The Extent of Corruption

The Extent of Corruption

By Michael Gryboski

The Extent of Corruption Michael Gryboski

In the origins debate both sides have fully formed views about the other. These views vary amongst the branches of each ideology, and also vary according to levels of objectivity. Unfortunately the basic opinions that Creationists have about Evolutionists and vice versa are often hopelessly incongruent. The big reason being that both sides rarely use sources from without their camp. Using writers from one’s own side has the double negative of allowing for immense bias as well as alienating those who do not see these sources as authoritative. Creationists who cite passages from the Bible cite a source that few evolutionists take seriously on scientific matters. Evolutionists who cite works from passionate atheists will get few Creationists to open their minds. So this work, one of many meant to increase doubt in the General Theory of Evolution and organizations that carry its banner, shall cite no Creationist sources.

When I was in ninth grade biology, I learned about the evidences for evolution. This all but blatant attempt by the public school system to remove all possible doubt in the General Theory of Evolution included the usual claims of homologies, the peppered moths, analogous structures, and even just simply the diversity of life (which one would think is contradictory given that extinction is so critical to the advancement of the species.). Of the five major evidences cited that small groups of students had to present, one went by many names, chief among them Biogenetic Law, the Principle of Recapitulation, or most commonly, the Recapitulation Theory. Outside of that high school classroom the theory has been rejected by all save the most dogmatic Darwinists. However, as shall be attested to, its significance does not end with modern denunciations.

I. Summary of Recapitulation Theory.

The intellectual underpinnings for the theory of Recapitulation predate the work of Charles Darwin. Naturalist K. E. von Baer researched visual similarities between the embryos of fish and those of human beings. “He considered it an example of the so-called biogenetic law, which is…a descriptive generalization with a number of exceptions. According to this generalization the earlier stages of embryos resemble those of other animals lower in the scale of nature.” 1Von Baer himself described his findings in the following way:

“…the embryos of mammalia, of birds, lizards, and snakes, probably also of chelonia are in their earliest states exceedingly like one another, both as a whole and in the mode of development of their parts; so much so, in fact, that we can often distinguish the embryos only by their size.” 2

Written before Darwin’s most infamous works, one can see inspiration for evolutionary thinking in this passage. It was a German evolutionist and contemporary of Darwin named Ernst Haeckel, who harmonized von Baer’s findings with Darwinism. Through this ideological annexation of von Baer, Haeckel created the Recapitulation Theory. In its most direct definition, this theory “held that higher animals, in their embryonic development, pass through a series of stages representing in proper sequence, the adult forms of ancestral, lower creatures.” 3 The two pillars of this theory were “phylogeny” and “ontogeny.” Ontogeny is the “development of the individual from the fertilized egg (zygote) to adulthood” 4 and phylogeny is the “origin and subsequent evolution of the higher taxa; the history of the evolutionary lineages.” 5 Combining these two forces, the thesis is that as an embryo develops is goes through its earlier evolutionary stages. Von Baer’s pre-evolution example was of fish and humans, which became the evolutionary claim that human beings were descended from aquatic life, as evidenced by embryological similarities with fish.

Cemented by the phrase “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”, Haeckel’s conclusions drew a firestorm of criticism possibly comparable to Darwin’s conclusions. As the 20th century arrived, opuses denouncing Recapitulation Theory increased, in particular because of the rise of Mendelian genetics. Evolutionists wrote whole books undermining the claim, among them being Stephen Jay Gould’s 1977 piece Ontogeny and Phylogeny. The final devastating blow came in 1997, when a team of scientists led by Dr. Michael Richardson proved that the illustrations done by Haeckel back in the mid to late 1800s were false. Talkorigins.org, one of the most imposing sites dedicated to the defense of evolution, spelled it out while critically reviewing Icons of Evolution by Jonathan Wells:

“In the case of Haeckel, though, I have to begin by admitting that Wells has got the core of the story right. Haeckel was wrong. His theory was invalid, some of his drawings were faked, and he willfully over-interpreted the data to prop up a false thesis.” 6

It should have been a strong blow to the credibility of the General Theory of Evolution, yet its followers continued the fight. As we shall see, apologists for evolutionary thought will gladly distance their views from this debunked theory albeit in vain.

