UND-Pilsa Blog

The concordance in the numerical ratios among animals is one of the wonderful laws of nature. The contexts in which species vie for life occur within definite limitations where no obstacles preclude their broader statistical distribution leads to the further insinuation that these limits were attributed to them from the start. We could come to the final conclusion that the order that predominates throughout nature is intended, that it is shaped by the limitations determined out on the first day of creation, and that it has been retained unchanged through ages with no other changes than those which the higher intellectual powers of man allow him to levy on some few animals more closely affiliated with him.

These opinions of some of the more eminent and potent thinkers of the pre-Darwinian age seem to us now to be altogether outdated or positively ludicrous; but they nonetheless exhibit the mental condition of even the most progressed section of scientists on the topic of the nature and origin of species. They render it clear that despite the great knowledge and ingenious thinking of Lamarck, and the more general exposition of the issue by the author of the Vestiges of Creation, there had never been a passable explanation of the lineage of any one species from another. Such well-known naturalists as Geoffroy Saint Hilaire, Professor Grant, Dean Herbert, Von Buch, and others, had expressed their belief that species arose as mere assortments, and that the species of each genus were all derived from a single common ancestor. However, not one of them gave explanation about the law or the method that created the changes. This was still “the great mystery.”

Pertaining to the additional question of how far this common lineage could be expected barely came up for discussion at all. This is because they trusted that, while the first step along the path of “transmutation of species” had so far not been reached, and it was quite futile to contemplate as to how far it might be possible to travel in the same direction or where the path would finally lead.

We see important divergences in thinking on these issues in the evolution creationism controversy debate.