Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation by George McCready Price
page 81 of 117 (69%)
page 81 of 117 (69%)
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the globe one outside another.
It is true that early in the nineteenth century Sir Charles Lyell and others tried to disclaim this absurd and unscientific inheritance from Werner's onion-coats; but modern geology has never yet got rid of its essential and its chief characteristic idea, for all our text-books still speak of various successive ages _when only certain types of life prevailed all over the globe_. Hence it is that Herbert Spencer caustically remarks: "Though the onion-coat hypothesis is dead, its spirit is traceable, under a transcendental form, even in the conclusions of its antagonists."[36] Hence it is that Whewell, in his "History of the Inductive Sciences," refuses to acknowledge that in geology any real advance has yet been made toward a stable science like those of astronomy, physics, and chemistry. "We hardly know," he says, "whether the progress is begun. The history of physical astronomy almost commences with Newton, and few persons will venture to assert that the Newton of geology has yet appeared."[37] Hence it is that T.H. Huxley declares, "In the present condition of our knowledge and of _our methods_, one verdict,--'_not proven and not provable'--must be recorded against all grand hypotheses of the palæontologist respecting the general succession of life on the globe."[38] And hence it is that Sir Henry H. Howorth, a member of the British House of Commons and the author of three exhaustive works on the Glacial theory, declares, "It is a singular and notable fact, that while most other branches of science have emancipated themselves from the trammels of metaphysical reasoning, _the science of geology still remains imprisoned in a priori_ theories."[39] [Footnote 36: "Illustr. of Univ. Prog.," p. 343.] |
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