The Nature and Limits of Evolution

Among the great and fertile scientific theories which have either originated or become firmly established during the nineteenth century, the theory of evolution, if not the greatest of them all, will certainly take its place in the front rank. As a partial explanation (for no complete explanation is possible to finite intelligence) of the phenomena of nature, it informs every area of science, from the study of the most remote cosmic phenomena to that of the smallest units of study at the sub-atomic level. When evolutionary scientists study the great problem of the origin of the various forms of life, it throws so clear a light that to many biologists it seems to afford as complete a solution as we can expect to reach.
Adherents of biblical creation theory reject these conclusions vehemently. So many of the objections of creationism, which are still made to the theory of evolution, and especially to that part of it which deals with living organisms, rest upon a false notion of what science professes to explain. In the meantime, the evolution creationism controversy debate continues in full force.

Evolution, as a general principle, implies that all things in the universe, as we see them, have arisen from other things which preceded them by a process of modification, under the action of those all-pervading but mysterious agencies known to us as “natural forces,” or “the laws of nature.” The term evolution conveys that the process is an “unrolling,” or “unfolding,” which probably derives from the way in which leaves and flowers are usually rolled up or crumpled up in the bud and grow into their perfect form by unrolling or unfolding. Insects in the pupa and vertebrates in the embryo exhibit a somewhat similar condition of folding, and the word is therefore very applicable to an extensive range of phenomena; but it must not be taken as universally applicable, since in the material world there are other modes of orderly change under natural laws to which the terms development or evolution are equally applicable.

Written by admin on October 25th, 2009 with comments disabled.
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