Evolution and creation / by Sir Oliver Lodge.

  • Oliver Lodge
Date:
1930
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Evolution and creation / by Sir Oliver Lodge. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    among the things themselves. It is curious that the discovery and investigation of mechanism should seem to exclude the idea of purpose, intention, planning. No machinery of our own construction, how¬ ever automatic in its working, gives any but the most superficial suggestion of absence of mind or purpose. Still that was the idea, a fortuitous mindless me¬ chanical Universe; with living creatures able to reproduce themselves without limit, unaided, self-confident, complete. “ Dur¬ ing such time as we have evidence of, no intelligence or volition has been concerned in events happening within the range of the solar system except that of animals living on the planets.” And again—an¬ other summary, also by that brilliant enthusiast W. K. Clifford—“ The world is made of atoms and ether, and there is no room in it for ghosts.” How animal mind and human conscious¬ ness could arise and enter into such a scheme, was hardly known, though there were and had been guesses about that too, and the doctrines called Parallelism and Epiphenomenalism were sustained by
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