The WISDOM of EVOLUTION bl_ Q.feb K) (p The WISDOM 0 of EVOLUTION Raymond J. Nogar, O.P., Ph.D. DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY, INC. GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK. Tl-ieologij Ut van} 'SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY AT CLAREMONT California Nihil obstat: Benedict M. Ashley, O.P. Charles J. D. Corcoran, O.P. Censores Duputati Imprimatur: Right Reverend Monsignor George J. Casey Vicar General November 21, 1962 The Nihil obstat and Imprimatur are official declarations that a book or pamphlet is free of doctrinal or moral error. No implication is contained therein that those who have granted the Nihil obstat and Imprimatur agree with the contents, opinions or statements expressed. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 63-18212 Copyright © 1963 by Raymond /. Nogar All Rights Reserved Printed in the United States of America Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to include excerpts from the following copyrighted publications: The American Scientist—“The Crucial Evidence for Human Evolution” by W. D. Le Gros Clark, 1959. Basic Books, Inc.—Excerpt from The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, 1959. Reprinted by permission of Basic Books, Inc. Chilton Books—Adapted from The History of Man by Gustav Schenk, copyright 1961 by Chr. Belser Verlag, Stuttgart. Used with permis¬ sion of the English language publisher, Chilton Books, Philadelphia and New York. Columbia University Press—Excerpt from Dobzhansky: Genetics and the Origin of Species. Reprinted by permission. Norma Millay Ellis—Excerpt from “The Return” by Edna St. Vincent Millay from Collected Poems, Harper & Row, Publishers. Copyright 1934, 1962 by Edna St. Vincent Millay and Norma Millay Ellis. Reprinted by permission of Norma Millay Ellis. 5 Duquesne University Press—Excerpt from Symposium on Evolution, Du- quesne University Press, Pittsburgh, 1958. Reprinted by permission. Faber and Faber Ltd.—Excerpt from “Snow” from Collected Poems by Louis MacNeice. Reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd. Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.—“The Song of the Jellicles” from Old Possutris Book of Practical Cats, copyright, 1939, by T. S. Eliot. Reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., and Faber and Faber, Ltd. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.—Excerpt from “Mending Wall” from Complete Works of Robert Frost. Copyright 1930, 1939 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Holt, Rine¬ hart and Winston, Inc. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.—Excerpt from “On a Sundial” from Cautionary Verses by Hilaire Belloc. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., and A. D. Peters, London. New Directions—Excerpt from “To-Em-Mei’s The Unmoving Cloud’ ” by Ezra Pound, from Personae: The Collected Poems of Ezra Pound, copyright 1926, 1958 by Ezra Pound. Reprinted by permission of New Directions. Penguin Books Ltd.—Excerpt from Man the Peculiar Animal by R. J. Harrison. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. Priory Press—Excerpts from Beginning: Genesis and Modern Science, 1955. Random House, Inc.—Excerpt from “Law Like Love” by W. H. Auden. Copyright 1940 by W. H. Auden. Reprinted from The Collected Poetry of W. H. Auden, by permission of Random House, Inc. Reinhold Publishing Corporation—Excerpt from Dodson: Evolution: Proc¬ ess and Product, revised edition, 1960, by permission of Reinhold Publishing Corporation. Copyright © 1960 Reinhold Publishing Corporation. Sheed & Ward, Inc.—Excerpts from Testament and Other Poems by John Fandel, © 1959 by Sheed & Ward, Inc., New York. The University of Arizona Press—Excerpt from “The Amber Cage” by Dorothy Donnelly. Reprinted by permission of The University of Arizona Press. The University of Chicago Press—Excerpts from Evolution After Darwin. Copyright © 1960 by The University of Chicago Press. Reprinted by permission of The University of Chicago Press. Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to include the following illustrations: Chart on pages 57-58—From Herbert H. Ross, A Synthesis of Evolution¬ ary Theory. Copyright © 1962 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Prentice-Hall, Inc. 6 Illustration on page 67—The Lineages of the Horse Family. Copyright © 1961 The American Museum of Natural History. Illustration on page 87—From the Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, Vol. 31. Illustration on page 104—Copyright © 1960 Reinhold Publishing Corpora¬ tion. Reprinted from Dodson, Evolution: Process and Product, re¬ vised edition, 1960, by permission of Reinhold Publishing Corpo¬ ration. Illustration on page 112—From A. S. Romer, The Vertebrate Body, pub¬ lished by W. B. Saunders Company. Illustration on page 113—Copyright © 1960 Reinhold Publishing Corpo¬ ration. Reprinted from Dodson, Evolution: Process and Product, revised edition, 1960, by permission of Reinhold Publishing Corpo¬ ration. Illustration on page 114—From A. S. Romer, The Vertebrate Body, after Gregory. Published by W. B. Saunders Company. Illustration on page 114—From General Zoology by Storer and Usinger. 