Law of evolution

“ If, then, the recognition of evolution as the law of many diverse orders of phenomena, has been spreading; may we not say that there thence arises the probability that evolution will presently be recognized as the law of the phenomena we are considering? Each further advance of knowledge confirms the belief in the unity of Nature; and the discovery that evolution has gone on, or is going on, in so many departments of Nature, becomes a reason for believing that there is no department of Nature in which it does not go on. ”

“ In 1857, in his essay on "Progress", he propounded the law of differentiation as a general law of evolution, verified by examples from all regions of experience, the evolution of species being only one of these examples. ”

“ If it was potent enough to differentiate the enormous multitude of these animals in all other traits, why did it not vary the number of segments with which the primitive race was endowed? Is the law of evolution limited or unlimited? If it is limited in its effects, then there are patterns of animal structure which it has not modified, and the presence of which in hundreds of thousands of different species must be explained as a form of structure designed for some end that was to be common to a great multitude of different beings. ”

“ And as regards the law of evolution, philosophy again insists upon a difference neglected by science, namely, a difference in that the successive forms in the evolutional series are, as it were, separate manifestations of one and the same concrete energy, instead of being merely altered reproductions, one of another. ”

“ A NEW LAW OF DEVELOPMENT
Evolution is no longer a mere tentative hypothesis. One by one, step by step, each division and subdivision of science has contributed its evidence, until now the case is complete and the verdict rendered. While there is still discussion as to the method of evolution, none the less, as a process sufficient to explain all biological phenomena, all differentiations of life into widely diverse species, families, and even kingdoms, evolution is flatly accepted. ”

“ This law of evolution is equally applicable to all orders of phenomena,--"astronomic, geologic, biologic, psychologic, sociologic, etc.,"--since these are all component parts of one cosmos, though disguised from one another by conventional groupings. It is obvious that, so long as evolution is merely established by induction, it belongs, not to philosophy, but to science. To belong to philosophy it must be deduced from the persistence of force. ”

“ Now it is the great triumph of the evolutional system to have rid us of this unintelligible break, and to have shown that the whole of the material universe, inorganic and organic, is the result of the unchangeable operation of laws which are no less active now than they have ever been. In other words, evolution dispenses with the necessity of supposing the existence, at some point in the history of the planet, of a special law for the production of species brought into operation ad hoc. ”

“ The bearing of these discriminations upon the supposed universality of the law of evolution may now be seen if we attend to the further inquiry whether that law obtains throughout all the phenomena of any one department of Nature as the sole cause of the phenomena in that department. ”

“ Pity thwarts the whole law of evolution, which is the law of natural selection. It preserves what is ripe for destruction; ”

“ Between the theory of Evolution and the idea of Creation as a primal formation of matter with force or motion in accordance with fixed laws, between it and the idea of an initial application of force from without,—an impulsion which set the universe in motion,—between it and the conception of a transcendental guidance through natural law or of a pantheistic order of development, there is no such necessary contradiction as could justify the denial of Evolution from the standpoint of any of these theories. ”

“ It is especially hazardous to argue that because a spontaneous development, or a gradual evolution, can be traced in some of the phenomena of inanimate matter, it therefore must obtain in the animal kingdom. It is alike hazardous to argue, because there has been what is called evolution in some departments of Nature over which man has had no control, that the same law obtains in other departments over which he has also had no control, or those in which he has had a large control. ”

“ Evolution is supplemented by the reverse process of Dissolution ; and these formulas express the law of the entire cycle of changes passed through by every existence and at every instant, with no limitations of time or space. Evolution, however, tends ultimately to equilibrium, in which the incessant changes come to an end.
In 'The Principles of Biology 'Spencer applied the law of evolution to animate existence. ”

“ The last leafy ramifications—flower-bearing and fruit-bearing—of this tree of life, are the fauna and flora of the present epoch. The law might be called a law of ramification, of specialization of the parts, and diversification of the whole.
b. Law of Progress of the Whole.—Many imagine that progress is the one law of evolution; in fact, that evolution and progress are coextensive and convertible terms. They imagine that in evolution the movement must be upward and onward in all parts; that degeneration is the opposite of evolution. ”

“ It is a name for a complicated set of actual phenomena, and if, with progress thus defined, we were to speak of a law of progress in evolution, we should be using the term law in a perfectly legitimate way, as denoting a generalization based on observed facts, and not as pre-supposing any vitalistic principle of perfectibility, any necessary and mysterious tendency of organisms to advance independently of circumstances. ”

“ According to this doctrine, creation is effected by the contact of one form of matter with another in the blind surgings of material forces. Circumstance, under the new name of environment, is elevated to the throne of the creation, and all things and all creatures become what they are by natural selection. In this rage and war of the elements, all progress is effected by the survival of the fittest, and by the law of heredity, according to which every thing and every creature tends to reproduce itself and perpetuate its own form and nature. ”

“ But, as being a proposition deduced by a chain of valid inferences from universally admitted facts, and at the same time a proposition necessary in se, natural selection stands midway between a rule and a law, though it comes nearer to the latter. Hence, of the two evolution principles of organic nature, laws of structure and natural selection, the latter is in theory the surer, whatever may be its shortcomings in practice. ”

