Is Evolution Proved? - A Debate Between Douglas Dewar and H.S. Shelton (Paperback)

IS EVOLUTION PROVED A DEBATE BETWEEN DOUGLAS DEWAR AND H. S. SHELTON WITH AH INTRODUCTION BT THE EDITOR ARNOLD LUNN LONDON HOLLIS AND GARTER 1947 THIS BOOK IS PRODUCED IN COM PLETE CONFORMITY WITH THE AUTHORIZED ECONOMY STANDARDS AND MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN FOR HOLLIS AND CARTER LTD 1947 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE INTRODUCTION BY ARNOLD LUNN . . . i R 1. CAUSES OF EVOLUTION ...... 25 2. THE GEOLOGICAL RECORD ITS VALUE ... 57 3. THE GEOLOGICAL RECORD ITS CONTENT . . . 81 4. GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION . . . . 139 5. MORPHOLOGY AND CLASSIFICATION . . . .154 6. EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE . . . . . .186 7. EMBRYOLOGY AND EVOLUTION 199 8. ARE THERE NASCENT AND VESTIGIAL ORGANS . . 222 9. SOME INSTINCTS AND HABITS OF ANIMALS . . . 239 10. THE ORIGIN OF MAN . . . . . . 252 11. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION ...... 286 GLOSSARY BY H. S. SHELTON ..... 336 Two CHARTS BY DOUGLAS DEWAR . . . .341 INDEX 342 INTRODUCTION i IN the autumn of 1944 I learned from H. S. Shelton that he had just completed a controversial book in which he had collaborated with Douglas Dewar. I asked if I might see the manuscript, read it with immense interest, and recommended it enthusiastically to Messrs. Hollis Carter who accepted it for publication. Maijy years ago Shelton sent me a paper which he had con tributed to Mind, which might without disrespect be described as the trade journal of professional philosophers. Sheltons paper struck me as the best essay on that particular subject that I had ever seen. The combination of philosopher and scientist is not common, with the result that most champions of evolution are very weak in logic. Sir Arthur Keith, for instance, in his book on Darwinism points out that there has been, in thecourse of ages, evolution in everything, in watches, for instance. But the question at issue is not whether men are different from fishes, or whether men appeared on the surface of the planet subsequent to fishes, but whether men are descended from fishes and unless Sir Arthur Keith could prove that my wrist watch is a blood relation of a sixteenth century watch, his analogy has not the least relevance to the issue which is in dispute. Shelton, who is a Bachelor of Science of London University, has published a large number of papers in Mind, Journal of Philosophy, The International Journal of Ethics, the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society and Science Progress. He has written with great lucidity on the methods of reasoning employed in science, a good preparation for this book, since it is not as a rule the facts which are in doubt in this controversy but the inferences to be drawn from them. He has written two books on education, and one of them, The Theory and Practice of General Science, is the only book on the theory of general science as yet published in this country. He has also written The Credibility of the Christian Faith. He will attempt to show in this correspondence that the truth of organic evolution is so well estab lished as to justify the teaching of it as a fact in an educational course. Douglas Dewar took a degree in natural science in 1895, anc then entered the Indian Civil Service. In India he took up orni thology as a hobby. His observations on birds led him to reject 2 IS EVOLUTION PROVED successively Darwinism, the Darwinian theory of sexual selection and finally the whole concept of organic evolution. The results of his investigations are set forth in IndianBird Life 1921. In 1931 he published his Difficulties of the Evolution Theory which was, asj, happen to know, widely read among orthodox evolutionists, but in the main ignored in scientific journals...