Creation or Evolution? A Philosophical Inquiry

by George Ticknor Curtis

Sophereus. We must take things in a certain order. I understand you to concede, for the present, that the laws of gravitation and motion must, or may, have existed before the sun and the planets were formed. We are agreed, then, that power has an existence anterior to and separate from the qualities of substance. What, then, is the difficulty attending the hypothesis that the Infinite Power, which devised and established the laws of gravitation and motion before the bodies of the solar system were formed, so fashioned and distributed those bodies that while each of them shall exert upon every other a certain amount of direct attraction, that attraction shall diminish in a certain fixed ratio, as the distance between them increases? We can not suppose that the relative magnitudes, weights, and distances of these bodies were accidental, or that they resulted from the property of attraction that was given to the particles of matter of which they are composed. That property of mutual attraction became at some time a fixed condition of all matter, but it will not account for the formation of a system of bodies so adjusted that the attracting force will act among them by a specific law, by the operation of which they will be prevented from exerting on each other an excessive amount of such force, or any amount but that which is exactly needful to preserve their relative distances from each other. Let it be supposed that the property of attraction was impressed upon all the particles of matter in the universe, and then that the Infinite Power, abstaining from all farther action, and without forming and arranging the bodies of the solar system upon any intentional plan, left all that plan to be worked out by that property of matter; what reason have we to conclude that the law of gravitation would, as the sole efficient cause, have produced just exactly this complex piece of mechanism, so wonderfully adjusted? What reason have we to conclude that the property of attraction, although ordained as an inherent quality of all matter, would not, if left without any special interposition, have resulted in some very different arrangement and disposition of the matter lying in the space now occupied by the solar system?

Kosmicos. Give me your idea of the condition which is called "chaos," and I will then explain to you why it is that you do not do justice to the scientific distinction between the natural and the supernatural method by which things have been produced as we see them.

Sophereus. I presume you do not mean to ask how I suppose chaotic matter came to exist. Its origin is one thing—its condition is another. In regard to its condition, it seems very plain that there was a period when diffused matter had not received the impress of the qualities or been subjected to the laws which we now recognize. Take the Mosaic hypothesis, where it speaks of the earth, for example, as "without form and void." In this terse expression, there is embraced the idea of a condition of matter without qualities, properties, or laws; lying in an utterly crude state, waiting to receive the impress of the divine will. The laws of motion have not begun to operate upon it; the laws of chemical combination have not been applied to it. It is a rational conclusion that this was the condition of things in that remote period of eternity before the solar system was formed. Chaos, then, was the condition of primeval matter before it had received the fixed properties that were afterward to belong to it, and before the laws that were ever afterward to govern it had been ordained. Lying in this utterly crude state, without tendencies, without combinations, without definite motion, floating in the universe without fixed form or qualities, it awaits the action of the Infinite Power. It pleases that power, out of its illimitable resources, to bestow upon this chaotic matter certain properties, and to subject it to certain laws. One of these properties is that its particles shall attract one another by a certain force; one of these laws is that this force shall operate by an invariable and fixed rule of direct action, and by an invariable and fixed rule of diminution, according to the distance of the particles from each other; and another law is that a body projected into space, by any force, shall continue to move in a straight line until and unless it is deflected from that line by some other force. There are, too, chemical properties belonging to matter as we know it, by which it takes on certain combinations and undergoes modifications and arrangements of its particles. All these properties, qualities, and laws—these unavoidable methods of action—must have been imposed upon the chaotic matter at some time by a power competent to establish them, and to put them in operation. But the laws and the methods of their operation do not account for the PLAN on which the solar system has been formed, consisting of different bodies of such shapes, dimensions, and relative distances, that the laws, when applied to them, will produce the wonderfully exact and perpetual movements which the telescope reveals. That PLAN is a creation, for which we must look to something more than the laws and properties of matter; and we can only find it in the will and purposes of the infinite artificer who devised the laws by which this mechanism was to be governed after it had been made, and who has so made it that it would be governed by them.

Kosmicos. I do not see that you have yet reached a stronger ground on which to rest the hypothesis of special interposition than that on which is based the hypothesis which imputes the formation of the solar system to certain fixed laws operating upon crude matter not yet formed into definite shapes or placed in certain relative positions. You will have to adduce some proof that has a stronger tendency to exclude the supposition that the mechanism of the solar system was produced by the laws of matter and motion working upon some material that lay in the condition which you have described as "chaos."

