Examples of
Evolutionary Dogma
Calvin S. Hall, Sigma Xi, vol. 26, 1 March
1938, p. 19.
...You may question, of course, whether rat intelligence is the same as
human intelligence, but if you do you are really not an evolutionist, and therefore your
views deserve little serious consideration.
Julian Huxley, Evolution After Darwin, Vol. 3,
Sol Tax, editor (University of Chicago Press, 1960), p. 42.
But all scientists agree that evolution is a fact. There are two
problems here: First, whether evolution has happened--and there is absolutely no
disagreement among scientists that it has. The second problem is how evolution takes
place, and here there has been argument...
G.G. Simpson, This View of Life (Harcourt,
Brace & World, New York, 1964), p. 10.
...The fact--not theory--that evolution has occurred...must color the
whole of our attitude toward life and toward ourselves, and hence our whole perceptual
world. That is, however, a single step, essentially taken a hundred years ago and now a
matter simple rational acceptance or superstitious rejection. How evolution occurs is much
more intricate, still incompletely known, debated in detail and the subject of most active
investigation at present.
Francisco J. Ayala, "Biology as an
Autonomous Science," American Scientist, vol. 5, Autumn 1968, p. 213.
Biological evolution can however be explained without recourse to a
Creator or a planning agent external to the organisms themselves. The evidence of the
fossil record is against any directing force, external or immanent, leading the
evolutionary process toward specified goals. Teleology in the stated sense is, then,
appropriately rejected in biology as a category of explanation.
Rene Dubos, "Humanistic Biology," American
Scientist, vol. 53, March 1965, p. 6.
...Most enlightened persons now accept as a fact that everything in the
cosmos--from heavenly bodies to human beings--has developed and continues to develop
through evolutionary processes.
Theodosius Dobzhansky, "Changing Man," Science,
vol. 155, 27 Jan. 1967, pp. 409-410.
Evolution comprises all the stages of the development of the universe:
the cosmic, biological, and the human or cultural developments. Attempts to restrict the
concept of evolution to biology are gratuitous. Life is a product of the evolution of
inorganic nature, and man is a product of the evolution of life. ...
The argument in favor of the view that mankind continues to evolve
biologically is deductive and inferential, but it seems strong enough nevertheless. ...
G. Ledyard Stebbins, Variation and Evolution in
Plants (Columbia University Press, New York, 1950), p. 561.
...The control by man of organic evolution is now an attainable goal.
Richard B. Goldschmidt, American Scientist,
vol. 40, 1952, p. 84.
...Evolution of the animal and plant world is considered by all those
entitled to judgment to be a fact for which no further proof is needed.
Ernst Mayr, "Darwin and Evolutionary
Thought,"
Evolution and Anthropology: A Centennial Appraisal (Theo. Gaus' Sons, Brooklyn,
N.Y.), p. 10.
...no phenomenon has ever been found in organic nature that cannot be
interpreted within the framework of the modern, synthetic theory of evolution.
H.H. Newman, Evolution, Genetics, and Eugenics
(University of Chicago Press, 1932, 1939), p. 51.
...There are no rival hypotheses except the outworn and completely
refuted idea of special creation, now retained only by the ignorant, the dogmatic, and the
prejudiced.
William Howells, Mankind So Far (Doubleday and
Co., New York, 1947), p. 5.
...The `theory of evolution' is an overworked term, in the popular
usage, and unfortunate besides, since it implies that, after all, there may be something
dubious about it. Evolution is a fact, like digestion.
George Wald, Annals of the New York Academy of
Science, vol. 66, Aug. 1957, p. 367.
...Evolution advances, not by a priori design, but by the selection of
what works best out of whatever choices offer. We are the products of editing, rather than
of authorship.
Theodosius Dobzhansky, Evolution of Man, L.B.
Young, editor (Oxford University Press, New Jersey, 1970), p. 58.