3d ed.. Copyright © 1957 by McGraw-Hill Book Co. Used by permission. Illustration on page 115—Copyright © 1960 Reinhold Publishing Corpo¬ ration. Reprinted from Dodson, Evolution: Process and Product, revised edition, 1960, by permission of Reinhold Publishing Corpo¬ ration. Illustration on pages 138-39—Copyright © 1960 Reinhold Publishing Cor¬ poration. Reprinted from Dodson, Evolution: Process and Product, revised edition, 1960, by permission of Reinhold Publishing Corpo¬ ration. Illustration on pages 160-61—By permission of The American Philosoph¬ ical Society. Originally published in Vol. 103, No. 2 of the Society’s Proceedings (1959). Illustration on page 178—From William Howells’ Mankind in the Making. Copyright © 1959 by William Howells, by permission of Doubleday & Company, Inc. Illustration on page 296—Reprinted by permission of Yale University Press from Mankind Evolving, by Theodosius Dobzhansky. Copy¬ right 1962 by Yale University Press. Illustration on page 299—Reprinted from Evolution After Darwin, Vol. 1, edited by Sol Tax, 1960, by permission of The University of Chicago Press. My Beloved Family Acknowledgments Today, no book about evolution involving biological, philo¬ sophical and theological issues could be written without the assistance of a corps of generous and tireless workers. Many of them must remain unknown. I have attempted to attribute my debt to other writers by extensive notes which appear at the conclusion of each chapter. There are a few persons, however, who deserve special gratitude for the part which they played in the production of this volume. First, I must thank Dr. Theodosius Dobzhansky, the dean of American geneticists, and one of the foremost contributors of our time to the literature on evolution. His lectures, his many articles and books, and especially his personal encour¬ agement have done much to inspire the effort expended on these pages. Dr. Edward O. Dodson, professor of biology at the University of Ottawa rendered me the immense favor of reading and scientifically editing the text. Although he can¬ not be held accountable for a single inaccuracy in my writing, his suggested changes have been invaluable, and have made much of the factual material more reliable and up-to-date. Most books require a special motive, ample time and the right circumstances. To the Very Rev. John E. Marr, O.P., S.T.M., Provincial of St. Albert’s Province, to the Very Rev. John G. O’Connell, O.P., to the Very Rev. Edward S. Carl- 10 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS son, O.P., S.T.M., and to the other administrators of the Aquinas Institute of Philosophy, I owe a deep debt of grati¬ tude for their generosity in affording me the incentive and opportunity to do the special research necessary to the writing of this book. These pages could not have been written without the help of the entire Dominican community at River Forest, Illinois. Many of my colleagues and students at the Aquinas Institute of Philosophy and the Albertus Magnus Lyceum assisted me in my work. I wish especially to mention the Very Rev. Benedict M. Ashley, O.P., S.T.M. (Pres.), and the Rev. Charles J. D. Corcoran, O.P., Ph. Laur., who brought great clarity and imagination to our discussions of the philosophi¬ cal issues which this book presents. To this list must be added the name of the Rev. John B. Endres, O.P., S.T.D., who contributed many important theological suggestions. But books also need publishers. I am greatly indebted to Doubleday & Company for the privilege of having Mr. Daniel R. Hayes and Mr. John J. Delaney as editors of this volume. Their months of kind and patient counsel gave direction and final form to my efforts. I must thank my typists Miss Bonnie Gekler and Mrs. Louise Bradley, who, beyond providing a manuscript in excellent form, carefully corrected many stylis¬ tic blunders. Finally, I am deeply grateful to Miss Carol Ann Giannini for her patient reading of proofs and her assistance in the preparation of the Index. R.J.N. Foreword Darwin’s theory of evolution seemed to many of his contem¬ poraries offensive to human dignity and incompatible with their religious faith. This tale is too well known to need an¬ other recital; the situation has changed radically during the century since Darwin. This century saw both an evolution of the theory of evolution, and an evolution of opinions concern¬ ing the philosophical and theological implications of this the¬ ory. Dr. Raymond J. Nogar is extraordinarily well qualified to discuss and analyze these implications. A member of the Dominican order, he is equally at home in theology, philoso¬ phy and biology. His book is not intended to be a biological treatise on evolution but rather an examination of the philo¬ sophical status of the evolution theory. The book nevertheless contains a very competent account of the biological founda¬ tions of this theory, which will doubtless be invaluable to the theological readers. In this sense the book is a valuable biolog¬ ical treatise, after all. To a professional biologist its interest lies, however, in the exceedingly subtle, many biologists will think oversubtle, logical and philosophical analysis of biolog¬ ical concepts, inferences and theories. Here Dr. Nogar displays a really remarkable degree of finesse which few biologists can hope to emulate successfully. 12 FOREWORD His careful and conscientious weighing of the evidence leads Dr. Nogar to accept evolution as the best available ac¬ count of the genesis of the living world and of man. He regards this account fully compatible with the philosophy of Thomism and with the doctrines of the Catholic Church. He is, of course, aware of the vigorous disagreements with his position on the part of the unreconstructed fundamentalists on the one hand and of agnostic and materialistic scientists on the other. While accepting the theory of biological evolution, Dr. Nogar views with misgivings its extension to cultural and to cosmic evolution, and he rejects what he calls “evolu¬ tionism” where “the concept of evolution now becomes a scientific ideology.” Here I, for one, have difficulty in follow¬ ing him; evolutionist “ideology” does not seem to me in¬ compatible with his philosophical principles. It would seem to me necessary to make a sharper distinction than Dr. Nogar makes between the evolutionist ideologies of, say, Teilhard de Chardin and Julian Huxley. However, this only goes to show that Dr. Nogar’s book does not end the debate con¬ cerning the issues which he has analyzed. One rather hopes that the book will, on the contrary, stimulate this debate and will give it more clarity than it has often had in the past. Theodosius Dobzhansky The Rockefeller Institute, New York