IS EVOLUTION SCIENCE? by President D. S. Gregory

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 29, 1880

IS EVOLUTION SCIENCE?

By President D. S. Gregory

It is not the purpose of this paper to show that development, or even evolution, is either contrary to the teachings of the Scriptures or atheistic.

There are many of us who think that there is a doctrine of "development"—or "evolution," if you please—which is not only theistic, but also consistent with a pretty rigid doctrine of the inspiration of the Scriptures. We believe, with M. Janet, that any rational theory of evolution neither excludes nor renders useless final cause, and, therefore, is not atheistic.

The point which we make is one which men of broad and comprehensive philosophy almost universally make. It is not that evolution is not scriptural, nor that it is not compatible with the received theology; but that it is not science. Please credit us not with "judicial blindness," but with the same desire for truth which animates the editor of The Independent, and give us the same right of free thought. The question is one of scientific truth. Is evolution true, or is it false? If true, we desire to know it to be so and to believe it with all the heart. Let the truth prevail, though the heavens fall. We most heartily indorse your indorsement of Dr. Patton's words, and insist upon their application to science, as well as to religion. We must have something more than assertion. We demand proof. But, if evolution be false, we want to know that and to treat it accordingly. For reasons which seem to us good and sufficient, we do actually believe that the doctrine of evolution, which you say "we are all taught in our best schools, by our scientific authorities, almost without exception, and we laymen in science are, therefore, compelled to believe," is unscientific and false. On that ground, and on that alone, we reject it, just as we reject the superstitions and irrational dogmas of the theologians.

The question may be settled by appeal either to scientific authorities or to scientific principles.

If the appeal be to scientific authority, the question is not to be settled by counting noses or comparing avoirdupois. Who are the scientific authorities? All the teachers of science in our colleges and technical schools? There are many industrious, scholarly, and able men who are teaching philosophy in our schools, with a breadth of understanding and depth of research certainly not inferior in the average to that of the teachers of the physical sciences; but who would think of appealing to them as "authorities" in philosophy, and matching the vote of any one, or any score of them, with that of Professor Bowen, or President Porter, or President McCosh, or of the few other men of their order? The opinion of a thousand of the ordinary teachers might have absolutely no weight, as opposed to one of the "authorities" in philosophy; in fact, would have little weight in any event, except as backed with most cogent reasons. With just as little propriety can the mass of teachers of science in our colleges be appealed to as "authorities." They may be able and earnest men, rising men, and destined to become distinguished; and yet the opinion of a thousand names of them weigh only as a feather when cast into the scales against a scientific conclusion of an Agassiz, a Henry, a Dana, or a Guyot.

In short, there are only a few scientific authorities, in any proper sense, before whom even those "laymen in science" who propose to keep their mental freedom and their manhood should think of bowing. Who are these authorities? If the word of such men as Professor Tait is to be taken, they are not the mere experimentalists, the men of facts and display. Facts are not science, nor is the brilliant experimental and rhetorical display of them. As a showman, Professor Tyndall may be a scientific Barnum, and yet have little weight as against Faraday, a man without such showy qualities. The authorities are not the dreamers, the men of phantasy. Bacon's words concerning such men are as true to-day as when he first uttered them. The Haeckels can never be scientific authorities. Exact science, according to Professor Tait, is an altogether different thing:—

"That which is properly called physical science is the knowledge of relations between natural phenomena and their physical antecedents, as the necessary sequences of cause and effect, these relations being investigated by the aid of mathematics—that is, by a method in which the processes of reasoning, on all questions that can be brought under the categories of quantity and of space-conditions, are rendered perfectly exact."

