PROFESSOR HAECKEL'S METHODS.

Auckland Star, Volume XLI, Issue 162, 11 July 1910, Page 6

PROFESSOR HAECKEL'S METHODS.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —When a writer in your columns seeks to justify Professor Haeckel in his doctoring of scientific drawings to try to get scientific support for his atheistic theory of tlie universe, and when in doing so he follows Haeckel in his attempt to implicate other scientific workers in similar dishonesty, it is time to enter i an emphatic protest. Professor Haeckel : has confessed that from six to eight per - cent of his embryo pictures are un- * trustworthy. In Ms own words: "The - data from exact observation are so im- - perfect and inadequate that in drawing 1 up an evolutionary chain, one is forced r to fill up the gaps with hypothesis, and - to reconstruct the missing links by 2 constructive synthesis." And Haeckel - lias ■ the hardihood to say that other i scientific men do the same thing. Only two or three months ago I read in r "The Missionary Record of the United c Free Church of Scotland" an account of 3 two protests, largely signed by eminent 5 German scientists, against Professor . Haeckel's statement that falsification : of facts, such as that confessed to by 1 him, was common with scientific 1 men. I believe that the statement is i an outrageous libel upon, scientific men. f I can well imagine the scorn with which 1 my two old teachers—Lord Kelvin and 1 Professor Henry Drummond—would t treat a statement of that kind. Ahsot lute loyalty to facts is always regarded =, as the first virtue in a scientific worker. , To doctor drawings so as to make them r fit in with a particular theory is simple f dishonesty. And to that dishonesty i Professor Haeckel has confessed; and , your corespondent "Bara Fo'stus" ate tempts to justify him in it. It shows i, the intellectual and moral bankruptcy f of some of the opponents of theism. f Had there been a confession of twisting i facts by doctoring drawings on the part 9 of any of the eminent scientists who de--3 fend the theistic view of the universe, f what a spout there would have been on i the part of "Bara Fostus" and his I friends; but when it is done by Haeckel, I they apologise for the dishonesty. " But no one who has read HaeckeFs l "Riddle of the Universe" can be surr prised at his being convicted of dis- } honesty. The theological section of that J book is such a grotesque misrepresenta- ! tion of facts that I vowed when I read i it that I would never believe any statei ment on the authority of Professor i Haeckel. It is so bad that Professor : Loots, of Halle, the eminent Church his- . torian, in replying to it, refused to treat ! Haeckel with the courtesy usually ex- ■ tended to scholars and scientific * men. - He broadly charged him with a lack of veracity, and said: "1 have written in 1 such a way that any court of law would • declare mc guilty of . having de- ) famed my colleague of Jena, had -' 1* not at the same tune brought proof s positive of my assertions? But Pro-

lessor Haeckel did not dare to appeal t« a law court to have his character <&Q ■ * cd. The facts were too d_m__,„- T 1 C "■' now Professor Haeckel has had°t6 «f fess that he is as little to he tni-r_V in his own department of wli theological beliefs are implicated"■ as Z is when writing about Christianity it!l self, lour readers wiU see to what de* nerate shifts men have to resort wS" s they seek a scientific justification "f™ atheism. It reminds one of the.•>».'■'■ ment of Pros. "tiacalister, F.RS i, eminent Cambridge scientist. Ho'say.. ' "I cannot see anything i_com£alß„| with the modern development of scien ' tific teaching in the fundamental docV tnnes of Christianity, and consider that it is only on the basis of a crude and 1 superficial philosophy that any such in. compatibility has been supposed to exist Accordingly, it has been my experienog that the disbelief in the revelation which ! God has given in the life and work: death and resurrection of our Saviour"; is more prevalent among what I may'" call the camp followers of science than among those to whom actual scientific work is the business of their lives." But it is those "camp followers of science" who usually mislead people hy3§ their attacks on Christianity in £___B name of science.—l am, etc., ISAAC JOLLY, ■ The Manse, Ponsonby, July 7, 1910.