FACT OF EVOLUTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTIONISM 337 



condition of scientific prehistory which must draw conclusions 

 without the aid of the statements of witnesses. Piggott, in a 

 very critical and illuminating paper at the Darwin Centennial 

 Convention states: 



What follows from this is, I think, of paramount importance and 

 insufficiently recognized: the nature of the evidence dictates the 

 nature of the inferences which can be properly drawn from it . . . 

 I want to stress here that the past-as-known which is based on 

 archaeological evidence is not, and cannot of its nature be, the 

 same as the past-as-known based on evidence which involves the 

 written record in lesser or greater degree.-^ 



In human prehistory (e. g. archaeology) , what must take 

 the place of written records and preserved technological phe- 

 nomena is the mental artifact called the raodel. This is a 

 human construction based upon extrapolation, interpolation 

 and rational analogies to things known to us more directly and 

 immediately. Simpson stresses the point that the paleonto- 

 logical record of fossil remains of past eras of organic life must 

 be read with two factors in mind: (1) the essential tool (in 

 reading the record) is extrapolation from what we know in 

 neo-biology and present geological formation, an extrapolation 

 which has serious limitations and must be carefully regulated; 

 and (2) the very nature of the materials makes it obvious that 

 the record should not be read with a score of fundamental 

 biases.^® 



A close reading of both Simpson and Piggott will reward the 

 reader with an insight into the limits and the powers of pre- 

 history. On the one hand, the warnings and misgivings about 

 which Olson, Case and Zuckerman and many others have written 

 concerning the conclusions of scientific prehistory are clearly 

 borne out." Yet, on the other hand, the reader will be struck 



'^ EAD, n, 87. 

 " EAD, I, 129-34. 



27 , 



Cf. Olson, EAD, I, 532-37; E. C. Case, " The Dilemma of the Paleontologist," 

 in Contributions from the Museum of Paleontology, Vol. IX, No. 5 (University of 

 Michigan, 1951) p. 180; Zuckerman's statements quoted in E. O. Dodson, Evolu- 

 tion: Process and Product (New York, 1960) p. 197. 



