EVOLUTION 



December, 1927 



Who Believes in Evolution ? 



By David Starr Jordan 



TUST now in America organic evolution has come to 



the front as a popular issue. With it is the broader 

 question as to whether scientific teaching and scientific 

 research shall be subject to official censorship of men 

 who know nothing of such matters. As to the final issue 

 there can be no doubt, for science will insist upon and 

 secure its own freedom. 



The word evolution as commonly accepted comprises 

 two distinct conceptions, the making of the material uni- 

 verse and the development of life and mind on the earth. 

 Cosmic evolution deals with the formation of worlds, 

 moons, mountains, crystals, 

 seas, rivers and glaciers — 

 matter that in itself has no 

 organic life. This bears no 

 intimate relation to organic 

 evolution, the development 

 on the earth of animals and 

 plants. It is true that all 

 are in the same universe, 

 from which nothing can 

 escape. It is true that all 

 are undergoing change, and 

 that all such change so far 

 as we can trace it is, in all 

 its details, perfectly orderly. 



But to unite the phe- 

 nomena of life and those of 

 inert matter as one group of 

 phenomena is to ignore and 

 confuse our knowledge of 

 the essential qualities of or- 

 ganized life. Cosmic evolu- 

 tion in these days no one 

 presumes to doubt. Its strug- 

 gle with tradition is vir- 

 tually past. The facts of or- 

 ganic evolution are equally 

 well, though not so exhaustively, settled, but there per- 

 sists a kind of guerrilla warfare against its main con- 

 clusions. 



In their relation to organic evolution, several classes 

 may be recognized among our people. We have first a 

 small minority comprising those who know as to the 

 common origin of animals and plants, either through 

 broad, critical observation of animals and plants — the 

 naturalists — or through experiments with living beings 

 or organisms — the geneticists. Among these there is no 

 difference of opinion on the main question. All life 

 is and has always been subject to orderly divergence. 

 The animals and plants of today are descended from 

 those of the past. All men who have a right to an 

 opinion or are capable of forming an opinion from the 

 evidence of nature are now evolutionists. The main facts 

 are in, and none of them are explainable under any other 

 supposition. The great argument in biology is the 

 cumulative one. But as to the relative value of the factors 

 or forces which brought it about, and as to the probable 

 geological history of each group, there remains much 

 difference of opinion. Such differences furnish incen- 

 tives to future work. 



A second class called evolutionists, often very baffling 

 to workers themselves, are the imperfectly educated 

 who accept evolution but are impatient with the slow 

 progress which actual knowledge demands. They de- 

 light to run ahead of science and to anticipate it by 

 methods of fancy, using fragments of philosophy, bits 

 of poetry or of assumed "logical necessity." In science 

 we can know the truth only so fast as we can find it 

 out. Science is embarrassed by tradition and intuition 

 alike. 



A third and much larger class realize they must ac- 

 accept most conclusions on 

 the authority of men who 

 have given their lives to the 

 study of the science of life 

 and are therefore in full 

 agreement as to the meaning 

 of what men have found to 

 be true. No man can have 

 an opinion of his own on 

 all subjects. He must trust 

 to authority for the most. 

 But the mark of the edu- 

 cated man is that he knows 

 what authority he can trust. 

 To enable men to do this is 

 a central purpose of educa- 

 tion. To teach this conclu- 

 sion or that, one set of dog- 

 mas rather than another, 

 truth even rather than false- 

 hood, is not a university's 

 business. It is rather to 

 give such training as will 

 enable the student to find 

 out for himself. Only by 

 such means can any man 

 acquire the "courage of his 

 convictions." A working hypothesis becomes science only 

 when rival hypotheses have definitely ceased to work. 

 When this takes place science moves on, never returning 

 to occupy territory once abandoned. 



A fourth class are interested chiefly in evolution in 

 so far as it seems to stand in opposition to current 

 orthodoxy or to religion. 



A fifth class, the largest of all, enjoy going with the 

 crowd, priding themselves on their hundred per cent 

 regularity in all matters of opinion having the backing 

 of some form of tradition. The burden carried by 

 tradition is essentially one of ignorance. It treats as 

 final the conceptions of able men of other ages, who had 

 neither tools of observation nor training by which to 

 carry on experiments. These men, of whose judgment we 

 have records, were devoted and sincere but made no 

 claim to any form of omniscience, only reporting their 

 own impressions in forms of history and poetry. 



A sixth class rejoice in being blind leaders of the 

 blind, scorning science and willing to use civil authority 

 for its suppression. 



David Starr Jordan 



(Dr. Jordan's argument will be continued in the 

 next issue of Evolution) 



24133 



JUL 2 5 1960 



