388 A SHORT HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



A complete cosmogony should, in theory at least, attempt to 

 account both for the origin of the cosmos and for its present as- 

 pects. This the theory of special creation failed to do. It de- 

 scribed the origin of the cosmos at a period evidently remote, 

 inasmuch as it was stated elsewhere in the Scriptures that many 

 generations had come and gone since the Creation, but was 

 silent as to any essential progress or modifications in the mean- 

 time. Hence, for those accepting special creation the inference 

 naturally was that no great changes either in the heavens or in 

 the earth had, in fact, taken place since the initial act of creation, 

 and that the present aspect of the cosmos is substantially its 

 primitive aspect. On this theory mankind and other living things 

 had not developed, but rather stood still or even as in the case 

 of "the fall of man" actually retrograded from a more perfect 

 type. In complete contrast with this ancient, Oriental theory 

 the modern theory of Evolution, making no pretence to solve 

 the problem of the origin of the cosmos, attempts only to explain 

 some of its present aspects. 



RELATIONSHIP OF THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH. It had for 

 centuries been taken for granted, as a part of the geocentric 

 theory, that the heavens and the earth had little if anything in 

 common the earth being the centre of things and of first impor- 

 tance. Copernicus, however, had shown that the earth is inferior, 

 and tributary to the sun, while his great successors Galileo, 

 Kepler, and Newton had proved both earth and sun to be no more 

 than members of a huge system of heavenly bodies strictly corre- 

 lated by gravitation. Hence, when Franklin drew down light- 

 ning from the terrestrial heavens and the spectroscopists not long 

 after proved a substantial chemical identity between the earth 

 and celestial bodies, the older cosmogony began to seem both 

 primitive and parochial. 



Above all, the ideas of Kant and Laplace, which seemed to 

 indicate not merely a structural and material kinship between the 

 heavens and the earth, such as that later revealed by the 

 spectroscope, or a functional similarity, such as that dis- 

 covered by Franklin, but, more remarkable than either, a 



