FACT OF EVOLUTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTIONISM 361 



this quite peculiar sense, which can be traced back to the sciences 

 of nature, that with such an explanation our thought enjoys a kind 

 of intellectual mastery over the subject-matter.^° 



This rather vehement reproach can, more quietly, be applied 

 to the philosophies of evolutionism. Evolution is an historical 

 process, and, as such, it can have no a 'priori explanation; to 

 assume one and then arrange materials to document it would 

 be false to good scientific method. Simpson admits that the 

 record cannot be read without bias, but bias must be reduced 

 to a reasonable and defensible minimum,^' Since no true law 

 of evolution is discernible, evolution cannot have an all-inclu- 

 sive explanation written into its own process to be divined by 

 analysis or arbitrary intuition. Evolution is an irreversible 

 process and therefore cannot be reconstructed according to 

 necessitating laws. Since evolutionary process can neither be 

 its own explanation nor reconstructed according to necessitating 

 laws, scientific evolution cannot he the basis for any philosophy 

 of evolutionism. 



Those who see evolution written into the " laws of nature " 

 confuse two things: the necessity of the laws of nature and the 

 contingency of the historical events which run their course 

 quite naturally. The necessity proper to the laws do not make 

 the events necessary. As Rensch observed, the laws of biology 

 restrict evolutionary change; the laws of nature are preserva- 

 tive, stable, typical, and ever tend to permanence of structure 

 and function to the most extraordinary degree .^^ The unique, 

 irreversible, non-lawful, historical process which is the sequence 

 of contingent events we call evolution is not a law unto itself, 

 necessitating all things that it elaborates. Evolution, like any 

 history, can be characterized, interpreted or deciphered in a 

 certain measure so as to reveal limited general trends, to use 

 Simpson's term. But the history does not cause, nor necessitate, 

 nor explain the natures or their laws. The cosmos is not merely 



*® Quoted in Maxitain, op. cit., p. 30. 

 ^'EAD, I, 121. 



'^ EAD, I, 101 



