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The Baroness Von Ijkck Case Still Excite...
LYEI * I * AND OWEN ON DEVELOPMENT . Anniversary Address to the Geological Society , February , 1851 . By Sir Charles Lyell , President . Murray . The Quarterly Review . No . CLXXVIII . Art . VII . Murray . In proportion as any branch of inquiry rises out of mere details into the higher generalizations which alone constitute Science , we find our scientific men , with rare exceptions , pitiably incompetent . Division of labour here , as elsewhere , seems to have narrowed their minds to petty segments , and rendered them incapable of embracing Comte
circles . All the sarcasms which Auguste heaps upon the " of specialities , " are deserved . The man whose life is spent in making the pin ' s head , never rises into the philosophy of manufactures . Indeed , we say it without any sarcastic intention , all over Europe scientific men are for the most part Hodmen who mistake themselves for Architects . Because they amass " facts , " they call themselves inductive philosophers ; forgotting that " facts" but stepping stones to philosophy , — forgetting that the object of knowledge is not facts , not even things , but processes , —laws , —
causation . Among the glaring instances of the poverty we allude to , the discussions elicited by the Vestiges of Creation are among the most recent and notorious . There are faults in that delightful work ; errors both of fact and philosophy ; but compared with the answers it provoked , we cannot help regarding it as a masterpiece . The history of that controversy will hereafter form an amusing chapter illustrative of the essentially superficial and unphilosophic training of our scientific men—if , indeed , greater proofs were needed than the immense reputation of two such mediocrities as Whewell and Sedgwick . ' In the opposition which the "
development theory " has met with , there is unquestionably a considerably leaven of terrified Orthodoxy . We may pity the ineffectual struggles of Orthodoxy to keep a bold front against the irresistible march of science ( the story of Galileo is incessantly repeated on a smaller scale ) , but we can understand the motive ; our astonishment is , not that the Development Theory should be assailed , but that it should be assailed in so ludicrous and illogical a manner . To anticipate misconception we may add that the Theory laid down in the Vestiges appears to us inadmissible—even unphilosophicai in one of its fundamental positions—the author not keeping distinctly in mind the cardinal fact that Organization is the resultant of two factors—the organism
and the external conditions . But we must not wander from our purpose , which is to draw attention to the triumphant demolition of Sir Charles Lyell ' s attack upon the doctrine of a gradual development in the scale of being , both animal and vegetable , from the earliest periods to our own time , by Professor Owen ( the article can only be by him ) , in the last Quarterly Review . Lyell is a great name ; and Geology owes much to him if Philosophy owes little . In a country like ours , where Authority is so weighty , the position of a man like Lyell in a question so
important as that of development , is one to coerce attention . We cannot but rejoice that the refutation has appeared in a popular organ like the Quarterly , and not been hidden from the public in some scientific journal . The refutation is complete , and such an liny one superficially acquainted with geology can easily apprehend . Not one word escapes the reviewer respecting the Vestiyes . He confines himself to proving that , according to the present state of our geological knowledge , there has been a successive and progressive development— -which is the position assailed by Lyell .
