Tomorrow will mark the 160th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species. Considered to be a formational tome in the field of evolutionary biology, it has in the last century plus become a foundation of the model world. We find evolution, not just among plants, but races of men. Survival of the fittest becomes political eugenicism. We find it in not just animals, but among societies of men who reject the ideas of the past as extinct that needed to evolve to suit the changes in enlightened mankind. The modern world is, in truth, all in on evolution. And this might help to explain why it has devolved. The theory of evolution is bad science and even worse philosophy.
Evolution as Bad Science?
Science, in Aristotelian tradition is thought of in more general terms than we do today. The most general meaning of the term is an organized body of knowledge, resting on first principles, purposed to investigate causes. This broad definition includes all fields of knowledge from metaphysics to the empirical sciences such as evolutionary biology. This spectrum of sciences has a natural hierarchy in the sense that it studies not just individual beings (empirical science), but being itself (metaphysics). Each science must accept certain first principles, givens if you will, upon which the investigation of the causes of things can proceed. With no foundational truths to build upon, the scientific house is destined to crumble. The hierarchy allows the lower sciences to draw from the higher to procure their first principles. For example, physics, one of the lower sciences, depends on mathematics, a higher one, for its first principles. A physicist in acting to quantify some aspect of reality, could not proceed if he doubted the laws of mathematics. If he were question the laws of math rather than his own hypothetical law, then he would most certainly be wrong. He is ignoring the first principles so that the truth can adapt to his theory.
A science then can be bad not just in its method, but in its observance of first principles. In this way evolution is bad science. Evolutionary biology depends on the philosophy of nature for its first principles. The philosophy of nature is concerned with principles of unity in the face of change. Evolutionary biology, too, is concerned with change, but specific changes in individual species. Any theory that explains the change in individual species must respect the higher science in order to maintain its connection to truth. If the evolutionary biologist ignores these principles then he is no different than the physicist who ignores the laws of mathematics.
The First Principles
What are the first principles that evolutionary biology borrows from the Philosophy of Nature? There are a number of them, but three will suffice to show why evolution is bad science.
All that exists is either substance or accident. A substance is an individual existing thing, while an accident depends upon a substance to exist. A tree is a substance, the green of the leaves is an accident. Trees exist on their own, greenness does not exist except in the trees (and other green substances). You could take away the green from the leaves and the tree would remain a tree.
Since evolution deals with change, we must also look at some of the first principles related to change. Change consists in reducing potency to act; some specific potential that is dictated by a thing’s nature is brought into existence through some agent cause. This agent cause must already have the power to cause the change. That is, it must be in act. Suppose a room is cold which means it is potentially warm. Only something that is actually warm like a burning log can heat up the room. A log that is only potentially hot could never heat up the room. This is the principle of sufficient reason. This principle, in all its variations, deals with cause and effect. An effect must in some form be in the cause. In layman’s terms, you cannot give what you do not have. For an effect to come about, the cause must have the power to cause the effect.
Third, there is the principle of hylemorphism. This principle says that all material beings are composed of form and matter. Form, which is ontologically prior to matter, determines what a thing is. Matter is the individuating principle, it is what makes the thing “this thing” rather than “this other thing”.
There is also another principle related to the upward movement of evolution. Material creation proceeds from simple to complex, from the lowest to the highest. In philosophical terms, there is a hierarchy of being in which the higher beings exhibit perfections not found in the lower. Stones are not alive the way that plants are. Plants cannot move and sense the way animals can, even if they have the same vegetative powers. Animals cannot abstract and communicate the way that man can, even if they can gain sense knowledge of individual things. As one of the philosophical dictionaries puts it, “in material and living bodies we find an ascending order of perfection in which the higher beings have their own perfections as well as those of the lower level of being. In the unity of the higher being, the multiplicity of the lower beings is virtually present.” What this means is that although the lower is contained within the higher, the higher is not contained in the lower.
The First Principles Applied to Evolution
If we frame evolution first as a philosophical problem, then it becomes clear how the first principles apply. Specifically, it deals with changes not in individual substances, but in the generation of offspring. The law of generation allows for accidental differences between parent and offspring. These accidental differences can be based upon both the mixing of genes of the parents and on mutations in the genetic information. These differences result in an offspring with the same essential form, but accidental differences. Some of these differences may be biologically advantageous such that the incidence in the population increases. Still we are dealing with like substances. Evolutionary biology has a term for such changes and it calls it microevolution. Microevolution is on solid philosophical groundwork such that if the biological data supports it then we can conclude that it is at least highly probable.
Macroevolution, on the other hand, posits a different sort of change. Based on random a series of random mutations the matter is changed to the point that a new form is brought about. This hypothesis comes in conflict with our first principles stated above. First, the direction of evolution is always upward towards greater perfections. But this would violate the principle of sufficient reason. An effect cannot exceed its cause. If the cause does not include the effect, then it must be brought about by some other way. A blind animal can give birth to an offspring with sight because she has sight in potency, but no amount of lightning and “primordial soup” can effect sight in the offspring of a being who does not have eyes. You cannot give what you don’t have.
This principle is also violated quite frequently when the fossil record is combed for the elusive “common ancestor” and “missing link” that the lower somehow caused the higher. There is little actual biological evidence for this causal link such that it is much more plausible that are closely situated on the ladder of being. If nature is a continuous hierarchy then we would expect to see beings that are closely related to each other.
Secondly, and more fatal for the philosophical backing of macroevolution, is that it posits that matter is the cause of a new form. It is saying that given enough changes in the matter, a new kind of form can come into existence. But form always precedes matter. Matter cannot exist without a form, even if a form can exist without matter. Once the new form exists, the matter which is in potency to the form, can be reduced to act. If the new form cannot come into existence without some immaterial Cause, then the only way that macroevolution could possibly be true is if this Cause intervenes at each evolutionary stage to create new forms. This Cause, because He was capable of creating all forms, would have to be omnipotent and omniscient. Most would call such a Cause God.
We can readily see why microevolution often is used in an ideological sleight of hand to cover up what is going on with macroevolution. If matter cannot bring about a new form, then in order for macroevolution to proceed, God must create new forms. In other words, Macroevolution, if it is true, then offers proof for the existence of God. Because it does not conform to the ideological agenda that most who support evolution have, this fact is kept quiet and only material explanations are allowed.
Good science always requires good philosophy. Darwin may not have realized the implications of his new theory, but once we apply the Philosophy of Nature to his theory, we quickly find that macroevolution needs not only Aristotle, but God.