II. Damage Control

From a psychological perspective, the refusal to denounce at least a portion of Darwinian dogma on the part of many evolutionists is due to the Perseverance Effect, or the retaining of a schema in spite of increasing evidence that it’s flawed. Moving away from the technical, it is arguably stubbornness, a personality trait expressed by creationists from time to time. Whatever the reasons, the debunking of Recapitulation Theory and eventual admonitions from the various spheres of the evolutionist spectrum has not led to any objectively charted migration from the theory. In all fifty States (And that includes Kansas, by the way), the General Theory of Evolution is taught as though nothing of significance took place when the labors of Gould and many others came to consummation in 1997. This is most likely because evolutionists downplay Recapitulation Theory.

Even Stephen Jay Gould, a staunch critic of Recapitulation Theory, never strayed from evolutionary assumptions. In the same way many religious believers whose holy books teach a different origins theory have reconciled their beliefs with evolution, Gould reconciled his evolutionary beliefs to the fact that Recapitulation was inaccurate. According to this critic, it is no major news that the theory was bunk: “But the turn of the century also heralded the collapse of recapitulation. It died primarily because Mendelian genetics (rediscovered in 1900) rendered its premises untenable.” 7 Some may wonder why a notable flaw in evolutionary thinking did not cause disillusionment amongst its supporters.

An explanation can be found through the efforts of Talkorigins.org to deal with constant references to the debunking in creationist polemics. Rather than consider the Recapitulation Theory to be an error of the overall evolution theory, Talk Origins takes an interesting approach by not considering Haeckel’s work to be compatible with Evolution at all. In their prolific “Index of Creationist Claims”, Talk Origins has two answers for men like Wells who see the debunking of recapitulation theory as a major loss: “Haeckel's biogenetic law was never part of Darwin's theory and was challenged even in his own lifetime” 8 and “Irrespective of biogenetic law, embryological characters are still useful as evidence for evolution (in constructing phylogenies, for example), just as adult characters are.” 9

In other words, neither Gould nor Talk Origins ever viewed the work of Haeckel as being part of evolution. Since they do not believe it has anything to do with the General Theory of Evolution, its termination is not seen as damaging to the General Theory of Evolution. As that comprehensive and critical review of Wells’ famous book so boldly put it: “Poking holes in the biogenetic law is easy to do, it's been done repeatedly in the scientific literature, and it does not damage modern evolutionary biology at all.” 10 Yet the survivability and influence of Haeckel’s Recapitulation Theory within evolutionary thought is far greater than the apologists of Darwin’s dangerous idea would like to admit.

III. Looking into the Extent

To the reader, it may sound like lamenting, but the subjective example should be stressed: when I was in ninth grade public school, in a moderate to high socio-economic status community, Recapitulation Theory was part of the curriculum. Although the woodcuts made by Ernst Haeckel were not in my textbook, a variation of them was present. So even in this country, with the amount of money that goes into government-run education, science was not poisoned by Creationism but rather an outdated tenet of Victorian-era evolutionism. Talk Origins’ “Index of Creationist Claims” may say that Evolution and Recapitulation are mutually exclusive and that Haeckel held no influence over Darwin’s ideas, but evidence suggests otherwise. For one, there is what Darwin wrote in none other than The Origin of Species: “it has been shown that generally the embryos of the most distinct species belonging to the same class are closely similar, but become, when fully developed, widely dissimilar.” 11 Darwin elaborates on his opinion of a theory he allegedly held no connection to:

“Professor Hackel in his ‘Generelle Morphologie’ and in other works, has recently brought his great knowledge and abilities to bear on what he calls phylogeny, or the lines of descent of all organic beings. In drawing up the several series he trusts chiefly to embryological characters, but receives aid from homologous and rudimentary organs, as well as from the successive periods at which the various forms of life are believed to have first appeared in our geological formations. He has thus boldly made a great beginning, and shows us how classification will in the future be treated.” 12

That is very high praise for someone whose ideological descendants claim was neither influenced nor edified by Haeckel. Even one writer from Talk Origins, going back to that critique of Wells’ book, will admit the extent of potential influence Haeckel had on Darwin and many others: “[Haeckel] was influential, both in the sciences and the popular press; his theory still gets echoed in the latter today. Wells is also correct in criticizing textbook authors for perpetuating Haeckel's infamous diagram without commenting on its inaccuracies or the way it was misused to support a falsified theory.” 13 Furthermore, “Darwin and Haeckel met and corresponded, and each influenced the theories of the other strongly.” 14 So how then can recapitulation have nothing to do with evolution when its founder and evolution’s founder influenced each other?