To us it appears that , owing to the waul , of precise notions ; ibout Life , geological induction is vitiated . Once supply the metaphysical conception of development in a chain ol being uccordin"" to some plan ., by the more abstract and scientific conception of a law of progressive adaptation — once perceive that the existence of an organism implies the existence of Nucli external conditions as must respond to it -must permit it to exist , —and geological facts ,
however astounding , will mii tfe themselves quietly in the series , and in no way alter the truth of what id dimly set forth in tluv ? Vstiyes of a progressive advance from the simpler to the more complex forms of organization . Suppose the fossils oi 7 Vo »/ odytes tyr even of man , should be discovered m the trrliiiry formation , what would it prove ? Jt would Drove that the conditions to which human organ . s . ns are adapted were present in that epoch as well us m our own ; and in so far it would revolutionize geology , but it would not in the gHghtuHt degree , ufleet the fundamental proposition , viz ., Nature untjormly
proceeds from the simple to the complex , from the more general to the more specific organization . No facts can invalidate a position so perfectly established as that ; yet that , and that only , is the proposition underlying the theory of development . Geological discoveries may alter our views of the great lapses of time which occurred between the various stages of development ; but they cannot alter the fundamental law of development , which is a process from the simple to the complex . Professor Owen shows that all the sound generalizations we have of geological facts point to the same conclusion : —
" All that > e at present know of the vegetation of the globe , at the period of the earliest known fossiliferous deposits , is , that it was of that more simple or less developed kind which characterizes the tribes growing in the sea . No doubt the lowest strata which we have hitherto found happen to be marine ; but it helps us very little forward in the solution of the great question of stationary or progressive creation , to suggest that the contemporaneous silurian land may very probably have been inhabited by plants more highly organized ; because those plants may also , with , some probability , have been lichens , mosses , ferns , or forms at least of a kindred grade of organization . " We do not know what they were , and our hypotheses must wait until we do . "
He alludes also to the indisputable fact that Cryptogamia , Phaenogamia , Gymnosperms , and Dicotyledonous Angiosperms constitute a progressive series ; and this series is precisely that in which our present collection of facts compels us to arrange the records of ancient vegetation . New facts may possibly be discovered to modify or subvert that order ; but what philosopher rejects the generalization of actual facts in favour of some possibility that subversive facts may be one day discovered ?
We have already indicated the Metaphysical ( and consequently vicious ) nature of the ordinary conception of the Development hypothesis , which treats organization as if it were in some sort independent of external conditions , and not the resultant of two factors—Life and Circumstance ( to use broad familiar terms ) . The influence of that error may be traced in this sentence , which Lyell believes a crushing argument : — " Fifthly , in regard to the animal kingdom , the lowest silurian strata contain highly developed representatives of the three great divisions of radiata , articulatn , and mollusca , showing that the marine invertebrate animals tocre as perfect then as in the existing seas . "
The answer is so simple we are almost ashamed to make it : if the marine invertebrata which existed then , exist now , it only proves that the conditions to which those forms of life were adapted are still found in our seas ; nothing more ! Who ever disputed that ? Lyell ' s argument may be paralleled thus : —John Jones , the wealthy citizen , did not rise gradually to his opulence , because evidence exists that at the time of his greatest poverty he ate wheaten bread of a quality as fine
as that which he eats now with venison , stewed eels , and pate tie foie gras . If he eats bread now when he can command cake , it is because bread fulfils all the conditions he requires of it . On our planet there are conditions which suffice for the infinite varieties of life ranging from the plant up to man ; but if we know anything of those conditions , we know that the conditions which will sufliee for the lower will not suilice for the higher forms .
A word on the " question-begging phrase" of Litjhly developed , representatives : to talk of the high development of invertebrate animals is to throw dust , in the eyes of the world : no invertebrate \ h highly developed , except in comparison with the rudimentary forms of animal life . Lyell makes use of the same question-begging language in this sentence : — " In the airhnmfcrou . s fauna there huve been recently discovered neveral skeletons of reptiles of by no means low or simple organization . "
Upon which Owen properly remarks : — - " nut no reptile bus <) ii organjzaiion that can properly be called simple or low- no fish even ; lor the verlebrated type is the highest of all . The question is — whether the , carboniferous fauna has yielded any evidence of a reptile which presents a high and complex organization compared to the rest of its class . " He further says : —¦ " Kvery fink and every reptilo was doubtless as perfectly adapted to the ciicumHtaneeH under which it , lived at the remotCHt of the geological periods , an any li .-. li or reptile at the prenent day : in that respect it was ' an lull y developed . ' J'uheoiitolojjjy , however , ban made utt acquainted with different raeow of linhen iu different iounatioiiH , to which thono rucea
