Illogical Geology, the Weakest Point in the Evolution Theory

by George McCready Price

Spencer then goes on to show how dogmatic and unscientific it is to say that when the Carboniferous flora, for example, existed in some localities, this type of life and this only must have enveloped the world.

"Now this belief," he says, "that geologic 'systems' are universal, is quite as untenable as the other. It is just as absurd when considered a priori: and it is equally inconsistent with the facts," for all such systems of similar life-forms must in olden time have been of merely "local origin," just as they are now. In other words, we have no scientific knowledge of a time in the past when there were not zoological provinces and zones as there are to-day, one type of life existing in one locality, while another and totally different type existed somewhere else.

Then, after quoting from Lyell a strong protest against the old fancy that only certain types of sandstone and marls were made at certain epochs, he proceeds:

"Nevertheless, while in this and numerous passages of like implication, Sir C. Lyell protests against the bias here illustrated, he seems himself not completely free from it. Though he utterly rejects the old hypothesis that all over the earth the same continuous strata lie upon each other in regular order, like the coats of an onion, he still writes as though geologic 'systems' do thus succeed each other. A reader of his 'Manual' would certainly suppose him to believe, that the Primary epoch ended, and the Secondary epoch commenced, all over the world at the same time.... Must we not say that though the onion-coat hypothesis is dead, its spirit is tractable, under a transcendental form, even in the conclusions of its antagonists."

Spencer then examines at considerable length the kindred idea that the same or similar species "lived in all parts of the earth at the same time." "This theory," he says, "is scarcely more tenable than the other."

He then shows how in some localities there are now forming coral deposits, in some places chalk, and in others beds of Molluscs; while in still other places entirely different forms of life are existing. In fact, each zone or depth of the ocean has its particular type of life, just as successive altitudes do on the sides of a mountain; and it is a dogmatic and arbitrary assumption to say that such conditions have not existed in the past.

"On our own coasts, the marine remains found a few miles from shore, in banks where fish congregate, are different from those found close to the shore, where only littoral species flourish. A large proportion of aquatic creatures have structures that do not admit of fossilization; while of the rest, the great majority are destroyed, when dead, by the various kinds of scavengers that creep among the rocks and weeds. So that no one deposit near our shores can contain anything like a true representation of the fauna of the surrounding sea; much less of the co-existing faunas of other seas in the same latitude; and still less of the faunas of seas in distant latitudes. Were it not that the assertion seems needful, it would be almost absurd to say that the organic remains now being buried in the Dogger Bank can tell us next to nothing about the fish, crustaceans, mollusks, and corals that are now being buried in the Bay of Bengal."

This author evidently found it difficult to keep within the bounds of parliamentary language when speaking of the absurd and vicious reasoning at the very basis of the whole current geological theory; for, unlike the other physical sciences, the great leading ideas of geology are not generalisations framed from the whole series or group of observed facts, but are really abstract statements supposed to be reasonable in themselves, or at the most very hasty conclusions based on wholly insufficient data, like that of Werner in his "narrow district of Germany." Sir Henry Howorth[2] has well expressed the urgent need that there is of a complete reconstruction of geological theory:

"It is a singular and a notable fact, that while most other branches of science have emancipated themselves from the trammels of metaphysical reasoning, the science of geology still remains imprisoned in a priori theories."

But Huxley[3] also has left us some remarks along the same line which are almost equally helpful in showing the essential absurdity of the assumption that when one type of life was living and being buried in one locality another and very diverse type could not have been doing the same things in other distant localities.