979, pp.82-84)
6/07/2006
"In the case of Charles Darwin, although he at no time mentioned Edward Blyth's ideas on natural selection,
[He was able, however, to refer to everything else about Blyth's work in detail] interior evidence such as I
produced in 1959, and which also appears in Darwin's Second Notebook on Transmutation of Species,
shows that he was fully aware of the papers which contained these ideas. Dr. Gerald Henderson of Brooklyn
College has kindly allowed me to utilize additional evidence from his own recent unpublished investigations
at the Cambridge University Library. Darwin's personal volume of The Magazine of Natural History of
1837 reveals annotations on Blyth's paper in Darwin's own hand. Moreover, a set of Darwin's page
reminders which include Blyth's paper has been pinned to the inside of the back page. I will not encroach
further upon Dr. Henderson's researches except to reiterate that Darwin knew and studied the 1837 paper he
was never to mention in print." (Eiseley, L.C., "Charles Darwin, Edward Blyth, and the Theory of Natural
Selection," in "Darwin and the Mysterious Mr. X," E.P. Dutton: New York NY, 1979, pp.88, 248 n.26)
6/07/2006
"The widespread popularity of the `unconscious' theory concerning Charles Darwin can readily be explained
by the fact that a cult of hero worship has developed about the great biologist, such as frequently happens
to a prominent innovator in any field . Darlington, the British geneticist, has commented ironically: `Among
scientists there is a natural feeling that one of the greatest of our figures should not be dissected, at least by
one of us.' [Darlington, C.D., "Darwin's Place in History" Oxford, 1959, p.57] In the face of evidence that
Darwin made unacknowledged use of material from Blyth, the theory of the unconscious is the easiest, most
polite way of evading the exploration of a delicate subject. Numerous naturalists who would never treat
contemporaries so gently under similar circumstances are eager to make a `sleep-walker' of a scientist whose
letters and notes are models of persistent conscious inquiry upon a great range of subject matter." (Eiseley,
L.C., "Charles Darwin, Edward Blyth, and the Theory of Natural Selection," in "Darwin and the Mysterious
Mr. X," E.P. Dutton: New York NY, 1979, pp.89-90)
6/07/2006
"The paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson, referring to Darwin's statement in his autobiography that
he `never happened to come across a single one [naturalist] who seemed to doubt about the
permanence of species,' and Darwin's belief that he owed no debt to his predecessors, said: `These are
extraordinary statements. They cannot be literally true, yet Darwin cannot be consciously lying, and he
may therefore be judged unconsciously misleading, naive, forgetful, or all three.' [Simpson, G.G.,
"Charles Darwin in search of himself." Review of "The Autobiography of Charles Darwin," by Nora
Barlow, ed., Collins: London, 1958. Scientific American, Vol. 199, No. 2, August 1958, pp.117-122,
p.122] Nora Barlow has also used the `unconscious' theory to explain her grandfather's denial that the
subject of evolution was in the air. Doubtless Darwin's isolation at Down kept him from being aware of
opinions from workers in other fields than his own, said Lady Barlow, `so that he unconsciously
overlooked indications that belief in the permanence of species was waning.' [Barlow, N., "On Charles
Darwin and his Grandfather Dr. Erasmus Darwin," in Barlow, N., ed., "The Autobiography of Charles
Darwin," Norton: New York, 1958, p.153] Nevertheless some of the very journals he consulted
contained references to the evolutionary hypothesis." (Eiseley, L.C., "Darwin, Coleridge, and the
Theory of Unconscious Creation," in "Darwin and the Mysterious Mr. X," E.P. Dutton: New York NY,
1979, pp.90-91)
6/07/2006
"As opposed to the theory of the unconscious, it strikes one that Darwin was, in general, a keenly alert,
conscious thinker, and he was so characterized by his associate, Thomas Huxley. [Huxley, T.H., in
Huxley, L., ed., "Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley," New York, 1902, Vol. 2, p.42] It is strange
that in Darwin's The Descent of Man and Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication
all factual material drawn from Blyth was carefully listed but the two papers of Blyth concerning natural
selection should be quietly ignored. It is difficult to accept this as mere coincidence. In Variation a
footnote refers to the same volume of The Magazine of Natural History of 1835 in which Blyth's first
paper on natural selection appeared. [Variation, Vol. 1, pp.335-336 n.8] Also a footnote in Variation
contains the somewhat cryptic and unenlightening statement, `Mr. Blyth has freely communicated to
me his stores of knowledge on this and all other related subjects.' [Ibid., Vol. 1, p. 164 n.1] There is no
possibility of doubt that Darwin used and studied The Magazine of Natural History in which Blyth's
papers appeared." (Eiseley, L.C., "Darwin, Coleridge, and the Theory of Unconscious Creation," in
"Darwin and the Mysterious Mr. X," E.P. Dutton: New York NY, 1979, pp.90-91)
6/07/2006
"Another odd circumstance has recently been brought to light by Gavin de Beer, even though he has
refrained from any comment as to its potential significance. I refer to the recent disclosure that a
number of pages are missing from Darwin's First Notebook on Transmutation of Species. The great
importance of the first notebook in tracing Darwin's early thought has been stressed by de Beer. [de
Beer, ed., introduction to First Notebook, Part I, "Darwin's Notebooks on Transmutation of Species,"
Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History), Historical Series, Vol. 2, No. 2, 1960, p.26] Yet fifty
pages are missing from this notebook, in which Darwin wrote on the first page: `All useful pages cut
out. Dec. 7/1856/. (and again looked through April 21, 1873).' [Ibid, p.41] Nothing was said about
destroying the notes. As his son, Francis Darwin, pointed out in reminiscences of his father, Charles
Darwin `felt the value of his notes, and had a horror of their destruction by fire. I remember, when some
alarm of fire had happened, his begging me to be especially careful, adding very earnestly, that the rest
of his life would be miserable if his notes and books were to be destroyed.' [Darwin, F., ed., "Life and
Letters of Charles Darwin," London, 1888, Vol. 1, p.129] De Beer, who reported in 1960 on these missing
pages, said they had been searched for unsuccessfully in the Cambridge University Library, at Down
House and the Royal College of Surgeons, and in the British Museum of Natural History. `The nature
of their contents can only be surmised after a close study of the two hundred and thirty pages that
remain,' de Beer remarked, `and an estimate can be made of what is missing from the information and the
argument.' [Ibid., p.26] Although there are some pages missing from the other notebooks, it is those
from the first notebook that would seem to have the most bearing upon the origin of Darwin's theory,
since it was begun in July 1837, before the date when he said he received his inspiration from Malthus.
To reiterate my own words, I believe it significant that "Darwin opened his first notebook on the
`species question' in 1837. In January of that year Edward Blyth ventured the beginning of a second
paper in which there is comment upon the principle of natural selection.' ["Charles Darwin, Edward
Blyth, and the Theory of Natural Selection," this volume, p.53] This comment, as we have seen, goes
considerably beyond Blyth's first statement of 1835. It introduces, if briefly, the possibility of organic
change. The name and work of Edward Blyth are not noted in the existing portion of the first notebook,
although they do appear in the second." (Eiseley, L.C., "Darwin, Coleridge, and the Theory of
Unconscious Creation," in "Darwin and the Mysterious Mr. X," E.P. Dutton: New York NY, 1979, pp.90-
91)
6/07/2006
"`The idea of natural selection, so far as can be seen from the extant portions of the notebooks, seems to
have occurred to Darwin as a combination of the effects on him of the facts of variation, adaptation, and
extinction,' observed de Beer. [de Beer, Introduction to Third Notebook, Part III, `Darwin's Notebooks on
Transmutation of Species,' Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History), Historical Series, Vol. 1, No.