Sophereus. Let us, then, look a little farther into some of the details of this vast machine. Take one that is most obvious, and that lies the nearest to us; I mean the moon, which accompanies our earth as its satellite. The most remarkable thing about the motion of the moon is the fact that she makes one revolution on her axis in the same time that she takes to revolve around the earth, and consequently she always presents to us the same face, and her other side is never seen by human eyes. How came this to be the case? How came this to be the adjustment of the two motions, the axial revolution of the moon and her revolution around the earth, causing her always to present to us the same side? It is said by astronomers that the two motions are so exactly adjusted to each other that the longer axis of the moon always points to the earth, without the slightest variation. It is conceded, as I understand, to be infinitely improbable that this adjustment was the result of chance. A cause for it is therefore to be found. Where are we to look for that cause, unless we look for it in the will and design of the Creator, who established it for some special purpose?

Kosmicos. You are aware that there is a physical explanation of this phenomenon which accounts for it without the special design. This explanation is that the moon was once in a partially fluid state, and that she rotated on her axis in a period different from the present one. In such a condition, the attraction of the earth would produce great tides in the fluid substance of the moon; this attraction, combined with the centrifugal force of the moon's rotation on her own axis, would cause a friction, and this friction would retard the rate of her axial rotation, until it became coincident with the rate of her revolution around the earth. It is highly improbable that the moon was originally set in rotation on her axis with just the same velocity with which she was made to revolve around the earth. This improbability is based on the ellipticity of the moon's orbit, which is caused by the attraction of the sun. The mean distance of the moon from the earth is 240,300 miles; her smallest possible distance is 221,000 miles; and the greatest possible distance is 259,600. The usual oscillation between these extremes is about 13,000 miles on each side of the mean distance of 240,300. The diameter of the moon is 2,160 miles, or less than two sevenths of the earth's diameter. In volume she is about one fiftieth as large as the earth, but her density, or the specific gravity of her material, is supposed to be a little more than half of that of our globe; and her weight is about three and a half times the weight of the same bulk of water. When she is nearest to the sun, the superior attraction of that body tends to draw her out of her circular orbit around the earth; when she is farthest from the sun, this attraction is diminished, and thus her terrestrial orbit becomes slightly elliptical. But there is another attraction to be taken into account. This other attraction, in her former fluid condition, has given her the shape, not of a perfect sphere, but of an ellipsoid, or an elongated body with three unequal axes. The shortest of her axes is that around which she rotates; the next longest is that which points in the direction in which she is moving; and the longest of all points toward the earth. This shape of the moon, resulting from the earth's attraction, has been produced by drawing the matter of the moon which is nearest to the earth toward the earth, and by the centrifugal force which tends to throw outward the matter farthest from the earth. The substance of the moon being a liquid, so as to yield freely, she would be elongated in the direction of the earth. But if she was originally set in motion on her own axis at precisely the same rate with which she was made to revolve around the earth, the correspondence between the two motions could not have been kept up; her axial rotation would have varied, by reason of the fact that her relative distance from the sun and the earth varies with the ellipticity of her orbit around the earth, and thus the two motions would not correspond. But if we allow for the attraction of the earth upon a liquid or semi-liquid body, producing for the moon an elongated shape, her axial rotation would, if the two motions were in the beginning very near together, vary with her revolutions around the earth, and the correspondence between the two motions would be kept up. Here, then, you have a physical explanation of the phenomenon which strikes you as so remarkable—a result brought about by natural causes, without the supposition of what you call intentional design, or formative skill directly exercised by a supernatural interposition.