Gould, another evolutionist who denied the true extent of recapitulation on evolution, assured his readers that 1900 meant the end of Haeckel’s scientific heresy. Indeed, in one biology textbook by G.G. Simpson et al, Recapitulation Theory was indentified as debunked and outdated. Yet the tenth footnote, as found in the section on the evolution of development, tells an interesting story:

“You may well ask why we bother you with principles that turned out to be wrong. There are two reasons. In the first place, belief in recapitulation became so widespread that it is still evident in some writings about biology and evolution. You should therefore know what recapitulation is supposed to be and you should know that it does not really occur. In the second place, this is a good example of how scientific knowledge is gained.” 15 (My bolding)

That was published in 1957, about a half-century after Haeckel’s work was supposed to be dead according to Gould. Twenty years later there was the late great astronomer Carl Sagan. Renowned for popularizing science, in 1977 Sagan wrote The Dragons of Eden, a speculative opus on the evolution of the human brain. The textbook footnote above was almost prophetic regarding Sagan, who described this theme in his theorizing on brain development:

“But fundamental change can be accomplished by the addition of new systems on top of old ones. This is reminiscent of a doctrine which was called recapitulation by Ernst Haeckel, a nineteenth-century German anatomist, and which has gone through various cycles of scholarly acceptance and rejection.” 16

Sagan was a man who made a career from scientific inquiry and yet he echoed the sentiments of von Baer, Haeckel, and Darwin: “in human intrauterine development we run through stages very much like fish, reptiles and nonprimate mammals before we become recognizably human.” 17 He even attempted to rationalize the procedure, also seeing no contradiction between recapitulation and evolution, “Natural selection operates only on individuals, not on species and not very much on eggs or fetuses. Thus the latest evolutionary charge appears postpartum.” 18 This is three-quarters of a century after Gould said that recapitulation theory was essentially in its death throes.

Stubbornness being the tool of many whose convictions are embattled, Talk Origins and those of like-mind may still not be convinced. Sure, Darwin mentioned Haeckel and indeed was influenced by his work. Granted, many scientists believed in recapitulation both when it was first introduced and even up until the theatrical release of Star Wars. That doesn’t mean recapitulation has actually directly spurred any sub-theories of evolution. That is the line some apologists draw and they draw it improperly. Recapitulation Theory has been used as an axiom of evolutionary hypotheses. “In the latter part of the nineteenth century zoologists were quite sure that the coelenterates had a key position in the evolution of animals and that this position was well understood.” 19 According to this position, the coelenterates gave rise to flatworms, being to flatworms as chimpanzees are supposedly to humans. But only a fringe believes this theory, right? Well not exactly: “That view is still held by many zoologists—perhaps a majority—and it is still commonly taught in courses on biology, zoology, or evolution.” 20 So how does the coelenterates proposal that was widely accepted in the 21st century connect evolution and recapitulation? Simpson et al, explains:

“It was argued that, when some other animals go through the two-cell-layer gastrula stage in development, they are recapitulating the adult coelenterate stage in their ancestry. We now know that development does not recapitulate adult ancestral stages. Moreover, the actual mode of development of the gastrula-like form, which is much better evidence than static comparison at any one stage in life, occurs in quite diverse ways among coelenterates and is not really much like the process in other animals.” 21 (Their italics.)

Evolutionary thinking and Recapitulation theory are compatible, and even now vestiges of Haeckel’s ideas remain in the General Theory of Evolution. A case in point also offers another reason why Haeckel’s work being exposed has not damaged the beliefs of many evolutionists: they still agree with some of what he said. Mayr gives testimony to this in his writings, “Again this [recapitulation] principle was a vast oversimplification, but it has a correct nucleus. The fact that the land-living vertebrates go through a gill arch stage in their development is a powerful clue for their descent from aquatic ancestors, to give only one example.” 22 Talk Origins echoes this: “Darwinian evolution predicts, among other things, similar (not identical) structures in related organisms. That pharyngeal pouches in humans are similar to pharyngeal pouches…in fish is one piece of evidence that humans and fish share a common ancestor.” 23