4, 1960, p.126] Actually the missing fifty pages could have contained a great deal of information extending to
Blyth's own views on these subjects. De Beer has avoided the suggestion that this fragmentary document
may have contained more detailed references to Blyth's works. Since these pages compose the first part of
the diary, their disappearance, taken with other evidence, cannot fail to hint of a genuinely `missing link' in
the story of natural selection." (Eiseley, L.C., "Darwin, Coleridge, and the Theory of Unconscious Creation,"
in "Darwin and the Mysterious Mr. X," E.P. Dutton: New York NY, 1979, pp.91-92)
6/07/2006
"One statement of Darwin's, to which I have previously referred, is curiously revelatory to the student of
character. In regard to an incidental matter of priority upon another biological matter, he wrote in his
autobiography: `It is clear that I failed to impress my readers; and he who succeeds in doing so deserves, in
my opinion, all the credit.' [Darwin, C.R., in Barlow N., ed., `The Autobiography of Charles Darwin,' Norton:
New York, 1958, p.125] There is a strange indifference to historical priority here. Was Charles Darwin
engaged in psychologically justifying a philosophy which permitted him to dismiss forerunners from whom
he had drawn inspiration - men like his friend, `poor Blyth,' who `failed to impress' and therefore deserved no
recognition from the world? [Darwin, C.R., in Darwin, F., ed., "Life and Letters of Charles Darwin," London,
1888, Vol. 2, p.109] One is forced to reflect upon this possibility, which has even been seized upon and
brought forward by later writers as a justification of Darwin's attitude toward his predecessors. There will
always be an ineluctable mystery concerning the origin of the theory of natural selection, just as there will
always be a shadowy web surrounding the real Charles Darwin, a web unseen but as real as the black cape
in which we see him enveloped in a photograph taken of him on the verandah at Down at the age of
seventy-two. One of Darwin's most ardent supporters, George Gaylord Simpson, states with perceptive
acuteness: `The mystery persists. The man is not really explained, his inner adventures are not fully revealed
in his own autobiography, in the family biography by Francis Darwin, or in the many other biographical
sketches and books. There will always be something hidden, as there is in every life....' [Simpson, G.G.,
"Charles Darwin in search of himself." Review of "The Autobiography of Charles Darwin," by Nora Barlow,
ed., Collins: London, 1958. Scientific American, Vol. 199, No. 2, August 1958, pp.117-122, p.119]" (Eiseley,
L.C., "Darwin, Coleridge, and the Theory of Unconscious Creation," in "Darwin and the Mysterious Mr. X,"
E.P. Dutton: New York NY, 1979, pp.92-93)
7/07/2006
"I said that cladistic taxonomy has the advantage over librarians' types of taxonomy that there is one
unique, true hierarchical nesting pattern in nature, waiting to be discovered. All that we have to do is
develop methods of discovering it. Unfortunately there are practical difficulties. The most interesting
bugbear of the taxonomist is evolutionary convergence. ... we saw how, over and over again, animals have
been found to resemble unrelated animals in other parts of the world, because they have similar ways of life.
New World army ants resemble Old World driver ants. Uncanny resemblances have evolved between the
quite unrelated electric fish of Africa and South America; and between true wolves and the marsupial `wolf'
Thylacinus of Tasmania. In all these cases I simply asserted without justification that these resemblances
were convergent: that they had evolved independently in unrelated animals. But how do we know that they
are unrelated? If taxonomists use resemblances to measure closeness of cousinship, why weren't
taxonomists fooled by the uncannily close resemblances that seem to unite these pairs of animals? Or, to
twist the question round into a more worrying form, when taxonomists tell us that two animals really are
closely related- say rabbits and hares - how do we know that the taxonomists haven't been fooled by
massive convergence? This question really is worrying, because the history of taxonomy is replete with
cases where later taxonomists have declared their predecessors wrong for precisely this reason. ... Who is to
say that future generations of taxonomists won't change their minds yet again? What confidence can we
vest in taxonomy, if convergent evolution is such a powerful faker of deceptive resemblances?" (Dawkins,
R., "The Blind Watchmaker," [1986], Penguin: London, 1991 reprint, p.269)
7/07/2006
"MY DEAR LYELL,-Some year or so ago you recommended me to read a paper by Wallace in the `Annals,'
[Annals and Magazine of Natural History, 1855]. which had interested you, and, as I was writing to him, I
knew this would please him much, so I told him. He has to-day sent me the enclosed, and asked me to
forward it to you. It seems to me well worth reading. Your words have come true with a vengeance-that I
should be forestalled. You said this, when I explained to you here very briefly my views of ` Natural
Selection' depending on the struggle for existence. I never saw a more striking coincidence ; if Wallace had
my MS. sketch written out in 1842, he could not have made a better short abstract! Even his terms now
stand as heads of my chapters. Please return me the MS., which he does not say he wishes me to publish,
but I shall of course, at once write and offer to send to any journal. So all my originality, whatever it may
amount to, will be smashed, though my book, if it will ever have any value, will not be deteriorated; as all the
labour consists in the application of the theory. I hope you will approve of Wallace's sketch, that I may tell
him what you say." (Darwin, C.R., Letter to C. Lyell, 18th June 1858, in Darwin, F., ed., "The Life and
Letters of Charles Darwin," [1898], Basic Books: New York NY, Vol. I., 1959, reprint, pp.472-473)
7/07/2006
"MY DEAR LYELL,-I am very sorry to trouble you, busy as you are, in so merely a personal an affair; but if
you will give me your deliberate opinion, you will do me as great a service as ever man did, for I have entire
confidence in your judgment and honour. ... There is nothing in Wallace's sketch which is not written out
much fuller in my sketch, copied out in 1844, and read by Hooker some dozen years ago. About a year ago I
sent a short sketch, of which I have a copy, of my views (owing to correspondence on several points) to
Asa Gray, so that I could most truly say and prove that I take nothing from Wallace. I should be extremely
glad now to publish a sketch of my general views in about a dozen pages or so; but I cannot persuade
myself that I can do so honourably. Wallace says nothing about publication, and I enclose his letter. But as
I had not intended to publish any sketch, can I do so honourably, because Wallace has sent me an outline
of his doctrine? I would far rather burn my whole book, than that he or any other man should think that I had
behaved in a paltry spirit. Do you not think his having sent me this sketch ties my hands? ... If I could
honourably publish, I would state that I was induced now to publish a sketch (and I should be very glad to
be permitted to say, to follow your advice long ago given) from Wallace having sent me an outline of my
general conclusions. We differ only, [in] that I was led to my views from what artificial selection has done
for domestic animals. I would send Wallace a copy of my letter to Asa Gray, to show him that I had not
stolen his doctrine. But I cannot tell whether to publish now would not be base and paltry. This was my first
impression, and I should have certainly acted on it had it not been for your letter. This is a trumpery affair to
trouble you with, but you cannot tell how much obliged I should be for your advice. By the way, would you
object to send this and your answer to Hooker to be forwarded to me, for then I shall have the opinion of my
two best and kindest friends. This letter is miserably written, and I write it now, that I may for a time banish
the whole subject; and I am worn out with musing ... My good dear friend forgive me. This is a trumpery
letter, influenced by trumpery feelings ... I will never trouble you or Hooker on the subject again." (Darwin,
C.R., Letter to C. Lyell, 25th June 1858, in Darwin, F., ed., "The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin," [1898],
Basic Books: New York NY, Vol. I., 1959, reprint, pp.474-475)
7/07/2006
"MY DEAR LYELL,-Forgive me for adding a P.S. to make the case as strong as possible against myself.
