CREATION BY EVOLUTION 



EVOLUTION— ITS MEANING 

 By David Starr Jordan 



Chancellor Emeritus, Leland Stanford Junior University 



Evolution as Orderly Change 



By evolution, as the word is now used, we mean the 

 universal process of orderly change. It includes cosmic 

 changes in suns and planets and organic changes in living 

 creatures, called organisms because they are made up 

 of cooperating parts, or organs, which by fitting into 

 one another constitute organization. And from the fact 

 that all these changes — whether instantaneous, daily, yearly, 

 or consuming centuries or aeons, in the individual or in 

 generations of individuals — are orderly, never random nor 

 accidental, we derive our definition of evolution. More- 

 over, as this process occurs throughout all that we know, 

 evolution becomes another name for Nature. Evolution, 

 indeed, is Nature's way; thus all Nature study, if serious 

 and thorough, must lead to the recognition of evolution. 

 That Nature has her ways is the most visibly evident fact 

 in all our experience, and such phrases as ''blind force" 

 have no real meaning. 



Nevertheless, the forces and conditions which surround 



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