CREATION BY EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION—ITS MEANING
By David Starr Jordan
Chancellor Emeritus, Leland Stanford Junior University
Evolution as Orderly Change
By evolution, as the word is now used, we mean the universal process of orderly change. It includes cosmic changes in suns and planets and organic changes in living creatures, called organisms because they are made up of coöperating parts, or organs, which by fitting into one another constitute organization. And from the fact that all these changes—whether instantaneous, daily, yearly, or consuming centuries or æons, in the individual or in generations of individuals—are orderly, never random nor accidental, we derive our definition of evolution. Moreover, as this process occurs throughout all that we know, evolution becomes another name for Nature. Evolution, indeed, is Nature’s way; thus all Nature study, if serious and thorough, must lead to the recognition of evolution. That Nature has her ways is the most visibly evident fact in all our experience, and such phrases as “blind force” have no real meaning.
Nevertheless, the forces and conditions which surround
[ 1 ]