Wallace might say, ` You did not intend publishing an abstract of your views till you received my
communication. Is it fair to take advantage of my having freely, though unasked, communicated to you my
ideas, and thus prevent me forestalling you?' The advantage which I should take being that I am induced
to publish from privately knowing that Wallace is in the field. It seems hard on me that I should be thus
compelled to lose my priority of many years' standing, but I cannot feel at all sure that this alters the justice
of the case. First impressions are generally right, and I at first thought it would be dishonourable in me now
to publish. ... P. S.-I have always thought you would make a first-rate Lord Chancellor; and I now appeal to
you as a Lord Chancellor." (Darwin, C.R., Letter to C. Lyell, 26th June 1858, in Darwin, F., ed., "The Life and
Letters of Charles Darwin," [1898], Basic Books: New York NY, Vol. I., 1959, reprint, p.475)
7/07/2006
"In our view, the evidence in this book is strong. However, there is still much resistance to this type of
argumentation. There are many reasons for the resistance. But it can be explained, at least in part, by the
dominance of naturalism both within science and outside science in academic culture generally, as well as
by the religious function that evolutionary naturalism plays for many people. Darwin, it has been said, made
the world safe for atheists. In our view that world is not as safe as atheists may think. In fact, many
scientists have said, in various contexts, that evolutionary theory is in a period of crisis. To show this, we
have included an appendix by John Ankerberg and John Weldon. They have compiled a list of statements,
taken in context, to show that a number of scientists, sometimes in unguarded moments and usually without
the intent of abandoning evolutionary theory, have frankly expressed their own intellectual doubts about
various aspects of evolutionary naturalism." (Moreland, J.P.*, "Introduction," in Moreland, J.P., ed., "The
Creation Hypothesis: Scientific Evidence for an Intelligent Designer," InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL,
1994, p.36)
7/07/2006
"I think it could be argued that much of the acceptance of Darwinism (which was the major contributor to
the abandonment of theistic science) was sociological, philosophical and spiritual (it made the world safe for
atheists, as Richard Dawkins has said), much like what Searle has shown to be the case in the current
acceptance of materialist research programs in the mind-body problem." (Moreland, J.P., "Theistic Science &
Methodological Naturalism," in Moreland, J.P.*, ed., "The Creation Hypothesis: Scientific Evidence for an
Intelligent Designer," InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL, 1994, p.62)
8/07/2006
"In many cultures, the origin of the universe is traditionally explained through tales of the creation or
separation of the solid Earth, the waters and the sky. The stories commonly feature a belief that there is
some device or being that acts as an intermediary between Heaven and Earth. For example, they depict real
or mythical people and animals in celestial constellations. In the modern era, most people regard these tales
only as colourful traditions, part of cultural history rather than of science. Some, however, have survived -
such as the Christian creationist belief that the universe was created in a few days about 6,000 years ago.
The flaw with all early accounts of the origin of the universe is that they devote the bulk of their attention to
the formation of the Earth and its living creatures while, in the last few hundred years, it has become
apparent that the Earth is a minute object in a massive universe, of interest only because we live there. It
does not make even a footnote to a footnote in modern cosmology." (Ince, M., "How did the universe
begin?", in Swain, H., ed., "Big Questions in Science?," Jonathan Cape: London, p.12)
8/07/2006
"The term `ad hoc' is also used to characterize a hypothesis that accounts only for the particular fact or facts
it was invented to explain and has no other explanatory power, that is, no other testable consequences. No
scientific hypothesis is ad hoc in this second sense of the term, although every hypothesis is ad
hoc in the first sense explained. A hypothesis that is ad hoc in the second sense is unscientific; since it
is not testable, it has no place in the structure of science. The second sense of `ad hoc' fits in perfectly with
the derogatory emotive meaning of the term. " (Copi, I.M., Introduction to Logic," [1953], Macmillan: New
York NY, Seventh edition, 1986, p.509)
8/07/2006
"A hypothesis threatened by recalcitrant data can often be saved by postulating entities or properties that
account for the data. Such a move is legitimate if there's an independent means of verifying their existence. If
there is no such means, the hypothesis is ad hoc. Ad hoc literally means `for this case only.' But it's
not simply that a hypothesis is designed to account for a particular phenomenon that makes it ad hoc (if
that were the case, all hypotheses would be ad hoc). What makes a hypothesis ad hoc is that it can't
be verified independently of the phenomenon it's supposed to explain. ... When a scientific theory starts
relying on ad hoc hypotheses to be saved from adverse data, it becomes unreasonable to maintain belief
in that theory." (Schick, T. & Vaughn, L., "How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New
Age," Mayfield: Mountain View CA, California, Second edition, 1995, pp.157,159)
8/07/2006
"The moral of this story is that for a hypothesis to increase our knowledge, there must be some way to test
it, for if there isn't, we have no way of telling whether or not the hypothesis is true. ... Since science is a
search for knowledge, it's interested only in those hypotheses that can be tested-if a hypothesis can't be
tested, there is no way to determine whether it's true or false. Hypotheses, however, can't be tested in
isolation, for, as we've seen, hypotheses have observable consequences only in the context of a
background theory. So to be testable, a hypothesis, in conjunction with a background theory, must predict
something more than the background theory alone. If a hypothesis doesn't go beyond the background
theory, it doesn't expand our knowledge, and hence is scientifically uninteresting. ... Scientific hypotheses
can be distinguished from nonscientific ones, then, by the following principle: A hypothesis is scientific
only if it is testable, that is, only if it predicts something other than what it was introduced to explain."
(Schick, T. & Vaughn, L., "How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age," Mayfield:
Mountain View CA, California, Second edition, 1995, pp.160-161)
9/07/2006
"Over the centuries Galileo's condemnation by-the Catholic church has loomed large in controversies
between science and religion. His trial has been held up as the prime example of Christianity's hostility to
free inquiry and to scientific progress. For example, one biography of Galileo concludes with this
assessment: `Galileo does stand as a classic example of the evils of a totalitarian regime. He was persecuted
and prosecuted by men who ... were afraid of the power of independent thought. Galileo queried the
Scriptures, he made his own interpretation, and so cut right across the religious authority of the Church....
All they could see was a man who could disrupt their system, and they took the one course they could: they
stifled the dissension at its source.' [Ronan, C.A., "Galileo," G.P. Putnam's Sons: New York, 1974, p.253] But
was the conflict so clear-cut? Whose system did Galileo set out to disrupt, the religious authority of Rome
or the scientific authority of Aristotle? How did an academic conflict originating within the university
become a theological issue for the church? And what forces of power politics-ambition, envy, prejudice,
rancor, special interests - propelled the conflict to its disturbing conclusion? ... Galileo's trial of 1633 was not
the simple conflict between science and religion so commonly pictured. It was a complex power struggle of
personal and professional pride, envy and ambition, affected by pressures of bureaucratic politics. The
deliberations seemed to take on a life of their own, moving toward an inevitable conclusion with elements of
a Greek tragedy. ... one should be wary of accepting the traditional interpretation of the trial, exemplified by
Colin Ronan's conclusion: "Galileo does stand as a classic example of the evils of a totalitarian regime.... [He]
cut right across the religious authority of the Church.... It was essentially Galileo's danger to an authoritarian
outlook that caused his downfall ." [Ronan, C.A., "Galileo," G. P. Putnam's Sons: New York, 1974, p.253] ...
Ronan's conclusion is a curious mixture of truth and error. He is close to the truth when he calls Galileo the
victim of an authoritarian outlook. The problem is that he points the guilty finger in the wrong direction. To
call the Catholic Church in the Italy of that time (a collection of independent states) a totalitarian regime is an
anachronism. The Pope hardly had the power of a modern dictator. For example, if Galileo had stayed in the
Republic of Venice, which had recently expelled the Jesuits for political intrigue, he would have been safe.