...Evolution as a historical fact was proved beyond reasonable doubt not
later than in the closing decades of the 19th century. No one who takes the trouble to
become familiar with the pertinent evidence has at present a valid reason to disbelieve
that the living world, including man, is a product of evolutionary development.
Edwin Grant Conklin, Man, Real and Ideal
(Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1943), p. 28.
...The fact of evolution is no longer questioned by men of science.
Marston Bates, The Nature of Natural History
(Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1950), p. 222.
...Most books on evolution take up a lot of space with the review of the
evidence that some process of evolution has taken place. There is no more question of this
among contemporary scientists than there is of the relative movements of the planets
within the solar system.
William Patten, Scientific Monthly, vol. 31,
Oct. 1930, p. 290.
...Evolution itself has long since passed out of the field of scientific
controversy. There is no other subject on which scientific opinion is so completely
unanimous. It is the one great truth we most surely know.
Gordon Alexander, General Biology (Thomas Y.
Crowell, New York, 1956), p. 808.
...The proofs of evolution are not merely adequate; they are
overwhelming. The fact of organic evolution is a part of the thinking of every individual
who may properly call himself a biologist.
Gilbert M. Smith, et al., A Textbook of General
Botany, 4th edition (Macmillan, New York, 1942), p.630.
...No one who, since the publication of Origin of Species in 1859, has
impartially investigated this evidence has questioned the validity or the usefulness of
the idea of continuous evolution.
Michael F. Guyer, Speaking of Man (Harper and
Bros., New York, 1942), p. 302.
...The fact that every biologist who undertakes an exhaustive study of
the evidence comes to the conclusion that living organisms do exhibit such evolutionary
relationships surely indicates the reliability of the conclusion. If we cannot take the
word of the specialist in his own field, whose word can we accept?
Paul Weatherwax, Plant Biology (W.B. Saunders,
Philadelphia, 1942), p. 370.
...The doctrine is no longer questioned by any biologist.
Jacques Monod in Studies in the Philosophy of
Biology, F.J. Ayala and T. Dobzhansky, editors (University of California Press,
Berkeley, 1974), pp. 357-359.
...As I put it, the Postulate of Objectivity is the systematic or
axiomatic denial that scientific knowledge can be obtained on the basis of theories that
involve, explicitly or not, a teleological principle; and admittedly it is an axiomatic
attitude which I strongly believe to be essential for the development of science. ...
We might say that the existence of living beings (that is to say, of
living beings which in their structure and their functions must be recognised as showing
every evidence of some sort of project) is a constant challenge and a menace to the
postulate of objectivity. I think it is reasonable to wonder whether the postulate does
apply to living beings at all--whether we will ever be able to account for living beings
in terms that do not violate the principle--and I would say that to be a biologist in the
full sense of the word is to be completely conscious all the time of the tremendous
challenge. I would also say that it is the consciousness of this challenge which has been
the leading force in biology ever since it seriously started to develop at the end of the
eighteenth century.
You all know of course, and you have been discussing the solutions that
have been proposed to put living beings back into an objective universe: that is to say,
the solutions which have purported to give an interpretation of the apparently paradoxical
fact that objects which have purpose could have been derived from a universe which we have
assumed to begin with to be without purpose. The solution of course is the theory of
evolution. ...
Julian Huxley, Evolution After Darwin, Vol. 3,
Sol Tax, editor (University of Chicago Press, 1960), p. 42.
...Indeed, I would...hold that it is essential for evolution to become
the central core of any educational system, because it is evolution, in the broadest
sense, that links inorganic nature with life, and the stars with earth, and matter with
mind, and animals with man. Human history is a continuation of biological evolution in a
different form.
Garett Hardin, Nature and Man's Fate (Mentor,
New York, 1961), p. 216.
...True, Darwin is not the last word in science; but neither is
Shakespeare the final insight into human nature. He who fails to honor either genius for
his positive accomplishments inevitably attracts the speculative psychiatric eye to
himself.
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