The Philosophy of Natural Theology: An Essay in confutation of the scepticism of the present dayJackson, William
Religion
The Philosophy of Natural Theology: An Essay in confutation of the scepticism of the present day
Jackson, William
Natural theology; Religion -- Philosophy; Religion and science
It will be well worth while to close this present series of
illustrations by a review of Professor Huxley's last published and best
considered positions on Teleology. He printed, in 1871, an article on
Haeckel's "Natürliche Schöpfungs Geschichte," and has now entitled it
"The Genealogy of Animals," and included it in his recent volume of
Critiques. We may therefore assume that we here find the distinguished
Biologist's deliberate opinions. He says, p. 305, "The Teleology
which supposes that the eye, such as we see it in man or one of the
higher _Vertebrata_,[82] was made with the precise structure which
it exhibits, for the purpose of enabling the animal which possesses
it to see, has undoubtedly received its death-blow. Nevertheless it
is necessary to remember that there is a wider Teleology, which is
not touched by the doctrine of Evolution, but is actually based upon
the fundamental proposition of Evolution. That proposition is, that
the whole world, living and not living, is the result of the mutual
interaction, according to definite laws, of the forces possessed by
the molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of the universe was
composed. If this be true, it is no less certain that the existing
world lay, potentially, in the cosmic vapour; and that a sufficient
intelligence could, from a knowledge of the properties of the molecules
of that vapour, have predicted, say the state of the Fauna of Britain
in 1869, with as much certainty as one can say what will happen to the
vapour of the breath on a cold winter's day.
"Consider a kitchen clock, which ticks loudly, shows the hours,
minutes, and seconds, strikes, cries 'cuckoo!' and perhaps shows the
phases of the moon. When the clock is wound up, all the phenomena which
it exhibits are potentially contained in its mechanism, and a clever
clockmaker could predict all it will do after an examination of its
structure.
"If the evolution theory is correct, the molecular structure of the
cosmic gas stands in the same relation to the phenomena of the world as
the structure of the clock to its phenomena."
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