Evolution, Natural Selection and Common Ancestry

by admin on October 29th, 2009

A few great naturalists, astonished by the very narrow divergence of traits between some species, and the numerous similarities that exist between the most distinct classes of animals and plants.They also noticed that a surprising number of species do vary substantially in their forms, colors, and habits. They thus put forth the notion that the individuals in a species might be all made one from the other. The most notable of these naturalists was a great French naturalist, Lamarck, who wrote a detailed work in which he sought to establish that all species are descended from common ancestry.

Lamarck ascribed the change of species mainly to the force of changes in the conditions of the conditions in which they lived and particularly to the desires and efforts of the animals to improve their living conditions, thereby leading to a modification of various characteristics, due to the noted biological law that all organs are strengthened by incessant use, while they are weakened or even entirely lost by disuse. The observations of Lamarck did not gratify naturalists, and though a few adopted the view that closely related species had descended from each other, the standard belief of the educated public was that each species was a “special creation” quite independent of all others. On the other hand, the majority of natural scientists believed that the variety from one species to another for any external cause was infeasible, and that the “origin of species” was an unresolved and in all probability insoluble problem.

Another great work dealing with the matter of common ancestry was the renowned Vestiges of Creation, penned anonymously, but now acknowledged to have been written by the late Robert Chambers. In Chamber’s book, the processes of natural laws was delineated throughout the universe as a system of growth and development, and it was reasoned that the different species of animals and plants had evolved in orderly successiveness from each other by the natural process of undiscovered laws of development assisted by the action of external conditions. Although Chamber’s book had a appreciable effect in shaping public thought as to the strong unlikelihood of “special creation” of each species, it had lesser effect upon naturalists, as it made no effort to grapple with the problem in detail, or to show in any single instance how the related species of a genus could have arisen.

Today in the evolution creationism debate, the theory of “special creation” is upheld unilaterally and quite fiercely by creationists as an inarguable law not only of nature, but of God. Divine laws are not to be debated, and thus, the evolution creationism controversy debate remains at a standstill.