454 Living in a World of Change 



Each living thing is obviously jit. According to the older 

 ways of thinking, each organism, or species rather, has been 

 made fit, in the first instance, by the act of creation; and it 

 had remained fit because of the constancy of the environ- 

 ment. What we now call adaptation and are coming to 

 think of as a never-ending process was formerly looked upon 

 as a fixed condition, something absolute. The evidence of 

 an underlying design became manifest in the multitude of 

 details that fitted living things to their surroundings and 

 conditions of life, and especially the details that serve man's 

 life and his conscious needs. Even the color of the foliage 

 was related to our own comfort and the special needs of our 

 eyes for a restful outlook. 



The mode of thinking which rested upon the assumption 

 of a purposeful making and guiding of things as we find 

 them is not in itself either religious or irreligious. It grows 

 normally out of human experience with the facts and fur- 

 nishes a simple and intelligible interpretation of the remark- 

 able interrelations between plants and animals, between 

 different species of living things, between life and the non- 

 living world, between man and the non-human world. 

 Paley's watch is no more eloquent of design than are the 

 daily happenings in the lives of familiar plants and animals. 



Science today dispenses with the notion of purpose in 

 studying structure and behavior, among living things as 

 among galaxies and atoms. But the conception of an 

 overhanging purpose anticipates the teachings of science 

 and anchors itself firmly in the child's mind. The pro- 

 fessional scientist who learns to assert his faith in a more 

 objective and impersonal pursuit of truth and to discuss 

 adaptation as a natural phenomenon may yet continue to 

 speak — and indeed to think — in terms of design. It makes 

 his mode of thinking no more and no less religious, and 

 certainly no more scientific, to substitute " nature " for 

 God. Current textbooks in science still reveal frequent 

 lapses into forms of speech that imply assumptions which 

 the authors expressly repudiate. 