“ When we turn to a department in which human influence has largely or wholly shaped the phenomena, we find numerous special creations that are not attributable to the operation of any law of development or evolution such as is supposed to have led to the production of one species of animal out of another, or out of several previous species. ”

“ Darwinism has revolutionized our conceptions of nature. Darwin placed upon a satisfactory basis a new order of interpretation of the organic world. By it other interpretations have been supplanted. And now this new conception is undergoing evolution, not without some divergence.
In this chapter we have seen how evolution is possible under natural conditions. If the law of increase be true, if more are born than can survive to procreate their kind, natural selection is a logical necessity. ”

“ Accordingly, we might establish the Evolution doctrine by showing that matter can be made de novo, that energy can be created or increased in amount, that life can be made from the not-living, and that new and distinct forms of life can be produced in modern times,--all by natural law as now prevailing.
Or we can practically demonstrate the historical reality of a direct Creation at some time in the past, if we can show that the net results of all modern science tend to prove that the forces and processes now in operation can never account for the origin of things ”

“ The law of origin by evolution, as Herbert Spencer showed, is not confined to the method of bringing into existence new species of animals and plants. The stars, planets, the geological strata and earth contours and forms, human institutions, social customs, and practically everything in nature are obedient to it.
Much research work in evolution has been done since Darwin stated his theory, but the basic principle of the survival of the fittest remains untouched by criticism. ”

“ It reads into evolution [Pg 83] progress towards what is, in one way or another, assumed to be an end. But we really know, in the universe, nothing but continuity, eternal change according to natural law, and so only causæ efficientes, never causæ finales; and organic development as well as processes in inorganic nature are to be explained in this manner. The assumption that the result of a process is an end towards which the process was directed is unwarranted. The question of science is not: Wherefore is any creature in the world? ”

“ Evolution is not a force, but a process; not a cause, but a law. ”

“ We see that the maintenance of life in the successive generations of a species, becomes a consequence of the continual incidence of new forces on the species, to replace the forces that are ever being rhythmically equilibrated in the propagation of the species. And we thus see that these apparently-exceptional phenomena displayed in the multiplication of organic beings, fall into their places as results of the general laws of Evolution. We have, therefore, weighty reasons for entertaining the hypothesis which affords us this interpretation. ”

“ Of all the mischievous misconceptions of Darwin’s theory none have worked so much harm as that which regards natural selection as the active and efficient cause of evolution. Although evolution is an established fact, our knowledge of its processes are incomplete and must always remain so until we have solved that most vexed of all biological problems, the “causes of variation.” ”

“ We rest in sure and certain hope that no force and no combination of forces can stop the process of Evolution, which from a speck of jelly has developed such living forms as Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer, and which has produced the beauty of the earth and the heavens from formless ether.
This outline of the Evolutionary system in its widest and fullest sense will enable us to judge upon what grounds it can claim the sanction of Science. ”

“ But it is possible to obtain a clear conception of certain of the fundamental principles that fall into line with the other parts of the doctrine of organic evolution with which we have now become acquainted. ”

“ Or if freedom is asserted of the whole range of animal will, not, however, of plant movement or the motions of the inorganic, we may again inquire as to the point of exact division between the animal and the plant. Evolution is, by definition, a gradual process, a growth in which there are no gaps, and of which our finest and most minute calculations by infinitesimals can give us only a faint conception. ”

“ If the theory that the different species of animals now known to us have been evolved successively by descent from some primordial simplest form through modifications induced by change of habitation, of medium of life, and accumulation of new structures occurring through an immense period of time, be a sound hypothesis, the process which has evolved superior out of inferior organizations ought, in consistency with itself and with all its supposed conditions, to be capable of being reversed, so as to lead to the evolution of inferior out of superior organisms. ”

“ Because the doctrine of natural selection does not profess to answer all the questions propounded by scientific inquisitiveness, it must not be supposed that it fails in its immediate purpose of giving a natural explanation of how evolution may be partly accounted for. ”

“ That there are other factors of evolution not yet discovered is almost inevitable; they, however, will be but added ‘laws;’ supplementary and co-ordinated methods—giving greater completeness to our knowledge of the origin of species.
But having reached this conclusion, we are at once compelled to ask, What is the origin of this unceasing continuity of variation in all living things? this power to become constantly adapted to change of environment, and for ever, in the fittest form, to survive? ”

“ Although scientists have so largely discarded Darwin’s theory, the utter lack of new species in historic time, when so many are required by every theory of evolution, is a mathematical demonstration that the whole theory of evolution must be abandoned. ”

“ These processes are real and natural, not imaginative or artificial, and so they will remain even though it will become clear that much is still to be learned about the causes of variation and the course of biological inheritance. Darwin was the first to contend that natural selection is but a part of nature's method of accomplishing evolution. ”

“ We began with the basic principles of organic structure and workings, and then we examined serially the larger categories of the evidences relating to evolution as a fact, and to the mode of its accomplishment by natural factors. Proceeding to the special case of our own species, we learned that human beings are inevitably a part of nature and not outside it; in structure, development, and palæontological history, mankind is subject to the control of the uniform laws which operate throughout the entire range of living things. ”

“ The evolution theory could only pass beyond the rank of a hypothesis, if we should succeed in showing the impelling forces of such an origin of species through development. Such an attempt can be made in two ways—the metaphysical and the scientific-empirical. ”