5
gen
erations, the creatures with the anatomical or mental advantages
have outbred their dull-witted or blunt-pawed rivals. Less favored
creatures may easily find themselves extinct.
According to the current evolutionary party line, this
competition takes place between individuals. The idea that it could
occur between groups has been resoundingly dismissed. The reason: a
chain of arbitrary twists in the history of evolutionary theory.
The concept of evolving life dawned long before the publication
of Charles Darwin's theories. In roughly 580 B.C., the Greek
philosopher Thales of Miletus declared that life had not been created
by the gods, but had emerged by natural means from water.8 Twenty-
three hundred years later, enlightenment thinkers like France's George
Buffon reinterpreted petrified oddities formerly dismissed as stone
tongues and dragon's teeth. The objects, the audacious naturalists said,
were parts of fossilized creatures from a previous era. Using the latest
theories of geology, Buffon and his fellow iconoclasts demonstrated
that placement of fossils in the rocky strata suggested primitive
creatures had occupied the earth far before the supposed Biblical date
of creation and had progressed to increasing levels of complexity as
they'd moved from their birthplace in the seas to footholds on dry land.
Meanwhile Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, another scholar
who preceded Darwin by a hundred years, worked out a remarkably
prescient theory explaining how advances from one species to another
might occur. Even Darwin's grandfather, Erasmus, anticipated his
younger relative by more than half a century, putting forth an
evolutionary overview in his 1796 Zoonomia. But it was Darwin's
meticulous fact-gathering,9 his family connections, and his methodical
campaign to win over the scientific community that finally reoriented
the thinking of specialists and laymen alike. (Darwin kept a checklist of
influential thinkers, then used his social ties to bring them on board
one by one.) As a result, Darwin's 1859 Origin of the Species created a
splash so great that its propositions were even the subject of
newspaper cartoons.
<< < GO > >>
5
gen
erations, the creatures with the anatomical or mental advantages
have outbred their dull-witted or blunt-pawed rivals. Less favored
creatures may easily find themselves extinct.
According to the current evolutionary party line, this
competition takes place between individuals. The idea that it could
occur between groups has been resoundingly dismissed. The reason: a
chain of arbitrary twists in the history of evolutionary theory.
The concept of evolving life dawned long before the publication
of Charles Darwin's theories. In roughly 580 B.C., the Greek
philosopher Thales of Miletus declared that life had not been created
by the gods, but had emerged by natural means from water.8 Twenty-
three hundred years later, enlightenment thinkers like France's George
Buffon reinterpreted petrified oddities formerly dismissed as stone
tongues and dragon's teeth. The objects, the audacious naturalists said,
were parts of fossilized creatures from a previous era. Using the latest
theories of geology, Buffon and his fellow iconoclasts demonstrated
that placement of fossils in the rocky strata suggested primitive
creatures had occupied the earth far before the supposed Biblical date
of creation and had progressed to increasing levels of complexity as
they'd moved from their birthplace in the seas to footholds on dry land.
Meanwhile Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, another scholar
who preceded Darwin by a hundred years, worked out a remarkably
prescient theory explaining how advances from one species to another
might occur. Even Darwin's grandfather, Erasmus, anticipated his
younger relative by more than half a century, putting forth an
evolutionary overview in his 1796 Zoonomia. But it was Darwin's
meticulous fact-gathering,9 his family connections, and his methodical
campaign to win over the scientific community that finally reoriented
the thinking of specialists and laymen alike. (Darwin kept a checklist of
influential thinkers, then used his social ties to bring them on board
one by one.) As a result, Darwin's 1859 Origin of the Species created a
splash so great that its propositions were even the subject of
newspaper cartoons.
<< < GO > >>