WHY WE MUST BE EVOLUTIONISTS
By J. Arthur Thomson
Regius Professor of Natural History in Aberdeen University
Evidences of Evolution
We use the familiar phrase “evidences of evolution” with some misgiving, because it does not suggest the right way of looking at the question. Evolution means a way of Becoming. Just as it is certain that all the many races of domesticated pigeon are descended from the wild rock dove, so, it is argued, have all the different kinds of wild animals and wild plants descended from ancestors that were on the whole somewhat simpler, and these from simpler ancestors still, and so back and back until we come to the first living creatures, whose origin is all in the mist. Evolution just means that the present is the child of the past and the parent of the future.
But it is not possible to prove this conclusion in an absolutely rigorous way. We can, indeed, see evolution going on now, but we cannot, so to speak, reverse the world-film and see precisely what took place long ago. The records in the rocks do clearly reveal what happened in the past, even millions of years ago, but not in so clear and so detailed a way as the developing egg of a hen reveals the gradual rise and progress of the chick.
Although we do not know of any competent biologist
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