4x8 



THE QUARTERLY REVIEW OF BIOLOGY 



edition of xo,ooo copies, in 1918. So it 

 can be seen that the book has had at least 

 a moderate success. And this success 

 seems to us warranted. For the book is by 

 a long way the most amusing Funda- 

 mentalist tract that has come our way. 

 What makes it amusing is that its tech- 

 nique is so pesky mean. The strategy 

 is to discuss the numerical consequences of 

 various general statements which have 

 been made by scientific men regarding 

 some of the variables involved in the 

 arguments in favor of evolution. In all 

 controversial technique one of the most 

 devilish, and often devastating, tricks is 

 to set forth solemnly the simple numerical 

 results which necessarily (or supposedly 

 necessarily) follow upon general state- 

 ments. When someone engrossed in a 

 particular line of evidence which he has 

 been studying says casually that man has 

 been upon the earth one million years, or 

 one hundred thousand years, or some other 

 long time, he usually overlooks the fact 

 that a zealous and ingenious person can 

 figure with pencil and paper about this 

 statement in a whole lot of ways that its 

 originator never thought about at all. 

 Sometimes the consequences of such pur- 

 poseful arithmetic may be embarrassing 

 in high degree. It was by this technique 

 that the good Bishop Colenso opened the 

 flood gates of Modernism and the Higher 

 Criticism when he turned his diabolical 

 arithmetic loose upon the Pentateuch. 



It is again precisely this sort of thing 

 that the Rev. Dr. Williams has done to 

 the evolutionists. His book is divided 

 into three parts. The first part has for 

 its general title "The Evolution of the 

 Human Body Mathematically Disproved;" 

 the second part, which, along with the 

 third, appears to have been written at 

 some later date than the first, has for 

 its title "Evidence Answered;" finally, 

 the third part has to do with "The Soul." 



The initial calculation runs this way: 



The population of the world, based upon the 

 Berlin census reports of 19x1, was found to be 

 1,804,187,000. The human race must double itself 

 30.75 times to make this number. This result may 

 be approximately ascertained by the following 

 computation: 



At the beginning of the first period of doubling 

 there would just be two human beings; the second, 4; 

 the third, 8; the fourth, 16; the tenth, 102.4; the 

 twentieth, 1,048,576; the thirtieth, 1,073,741,814; 

 and the thirty-first, 1,147,483,648. In other 

 words, if we raise two to the thirtieth power, we 

 have 1,073,741,814; or to the thirty-first power, 

 1,147,483,648. Therefore, it is evident even to the 

 school boy, that, to have the present population of 

 the globe, the net population must be doubled more 

 than thirty times and less than thirty-one times. 

 By logarithms, we find it to be 30.75 times. After 

 all allowances are made for natural deaths, wars, 

 catastrophes, and losses of all kinds, if the human 

 race would double its numbers 30.75 times, we would 

 have the present population of the globe. 



Now, according to the chronology of Hales, 

 based on the Septuagint text, 5077 years have elapsed 

 since the flood, and 5177 years since the ancestors of 

 mankind numbered only two, Noah and his wife. 

 By dividing 5177 by 30.75, we find it requires an aver- 

 age of 168.3 years for the human race to double its 

 numbers, in order to make the present population. 

 This is a reasonable average length of time. 



Moreover, it is singularly confirmed by the number 

 of Jews, or descendants of Jacob. According to 

 Hales, 3850 years have passed since the marriage of 

 Jacob. By the same method of calculation as above, 

 the Jews, who, according to the Jewish yearbook for 

 1911, number 15,393,815, must have doubled their 

 numbers 13.8758 times, or once every 161 .151 years. 

 The whole human race, therefore, on an average has 

 doubled its numbers every 168.3 y eaf s; and the Jews, 

 every 161.151 years. What a marvelous agreement! 



So far so good. Leaving Dr. Williams' 

 calculations to one side for a moment and 

 making some of our own, it is a fact that 

 between 1650 and 1910 (_— 1.70 years) the 

 population of the world increased about 

 3.7 times. In other words, during this 

 period of reasonably reliable estimates of 

 world population it has doubled at the 

 rate of once in approximately 146 years. 

 This is a figure of at least roughly the same 



