FACT OF EVOLUTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTIONISM 357 



as though, from the evidence of biological evolution, there is 

 but one philosophical inference available: a monistic, mechan- 

 istic historical unfolding which is the cause and explanation of 

 the origin and diversity of life and living things. Simpson, for 

 example, after admitting that inorganic evolution is a special 

 case, concludes: 



Evolution is, then, a completely general principle of life and is a 

 fully natural process, inherent in the physical properties of the 

 universe, by which life arose in the first place (biopoesis) and by 

 which all living things, past or present, have since developed, 

 divergently and progressively."^ 



The reader will note carefully that the prehistoric process of the 

 origin and development of life, including man, is generalized 

 into a physical law by which an immanent natural process 

 necessitates the present order of living things. Simpson, after 

 admitting that the " ultimate mystery," the origin of the uni- 

 verse and the source of the laws or physical properties of 

 matter, energy, space and time are presently unknown to 

 science, goes on: 



Nevertheless, once those properties are given, the theory demon- 

 strates that the whole evolution of life could well have ensued, and 

 probably did ensue, automatically, as a natural consequence of the 

 immanent laws and successive configurations of the material cosmos. 

 There is no need, at least, to postulate any non-natural or meta- 

 physical intervention in the course of evolution.^ 



72 



He everywhere insists that there are no universal laws of evo- 

 lution "^ and that the process of evolution is a unique, irrever- 

 sible and directionless historical sequence of events. ^^ Yet here 

 he insists that the " fact of evolution," as we know it for 

 living things, even in their origin from the inorganic world, 

 demonstrates a causal, automatic process resulting from " the 

 immanent laws and successive configurations of the material 

 cosmos." And with this " demonstration," he rules out scien- 

 tifically the possibility of any vitalistic or finalistic explanation 



^' " The World Into Which Darwin Led Us," Science, 131 (Apr. 1, 1960), p. 969, 

 " Ibid., p. 972. '" E. g., EAD, I, 167. '* Ibid., p. 173. 