Sophereus. This is a very plausible theory, but it all depends upon two assumptions: First, it assumes it to be extremely improbable that the two motions were aboriginally made to correspond, by an intentional adjustment of the moon's weight, dimensions, and shape, upon such a plan that the laws of gravitation and movement would keep the two motions in exact correspondence. Why should not the rates of movement have been originally designed and put in execution as we find them? You anticipate the answer to this question by another assumption, namely, that the substance of the moon was at first in a fluid or semi-fluid state, so that she owed her present shape to the effect of the earth's attraction, and the centrifugal tendency of its most distant part to be thrown out of the line of its motion. I should be glad to have you explain why it is extremely improbable that the Creator planned this part of the solar system, the earth and its satellite, and so adjusted the dimensions, shapes, and weights of each of them, and fixed the rates of revolution of the satellite, that the laws of attraction and motion would find a mechanism which they would keep perpetually in operation, and thus preserve a constant relation between the moon's axial rotation and her revolution around the earth. I have thus far learned to regard the probable methods of the Creator somewhat differently from those which you scientists ascribe to him. Most of you, I observe, have a strong tendency to regard the Deity as having no specific plan in the production of anything, which plan he directly executed; and, so far as you regard a First Cause as the producing cause of phenomena, you limit its activity to the establishment of certain fixed laws, and explain all phenomena upon the hypothesis that the Supreme Being—if you admit one—made no special interpositions of his will and power in any direction, after he had established his system of general laws. But to me it seems that the weight of probability is entirely against your hypothesis. In this particular case of which we have been speaking, that of the moon's revolution, the supposed improbability of an original and intentional adjustment of the two motions turns altogether on the argument that if they had been so adjusted at the beginning they would not have kept on, and this argument is supported by the assumption that the moon was at first a mass of fluid. I do not understand this mode of making facts to support theories; and I wish you would explain to me why, in this particular instance, the inference of a divine and intentional plan in the structure of this part of the solar system is so extremely improbable. To me it seems so obvious a piece of invented mechanism, that I can not avoid the conclusion that it was the intentional work of a constructor, any more than I could if I were to find a piece of mechanism under circumstances which indicated that it was produced by human hands.

Kosmicos. You do not even yet do justice to the scientific method of reasoning. The deductions of science—the conclusions which the scientist draws from the phenomena of Nature—rest upon the postulate of fixed laws of Nature, which never change, and which have not been varied by any supernatural interference. We mean by a supernatural cause one which is not uniformly in operation, or which operates in some way different from the fixed laws which we have deduced from the observed order of the phenomena that we have studied and found to be invariable. We adopt this distinction between the natural and the supernatural because the observable phenomena of Nature do not furnish any means of discovering as a fact the operation of anything but the fixed laws, or any cause which has acted in a different way. Let us now apply this to the phenomena which we have been considering—the composition and arrangement of the solar system. What do we find? We find a system of bodies in the movements of which we detect certain fixed laws operating invariably in the same way. When the question is asked, How were these bodies produced? we have no means of reaching a conclusion except by reasoning upon the operation of the forces which these laws disclose, working on the primordial matter out of which the bodies became formed. It is for this reason that, in accounting for their existence, we speak of the method of their formation as the natural, in contradistinction to some other method which we call the supernatural; by which latter term we mean some mode in which there has been a power exerted differently from the established and fixed agency of the laws of matter, which constitute all that we have ever discovered. The nebular hypothesis affords a good illustration of the distinction which I am endeavoring to show you, whether it is well established or not, or is ever likely to be. It supposes that there was a mass of fiery vapor, floating in the space now occupied by the solar system. Under the operation of the laws of gravitation and motion, of mechanical forces and chemical combination, this crude matter becomes consolidated and formed into the different bodies known to us as the sun and the planets, and the laws which thus formed them continue to operate to keep them in the fixed relations to each other which resulted from the process of their formation. Whether as a matter of fact the solar system was formed in this way, this, or some other mode of operation through the action of certain established laws operating upon primeval matter, is what we call the natural method, in opposition to the supernatural; and we can not discover the supernatural method, because the closest and most extensive investigations never enable us to find in nature any method of operation but that which acts in a fixed and invariable way.

Sophereus. What you have now said brings me to a question that I have all along desired to ask you: How do you know that the Infinite Power never acts, or never has acted, in any way different from the established order of Nature? Is science able to determine this? If it is not, it must be for philosophy to consider whether there can have been, or probably has been, in operation at any time any cause other than those fixed laws of Nature which the scientist is able to deduce from observable phenomena. Because science can only discover certain fixed laws as the forces governing the bodies which compose the solar system, or governing the materials of which they are supposed to be made, it does not seem to me that a philosopher is precluded from deducing, by a proper method of reasoning upon a study of the solar system, the probable truth that its mechanism was specially planned and executed by a special act of the creating power. The degree to which this probability rises—whether it rises higher in the scale than any other hypothesis—must depend upon the inquiry whether any other hypothesis will better account for the existence of this great object, with its enormous mechanism, its adjustments, and its unerring movements. I must say, from what I have learned of this planetary system, with the sun as its center, viewed as a mechanism, that I can conceive of no hypothesis concerning its origin and formation which compares in probability with the hypothesis that it was directly and specially created, as we know it, by the Infinite Artificer.

Kosmicos. Pray, tell me what you mean by an act of creation? Did you or any other man ever see one? Can you tell what creation is?