Public Opinion

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 72, Issue 234, 2 October 1929, Page 12

Public Opinion

DR. PETTIT AND DARWIN Sir, —Dr Pettit denies the truth of Darwin’s doctrine that all species of animals and plants of tho present day are the lineal descendants of species that varied very much from the present forms. The doctor evidently holds to the old Linnean supposition that species are fixed and inimitable. He demands absolute proof of the doctrine of descent, but does not realise that his own doctrine of specific creation of animals and plants by a supernatural agency is outside the province of scientific evidence. Evolutionary science cannot be expected to show all the intermediate links between the first living cells of the primeval oceans and ‘Homo Sapiens.’ Dr Pettit denies that there ever have been intermediate links. The evolutionary scientists declare that they have quite a number of fossil links. Sir Ray Lankester, for instance, gives in his monograph on elephants a description of the fossil remains of prehistoric elephants found in upper Lgypt that are, morphologically speaking, true ancestral forms, from which the present African elephants are descended. Then we have the fossil ancstral forms of tho horse, which Dr Pettit referred to as being but variations, and he says that variation is not evolution. Darwin held that variation was synonymous with species —there being no absolute difference in the meaning of the two terms. It is obvious that without variation there could be no evolution. Dr Pettit denies that there is any evolution. Prof. J. A. Thomson and hundreds of other biologists affirm that evolution is operative to-day. That being provable, it is absurd to say there has been no evolution in the past. As to Dr Pettit’s inquiry relative to one species turning into another, Prof. Thomson meets the query by pointing out that disbelief in actual evolution is partly due to the mistaken idea that the theory supposes that one species turns into another. But this is not the actual method of Nature’s working. From amid species A variants arise, and these may separate themselves a little from the main body. If the variants- continue varying in the same direction, and if they in-breed in some measure of isolation, they will form a new species B, which may be particularly well-suited for the new conditions. If the new conditions become more and more insistent, then species A may disappear and species B, may persist, but both may survive together. Thomson’s answer to the query: Can you show us one species giving rise to another possible species to-day? “Yes! That may be seen in all rapidly varying species; and you can see for yourselves if you take time.” Dr Pettit’s authorities are mostly geologists, Dawson, Dangi and Price, whose opinions on questions of biology have no real weight. Great scientist as Lord Kelvin undoubtedly was, as a physicist, his objection to organic evolution cannot be put in the same scale as that of Haechel, Huxley, Darwin and Wallace. Sir Oliver Lodge’s opinion on the truth of evolution well offsets Lord Kelvin’s. For does ho not say: “Taught by Science, we learn that there has been no fall of man: There has been a rise. Through an ape—like ancestry, back through a fish-like and tadpole ancestry, away to the early beginning of life, the origin of man is being traced by science. There was no specific creation of the world such as was conceived appropriate to a geocentrix conception of the primeval universe; the world is a condensation of gas, a congeries of stones and meteors fallen together .... the whole system has evolved itself from mere moving matter in accordance with the law of gravitation and there is no certain sign of cities beginning or end,” Man and the Universe (p. 22). Thus we find that a professing Christian philosopher regrets the Mosaic acount of the miraculous creation of the world and man, and accepts the theory of evolution as being the only scientific view of how all forms of life have come to be what they are, and who endorses Thomas Huxley’s pronouncement forty years ago that “Evolution is no longer a theory, but an historical fact. ’ ’ A. TALBOT.