Even though Haeckel’s work was wrong and Von Baer’s work was no better, there is something found to vindicate evolutionism after all. It all goes back to fish and human embryos and their resemblances, which do exist to a certain extent. However, the one example given by Mayr and propagated by Talk Origins has a couple issues with it. For one, it is inaccurate to call them “gill arches” or “gill slits”, since the pharyngeal arches never actually become gills in a human being. Further, as embryology as attested to, the pharyngeal arches of a human embryo never develop into breathing mechanisms of any kind, but rather “form many of the various structures in the neck region.” 24These human pharyngeal arches develop into parts of the middle ear, skeleton and muscle tissue, the upper and lower jaws, and other anatomical structures that have nothing to do with respiration. 25

Talk Origins will admit these things in a defensive manner, “The pharyngeal pouches that appear in embryos technically are not gill slits, but that is irrelevant. The reason they are evidence for evolution is that the same structure, whatever you call it, appears in all vertebrate embryos.” 26And this is where the evolution idea starts to lose its falsifiable nature. After all, what if it turned out some species’ embryos did not have the pharyngeal arch? Could that be used as evidence against evolution or would groups like Talk Origins simply say this also was proof of evolution, for the embryos lacking the pharyngeal arch were examples of survival of the fittest and so forth? Fish, reptiles, and humans all have eyes, this would be considered evidence for evolution given that similar organic structures are found in many species, which alludes to a common ancestor. What if we have species that lack eyes? Can that be submitted as evidence against evolution or will the apologists merely state these creatures evolved to lose their sight? If evolution is the answer regardless of the evidence, then that means it cannot be falsified. If it cannot be falsified, then it is no better than Intelligent Design and therefore should be given the same treatment by our public schools.

IV. Last words

Fortunately, I only had to take ninth grade once and in one school. There is always the chance things have improved as time has passed and standards finally caught up to what has been said by the skeptics for about a century. For now, as recapitulation dies off and the efforts to revive it in some form fail to inquiry, the Darwinists find ways to cover up their mistake. To this day they deny that recapitulation’s downfall truly affects the merits of the General Theory of Evolution. I wonder what they do with words said by men like E. K. Conklin, an evolutionist and one who like many of his brethren eventually gave up Haeckel’s claims: “Here was a method which promised to reveal more important secrets of the past than would the unearthing of all the buried monuments of antiquity—in fact nothing less than a complete genealogical tree of all the diversified forms of life which inhabit the earth.” 27

Sources:

1.G.G. Simpson, C.S. Pittendrigh, L.H. Tiffany Life: An Introduction to Biology (Burlingame, CA: Harcourt, Brace, & World, Inc.) 1957, p.352.

2.Quoted in Darwin, Charles The Origin of Species, (New York: The Modern Library Edition) 1998, p.587.

3.Gould, Stephen Jay, The Panda’s Thumb (New York: W.W. Norton & Company) 1980, p.163.

4.Mayr, Ernst One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press) 1991, p.183.

5.Mayr, One Long Argument, p.184.

6. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/wells/haeckel.html, accessed March 10th, AD 2008.

7.Gould, The Panda’s Thumb, p.246.

8. http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB701_1.html, accessed March 10th, AD 2008.

9.Ibid.

10. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/wells/haeckel.html, accessed March 10th, AD 2008.

11.Darwin, The Origin of Species, p.587.

12.Darwin, The Origin of Species, pp.578-579.

13. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/wells/haeckel.html, accessed March 10th, AD 2008.

14.Ibid.

15.Simpson et al., Life, pp.352-353.

16.Sagan, Carl The Dragons of Eden, (New York: Random House, Inc.) 1977, p.57.

17.Sagan, The Dragons of Eden, p.58.

18.Ibid.

19.Simpson et al., Life, p.553.

20.Ibid.

21.Simpson, pp.553-554.

22.Mayr, One Long Argument, pp.157-158.

23. http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB704.html, accessed March 10th, AD 2008.

24. http://www.embryology.ch/anglais/bvueOrgan/vueorgan.html, accessed March 10th, AD 2008.

25.Ibid.

26. http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB704.html, accessed March 10th, AD 2008.

27.Quoted in Gould, The Panda’s Thumb, p.246.

--http://www.cross-nation.com/daplevolutionismcreationism01.html