PHILOSOPHICAL ASPECTS OF EVOLUTION 



namely, precisely what conclusions should be drawn from the 

 history of biology, as sketched above, which shows such a 

 great victory for the mechanistic point of view? Should one 

 of the conclusions be that we do not need the idea of creation 

 any more, and another that there is no essential distinction 

 between animate and inanimate matter? 



As regards the first problem, it is not too difficult to see 

 that the dispute concerning abiogenesis or biogenesis is of no 

 relevance with respect to the problem of creation. For the 

 question whether life is the natural result of complicated but 

 normal material structures, a very special order of matter, or 

 endowed with an entelechy in the neo-vitalistic sense, is 

 entirely different from the question about the existence of 

 the material universe as such. Even if all phenomena of life 

 can be reduced to the original forces of inanimate matter, still 

 no answer at all is given to the problem of the origin of matter 

 itself. The latter is an entirely different problem. Therefore, 

 G. G. Simpson is quite right in his book "The Meaning o[ 

 Evolution" — which strongly defends the mechanistic point 

 of view (he even calls it the materialistic view) — when he 

 writes: "Yet the origin of that cosmos and the causal prin- 

 ciples of its history remain unexplained and inaccessible to 

 science. Here is hidden the first cause sought by theology and 

 philosophy."^ 



From these considerations it should be clear that the anti- 

 thesis between mechanicism (materialism) and vitalism has 

 several aspects, and that more than one problem is involved. 

 First of all, the scientific problem whether or not the phen- 

 omena of life can be explained by physical and chemical 

 methods; secondly, the philosophical issue known as the 

 problem of creation and, thirdly, the problem of the distinction 

 between inanimate and animate matter. 



We will turn now our attention to that third problem. 



3. The Abstract Character of Science 



At first sight, it may seem as if there is no third problem 

 at all. For once the first problem, the scientific one, is solved, 

 what room can there be left for an essential distinction between 



^ G. G. Simpson, The Meaning of Evolution, New York 1951, p. 135. 



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