>>
I have read your posting with interest. Are you able to provide full
details of the book that I may immediately order it?
>>
Vernon -- it took me a little time to find the file which I had so
cleverly named that
it was lost in the heap.
Here is the text of the review I wrote for PERSPECTIVES:
OMPHALO3.TXT
OMPHALOS: An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot by Phillip
Henry Gosse. Woodbridge, CT: Ox Bow Press, 1998. 376
pages, index. Paperback; $34.95. ISBN 1-881987-10.
This is a reprint of a book originally published in London in
1857, two years before Darwin's ORIGIN OF SPECIES. Long out of
print, unavailable to students of origins issues, it has
reappeared as a study text for historians who would like to see
how one scientist struggled to reconcile what he understood of
both science and the scriptures.
References to Gosse's book appear often. Martin Gardner gives it
a sympathetic treatment in FADS & FALLACIES (1957). He wrote (in
chapter 11) that "Not the least of its remarkable virtues is that
while it won not a single convert, it presented a theory so
logically perfect, and so in accordance with geological facts
that no amount of scientific evidence will ever be able to refute
it." More recently, Chris Morgan and David Langford's FACTS AND
FALLACIES (1981) mentions it as an "ultimate invincible theory,"
overcoming "all conflict between evolution and the Bible."
Gosse's son, Edmund Gosse, in his 1905 book, FATHER AND SON,
reported at length his father's bewilderment, following
publication, of the expressions of derision that were expressed,
by believers and non-believers alike.
Phillip Henry Gosse was no pseudo-scientist, but a respected and
admired naturalist of his time. Thomas Huxley called him "an
honest hod carrier of science," by which term he paid respect to
Gosse's powers of observation and writing. Gosse is associated
with the development of salt water aquariums and published many
books on water creatures of the English countryside. He was an
admirer of the new scientists, as seen in this quote from his son:
"Where was his place, then, as a sincere and accurate observer?
Manifestly, it was with the pioneers of the new truth,
it was with Darwin, Wallace and Hooker" (FATHER AND SON, page 128).
But Gosse was also a biblical literalist. The Bible does not
lie, and the facts of nature must take second place to the
revealed word, a word which he was convinced he knew and knew
well. When his wife died painfully of cancer in February of 1857,
he turned his attention to a reconciliation of the issue.
OMPHALOS appeared in print that fall; within two years it had
disappeared into history's rubbish heap. Twenty years ago, I
found a second generation photocopy at Gordon-Conwell. For the
past two decades a photocopy of that photocopy has resided on my
bookshelf.
Gosse's argument is simple. If you had been present in Eden
twenty minutes after Adam's creation, you would have observed his
navel, a scar left from a birth that never happened. In his
digestive tract would have been the remains of a meal he had not
eaten two hours before. His feet would have had calluses from
walks he had never taken. A nearby tree, cut down, would have
shown real rings of unreal years of growth. Gosse goes on and on
with this argument, separating all time into historic time, what
Gosse calls "diachronic" time, and un-historic time, unreal time,
virtual time, what Gosse calls "prochronic" time. He argues two
propositions, ones which my friends at ICR might well take into
account: (1) All organic nature moves in a circle; and
(2) Creation is a violent irruption into the circle of nature.
Gosse quotes the philosopher Chalmers, who wrote "We have no
experience in the creation of worlds..." From this statement,
Gosse concludes, at least for the organic world
(he disclaims any arguments for the inorganic),
that any act of creation must involve the creation of
a being with a history that never took place. On page 336 he
writes, "...we cannot avoid the conclusion that each organism was
from the first marked with the records of a previous being. But
since creation and previous history are inconsistent with each
other; as the very idea of the creation of an organism excludes
the idea of pre-existence of that organism, or any part of it; it
follows, that such records are false, so far as they testify to
time; that the developments and processes thus recorded have been
produced without time, or are what I call 'prochronic.'"
The objections to Gosse's thesis are well known. The two
objections most often cited are (1) that it is simply a variation
of Russell's hypothesis, "last Thursdayism," the hypothesis that
we were all created, complete with memories of unreal events, on Thursday
morning of last week, and (2) that it must be rejected because "God can't
lie" and a false history must be taken as evidence that He did lie.
But Gosse's arguments go well beyond Russell's hypothesis, and he
argues well that any fiat creation, even by God, must necessarily
include unreal history. His arguments need to be taken seriously.
Gosse's thesis is not, of course, "scientific." While it may be
true, it is not testable, nor does it suggest future research
projects. It is a dead end. Gosse recognized this. Nevertheless,
he urged his fellow scientists to continue as if unreal history
were real and to construct their theories independent of his thesis.
For many years I have asked my friends at ICR for comments. To
date, they have declined that opportunity. Holding, as they do,
that fiat creation did happen, it seems that part of OMPHALOS
ought to play a part in their theorizing. One thing seems
certain. If one posits fiat creation of any kind, an appearance
of age must be a part of that hypothesis. That fact makes
scientific tests of the claim difficult, if not wholly
impossible, leading to the observation that "Scientific
Creationism" is simply an oxymoron. Sorry about that, Henry.
I highly recommend this book to my ASA colleagues interested in
origins issues. It is a good read. For the biblical literalist,
one who has honestly and thoroughly confronted the scientific
data, I see it as the only intellectually coherent position
possible.
Thanks to Jack Haas, Richard Ruble, George Murphy, Emrys Tyler
and Loren Haarsma for help in improving this review.
Rviewed by John W. Burgeson,
Stephen Minister at First Presbyterian Church,
Durango, CO 81301.
Submitted to PERSPECTIVES,
the quarterly journal of the ASA, October 31, 2000.
________________________________________________________________
GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO!
Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less!
Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit:
http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Jan 21 2001 - 16:47:04 EST