It has sometimes
been said that distance lends enchantment and light dispels charm,
so that a state of ignorance is conducive to bliss. Whether this be
true in any field of human thought is open to question, but in the
wonders opened up by the scientific study of the universe it is
not. Because Newton discovered the physical laws of nature that
account for the movements of heavenly bodies and the fall of
earthly things, the revolutions of the planets round the sun have
lost none of their marvel; nor have plants and animals since Darwin
showed that they have become what they arc by evolution, in
accordance with the laws of variation and natural selection. The
more the secrets of nature arc probed, the greater the wonder that
they instil. They have yielded enough to enable science to make an
intelligible picture of many natural events, and as the pieces of
the giant jig-saw puzzle are slowly found and fitted into place,
they are seen to conform to order. It is a matter of faith with
scientists to believe in such order.
The picture that
science constructs is intelligible at a particular level. It can
explain how evolution has taken place but has no more pretension to
answer the question why than to explain why there is a law of
gravitation, a speed of light, or chemical elements with constant
properties from end to end of the universe. Science is a system of
knowledge based on observation and experiment, verifiable and
repeatable, and not on the preferences or opinions of any man. It
is not because Darwin concluded that evolution has occurred that
scientists believe it, but because he discovered the evidence from
which they can see for themselves that it has. Since evolution
concerns the history of living beings of which man is one, it is
not surprising that the evidence bearing on it based on scientific
methods of study may conflict with views held on other grounds; It
is instructive to recall the words of Sir John Pringle in answer to
George III when the monarch remonstrated with him at the
recommendation made by the Royal Society in favour of a type of
lightning conductor devised by Benjamin Franklin, then a mutinous
subject in open rebellion against his sovereign. 'Sire', said Sir
John, 'I cannot reverse the laws and operations of nature', thereby
establishing the superiority of scientific truth above any other
consideration of reason.
The laws of nature
have been found to be of universal application and arc held to
represent fundamental truths. They are inscrutable and cannot be
evaded, suspended, or ignored by a scientist without sacrifice of
intellectual integrity, and they inspire wonder. It was neither a
philosopher nor a theologian but a scientist, Albert Michelson, who
wrote 'what can surpass in beauty the wonderful adaptations of
nature's means to her ends and the never-failing rule of law and
order which governs even the most apparently irregular and
complicated of her manifestations'.
The paths of the
heavenly bodies do not excite compassion in the hearts of men, but
the manifestations of life do. As a result of his work, Darwin
showed that in the evolution of animals nature has been amoral,
fiendishly cruel, and opportunistic. "What a book a devil's
chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and
horribly cruel works of nature', he wrote; but this very fact
enabled him to claim that there was some human comfort in the
conclusion that these frightful events formed no part of the
fulfillment of a detailed design. In the light of evolution by
natural selection, 'we cease being astonished, however much we may
deplore, that a group of animals should have been directly created
to lay their eggs in the bowels or flesh of others - that some
organisms should delight in cruelty - that animals should be led
away by false instincts - that annually there should be an
incalculable waste of eggs and pollen. From death, famine, rapine,
and the concealed war of nature we can see that the highest good,
which we can conceive, the creation of the higher animals has
directly come.'
The problem of
design never ceased to occupy Darwin's attention. The study of
evolution has shown that on the level of plants and animals there
has been no design. If there had, it must have
been directed to the doom and extinction of the vast majority of
species of living things that ever lived, in addition to the
suffering that the laws of nature entail. In the state of
perplexity induced by these inescapable facts, Darwin wrote, 'My
theology is a simple muddle. I cannot look at the universe as the
result of blind chance, yet I can see no evidence of beneficent
design, or indeed of design of any kind, in the details'. If he is
confronted with Darwin's dilemma, the scientist, with the humility
always befitting a searcher after truth, can only say that he
acknowledges the laws of nature and is not competent to express any
opinion on why they are as they are. The aim of science is
that it does not claim to 'explain* evolution but shows how it
works.