The real authoritarianism that engineered Galileo's downfall was that of the Aristotelian scientific outlook in
the universities. Only after Galileo had attacked that establishment for decades did his enemies turn their
controversy into a theological issue. Even then it was the natural philosophers who worked behind the
scenes with pliable church authorities to foment Galileo's trial, and finally to rob him of the reasonable
solution worked out by the Inquisition. ... A more accurate assessment is given by Santillana: `In reality it
was a confused free-for-all in which prejudice, inveterate rancor, and all sorts of special and corporate
interests were prime movers.... It has been known for a long time that a major part of the church intellectuals
were on the side of Galileo, while the clearest opposition to him came from secular ideas.... The tragedy was
the result of a plot of which the hierarchies themselves turned out to be the victims no less than Galileo-an
intrigue engineered by a group of obscure and disparate characters in strange collusion. [de Santillana, G.,
"The Crime of Galileo," University of Chicago Press: Chicago IL, 1955, pp.xii-xiii]" (Hummel, C.E., "The
Galileo Connection: Resolving Conflicts between Science & the Bible," Intervarsity Press: Downers Grove
IL, 1986, pp.13, 116, 122-123)
10/07/2006
"The greatest current controversy in phylogeny will perhaps be settled by invoking parallelophyly; it
concerns the origin of birds. There is no argument over the conclusion that birds derived from the
archosaurian lineage of the diapsid reptiles. But when this happened is the argument. As far back as the
1860s, T H. Huxley called attention to the remarkable similarity of the avian skeleton to that of certain reptiles
and concluded that the birds had descended from dinosaurs. Later, other authors postulated a much earlier
origin, but recently the dinosaur origin has been proclaimed by the cladists with such vigor that at present it
seems to be the most widely accepted explanation of the origin of birds. Indeed, the similarity of the pelvis
and legs between birds and certain bipedal dinosaurs is astonishingly close ... However, the arguments of
their opponents are also very persuasive. The fossil chronology seems to be in conflict with the dinosaur
theory The particular bipedal dinosaurs that are most birdlike occurred in the later Cretaceous, some 70-100
million years ago, while Archaeopteryx, the oldest known fossil bird, lived 145 million years ago.
Archaeopteryx has so many advanced avian characters that the origin of birds must be placed
considerably earlier than the late Jurassic, perhaps in the Triassic, but no birdlike dinosaurs are known from
that period. Furthermore, the digits in the dinosaurian hand are 2, 3, 4 while in the avian hand they are l, 2, 3.
Also, the anterior extremities of the birdlike dinosaurs are very much reduced and in no way preadapted to
become wings. It is quite inconceivable how they could have possibly shifted to flight. These are only a few
of the numerous facts in conflict with a Cretaceous origin of birds from a dinosaurian ancestry. The
argument will probably not be fully settled until more Triassic fossils are found." (Mayr, E.W., "What
Evolution Is," Basic Books: New York NY, 2001, pp.227-227. Emphasis original)
10/07/2006
"ARE THERE LAWS OF EVOLUTION? This is a question that physicists and philosophers like to ask. To
answer it, one first needs to decide what one means by the word `law.' The kind of laws characteristic of the
physical sciences, which can be stated in mathematical terms and have no exceptions, are sometimes also
encountered in functional biology. Mathematical generalizations can often be applied to biological
phenomena, like the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium relating to the distribution of alleles in populations. By
contrast, all so-called evolutionary laws are contingent generalizations, and thus not equivalent to the laws
of physics. Evolutionary `laws,' such as Dollo's Law of the irreversibility of evolution or Cope's Law of an
evolutionary increase in body size, are empirical generalizations, with numerous exceptions, and are quite
fundamentally different from the universal laws of physics. Empirical generalizations are useful for ordering
observations and in the search for causal factors. Rensch (1947) made a particularly helpful contribution to
this subject in pointing out that evolutionary `laws' are greatly restricted in time and place and therefore do
not satisfy the traditional definitions of scientific laws." (Mayr, E.W., "What Evolution Is," Basic Books:
New York NY, 2001, pp.227-228. Emphasis original)
10/07/2006
"For years there has been a rather heated controversy over whether chance (contingency) or necessity
(adaptation) is the dominant factor in evolution. Enthusiastic Darwinians tended to ascribe every aspect of a
living organism to adaptation. They argued that in every generation there is a drastic culling of each
population, sparing on the average only two of the hundreds, thousands, or in some cases even millions of
offspring of each set of parents. Only the most perfectly adapted individuals, they would claim, could pass
through this ruthless process of elimination. Those who uphold adaptation as the dominant force in
evolution have indeed a strong argument. Unfortunately, some of the strict adaptationists forgot that
natural selection is a two-step process. To be sure, selection for adaptedness is paramount at the second
step, but this is preceded by a first step-the production of the variation that provides the material for the
selection process, and here stochastic processes (chance, contingency) are dominant. And it is this
randomness of variation that is responsible for the enormous, often quite bizarre diversity of the living
world." (Mayr E.W., "What Evolution Is," Basic Books: New York NY, 2001, p.228. Emphasis original)
10/07/2006
"The illustration of the swimbladder in fishes is a good one, because it shows us clearly the highly
important fact that an organ originally constructed for one purpose, namely flotation, may be converted into
one for a wholly different purpose, namely respiration. ... All physiologists admit that the swimbladder is
homologous, or `ideally similar,' in position and structure with the lungs of the higher vertebrate animals:
hence there seems to me to be no great difficulty in believing that natural selection has actually converted a
swimbladder into a lung, or organ used exclusively for respiration. I can, indeed, hardly doubt that all
vertebrate animals having true lungs have descended by ordinary generation from an ancient prototype, of
which we know nothing, furnished with a floating apparatus or swimbladder." (Darwin, C.R., "The Origin of
Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life,"
1859, First Edition, Penguin: London, 1985, reprint, pp.220-221)
10/07/2006
"The illustration of the swimbladder in fishes is a good one, because it shows us clearly the highly
important fact that an organ originally constructed for one purpose, namely, flotation, may be converted into
one for a widely different purpose, namely, respiration. ... All physiologists admit that the swim bladder is
homologous, or `ideally similar' in position and structure with the lungs of the higher vertebrate animals:
hence there is no reason to doubt that the swim bladder has actually been converted into lungs, or an organ
used exclusively for respiration. According to this view it may be inferred that all vertebrate animals with
true lungs are descended by ordinary generation from an ancient and unknown prototype, which was
furnished with a floating apparatus or swimbladder." (Darwin, C.R., "The Origin of Species By Means of
Natural Selection," 1872, Sixth Edition, 1994, Senate: London, pp.147-148)
10/07/2006
"To show that any two species of organism are related in an evolutionary sense, to show for example that
one species A, is ancestral to B, ie A -> B or that both species have descended from a common ancestral
source, ie A <- ->B, it is necessary to satisfy one of the following conditions. Either one, to find a 'perfect'
sequence of fully functional intermediate forms I1, I2, I3 leading unambiguously from one species to
another, ie A-> I1 -> I2> I3 -> B, or two, to reconstruct hypothetically in great detail the exact sequence of
events which led from A to B or from a common ancestor to A and B, including thoroughly convincing
reconstructions of intermediate forms and a rigorous and detailed explanation of how and why each stage in
the transformation came about." (Denton M.J., "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis," Burnett Books: London,
1985, pp.55-56)
11/07/2006
"BIOLOGISTS adduce as strong evidence in support of the evolution doctrine the existence in organisms of
structures which they usually describe as rudimentary. If these were in reality rudimentary, that is to say, in
a nascent condition, in the course of being developed, their presence would indeed afford strong support to
the theory. Unfortunately for the doctrine, not one of these structures is rudimentary. Some of them are
vestigial, that is to say, organs in a state of degeneration. If the evolution doctrine was merely that many
types have degenerated since they were created or originated, then the presence of vestigial organs would
afford strong support to it. What the doctrine demands is not vestigial, but nascent organs, and the latter
appear to be non-existent. Such a state of affairs seems to strike at the root of the evolution doctrine. Better
evidence of the assertion that for the last fifty years biological textbooks bring to light only that which is
favourable to evolution and pass over unnoticed all that is unfavourable could scarcely be adduced than
the fact that these volumes contain many references to vestigial organs, but none to nascent organs.
