FACT OF EVOLUTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTIONISM 349 



solved. But today the concept " fact of evolution " cannot be 

 applied to the origin of life except in this equivocal sense. Evi- 

 dence and proper inference is lacking at the present stage of 

 investigation. 



When the concept " fact of evolution " is applied to the 

 origin of chemical and physical elements, an even greater 

 degree of equivocation on the terms " fact " and " evolution " 

 is present. Smart/^ Urey,*^ Fowler ^^ and others are very 

 guarded about the extremely hypothetical nature of the knowl- 

 edge concerning the formation of the elements of our own 

 system. Highly tentative backward extrapolation and reason- 

 ing from analogies with our present system of elements, coupled 

 with many alternative theories, all enjoying some reputation, 

 give another meaning to the phrase " fact of evolution " of the 

 elements. As Shapley's paper on the evidence for inorganic 

 evolution plainly manifests, the origin of the universe is hardly 

 a scientific question at all, and the theories about the course of 

 the universe's prehistory alternate between some one-way 

 process and a cyclic process, a steady-state and an expanding 

 universe depleting its energy.*^ The degree of conviction gen- 

 erated in these cosmic sciences is not so great as to rule out 

 serious doubts and alternative explanations, and the meaning 

 and status of the " fact of evolution " is equivocal. 



Almost without exception, the Darwin Centennial panelists 

 and those who submitted papers for Evolution After Darwin 

 agreed that when the organic process introduced homo sapiens 

 upon the cosmic scene, the concept of the " fact of evolution " 

 radically changed. Man may be terminal to a somatic-germinal 

 evolution determined in part at least by the forces and mechan- 

 isms of selection and mutation which were operative in all the 

 other higher animals, but once the species homo sapiens evolved, 

 his evolution was no longer to be manifested in human body 



" The Origin of the Earth, Chapter 10 (Cambridge, Eng., 1951). 

 *^ The Planets: Their Origin and Development (New Haven, 1952) p. 11. 

 *® See the analysis of scientific cosmology in M. K. Munitz, Space, Time and 

 Creation (Glencoe, Bl., 1957). 

 " BAD, I, 33. 



