“DARWINISM”

Evening Star, Issue 19772, 24 January 1928, Page 12

“DARWINISM”

A CONTROVERSY SUMMED UP THEORY AND FACT When Sir Arthur Keith announced the subject of his Presidential Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, many of us were perturbed (writes the scientific correspondent of ‘The Times’). He was to discuss ‘ Darwinism ’ in the light ot the knowledge of the day. In the scientific sense “ Darwinism ” denotes the theory of natural selection. The title of the book which opened a, new chapter in science was 1 The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life.’ To discuss that theory in the light of the vast additional knowledge that has come into existence since 1859 would require not one presidential address, but many, delivered by many different men with special knowledge of different lines of inquiry. . , When the address was actually delivered I, personally, was relieved. Sir Arthur took “Darwinism” in its most general and most popular sense, as the fact of evolution rather than the means by which it had come about and the still more popular example of evolution —the descent of man. Now when Darwin wrote 1 The Descent of Man Uj® arguments he was able tn assemble were almost wholly circumstantial. He showed that the human body was built on the same general plan as that of other mammals, and showed particular resemblances with that of the apes. He described a number of organs which were rudimentary in man and apparently functionless, but explicable if they were legacies from ancestors in which they were fully developed. He showed that the embryological development of man was practically identical with that of the apes. He discussed at length many of the themes opened in ‘The Origin of Species,’ developed them further, and showed how the origin of man by descent from apes was possible or even probable. Similarly, he analysed human mental capacities, and showed their relations to those of animals, and collected evidence of the development of intellectual and moral faculties during primeval and civilised times. With patient genius, he bunt up a case convincing everyone who understood it that man had descended from the lower animals, or that scientific reasoning was a delusion. But it remained a case, as there was almost no fossil evidence. THE NEW EVIDENCE.

Since Darwin wrote the direct evidence has turned a theory into the statement of a historical fact. Hie fossil remains of extinct apes, closer to man than existing apes in size, brain capacity, and general structure, have been found in many parts of the world, notably in Egypt. “Pithecanthropus” has been found in Java, and it is still a matter of opinion whether that fossil is better described as an ape-like man or a man-like ape. The skull more recently found at Piltdown, in Sussex, has a definitely human, although primitive, cranium and the jaw of an ape. Neanderthal man, known, only from on© fossil and incomplete skull in Darwin’s time, has been found in many parts of the world associated with a distinctive culture. Many varieties of fossil man, more primitive than modern “Homo sapiens,” hut certainly in our own ancestry, have been found. The meaning of all these is not a question of theory but of fact, to be discussed and expounded by expert human anatomists in concert with geologists, who can give authoritative decisions on the geological horizons in which the remains have been found. Sir Arthur Keith is one of the chief living authorities in the interpretation of these fossil remains, and he is well acquainted with the opinions of all his colleagues. Naturally there are some difficult and doubtful points in the details of the story. For example, there is the question of the relationship of “Homo sapiens”—our own stock—to “Homo neanderthalensis.” Were there several distinct species of men, of which “Homo sapiens ” alone has survived, or was our own stock a direct descendant of Neanderthal man? Sir Arthur Keith was very fully qualified to discuss these doubtful matters, and his opinion would have been deeply interesting to a scientific audience. To our surprise, he limited his address not only to Darwinism in the sense of the descent of man, but to the simplest and least controversial statement that the descent of man from apes was scientific fact. CURRENT OPINION. Sir Arthur Keith’s judgment was correct. His choice and presentment of his subject were not superfluous, but immediately raised wide controversy. And the controversy was not on points open to discussion, but on the main issue, the fact of descent. A famous bishop who had declared that theological doctrine required adjustment to the new knowledge was denounced, not because of the suggested or implied readjustments, but because of his statement of the biological fact. His critics and his defenders alike seemed to believe that not Augustine on the Fall, but Darwin on the Descent, was the matter at issue. In humbler circles all the old arguments against our kinship with apes were repeated, some of them as crude as the absence of a tail in man, others as subtly self-deceptive as that Darwin was not acquainted with the work of Mendel. The most popular of these resuscitations is the suggestion that the modern great apes are degenerate men—a view which is supported by no shadow of evidence. The disconcerting fact is that apparently, whilst other science advances, the popular knowledge of science remains stagnant. More than half a century ago, when the doctrine of rested almost wholly on circumstantial evidence, general considerations could come into the argument. That condition has ceased to exist; largely as a consequence of Darwin’s circumstantial evidence, a. great bulk of direct evidence has been accumulated, and can and paleontology. The experts have deand paleontology. The eperts have decided, and there the matter should rest. Last week, at the dinner of the Royal Society of Medicine, in relation to another subject, Sir Arthur Keith said that the great need of the day was the rationalisation of the public; his British Association address, slight from the scientific point of view, has now more than justified itself as a needed effort in popular education.