Darwin, however, was not guilty of this omission. He invariably endeavoured to forestall criticism. He tried
hard to find some examples of nascent organs. He suggested that the wing of the penguin might be a
nascent organ of flight; to-day no zoologist accepts this suggestion. Darwin was of opinion that the
mammary glands of the duck-billed platypus (Ornithorhynchus) may be considered `in comparison with
the udders of a cow, as in a nascent condition.' [Darwin, C.R., "The Origin of Species By Means of Natural
Selection," 1872, Sixth edition, Senate: London, 1994, pp.398-399)] As we shall notice ... later research has
proved this view to be incorrect. Darwin's third attempt to cite a nascent organ reads as follows (Origin of
Species, 6th ed., p. 399): 'The ovigerous frena of certain cirripedes which have ceased to give attachment to
the ova and are feebly developed are nascent branchiae.' Even if Darwin's surmise be correct, this would be
the case of a change in the function of an existing organ rather than the origin of an entirely new structure."
(Dewar, D., "Difficulties of the Evolution Theory," Edward Arnold & Co: London, 1931, p.25)
11/07/2006
"I cannot call to mind any other structure that has been cited as a nascent organ. It may here be mentioned
that the mammae of male mammals cannot be nascent mammary glands, as they occur in so many orders;
moreover, there is no evidence that they are better developed to-day in any species than they were three or
four thousand years ago. Thus, although the anatomy of thousands of species of animals has been carefully
studied, it is impossible to adduce a single structure in any species which is indubitably or even probably in
a nascent condition. Darwin saw that the absence of nascent organs was fatal to the theory of evolution as
held by him, and, having failed in the attempt to discover any, he made the best of a bad business by
disposing of it in the following summary manner (loc. cit., p. 398): `It is often difficult to distinguish
between rudimentary and nascent organs; for we can judge only by analogy whether a part is capable of
further development, in which case alone it deserves to be called nascent. Organs in this condition will
always be somewhat rare; for the beings thus provided will commonly have been supplanted by their
successors with the same organ in a more perfect state, and consequently will have become long ago
extinct.' [Darwin, C.R., "The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection," 1872, Sixth edition, Senate:
London, 1994, p.398] The flaw in this argument is obvious: if evolution be now taking place, the animals that
are about to supplant their rivals owing to the acquisition of new and useful organs should to-day exhibit
these latter in a nascent condition. ... The absence of nascent organs, then, indicates that evolution, as
distinguished from degeneration or mere differentiation, is not taking place in any living animal of which the
anatomy is known. This is quite in accordance with the fact that the breeders have not succeeded in
producing a new family. Although nascent organs do not seem to occur in organisms, vestigial structures
are numerous. Vestigial structures are those in a state of atrophy, apparently useless and often poorly
developed although well developed in other animals to which they are useful. These facts, difficult to
reconcile with the theory of evolution, are fully in accord with that of creation; because, if each type be an
independent creation, we should expect it to be endowed with all necessary organs at the time of its
creation. Even as the individual grows old, so does the type. In each case various organs tend to degenerate
with the advent of old age. Moreover, in the case of the type, changed conditions may render superfluous
certain structures that were necessary during the youth of the type." (Dewar D., "Difficulties of the
Evolution Theory," Edward Arnold & Co: London, 1931, pp.25-27. Emphasis original)
11/07/2006
"Useful organs, however little they may be developed, unless we have reason to suppose that they were
formerly more highly developed, ought not to be considered as rudimentary. They may be in a nascent
condition, and in progress towards further development. Rudimentary organs, on the other hand, are either
quite useless, such as teeth which never cut through the gums, or almost useless, such as the wings of an
ostrich, which serve merely as sails. As organs in this condition would formerly, when still less developed,
have been of even less use than at present, they cannot formerly have been produced through variation and
natural selection, which acts solely by the preservation of useful modifications. They have been partially
retained by the power of inheritance, and relate to a former state of things. It is, however, often difficult to
distinguish between rudimentary and nascent organs; for we can judge only by analogy whether a part is
capable of further development, in which case alone it deserves to be called nascent. Organs in this
condition will always be somewhat rare; for beings thus provided will commonly have been supplanted by
their successors with the same organ in a more perfect state, and consequently will have become long ago
extinct. The wing of the penguin is of high service, acting as a fin; it may, therefore, represent the nascent
state of the wing; not that I believe this to be the case; it is more probably a reduced organ, modified for a
new function; the wing of the Apteryx [Kiwi], on the other hand, is quite useless, and is truly rudimentary.
Owen considers the simple filamentary limbs of the Lepidosiren [lungfish]as the `beginnings of organs
which attain full functional development in higher vertebrates'; but, according to the view lately advocated
by Dr. Günther, they are probably remnants, consisting of the persistent axis of a fin, with the lateral rays or
branches aborted. The mammary glans of the Ornithorhynchus [pltypus] may be considered, in
comparison with the udders of a cow, as in a nascent condition. The ovigerous frena of certain cirripedes,
which have ceased to give attachment to the ova and are feebly developed, are nascent branchiæ." (Darwin,
C.R., "The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection," 1872, Sixth edition, Senate: London, 1994,
pp.398-399)
11/07/2006
"In short, Walcott viewed the Burgess arthropods as members of five major lineages, already stable and well
established at this early Cambrian date. But if life had already become so well differentiated along essentially
modern lines, the five lineages must have existed at the inception of the Cambrian explosion as recorded by
fossil evidence-for evolution is stately and gradual, not a domain of sudden jumps and mad eruptions of
diversity. And if the five lineages existed as well-differentiated groups right at the beginning of the
Cambrian, then their common ancestor must be sought far back in the Precambrian. The Cambrian explosion
must therefore be an artifact of an imperfect fossil record; the late Precambrian seas, in Darwin's words, must
have `swarmed with living creatures' (1859, p. 307). Walcott thought that he had discovered why we have no
evidence for this necessary Precambrian richness. In other words, he thought that he had solved the riddle
of the Cambrian explosion in orthodox Darwinian terms. ... We must remember that the Cambrian explosion
was no ordinary riddle, and its potential solution therefore no minor plum, but something more akin to the
Holy Grail. Darwin, as already noted, had publicly fretted that `the case at present must remain inexplicable;
and may be truly urged as a valid argument against the views here entertained' (1859, p. 308). Two different
kinds of explanations for the absence of Precambrian ancestors have been debated for more than a century:
the artifact theory (they did exist, but the fossil record hasn't preserved them), and the fast-transition theory
(they really didn't exist, at least as complex invertebrates easily linked to their descendants, and the
evolution of modern anatomical plans occurred with a rapidity that threatens our usual ideas about the
stately pace of evolutionary change). ... We can now understand why Walcott was virtually compelled to
propose the Burgess shoehorn. He interpreted his new fauna in the light of thirty previous years spent
(largely in frustration) trying to prove the artifact theory, as an ultimate tribute to Darwin from a Cambrian
geologist. He could not grant Burgess organisms the uniqueness that seems so evident to us today because
a raft of new phyla would have threatened his most cherished belief. If evolution could produce ten new
Cambrian phyla and then wipe them out just as quickly, then what about the surviving Cambrian groups?
Why should they have had a long and honorable Precambrian pedigree? Why should they not have
originated just before the Cambrian, as the fossil record, read literally, seems to indicate, and as the fast-
transition theory proposes? This argument, of course, is a death knell for the artifact theory." (Gould, S.J.,
"Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History," [1989], Penguin: London, 1991, reprint,
pp.270-273)
11/07/2006
"Huxley, Tyndall, and Spencer were founding members of the `X Club', a group of nine `scientific naturalists'
who spearheaded the drive to replace the cultural dominance of conventional religion with their scientific
(materialistic) world-view. The use of science as an ideological weapon is even more evident in the attempts
of this group to `secularize' society than it was in the work of the Radicals, the Paleyites, and the Idealists.
From a propagandist's point of view, this made confrontation with men like Owen inevitable, for Owen's
idealism was a mainstay of the natural theology used during the 1860's to support the Establishment
(Desmond, 1982). Huxley wished to read a different message from the book of Nature. In support of this
goal, the `Young Guard' used the trappings of religion to sacralize their `science'. Three centuries of
cooperation between science and religion was forgotten and their history was rewritten as a `warfare'.
