Creation or Evolution? A Philosophical Inquiry

by George Ticknor Curtis

6. An intermediate number of bodies called comets and meteors, which revolve in very eccentric orbits.

This system of bodies, constituting a mechanism by itself, apart from what are called the fixed stars, is the first object in nature to which our inquirer directs his studies. Inasmuch as the comets and meteors move in very eccentric orbits, and are supposed to come into our system from the illimitable spaces beyond it, although in the case of the comets, or some of them, mathematical calculations enable astronomers to predict their return when they have passed out of the solar system, and inasmuch as the sun and the superior planets may be contemplated as a grand piece of mechanism, and as the greatest mechanical object in nature of whose construction and movements we have some accurate knowledge, we will suppose that our inquirer confines his attention to this part of the solar system, without adverting to the action of the bodies which are not always, as these are, within the range of the telescope.

One of the first things that would strike him would be the enormous range in the sizes, distances, and relative weights of these different bodies. He would learn, for example, that Neptune is eighty times as far from the sun as Mercury, and that Jupiter is several thousand times as heavy; and he would observe that these differences in magnitude, distance from the sun, and weight of each mass, are carried through a range of proportions stupendously great. If he followed the best lights of modern astronomy, he would learn that what is known, or accepted as known, in regard to the operation of any law among these bodies, is that they are bound together by the law of universal gravitation as a force to which all matter would be subjected when it should come to exist, in whatever forms it might be distributed; secondly, that when the bodies now composing the solar system should come into existence, the system would not owe its proportions to the operation of the law of gravitation, but would be the result of a plan so shaped as to admit of its being governed by the law of gravitation after the system had been made, in such a manner as to produce regularity and certainty of movement and to prevent dislocation and disturbance. What the great modern telescopes have enabled astronomers to discover tends very strongly to show that the plan of the solar system, in respect to the relative distances, magnitudes, and revolutions of the different bodies around the sun, and their relations to that central body and to each other, are not the result of any antecedent law which gradually evolved this particular plan, but that the plan itself was primarily designed and executed as one on which the law of gravitation could operate uniformly, and so as to prevent any disturbance in the relations of the different bodies to each other.[105]

An illustration will help to make the meaning of this apparent. Let us suppose a human artificer to project the formation of a complex mechanism, in which different solid bodies would be made to revolve around a central body; and let us imagine him to be situated outside of the earth's attraction, so that its attraction would not disturb him. He would then have to consider the law of gravitation only in reference to its operation among the different bodies of his machine; and he would adjust their relative distances, weights, and orbits of revolution around the central body, so that the law of gravitation, instead of producing dislocation and disturbance, would bind the whole together in a fixed system of movement, by counteracting the centrifugal tendency of a revolving body to depart from its intended orbit, and at the same time relying on the effect of the two forces in preventing the revolving bodies from falling into the center or from rushing off into the endless realms of space.

This is what may well be supposed to have taken place in the formation of the solar system, for it is consistent with the law which must have preceded the existence of that system. We can not suppose that the law of gravitation was itself a mere result of the relative distances, magnitudes, and orbits of the different bodies. This supposition would make gravitation not a law, but a phenomenon. We do indeed arrive at the existence of the law of gravitation by observing the actions of the bodies which compose the solar system; in other words, we discover the law that holds them together, by observing their actions. But we should entirely reverse the proper process of reasoning, if we were to conclude that the law of gravitation is a phenomenon resulting from an arrangement of certain bodies according to a certain plan. The discoveries of astronomy, on the contrary, should lead us to regard gravitation as a universal law, which existed before the existence of the bodies which have been subjected to it. This is the only way in which our inquirer could reason in regard to the formation of the solar system, whether he supposed its plan to have been a special creation, or to have been evolved out of a nebulous vapor by the operation of the laws of motion or any other laws. Reasoning upon the hypothesis that the law of gravitation existed before there were any bodies for it to operate upon, or, in other words, that it had become in some way an ordained or established principle by which all bodies would be governed, he would have the means of understanding the adaptation of the solar system to be operated upon by the law which he had discovered.

He would next ask himself, How came this law of gravitation to exist? That it must have had an origin, must have proceeded from some lawgiver competent to make and enforce it, would be a conclusion to which he would be irresistibly led, for the very idea of a law implies that it is a command proceeding from an authority and power capable of ordaining and executing it. When it is said that a law is a rule of action ordained by a supreme power, which is perhaps the most familiar as it is the most exact definition, the idea of a command and of a power to enforce it is necessarily implied. This is just as true of a physical as it is of a moral law; of a law that is to govern matter as of a law that is to govern moral and accountable beings. Both proceed from a supreme authority and power, and both are commands. There is, however, one distinction between a moral law and a law of Nature, which relates to the mode in which we arrive at a knowledge of the law; a distinction which our inquirer would learn in the course of his investigations. We infer the existence of a law of Nature, or a law designed to operate upon matter, from the regularity and uniformity of certain physical phenomena. As the phenomena occur always in the same way we infer it to be an ordinance of Nature that they shall occur in that way. But the moral phenomena exhibited by the actions of men have not this regularity and uniformity. They are sometimes in accordance with and sometimes grossly variant from any supposed rule of moral action. We can not, therefore, deduce a moral law from our observation of the actions of the beings whom it was designed to govern, but we must discover it from the rules of right reason and from such information as has been given to us by whatever revelation may have come to us from another source than our own minds. But this distinction between the modes of reaching a knowledge of physical and moral laws does not apply to the authority from which they have proceeded. Both of them being commands, or fixed rules of action, both must have had an enacting authority. We learn the one by observing the phenomena of Nature. We learn the other from reason and revelation.