The men of breadth and depth who are masters of these processes, and who push out their investigations into the regions beyond, are the authorities in science. They are not all evolutionists, but are mainly on the other side. Louis Agassiz, Joseph Henry, John William Dawson, and Arnold Guyot agree in pronouncing the doctrine of evolution unscientific and false. They and such as they are the "authorities" on this side the ocean, and the unanimous vote of the professors against them should, as a mere expression of opinion, have but little weight. Exact science on the other side of the waters protests with equal weight of authority against confounding evolution with science. Mivart, the most accomplished naturalist in Great Britain, has pronounced it a "puerile hypothesis." Lionel Beale, the authority in biology, rejects it utterly, declaring that "correlation," its assumed principle, "is the 'abracadabra' of mechanical biology." Virchow, "the foremost chemist on the globe," a man, in phrase of the London Times, "opposed to every species of orthodoxy and altogether innocent of faith," affirms that "all real scientific knowledge has proceeded in the opposite direction," and styles the circles of materialistic evolutionists "bubble companies." Professor Tait declares that the evolutionists are "not in the slightest degree entitled to rank as physicists"—i. e., they are excluded from the ranks of exact science. Sir William Thompson, by his investigations in mathematical physics, has taken away from the evolutionist the ages upon ages absolutely essential to the maintainance of his hypothesis. These are the characteristic views of the scientific authorities abroad, the men who have a right to say something on this subject.

If, on the other hand, the appeal be to scientific principles, the question is not to be settled by enumerating assertions or estimating the force of spent breath. Give us thoroughly grounded principles. Science, so-called, which is not based on solid and sufficient reasons, will as inevitably go down as will a theology resting on like slender basis. The ages have as little respect for irrational science as for irrational religion.

The scientific authorities agree with the logicians and philosophers that three things are essential in any complete inductive science: exact observation of facts, correct interpretation of the observed facts, and consistent logical construction of the results of the observation and interpretation into scientific system.

The scientific authorities, waiving the rights of authority, demonstrate in the name of exact science that evolution violates these fundamental principles. It has no solid basis of carefully observed facts. It does not correctly interpret the facts it adduces. As a so-called scientific system, it is not the product of the consistent logical embodiment of the results of observation and rational explanation of facts. In other words, it is not science.

The philosophers and logicians prefer the same charge against the evolution doctrine. It is not science. It assumes, rather than investigates or proves. It uses deduction where only induction is logically and scientifically admissible. In short, it comes very near to being a return to the method of the Middle Ages, which so long stood in the way of scientific progress. As the philosophers and logicians are the authorities in logical and scientific method, we are warranted in assuming that the criticism of Ulrici, of Halle, or of Professor Birks of Cambridge University, or of Professor Bowen of Harvard University, on the scientific value of the hypothesis of evolution is worth a thousand times more than that of the average teacher of science in our schools.

Is it any wonder that, in the interests of clear and exact thinking, such men as President Seelye sometimes become a little impatient with the so-called scientists? Take, as an illustration of the quality of the so-called science, the well-known passage from Mr. Darwin:—

"The early progenitors of man were, no doubt, covered with hair, both sexes having beards. Their ears were pointed and capable of movement, and their bodies were provided with a tail. . . . The foot . . . was prehensile, and our progenitors, no doubt, were arboreal in their habits, frequenting some warm, forest-clad land. . . . At an earlier period the progenitors of man must have been aquatic in their habits."

When men laud this as "advanced science," we have to say that it is simply a double "no doubt" and a "must have been" resting on a hypothesis which is conceivable, but has not a fact to support it. We protest, in the name of sound thinking, against the almighty mustbeity with which the evolutionist constructs his system; and we do it for the same reason that we protest against the equally potent mustbeity and perseity of the speculative philosophers and theologians. Let us have men quoted as authorities who are in reality authorities. Let us have real science, and not sham science. It is, doubtless, true that evolution is taught in many of our colleges. We have known some of the young men whose faith has been wrecked by it. So much the worse for the science in our colleges. Still, we have the fullest faith in true science, and so we have in the religion of the Bible, and we have just as much in the consistency and harmony of the two; but we doubt whether the faith of men in either science or the Bible will ever be increased by teaching that "evolution is science."—President D. S. Gregory, D. D., in The Independent.