Beginnings 3

Site Menu

Facts do not "speak for themselves"; they are read in the light of theory.

| Back | Home |

DO THE FACTS PROVE EVOLUTION?

Darwin said: 'For I am well aware that scarcely a single point is discussed in this volume on which facts cannot be *adduced, often apparently leading to conclusions directly opposite to those at which I have arrived. A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question; and this is here impossible.'

*to lead or bring to; to give as a reason or proof; cite as an example

Charles Darwin, 1859, Introduction to Origin of Species, p. 2. Also quoted in 'John Lotion's Journal', The Washington Times, 8 February 1984.

'Facts do not"speak for themselves"; they are read in the light of theory. Creative thought, in science as much as in the arts, is the motor of changing opinion. Science is a quintessentially human activity, not a mechanized, robot-like accumulation of objective information, leading by laws of logic to inescapable interpretation.'

Stephen Jay Gould (Professor of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University), 'The validation of continental drift' in his book Ever Since Darwin, Burnett Books, 1978 pp. 161-162.

'I know that, at least in paleoanthropology, data are still so sparse that theory heavily influences interpretations. Theories have, in the past, clearly reflected our current ideologies instead of the actual data'.

Dr David Pilbeam (PhysicalAnthropologist, Yale University, USA), 'Rearranging ourfamily tree'. Human Nature, June 1978, p. 45.

'One of the reasons I started taking this anti-evolutionary view, or let's call it a non-evolutionary view, was last year I had a sudden realization for over twenty years I had thought I was working on evolution in some way. One morning I woke up and something had happened in the night, and it struck me that I had been working on this stuff for twenty years and there was not one thing I knew about it. That's quite a shock to leam that one can be so misled so long. Either there was something wrong with me or there was something wrong with evolutionary theory. Naturally, I know there is nothing wrong with me, so for the last few weeks I've tried putting a simple question to various people and groups of people. Question is: Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing, any one thing that is true? I tried that question on the geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural History and the only answer I got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar in the University of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long time and eventually one person said, "I do know one thing -- it ought not to be taught in high school".'

Dr Colin Patterson (Senior Palaeontologist, British Museum of Natural History, London). Keynote address at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City, 5 November 1981.

| Back | Top of Page | Home |