THE DOGMA OF EVOLUTION 



treatise, the Dialoghi delle nuove scienze. The effect 

 of this work was even more profound than the former, 

 as he here clearly established the inductive method as 

 one dependent on observation and reason. He laid the 

 foundation of the science of mechanics which, when 

 completed by Newton's discovery of the law of uni- 

 versal gravitation, has developed into the only com- 

 plete and satisfactory exemplification of the induc- 

 tive method. This mechanical theory, according to 

 which phenomena are due to the positions of bodies 

 and to the force of attraction between them, became 

 the goal, as an explanation, of all physical phenom- 

 ena, and today it is the basis for the Attempt of biolo- 

 gists to explain life as a manifestation of mechanical 

 energy. Its most complete expression is the nebular 

 hypothesis of Kant and Laplace which as a form of 

 inorganic evolution prepared the way for the later 

 doctrine that life is also progressive. 



The earliest attempt to adapt the mechanistic the- 

 ory to an explanation of the universe was made by 

 Descartes. He first identified substance with space 

 and then considered space itself as a continuum which 

 later became the model for the luminiferous aether. 

 The varieties of matter and of phenomena, he attrib- 

 uted to different forms of vortical, or whirling, motion 

 in this continuum.^" This theory, so far as inorganic 

 phenomena are involved, is a pure monistic doctrine, 



1° For the details of the Cartesian cosmogony the reader may refer 

 to the chapter on the subject in my Limitations of Science. 



C 102 3 