Hymns to nature were sung at popular lectures before the giving of `lay sermons' by a member of Galton's
`Scientific Priesthood'. Museums were built to resemble cathedrals, and following frantic string-pulling by
Lubbock (another X club member), Charles Darwin was buried in Westminster Abbey. The new church was
established. The success of this `scientific naturalism' as a religious movement can be judged by are general
acceptance of the pronouncements of the `true believers' of the `church scientific' who still exist and
evangelize among us." (Wilcox D.L., "Created in Eternity, Unfolded in Time", Eastern College: St. Davids
PA, 1990, Unpublished Manuscript, Chapter 2, p12)
11/07/2006
"In London, Thomas Huxley's 'X' Club, [Bibby, C., "Scientist Extraordinary", Pergamon, 1972, pp. 58, 135] an
influential group of nine men who were notified of meetings by the delivery of an algebraic formula and who
always dined immediately before meetings of the Royal Society, may have suppressed Mendel's work. The
Club mustered a Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Treasurer and three successive Presidents of the Royal
Society, six Presidents of the British Association and several officers of the Geological, Linnaean and
Ethnological Societies. It is certain that the 'gay and conspiratorial' 'X' Club, which was strongly evolutionist
in character, not only influenced the appointments made for senior positions in the newly formed
universities of the Victorian era but also, until its demise in the 1890s, practically controlled the business of
the Royal Society. It never elected a tenth member: Busk, Frankland, Hirst, Hooker, Huxley, Lubbock,
Herbert Spencer, Spottiswoode and Tyndall were its men. Is it possible they saw the implications of
Mendel's paper and refused to confront them?" (Pitman M., "Adam and Evolution," Rider & Co: London,
1984, p.64)
12/07/2006
"Gould was a modern master of the scientific essay, the inheritor of a tradition shaped by the likes of T. H.
Huxley, J. B. S. Haldane, and Martin Gardner. True to form, the essays in "I Have Landed" delight in the
unlikely intersection of science with you-name-it - the Alamo, the Red Sox, Nabokov, the mourners at Marx's
funeral. In one piece, Gould brings together Darwin's reluctance to utter the word `evolution' and the
reopening of the Hayden Planetarium, in 2000, to launch a marvellously lucid explanation of the difference
between biological and stellar evolution. "When astronomers talk about the evolution of a star, they clearly
do not invoke a ... theory like Darwin's," he writes. `Stars do not change through time because mama and
papa stars generate broods of varying daughter stars.'" (Orr, H.A., " The Descent of Gould: How a
paleontologist sought to revolutionize evolution," The New Yorker, September 30, 2002)
12/07/2006
"The biggest of Gould's theories - and the one on which his scientific legacy will surely ride - is known as
`punctuated equilibrium.' Gould introduced punctuated equilibrium with Niles Eldredge, of the American
Museum of Natural History, in 1972. Their starting point was simple: trust the fossils. The fossil record, they
said, shows something surprising. Species look unchanged for vast stretches of time and then - suddenly -
they morph. Certain species of African snail, for instance, look the same for millions of years and then
abruptly change shell shape. The question was why. The traditional answer among evolutionary biologists
was that species change gradually, by natural selection, and if the fossil record says different, so much the
worse for the fossil record. This attitude isn't quite as cavalier as it sounds. Evolutionary biologists have
always believed that the fossil record is abysmally bad. (Imagine trying to reconstruct Western history from
two snapshots, one of Pontius Pilate and the other of Evel Knievel.) Moreover, biologists can see gradual
adaptive change happening around them. (Think of antibiotic resistance.) So, the argument went, we're
better off extrapolating from what we can see clearly now than trusting a fragmentary record of what
allegedly happened then." (Orr, H.A., " The Descent of Gould: How a paleontologist sought to
revolutionize evolution," The New Yorker, September 30, 2002)
12/07/2006
"Gould and Eldredge believed otherwise. They said that the pattern of long stasis punctuated by sudden
change is real. It doesn't reflect gaps in the data; it is the data. They also said - and here we move from the
pattern to the theory side of punctuated equilibrium - that this pattern can be explained by two ideas. The
first idea is that creatures are robust beings that resist the pressures of changing environments. This
conservatism, they argued, reflects the complexities of development, the intricate process by which an
organism goes from a single cell to a strapping adult: development is so tightly coördinated that it can't be
easily tinkered with without breaking down entirely. The result is no evolutionary change. This idea of
`developmental constraints' was the most heterodox aspect of punctuated equilibrium. Darwin, after all, held
that animals and plants are nearly infinitely pliant, adapting to the subtlest shift in the environment; Gould
and Eldredge held that organisms are stiff and unyielding." (Orr, H.A., " The Descent of Gould: How a
paleontologist sought to revolutionize evolution," The New Yorker, September 30, 2002)
12/07/2006
"The second idea is that sudden change in the fossil record happens at the very moment that a species
splits into two species. According to conventional theory, `ordinary' evolutionary change and species-
splitting have little to do with each other. If we consider two lizard populations - one on one side of a river
and one on the other - traditional theory says that either population could start to change, say, tail length at
any time. If we could leap forward and look at these populations a million years hence, we might find that
although they began with identical tail lengths they now have tails of markedly different lengths. This
wouldn't mean, however, that these lizards now belong to separate species. They would belong to separate
species only if the two populations could no longer mate with each other and produce fertile offspring; only,
that is, if they could no longer share genes. The genetic changes underlying this process of `speciation' are
thought to accumulate slowly and gradually between geographically separated populations. But the
essential point is that, under this traditional view, speciation and change in ordinary features like tail length
are not necessarily simultaneous. This is the view that Gould and Eldredge rejected. Echoing arguments
made by the naturalist Ernst Mayr, they claimed that speciation involves `genetic revolutions,' episodes of
extensive genetic change that shake up much of an organism's genome. Going even further, Gould and
Eldredge argued that only speciation - only passage through a genetic revolution - is sufficiently violent to
break the binds of developmental constraints. The result is that all evolutionary change is restricted to rare
moments of species-splitting. Lizards can't just go changing tail length; they can do so only when splitting
into different species. So much for Darwinism." (Orr, H.A., " The Descent of Gould: How a
paleontologist sought to revolutionize evolution," The New Yorker, September 30, 2002)
12/07/2006
"Punctuated equilibrium ignited enormous controversy. The scientific literature erupted into attack and
counterattack; conferences melted down. Even by the indelicate standards of science, the debate got ugly.
Punctuated equilibrium was branded "evolution by jerks," and Gould was, as he says, "reviled in many
quarters." The ferocity of the proceedings had several causes. One was that a great deal was at stake.
Punctuated equilibrium struck at the foundations of evolution, and scientists do not, as a rule, like being
told that their theoretical edifice teeters on a wobbly base. Then there was the matter of Gould's style. Gould
was, by his own admission, the "most arrogant of literati," and his outsized confidence seemed to provoke
an escalation in his (and everyone else's) rhetoric. In 1980, he brashly pronounced the modern theory of
Darwinism "effectively dead," and predicted the emergence of "a new and general theory of evolution."
Last, the theory of punctuated equilibrium was at odds with the evidence, unsalvageably so. There was
simply no reason to think that speciation is a tumultuous event during which evolutionary change is
especially likely to take place. Worse, mountains of data contradicted the claim that organisms are bound by
developmental constraints, unable to change unless they speciate. The best of this evidence is no farther
away than the corn on your plate or the Chihuahua on your sofa. If man can shape these things from their
wild ancestors by artificial selection - and without speciation - talk of strong constraints is in a bad way."
(Orr, H.A., " The Descent of Gould: How a paleontologist sought to revolutionize evolution," The New
Yorker, September 30, 2002)
12/07/2006
"Gould ultimately conceded all this, though at an agonizing pace that spanned decades. (In this respect, if in
no other, he was a gradualist.) In `The Structure of Evolutionary Theory,' he admits that `we made mistakes,'
and that prominent among these were the claims about both constraint (idea one) and speciation (idea two).
