Re: Dawkins, The Ancestor's Tale

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  Darwin leaned heavily on observations of living organisms in arriving at his theory, but if he had not known the fossil evidence, would he have had his key insight? Perhaps he would have--because anyone can speculate; but would he have been persuasive?

   
  Darwin was first convinced about evolution from the fossil record as he noted in his Notebooks of 1837/8 before he read Malthus. This is what I wrote in Debating Design ed Ruse and Dembski 2004, where I objected to IDs refusal to consider geological time.

  It is interesting that in 1837 he argued from the fossil record and then in 1859 from biological mechanisms first, with the fossil evidence as minor.

  Michael

  PS Just got a puppy which has chewed Russell Mixter's 1959 book on evolution, I shall keep all publications of ASA members well away from her. However it ran out with an AIG tract in its mouth!
  A fine early example of a study on the succession of life is in John Phillips' Treatise of Geology of 1838. He dealt with the subject again that year for Baden Powell. After giving '[t]he order of development of life', he wrote, 'Is the present creation of life a continuation of the previous ones; . ? I answer, Yes; but not as the offspring is a continuation of its parent.' His meaning is clear - there has been a succession of similar species, each separately created and only differing slightly from its predecessor, but no descent. By doing this, Phillips allowed the direct creation of each species and thus retained the Argument from Design almost intact. This meant that any possibility of evolution could be side-stepped.

  The Young Darwin on a non-evolutionary succession of life.

  Phillips was a lifelong opponent of evolution, but Darwin made a fascinating use of Phillips's ideas, while toying with evolution in his B notebook of 1837-8. This was nine months before he read Malthus and thus predates Natural Selection. Darwin agreed with Phillips' historical order of fossils, but not his successive creations. In B notebook we see Darwin the GEOLOGIST arguing historically and abductively for evolution. From p167 he was using Phillips for historical information on fossils; 'fish approaching to reptiles at Silurian age' (B p170) and asking 'How long back have insects been known?' (B 171) Having asked the when questions he then asked the why. Crucial is his earlier statement 'Absolute knowledge that species die & others replace them' but 'two hypotheses [individual creation and common descent] fresh creation mere assumption, it explains nothing further, points gained if any facts are connected' (B 104) Here Darwin appears to dismiss the view of Phillips cited earlier. Later he asked, 'Has the creator since the Cambrian formations gone on creating animals with same general structure. - miserable limited view' (B 216) and argued 'My theory will make me deny the creation of any new quadruped since days of Didelphus in Stone[s]field' (B 219) This is in contrast to the Origin of Species where Darwin argues by analogy from artificial selection and then from the fossil record and biogeography. In B notebook he was arguing for the inference for the best explanation to explain the succession of life, but in 1859 argued for the mechanism first and then gave a minor abductive argument from biogeography and the fossil record. However the original basis of his 'one, long argument' was abduction from the fossil record. In fact, Darwin was more successful in convincing others that evolution was the best historical interpretation of the fossil record than for natural selection. This is contrary to Johnson's alleged materialist model of evolution, where 'a materialistic evolutionary process that is at least roughly like neo-Darwinism follows as a matter of deductive logic, regardless of the evidence'. Darwin had argued abductively and inductively from the historical evidence and then by analogy. He had taken the long chronology of "creationist" geologists and then, and only then, argued for evolution and the virtual absence of creative acts to explain the progression of lifeforms. This was a bold step as there were few detailed sequences like the elephant, the horse, Triceratops and allied species and others.

  Miller in Finding Darwin's God mischievously considers design in relation to elephants with 22 species in the last 6 million years and many more going back to the Eocene. If all were "formed" at about the same time in c8000 BC, then the only reasonable explanation is some kind of intelligent intervention, which designed each to be different, rather like cars made by Chrysler or GM over several decades.

  If geological timescale be correct, then these different fossil elephants appeared consecutively and despite "gaps" form a graded sequence. They indicate only "annual model upgrade". Assuming that this is a fairly complete sequence, the Intelligent Designer seemed to have adopted the same sequence of modifications as would be expected by evolution. This is exactly the point Darwin made in his 1844 draft;

  I must premise that, according to the view ordinarily received, the myriads of organisms, which have during past and present times peopled this world, have been created by so many distinct acts of creation. . That all the organisms of this world have been produced on a scheme is certain from their general affinities; and if this scheme can be shown to be the same with that which would result from allied organic beings descending from common stocks, it becomes highly improbable that they have been separately created by individual acts of the will of a Creator. For as well might it be said that, although the planets move in courses conformably to the law of gravity, yet we ought to attribute the course of each planet to the individual act of the will of the Creator.

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   Unless one rejects geological time, the fossil record points either to Progressive Creation with regular interventions (the common pre-Darwinian view), or evolution, possibly with occasional "interventions". The starting point has to be an ancient earth and the 'absolute knowledge that species die & others replace them'. To regard geological time as a subsidiary issue would deny that.
Received on Wed Jan 5 17:25:59 2005