The Theory of Evolution | 309 



many religious groups. Many clerics today may have serious reserva- 

 tions, particularly in regard to man's place in the evolutionary 

 scheme. Evolution has the distinction of having been legislated 

 against by some of our states; indeed, the teaching of evolution is still 

 technically illegal in the state of Tennessee. More than one hundred 

 years after the idea was first put forth, few laymen have any real 

 idea of what it is all about. In most high school biology classes (and 

 textbooks ) the subject is not touched on at all or is dealt with only 

 in euphemisms. A high school teacher was recently quoted in the 

 Palo Alfo Times (California) to the effect that he had been experi- 

 encing little difficulty in teaching evolution in a local school system, 

 although in Arizona he had met with less success because many 

 students and other teachers had refused to accept his statements on 

 the subject. There followed a flurry of letters to the editor, con- 

 demning the teacher for daring to express such dangerous and 

 heretical ideas. 



Evolutionists have not met with smooth sailing within biology 

 either. Many outstanding scientists of Darwin's day vigorously op- 

 posed the idea, and until the science of genetics began to mature in 

 the 1920s and 1930s the theory of natural selection led a tenuous 

 existence. Today the vast majority of biologists accept the theory of 

 evolution, although a great many of them have only a passing ac- 

 quaintance with recent thinking on the process itself. In addition, 

 there has always persisted a small but determined group of scientists 

 and pseudoscientists who use distorted versions of evolutionary ideas 

 to support their own social theories. Those interested in this aspect 

 of evolution should consult Dobzhansky's excellent Mankind Evolv- 

 ing. It is perhaps only natural that the massive ( and often ignorant ) 

 opposition presented to evolutionary theory should have left its mark 

 on the theory itself. There can be little question that it has. 



The most obvious aspect of evolutionary theory that may be at 

 least partially explained as reaction to the Bishop Wilberforce ap- 

 proach has been the development of a rather stringent orthodoxy. 

 This orthodoxy is easily detected in the compulsion of biologists to 

 affirm belief in evolution (rather than to accept it as a highly satis- 

 factory theory) and to list proofs that evolution has occurred. It is, 

 of course, a matter of debate as to where healthy conservatism leaves 

 off and dogma begins. Suffice it to say that the discipline is at least 

 close enough to the danger area to call for some critical reexamina- 

 tion of basic tenets. 



By the standards of science, the idea that all modern organisms 

 are the modified descendants of organisms that lived in the very 

 distant past is almost, but not quite, a "fact." Scientific facts are 