The theory part of punctuated equilibrium was thereby gutted. But what of the pattern part? If a punctuated
pattern characterizes the fossil record - and Gould insists that it does, and spends a good deal of `The
Structure' trying to show that new species often appear abruptly in the fossil record alongside ancestral
ones - what explains it? Gould concludes that the best guess was one made by the evolutionist Douglas
Futuyma in the eighties. Futuyma's idea starts with the fact that different populations of a species often
adapt to local features of their environments. Mice in the north, for instance, might evolve to be bigger than
those in the south because big bodies lose proportionally less heat. But such local differences are usually
too short-lived to show up in the fossil record. That's because populations are apt to come back into contact
with each other, and when they do they begin to mate and so swap genes. As a result, any differences
among the populations tend to get blended away: close encounters between northern and southern mice
yield mid-sized mice. There's only one way to prevent this washing-out: populations must not only adapt
but speciate. For separate species, by definition, can't swap genes and so won't lose their distinctive
looks by genetic blending when they come into contact. This, then, might explain why, in the fossil record,
change and speciation seem to go hand in hand. It's not that change is rare and happens only when species
split; it's that change is common, but only if species split do the resulting differences last long enough to
have a shot at showing up as fossils. Futuyma's idea, though, had one embarrassing blemish: it's pure
Darwinism. Gould and his allies thus found themselves in a peculiar position: the red-hot revolutionaries
suddenly seemed staid traditionalists. This was not, of course, lost on evolutionists, many of whom were
still steaming over the Darwinism-is-dead business. By the nineties, most evolutionary biologists had simply
stopped paying attention to punctuated equilibrium. At best, the theory looked like a moving target, veering
now at breakneck speed toward Darwinism. At worst, its chief advocate seemed muddled, a mixture of
radical rhetoric and malleable ideas. Punctuated equilibrium was down, if not out." (Orr, H.A., " The Descent
of Gould: How a paleontologist sought to revolutionize evolution," The New Yorker, September 30, 2002)
12/07/2006
"The worry is that all this misses what Gould was really up to. Over the years, I've come to an admittedly
speculative view of Gould's modus operandi as a scientist. It starts from the idea that there were two figures
looking over his shoulders as he wrote. One was Charles Darwin, but the other was Thomas Kuhn. Gould
was steeped in Kuhn's 1962 book `The Structure of Scientific Revolutions' and his vision of alternating
bouts of workaday `normal' science and revolutionary paradigm shifts. In `The Structure of Evolutionary
Theory,' Gould fondly reminisces about his first reading of Kuhn as an impressionable first-year graduate
student. Kuhn deeply affected Gould's science. One might even argue that punctuated equilibrium is little
more than Kuhn's view of the history of ideas transferred wholesale to the history of life, an idea that is
reinforced by the fact that Gould and Eldredge began their 1972 paper with talk of paradigms and Kuhn.
Even the title of Gould's magnum opus seems a riff on `The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.' In fact,
Kuhn seems to have transformed not only Gould's image of science but his image of the scientist. The
revolutionary scientist, Gould seemed to conclude, is one who knows that big progress follows big jolts.
Just as old and hopelessly constrained species can do nothing interesting unless they get periodically
shaken, so old and hopelessly conservative paradigms can't give way to new science unless they receive a
good swift kick now and then. These assaults are characterized by a great deal of noise, confusion, and hurt
feelings. But, more than anything, they're characterized by a protagonist who's willing to stick his neck out
farther than others dare - one who's willing to be wrong. Major progress, Gould seemed to believe, demands
major risk. And, even if you get things wrong, science may ultimately gain. People ask questions and make
discoveries that would otherwise have gone unasked and undiscovered. (Gould quotes the economist
Vilfredo Pareto with approval here: "Give me a fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own
corrections. You can keep your sterile truth for yourself.") Gould might well then represent something new
in the historical strata of science: the first self-consciously revolutionary scientist - the first scientist who
set out to create a revolution at least in part because he felt that the field just needed one. If something
like this characterizes Gould's approach, it complicates any attempt to assess his legacy. Gould's attacks on
adaptationism may have been extreme, but fanciful Just So stories are now, thankfully, rarer. Key parts of
punctuated equilibrium were wrong, but paleontological data are, largely due to Gould, richer than ever.
Species selection may not make sudden sense of the fossil record, but a reinvigorated paleontology sits at
evolutionary biology's high table. In the end, Gould's career may force us to separate two questions that are
usually conflated: was he right, and was he good for science? It may not, after all, be a law of nature that the
two have the same answer." (Orr, H.A., " The Descent of Gould: How a paleontologist sought to revolutionize
evolution," The New Yorker, September 30, 2002)
12/07/2006
"We read on the front page that the dollar has reached a new low against the Japanese yen; turning to the
business section, we see that the stock market has gone down. The explanation we are offered might go like
this: a more expensive yen will make Japanese imports costlier, fueling domestic inflation and tempting the
Federal Reserve Board to raise interest rates, stifling the American economy. But one can search the back
issues of the paper and find cases in which a dollar falling to a historic low against the yen has been
accompanied by a rise in the market. The rationale? More expensive Japanese imports give American
companies a competitive edge, and a cheaper dollar draws tourists from the Orient. With the slightest effort
we can construct a logical story. In 1993 when, after reaching twenty-year lows, home mortgage rates first
began creeping up, the change was blamed on a number of factors, including rising world gold prices (a
signal of inflation fears) and, again, the dollar falling precipitously against the yen. Several weeks later,
interest rates temporarily turned around again and went even lower than before, but the dollar kept on falling
and gold kept on rising When IBM announces layoffs and its stock goes down, the rationale is obvious.
But just as often, such events will cause a stock to rise. Why? Because, we are told, the market had already
`discounted' the bad news and investors were encouraged that the company had become serious about cost
cutting. There are so many variables to tweak, so much slack in the network of concepts, that you can easily
find a neat explanation for anything that happens. There have always been those who argue that Darwinists
are also guilty of arguing in circles, that the theory of evolution is based on a tautology: survival of the
fittest, with the fittest defined as those which survive. Gould suggests that when scientists find themselves
spinning Darwinian tales, they should pause and look for solid evidence that the variants they are calling
survivors are truly fitter than those that perished. Often they may find that which creatures perished and
which survived had less to do with fitness than with the random swing of the grim reaper. The structuralists
go much further than Gould, arguing that the circular nature of so much Darwinian reasoning is a symptom
of the weakness of the theory's explanatory power. " (Johnson, G., "Fire in the Mind: Science, Faith, and the
Search for Order," [1995], Penguin: London, 1997, reprint, pp.266-267)
12/07/2006
"The last element in the sociobiological argument is to reconstruct a plausible story for the origin of human
social traits by natural selection. The general outline is to suppose that in the evolutionary past of the
species there existed some genetic variation for a particular trait, but that the genotypes determining a
particular form of behavior somehow left more offspring. As a consequence, these genotypes increased in
the species and eventually came to characterize it. As an example, it is supposed that at some time in the
evolutionary past some males were more genetically individualistic and less prone to accept indoctrination
into group values than other males. Such nonindoctrinable males would be excluded by the group, would
lose their protection in bad times, not get to share in group resources, and perhaps even be killed by their
fellows. As a result; the nonindoctrinable genotypes would survive less well and leave fewer offspring, so
that genetically controlled indoctrinability would become characteristic of the species. Similarly imaginative
stories have been told for ethics, religion, male domination, aggression, artistic ability, etc. All one need do
is predicate a genetically determined contrast in the past and then use some imagination, in a Darwinian
version of Kipling's Just So Stories. The only trouble with Kipling was that he believed in the inheritance
of acquired characteristics." (Lewontin, R.C., Rose, S. & Kamin, L.J., "Not in Our Genes: Biology, Ideology,
and Human Nature," Penguin: Harmondsworth, Middlesex UK, 1984, p.258)
13/07/2006
"In one sense it could be said that Malthus's images were turning full circle, for Darwin applied political
economy to biology, and now these biological ideas were being reintegrated back into political economy,
seemingly providing a `natural' account of the way human populations and social economies were thought
to work. Malthus's principles were biologised and then reabsorbed into economic thought. In another sense,
the social and the biological were scarcely separable. Malthus's remarks did not so much travel back and
forth as exist already embedded in the same cultural context. Either way, Malthus's doctrines looked like
incontrovertible laws of nature to a nation steeped in ' competitive economic activity, buoyed up with
Samuel Smiles's anthems of self-help, adaptation, struggle, and survival, and as a political body fully
engaged in territorial and commercial expansion. `It is remarkable how Darwin rediscovers among beasts and
plants the society of England, with its division of labour, competition, opening up of new markets,
inventions, and the Malthusian struggle for existence,' remarked Karl Marx in a letter to Engels in 1862.