respectively are peculiar , and of which , they are cons quently characteristic ; and as those formatio succeeded each other in point of time , so we inf that the different races of fishes were successively d ^ veloped . But what Sir Charles Lyell appears to h " contending for is , that the forms of animal life th t succeeded each other did not differ in' the grade f their organization ; man , of course , always excepted " No doubt every fish is alike perfect in relation t ' its sphere of existence ; but a gradation of com plexity of organization is traceable throughout the class , as we now know it , and the lancelet and lamprey
are , in this comparison , pronounced by naturalists to be inferior to , or less fully developed than , the tunny or the shark . There is , however , but a Ehort range of gradation within the limits of this class as compared with , that which extends from the fish to the mammal , or from the invertebrate to the vertebrate series ; and in the class of fishes it is seen that when a species overpasses another in certain organs as e . g ., in the brain or the parts of generation , the ' advance is usually counterbalanced by a less full developement of some other system , as , e . g ., the
respiratory and osseous . In no shark or cestracion , e . a , are the gills free , or is there any rudiment of the lungs , such as the air-bladder of most osseous fishes presents ; and the lower grade of the skeleton of the sharks is indicated by the position in the so-called cartilaginous' order of fishes . When once the skeleton becomes ossified in the class of fishes , little , if anything , can be distinctly predicated of the grade of organization or of developement of the fish , as such : in the rest of their organization they are much alike . * * * *
Probably , therefore , the conditions of the seas in . "which the primeval placoids and ganoids existed , were such , as to dispense with that state of the backbone which is required at its highest stage of development . In relation to the circumstances in which they lived , palaeozoic fishes were as perfect as their successors ; but , in comparion with these successors , they were ' less fully developed , ' and the state of their world may be inferred to have differed pro tanto from the state of ours . We cannot shut out this
evidence of a different order of things . Not any of the arguments which . Sir Charles Lyell has endeavoured to apply in explanation of the non-discovery of terrestrial mammalia in- the marine strata of the old world will apply to the remains of sea fishes . Palaeontology demonstrates that there has been , not only a successive development in this class , but , as regards their vertebrate skeleton , a progressive one . " Elsewhere summing up evidence , he says : —
" We cannot contrast the total absence of cetacean mammalia in the deposits of the polaeozoic and secondary seas with the abundance of ganoid fishes in the same deposits , and the analogous abundance of marine cetacea with the total absence of imbricated ganoids in the seas of the present day , without the conviction that there must have been some difference in the conditions suited to animal life associated with , such evidence of successive development . "
Indeed , Sir Charles Lyell ' s obstinate persistence in his objection to the Development Theory is evidence of the force of prejudgments ( we will not say prejudices ) in determining- convictions ; but after the absurd attempts to reconcile Geology and Astronomy with Scripture nothing in that way is incredible . As a scientific question the root of the error lies , we believe , in the fiilae conception oi life . Professor Owen , who has a clearer conception of the essential functions of external conditions ( and whose accurate extensive knowledge of geology we so gladly avail ourselves oi ' , to give to our position an authority which our own very inadequate knowledge would disclaim ) , insists duly upon this aspect of the question . To those passages
already quoted let us add this : —¦ " That the forms of animal lift ! now are very different from what they were in the Hecondary nna puhcozoic periods , is ( shown not merely by the iiondihscovery of existing forms and elaHHCH m tl »<* ancient rocks , but by the non-exiHtenco now ol t <•• creatures that then lived in no mean numbers . ' ingenious reasons assigned by Sir ( Jharles to act <> u for the non-discovery of umnunuls and birds in i-Silurian and other lena ancient marine iormatio ""
not apply to the non-discovery of Me ^ ahchthViU ( and KnahoHaurn in the present hohh . N ° " " . m dreams that the air-breathintf ichthyonauiH h-* tempest the ocean , ' and have only escaped . notiu ^ the ulenderiioHH of their snouts , whn : h they aI \ ,. . pulled to protrude to inhale the atmosp here . ' lungu and the decomposing Henh would have into view their dead bodies , which , hk « tin ^^ existing nir-breatlniiK sea-monster * , would n- ' { occasionally cant on shore . IMo event in i history would ereato greater astoniHhment t " ; , . ,,-discovery of ii living Trilobite , Ammo nite , J ^ < <> f thy * . , or ichthyosauri And why ? J . , nvicthoiixed , and , we will add , av « I 1 -grounded v ^ Lion in the law of tho nucceHHive « " ) V (! l i ° . l " | " clir to tiuimul forum on thin pluuct . l ) i ( 1 % i ui : Xiil . u bird Sir Churlcu that tho absence of u mummul anu
996 3pft$ H £&&*?? [Saturday ,
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 18, 1851, page 16, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_18101851/page/16/
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