Part 6 (1/2)

One of the highest scientific authorities in America, Prof. Thomas Hunt Morgan, of Columbia University, has recently said, ”The direct evidence furnished by fossil remains is by all odds the strongest evidence that we have in favor of organic evolution.”[33] Accordingly we purpose to examine carefully what this by all odds ”strongest evidence” is like.

[Footnote 33: ”A Critique of the Theory of Evolution,” p. 24.]

II

As with some of the other facts with which we have had to deal in previous chapters, a correct understanding of the questions involved can best be obtained by examining the history of the development of the science.

The first man with whom we need to concern ourselves is A.G. Werner, a teacher of mineralogy in the University of Freiberg, Germany. For three hundred years his ancestors had been connected with mining work, and he, though possessing little general education, knew about all that was then known regarding mineralogy and petrology. He wrote no books; but by his enthusiastic teaching he gathered as students and sent out as evangelists hundreds of devoted young scientists who rapidly spread his theories through all the countries of Europe.

”Unfortunately,” says Zittel, ”Werner's field observations were limited to a small district, the Erz Mountains and the neighboring parts of Saxony and Bohemia. And his chronological scheme of formations was founded on the mode of occurrence of the rocks within these narrow confines.”[34]

[Footnote 34: ”History of Geology,” p. 59.]

Werner had found the granites, limestones, sandstones, schists, etc., occurring in a certain relative order in his native country; and he drew the very remarkable conclusion that this was the _normal_ order in which these various rocks would invariably be found in all parts of the world, on the theory that this was the order in which these different rocks had been formed in the beginning, great layers of these different rocks having originally been spread completely around the globe one outside another like the coats of an onion. With this as a major premise, it is not surprising that he and his enthusiastic disciples ”were as certain of the origin and sequence of the rocks as if they had been present at the formation of the earth's crust.”[35]

[Footnote 35: A. Geikie, ”Founders of Geology,” p. 112.]

The amus.e.m.e.nt with which this onion-coat theory is now regarded is hardly appropriate in view of its universal vogue among geologists about the beginning of the nineteenth century, and in view of the further fact that a very similar and only slightly modified subst.i.tute theory has been universally taught for three-quarters of a century _and still prevails_. The modern form of the theory subst.i.tutes onion-coats of fossiliferous rocks for onion-coats of mineral and lithological characters; and a brief consideration of this theory is now in order.

About the time that various geologists here and there were finding rocks in positions that could not be explained in terms of Werner's theory, William Smith (1769-1839) in England and the great Baron Cuvier (1769-1832) in France found characteristic fossils occurring in various strata; and under their teachings it was not long before the fossils were considered the best guide in determining the relative sequence of the rocks. The familiar idea of world-enveloping strata as representing successive ages was not discarded; but instead of Werner's successive ages of limestone making, sandstone making, etc., these new investigators taught that there were successive ages of invertebrates, fishes, reptiles, and mammals, these creatures having registered their existence in rocky strata which thus by hypothesis completely encircled the globe one outside another.

It is true that early in the nineteenth century Sir Charles Lyell and others tried to disclaim this absurd and unscientific inheritance from Werner's onion-coats; but modern geology has never yet got rid of its essential and its chief characteristic idea, for all our text-books still speak of various successive ages _when only certain types of life prevailed all over the globe_. Hence it is that Herbert Spencer caustically remarks: ”Though the onion-coat hypothesis is dead, its spirit is traceable, under a transcendental form, even in the conclusions of its antagonists.”[36] Hence it is that Whewell, in his ”History of the Inductive Sciences,” refuses to acknowledge that in geology any real advance has yet been made toward a stable science like those of astronomy, physics, and chemistry. ”We hardly know,” he says, ”whether the progress is begun. The history of physical astronomy almost commences with Newton, and few persons will venture to a.s.sert that the Newton of geology has yet appeared.”[37] Hence it is that T.H. Huxley declares, ”In the present condition of our knowledge and of _our methods_, one verdict,--'_not proven and not provable'--must be recorded against all grand hypotheses of the palaeontologist respecting the general succession of life on the globe.”[38] And hence it is that Sir Henry H. Howorth, a member of the British House of Commons and the author of three exhaustive works on the Glacial theory, declares, ”It is a singular and notable fact, that while most other branches of science have emanc.i.p.ated themselves from the trammels of metaphysical reasoning, _the science of geology still remains imprisoned in a priori_ theories.”[39]

[Footnote 36: ”Ill.u.s.tr. of Univ. Prog.,” p. 343.]

[Footnote 37: Vol. II, p.580.]

[Footnote 38: ”Discourses,” pp. 279-288.]

