Illogical Geology, the Weakest Point in the Evolution Theory

by George McCready Price

"After his long period of field observations, William Smith came to the conclusion that one and the same succession of strata stretched through England from the south coast to the east, and that each individual horizon could be recognized by its particular fossils, that certain forms reappear in the same beds in the different localities, and that each fossil species belongs to a definite horizon of rock."[12]

But even granting the perfect accuracy of this generalization of Smith's for the rocks which he examined, I fail to see how it is any better than Werner's scheme, which Zittel characterizes as "weak" and premature, and of which Whewell (p. 521) says that "he promulgated, as respecting the world, a scheme collected from a province, and even too hastily gathered from that narrow field."

Quoting again from Zittel's criticism of Werner's work ("Hist. of Geology," p. 59), we must admit that Smith's observations also were "limited to a small district," and "his chronological scheme of formations was founded upon the mode of occurrence of the rocks (fossils) within these narrow confines." There is, as we have shown, a monstrous jump from this to the conclusion that even these particular fossils must always occur in this particular relative order over the whole earth. How can any one deny that if we had a complete collection of all the fossils laid down during the last thousand years—when all admit that the so-called "phylogenic series" is complete—particular fossils would in many cases be found to occur only in particular rocks, and we could still arrange them in this same order from the lowest to the highest forms of life, while we might even happen to find "small districts" where the "mode of occurrence of the rocks within these narrow confines" would have all the appearance of showing a true "phylogenic" order. This of itself ought to be sufficient to show us the weakness of this subjective method of study, and the purely hypothetical and imaginary value of the fossils in determining the real age of a rock deposit.

The name of Baron Cuvier is the next that we have to consider. An examination of part of his teaching will come naturally a little later when considering "extinct species." That part of his work which related to the doctrine of Catastrophism is somewhat aside from the subject of our study; while with regard to his influence on the succession of life idea per se there is not very much that need be said. And yet Cuvier is the real founder of modern cosmological geology, and thus in a certain sense the father of biological evolution.

But if the absence of the architectonic mania for building a cosmogony will serve to remove in a great measure any suspicions with regard to William Smith's results, we cannot say the same for those of Cuvier. In his scheme the hereditary Cosmological taint, which is such an invariable characteristic of the family, is very strong, though disguised and almost transfigured by learning and genius. It is doubtless these latter qualities which have secured for the theory such a phenomenal length of life, though of course we know that nothing born of this whole brood can ever secure a permanent home in the kingdom of science.

"How glorious," wrote this otherwise truly great man in his famous "Preliminary Discourse," "it would be if we could arrange the organized products of the universe in their chronological order, as we can already (Werner's onion-coats) do with the more important mineral substances!"

His work (with that of his co-laborer Brongniart) on the fossils of the Paris basin was probably accurate and logical enough for that limited locality. It was only when he quietly assumed as Werner had done, that the rocks must always occur in this particular order all over the world, or as Whewell expresses it, "promulgated as respecting the world, a scheme collected from a province, and (perhaps) even too hastily gathered from that narrow field"—it was only, I say, when this monstrous assumption was incorporated into his scheme, and he began to call into being his vision of organic creation on the instalment plan, as Werner had done with the minerals, that his great and valuable work for science became tainted with the deadly Cosmological virus, dooming it to death sooner or later. Sherlock Holmes might attempt to diagnose a disease by a mere glance at his patient's boots, but even this gave him more data and was a more logical proceeding than the facts and methods of Cuvier supplied for constructing a scheme of organic creation.

It will not be necessary to detail the manner in which the modern "phylogenic series" was gradually pieced together from the scattered fragments here and there all over the globe; but it should be noted here that the whole chain of life was practically complete before any serious attempt was made to study the rocks on the top of the ground, and to find out how this marvellous record of the past joined on to the modern period, thus reversing completely the true inductive method, and leaving the most important of all, viz., the rocks containing human remains and other living species, over till the last, with the result that we have for over half a century been laboring under a "Glacial Nightmare," and these deposits on the top of the ground "still remain in many respects the despair of geology."

Then came Lyell, Agassiz, and Darwin; and now in the light of the keen discussions instituted by Weismann in the later eighties of the last century, the modern world is pretty well agreed on two results, viz., that so far from natural selection being able to originate a species, it can't possibly originate anything at all, and also that no individual can transmit to his descendants what he has himself acquired in his lifetime, and hence it is hard to see how he can transmit what he has not got himself and what none of his ancestors ever had.

I have not the space to show how Agassiz further complicated the problem immensely by his absurdly illogical use of his three "laws" of comparison, when the prime fact of there ever having been a succession of life on the globe in any order whatever had never been proved; but I am free to say that if Cuvier's system of creation on the instalment plan had been fact instead of fancy, some scheme of evolution would undoubtedly be implied in this general fact. It is this instinctive feeling on the part of modern scientists which makes them to-day, while confessing the failure of Darwinism, still cling to the general idea of evolution somehow. Hence it seems quite evident that, having deviated from strict inductive methods by pursuing this ignis fatuus of a cosmological history of creation, it was essential in the interests of true science to go the whole journey and make a complete investigation of the biological side of the question, in order to complete the demonstration that science was on a wrong tack entirely. Darwin and Weismann were inevitable in view of the wholly unscientific course on which biology entered under the guidance of Buffon and Cuvier.