Evolution of an unthreatening sort

For nearly 150 years, various critics and authorities have been predicting the death-knell of "Darwinism." It is a crumbling ideological edifice, they say, and it will soon collapse. Just as predictions about Armageddon have turned out to be invariably wrong, so too has the wailing and whining of many of Darwin's critics, but there was a time when evolution by natural selection was being eclipsed.

As I have said before, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection served to stir debate rather than resolve how evolution occurred once and for all. It was widely appreciated as a coherent attempt to identify an evolutionary mechanism, but appreciation was not necessarily equal agreement. Many researchers thought they could do better, and some thought they had discovered other mechanisms that had to be considered.

The idea that evolution made jumps was a popular alternate explanation, and this was not for scientific reasons alone. For some it meshed better with religious concepts, particularly if evolution was driven by internal forces rather than by the capricious hand of natural selection. The 1907 apologetics handbook The Bible Under Trial appealed to just this variety of evolution to protect scripture from science.

The area in which evolution by saltation was of most interest involved, not surprisingly, humans. The views of Darwin and Haeckel required a "brute creation" for man, the author asserted, but no savage transitional stage would be needed if humans were produced approximating their present form. This view appeared to be more consistent with the Bible, at least according to this particular author, and was therefore preferred;

It is obvious that if this new theory of

"SALTATORY" OR "MUTATIONAL" EVOLUTION

is accepted it does away at a stroke with nearly all the difficulties connected with the origin of man. It involves a revolution in the way of conceiving the evolutionary process at once as regards the time required, the nature of the forces employed, and the need of supposing minute gradations between the lower and higher forms. In man's case there is no longer need for supposing a slow and gradual ascent from ape to true man ; the " leap," when the proper time comes, may be taken with all the suddenness needed to introduce the new being, with his distinctive attributes, upon the scene. Neither is there any need for picturing man, on his first appearance, as a semi-animal, the subject of brute impulse and unregulated passion ; his nature may have been internally harmonious, with possibilities of sinless development, which only his own free act annulled. Room is given on this view for

A DOCTRINE OF SIN --

both individual and racial -- such as Scripture affirms and requires as the basis of its doctrine of redemption, and as experience so abundantly ratines.

How such saltations occurred (and from what creature produced the first human) apparently was of little concern. That such large-scale changes were said to have occurred was enough. Even so, evolution by natural selection was enough of a threat for the author to include additional criticisms involving the fossil record. It remains the same today. Creationists (of whatever variety) are far less prone to carrying out investigations to support their claims than yammering about the "gaps in evolution." Such cowardice probably pays better, anyway.

[Image: "Joe and Sallie at home. A chimpanzee couple from Edwards' Zoological Exhibition." From The Rise of Man, 2nd ed (1917)]

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