306 VINCENT E. SMITH 



thus becomes a universal cosmic tendency, what becomes of 

 entropy and of the opinion that " it is difficult to conceive of 

 circumstances that would invalidate the statistical proof of 

 the Second Law "? ° Obviously, the paradox suggested by La- 

 lande remains unresolved and probably exists in more pointed 

 form than the cosmologies of his own day would have urged. 

 If the apparent antimony between evolution and entropy is 

 to be frankly faced, there is clear need for carefully tracing 

 each of the two concepts to their empirical evidence. 



Despite all of its obscurity, entropy is understood well 

 enough to be embodied in mathematical equations. Yet evolu- 

 tion, even apart from the greater attention paid to it in the 

 popular press, is probably easier to illustrate at a physical level. 

 All natural change, e. g., the development of an oak from an 

 acorn, a frog from a tadpole, and flesh and bone from food 

 materials, is in a loose sense of the term an evolutionary process 

 in which the better comes into existence.'' Because progress 

 is more intelligible in the physical world than the down-hill 

 drive of entropy, evolution may be more profitably discussed 

 first. 



I 



Like other leading ideas in modern science, e. g., the helio- 

 centric theory in physics or the atomic theory in chemistry, 

 the theory of evolution has analogues going back as far as 

 the Greeks, for instance Anaxagora? 7 and appearing in Chris- 

 tian writers like St. Augustine with his " seminal reasons." ^ 

 Yet the theory of evolution, as we now know it, together with 

 the empirical evidence adduced in its favor, is an original 

 achievement of modern science. Collingwood, despite his fre- 

 quent exaggerations, had an insight in taking the post-New- 

 tonian conception of matter to be nature as history.^ Even 



" C. F. von Weizsacker, The History of Nature (Chicago, 1949) p. 57. 

 ' Sum. cont. Gent., Ill, cc. 3, 4. 



'' Cf. Aristotle's report, Phys., I, 4, 187a20 fF.; the best secondary source on 

 Anaxagoras is F. Cleve's, The Philosophy of Anaxagoras (New York, 1949) . 

 * Cf. for instance, L.-M. Otis, La doctrine de I'evolution (Montreal, 1950) . 

 ® The Idea of Nature (New York, 1960) pp. 9 ff.; 133 fl. 



