THE DOGMA OF EVOLUTION 



ideal pattern; but, by the very nature of things, one 

 species cannot evolve into another species because 

 that would be equivalent to acknowledging that its 

 own divine pattern was imperfect and variable. 



While Aristotle wrote voluminously of physics, 

 and was accepted as the final arbiter of physical law 

 down to the time of the Renaissance, his influence 

 was on the whole unfortunate. His natural causes 

 were accepted and became the touchstone of truth; 

 in mechanics the inductive method of Archimedes, 

 and in astronomy the solar system of Hipparchus, 

 were abandoned for the a priori postulates of Aristo- 

 tle. His rejection of the atomic theory of Democritus, 

 according to which the idea of motion was confined 

 to the modern concept of change of position and oc- 

 curred only according to natural necessity or mathe- 

 matical law, practically made impossible any sound 

 advance in the physical sciences. His dicta, that all 

 motion in nature is directed to an end and that God 

 and nature do nothing in vain, prevented later writers 

 from seeing that God and nature could act towards an 

 end through natural or mathematical law. That is, 

 according to modern concepts, the laws of chance are 

 as certain as are a priori causes. 



Thus, his physical laws that bodies have a natural 

 motion and a natural position, that nature abhors a 

 vacuum, etc., became rules of dogmatic faith and 

 superior to observation. The method of Plato, Euclid, 

 Archimedes, and Hipparchus was discarded and the 



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