[Footnote 39: ”The Glacial Nightmare,” Preface, vii.]

And thus the matter remains even to-day, in this second decade of the twentieth century. _Geology has never yet been regenerated_, as have all the other sciences, by being delivered from the caprice of subjective speculations and _a priori_ theories and being placed on the secure basis of objective and demonstrable fact, in accordance with the principles of that inductive method of investigation which was inst.i.tuted by Bacon and which has become so far universal in the other sciences that it is everywhere known as the scientific method. In accordance with this method, theories in all the other sciences are always kept well subordinated to facts; and whenever unequivocal facts are found manifestly contradicting a theory no matter how venerable, the theory must go to make way for the facts. In other words, the theoretical parts of the various other sciences are always kept revised from time to time, to keep them in line with the new discoveries that have been made. There has been no lack of astonis.h.i.+ng discoveries of new facts in geology during the past half century or so, while all the other sciences have been making such astonis.h.i.+ng progress. _But for over seventy five years geology has not made a single advance movement in its theoretical aspects_; indeed, in all its important general principles it has scarcely changed in a hundred years. I shall leave it to the reader to judge whether this is a case of almost miraculous perfection from the beginning, or of arrested development.

III

Of the _three_ general postulates or _a priori_ a.s.sumptions of this curiously out-of-date mediaeval science, namely, (1) Uniformity, (2) the Cooling globe theory, and (3) the theory of the Successive Ages, the first two have already been examined and found wanting by other investigators, and have been allowed to lapse into a sort of honored disuse, though their memory is still reverently cherished in all the text-books of the science. The ”Challenger” Expedition dissipated most of the myths that had long been taught regarding the deep waters of the ocean; and Professor Suess has disposed of the closely related myth about the coasts of the continents being constantly on the seesaw up and down. These two discoveries, with others that might be mentioned, dispose of Lyell's theory of uniformity. Lord Kelvin and the other physicists dissipated the idea of a molten interior of the earth. Hence, because these other false hypotheses have already in a measure been disposed of, as well as for the sake of brevity, I shall here discuss only the _third_ of the prime postulates of the current system of geology, namely the theory of Successive Ages. And when we have adjusted this aspect of the science of geology to the facts of the rocks as made known to us by modern discoveries, we shall find little in this science out of harmony with the older view of a literal Creation as taught in the Bible and as already confirmed by the other branches of science which we have been examining.

There are _five_ leading arguments against the reality of these successive ages. Four of them must be dismissed here by a brief summary of the facts as we know them to-day, referring the reader to the author's larger work, where detailed evidence is given for each. The _fifth_ series of facts I shall give here in more detail, though of course even this must be but an outline of what is given elsewhere.

1. In the earlier days of the theory of successive ages it was taught that only certain kinds of fossils were to be found _at the bottom_ of the series, or next to the Primitive or Archaean. This feature of the theory was demanded by the supposed universal spread of one type of life all around the globe in the earliest age. But it is now known that the so-called ”oldest” fossiliferous rocks occur only in detached patches over the globe, while other or ”younger” kinds are just as likely to be found on the Primitive or next to the Archaean. Not only may any kind of fossiliferous rocks occur next to the Archaean, but even the ”youngest”

may be so metamorphosed and crystalline as to resemble exactly in this respect the so-called ”oldest” rocks. On the other hand some of the very ”oldest” rocks may, like the Cambrian strata around the Baltic and in some parts of the United States, consist of ”muds scarcely indurated and sands still incoherent.”[40]

[Footnote 40: J.A. Howe; Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. II, p. 86.

Cambridge Edition.]

All this means that many facts regarding the _position_ of the strata as well as regarding their _consolidation_ contradict the theory of successive ages.

2. Many of the rivers of the world completely ignore the alleged varying ages of the rocks in the different parts of their course, and treat them all as if of the same age or as if they began sawing at them all at the same time. This is true of the Rhine, the Meuse, and the Danube in Europe, the Sutlej of India, and the upper part of the Colorado in America, not to mention others. The old strand lines around all the continents act in the very same way, ignoring the varying ages of the rocks they happen to meet; as is also true of nearly all the great faults or fissures which are of more than local extent. The ore veins of the various minerals are about as likely to be found in Tertiary or Mesozoic as in the Palaeozoic. A very similar lesson is to be learned from the fossils found lying exposed on the deep ocean bottom; for they are about as likely to be Palaeozoic or Mesozoic as Tertiary.

From these facts we conclude that practically all the great natural chronometers of the earth seem to treat the fossiliferous rocks as if they are _all of about the same age_, completely disregarding the distinctions in age founded on the fossils.