To return now to the examination of the solar system, which our inquirer is supposed to be prosecuting. The study, which astronomy and its implements will have enabled him to make, has taught him the existence of the law of gravitation, and has led him to the conclusion that it must have had an enacting authority. Following out the operation of this law, through the stupendous spaces of the solar system, he would begin to form conclusions respecting the attributes of its author. He would see that the power must have been superhuman; in other words, that it must have immeasurably transcended anything that can be imagined of power wielded by a being of less than infinite capacities; for, although the space occupied by the solar system, from the central sun out to the orbit of the planet Neptune, is a measurable distance, the conception of the law of gravitation, and its execution, through such an enormous space and among such a complex system of bodies, evince a faculty in the lawgiver that must have been boundless in power and skill. The force of gravitation is found to exactly balance the centrifugal tendency of the bodies revolving around the sun, so that, when once set in motion around that center, they remain in their respective orbits and never fall into the sun or into each other. Our learner would thus see the nature of the adjustment required to produce such a result; and, even if he endeavored to follow out this balancing of forces no farther than to the extreme boundary of the solar system, he would see that the being, who could conceive and execute such a design on such a scale, must have had supreme power and boundless intelligence. So that, by the study of the solar system, as its arrangements and movements are disclosed by astronomy, our inquirer would be naturally led to the conception of a lawgiver and artificer of infinite power and wisdom, ordaining the law of gravitation to operate against the centrifugal force, which would otherwise conduct out of its orbit a body revolving around a center, and then adjusting the relative distances, weights, and revolutions of the different bodies, so as to subject them to the operation of the great law that is to preserve them in fixed relations to each other.

If, next, our inquirer should go farther in his investigations of the solar system, and endeavor to satisfy himself concerning the mode in which the different bodies of this system came into existence in their respective positions, the history of astronomy would teach him that there has been a theory on this subject which fails to account for the existence of this system of bodies without the hypothesis of some special creation. This theory is what is called the nebular hypothesis. It supposes that the solar system was evolved out of a mass of fiery vapor, which filled the stellar spaces, and which became the bodies now observable by the telescope, and that they were finally swung into their respective places by the operation of the fixed laws of motion. But all that astronomers now undertake to say is that this hypothesis is a probably true account of the origin of the solar system, and not that it is an established scientific fact, or a fact supported by such proofs as those which show the existence of the laws of motion. The history of the nebular hypothesis, from the time of its first suggestion to the present day, shows that there are no satisfactory means of accounting for the method in which the supposed mass of fiery vapor became separated, consolidated, and formed into different bodies, and those bodies became ranged and located in their respective positions. The hypothesis that these results were all produced by fixed laws working upon a mass of fiery vapor, is one that has been reasoned out in very different ways; and this diversity of views is such that astronomers of the higher order do not undertake to say that opinions may not reasonably differ in regard to the principal question, namely, the question between the nebular hypothesis and the hypothesis of a special act or acts of creation.

Inasmuch, therefore, as scientific astronomy would present to our inquirer nothing but the nebular hypothesis to account for the production of the bodies of the solar system as they now exist, and as there are admitted difficulties in this hypothesis which may not be insurmountable but which have not been as yet by any means overcome, it can not be said that philosophers are warranted in assuming that all the phenomena of the solar system are to be explained by this theory. The hypothesis that the phenomena, or some part of them, have been produced by a cause operating in a different way, that is, by an act or acts of intentional and direct or special creation, is not excluded by the discoveries of the astronomer. Those discoveries lie in the domain of astronomy, and they do not exclude the hypothesis of a special creation of the solar system upon the plan on which we find it arranged. The latter hypothesis lies in the domain of philosophy. It is to be judged by the inquiry whether it is a rational explanation of phenomena, which astronomy does not show as an established scientific fact, or by proofs that ought to be deemed satisfactory, to have been produced by the method suggested by the nebular hypothesis.

The philosophic reasoning, which would conduct our inquirer to his conclusions, would begin for him with the existence of an omnipotent being, by whom the laws of matter and motion were established. This conception and belief he has attained from having discovered those laws, which must have had an author. He would soon hear the scientist speak of "natural" and "supernatural" methods, and he would understand that by the former is meant the operation of certain fixed laws, and, by the latter, a mode of action in a different way. But he would also and easily understand that the power which could establish the laws of matter and motion, the operation of which the scientist calls the natural method, could equally act in another way, which the scientist calls the supernatural, but which, in the eye of philosophy, is just as competent to the Infinite Power as the method called natural. To state it in different words, but with the same meaning, that which the scientist calls the supernatural is to the philosopher just as conceivable and just as consistent with the idea of a supreme being as the order of what we call Nature; for Nature is the phenomena that are open to our observation, and from which we deduce the probable method by which they have been brought about. It will never do to say that they could not have been produced by a cause operating differently from a system of fixed laws so long as we reason from the hypothesis of the existence and attributes of a Supreme Being. If we reason without that hypothesis, we may persuade ourselves of anything or of nothing.