[Marx to Engels, 18 June 1862, in Marx, K., "Letters 1860-64," Vol. 41, in "Collected Works," 46 Vols.,
Lawrence & Wishart: London, 1985, p.381] Marx read the Origin of Species soon after publication, noting
`the clumsy English style.' He understood the Origin's threat to traditional Victorian standards more
clearly than most. `Although developed in the crude English fashion, this is the book which in the field of
natural history, provides the basis for our views,' he continued to Engels. He repeated much the same
comment to Ferdinand Lassalle. `Darwin's work is most important and suits my purpose in that it provides a
basis in natural science for the historical class struggle.' [Marx 1985, pp.234, 246] Marx laughed at the British
fear of apes. `Since Darwin demonstrated that we are all descended from the apes there is scarcely any
shock whatever that could shake our ancestral pride.' [Marx 1985, p.543]" (Browne, E.J., "Charles Darwin:
The Power of Place: Volume II of a Biography," [2002], Pimlico: London, 2003, reprint, pp.187-188)
14/07/2006
"First, there is the familiar, and I have to say rather irritating, confusion of natural selection with
'randomness'. Mutation is random; natural selection is the very opposite of random. Second, it just isn't
true that 'each by itself is useless'. It isn't true that the whole perfect work must have been achieved
simultaneously. It isn't true that each part is essential for the success of the whole. A simple, rudimentary,
half-cocked eye/ear/ echolocation system/cuckoo parasitism system, etc., is better than none at all. Without
an eye you are totally blind. With half an eye you may at least be able to detect the general direction of a
predator's movement, even if you can't focus a clear image. And this may make all the difference between life
and death." (Dawkins R., "The Blind Watchmaker," [1986], Penguin: London, 1991, reprint, p.41. Emphasis
original)
14/07/2006
"But I was starting to tell the story of how lenses might have evolved in the first place, from a vitreous mass
that filled the whole eye. The principle of how it might have happened, and the speed with which it might
have been accomplished, has been beautifully demonstrated in a computer model by a pair of Swedish
biologists called Dan Nilsson and Susanne Pelger. I shall lead up to explaining their elegant computer model
in a slightly oblique way. Instead of going straight to what they actually did, I shall return to our
progression from Biomorph to NetSpinner computer models and ask how one could ideally set about making
a similar computer model of the evolution of an eye. I shall then explain that this is essentially equivalent to
what NiIsson and Pelger did, although they didn't put it in quite the same way." (Dawkins, R., "Climbing
Mount Improbable," Penguin: London, 1996, pp.148-149)
14/07/2006
"In the case of eyes, Nilsson and Pelger began by acknowledging that there are three main types of tissue in
a typical `camera' eye. There is an outer casing to the camera, usually opaque to light. There is a layer of
light-sensitive `photocells'. And there is some kind of transparent material, which may serve as a protective
window or which may fill the cavity inside the cup - if, indeed, there is a cup, for we are not taking anything
for granted in our simulation. Nilsson and Pelger's starting point - the foot of the mountain - is a flat layer of
photocells ... sitting on a flat backing screen ... and topped by a flat layer of transparent tissue ... They
assumed that mutation works by causing a small percentage change in the size of something, for example a
small percentage decrease in the thickness of the transparent layer, or a small percentage increase in the
refractive index of a local region of the transparent layer. Their question really is, where can you get to on
the mountain if you start from a given base camp and go steadily upwards? Going upwards means mutating,
one small step at a time, and only accepting mutations that improve optical performance. So, where do we
get to? Pleasingly, through a smooth upward pathway, starting from no proper eye at all, we reach a familiar
fish eye, complete with lens. The lens is not uniform like an ordinary man-made lens. It is a graded index lens
... Its continuously varying refractive index is represented in the diagram by varying shades of grey. The
lens has `condensed' out of the vitreous mass by gradual, point by point changes in the refractive index.
There is no sleight of hand here. Nilsson and Pelger didn't pre-program their simulated vitreous mass with a
primordial lens just waiting to burst forth. They simply allowed the refractive index of each small bit of
transparent material to vary under genetic control. Every smidgen of transparent material was free to vary its
refractive index in any direction at random. An infinite number of patterns of varying refractive index could
have emerged within the vitreous mass. What made the lens come out 'lens-shaped' was unbroken upward
mobility, the equivalent of selectively breeding from the best seeing eye in each generation. Nilsson and
Pelger's purpose was not only to show that there is a smooth trajectory of improvement from a flat non-eye
to a good fish eye. They were also able to use their model to estimate the time it would take to evolve an eye
from nothing. The total number of steps that their model took was 1,829 if each step achieved a i per cent
change in the magnitude of something. But there is nothing magic about t per cent. The same total quantity
of change would have taken 363,992 steps of 0.005 per cent." (Dawkins, R., "Climbing Mount Improbable,"
Penguin: London, 1996, pp.150-151)
14/07/2006
"MY DEAR GRAY ... I hope you have received long ago the third edition of the ` Origin.' ... I sent a copy to
Sir J. Herschel, and in his new edition of his `Physical Geography' he has a note on the `Origin of Species,'
and agrees, to a certain limited extent, but puts in a caution on design-much like yours. ... I have been led to
think more on this subject of late, and grieve to say that I come to differ more from you. It is not that
designed variation makes, as it seems to me, my deity `Natural Selection' superfluous, but rather from
studying, lately, domestic variation, and seeing what an enormous field of undesigned variability there is
ready for natural selection to appropriate for any purpose useful to each creature." (Darwin, C.R., Letter to
Asa Gray, June 5, 1861, in Darwin, F., ed., "The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin," [1898], Basic Books:
New York NY, Vol. II., 1959, reprint, pp.165-166. Emphasis original) @
14/07/2006
"What a book a devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel
works of nature! ... You say most truly about multiple creations and my notions. If any one case could be
proved, I should be smashed; but as I am writing my book, I try to take as much pains as possible to give
the strongest cases opposed to me, and often such conjectures as occur to me. ... A correct reference would
be enough for me, though it is wrong even to quote without looking oneself. ... But it is quite likely that you
may object on the ground that you might be publishing before me (I hope to publish in a year at furthest) ...
From Lyell's letters, he is coming round at a railway pace on the mutability of species, and authorises me to
put some sentences on this head in my preface." (Darwin, C.R., Letter to J.D. Hooker, July 13th, 1856, in
Darwin, F. & Seward, A.C. eds, More letters of Charles Darwin," John Murray: London, 1903, Vol. 1,
pp.94-95)
15/07/2006
"There is an incident in the history of biology that is well worth recounting here. It illustrates the sort of
controversy that may attend the acceptance of a new and far-reaching theory. It also shows how biologists
learned to use and understand the importance of controlled experiments. This incident was a controversy
which lasted for about two hundred years. During that extended time, biology as we know it today was
being born, and was fighting for its very existence. ... All sorts of the lower animals were considered to be
created continuously, on the spot, from nonliving stuff-a spontaneous generation of life. Belief in
spontaneous generation of living things was widely held, and became imbedded in the written records of
ancient cultures. ... Francesco Redi was a biologist who lived and worked in Florence during the
seventeenth century. He ... undertook to test the hypothesis that the blowflies produced in decaying flesh
were the offspring of blowflies which laid e