November
2009
Transmutation and Origin of the Theory of Evolution
It is crucial to consider that what has been understood by the “origin” or “transmutation” of species before Darwin’s work appeared, is the relatively plain question whether the related species of each genus had or had not been derived from one another and, remotely, from a common ancestor, by the general method of procreation and by agencies of laws and conditions still in process and capable of being soundly investigated. If any naturalist had been asked at that day whether, theorizing that all the divergent species of each genus had been descended from some one ancestral species, and that a broad and total explanation were to be given of how each little divergence in form, color, or structure might have developed, and how the different oddities of habit and of geographic dispersion might have been acted about and if this were done, the “origin of species” would be discovered, the primary secret worked out, he would doubtless have responded in the affirmative. Our investigator would in all likelihood have imparted that he never anticipated any such remarkable breakthrough to be given in his life. Darwin has done this, not simply in the judgement of his adherents and admirers, but by the viewpoints of those who doubt the veracity of his accounts. For most all their remonstrations and difficulties apply to those specific deviations which split genera, families, and orders from each other, not to those that separate one species from the species from which it is most intimately allied, and from the remaining species of the same genus. So are these protests ubiquitous or simply a case of mistaken identity?
There is a great deal of disagreement on this, in the evolution creationism debate, including an Oprah Winfrey creationism controversy.
