Vernon Lyman Kellogg Quotes
What the evolutionist believes, on the basis of a mass of what seems to him un-refuted and irrefutable scientific evidence, is that the plants and animals and man and woman were not created by some sudden supernatural treatment of clay and ribs, but that they have slowly and gradually come into existence through the orderly processes of Nature extending over much time. He sees a fine and awe-inspiring order throughout Nature, some of which can be discovered and, in a measure, understood. He sees in this order, this immense capacity for natural being and doing and becoming, a beauty and majesty in Nature which cannot be transcended in conception. In recognizing the creation of man as its supreme achievement, he sees no belittling of man, but a proof of the extraordinary potentialities of this natural order. In organic evolution he sees just what the name signifies, the unfolding of organized matter, the outrolling of the possibilities of life.
Vernon Lyman Kellogg, 1867-1937, Writer, Entomologist, Evolutionary Biologist, “The Modern View of Evolution”, The Atlantic Monthly, July 1913
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The Bible contains two separate and somewhat contradictory versions of creation (Adam & Eve vs. the 6 day creation).
The Science Guy
The fundamentalist majority of the school board agreed, but the minority did not. Nor do virtually all the leading scientists in the country. The word “theory” as it is used to describe Darwin’s construct or in Einstein’s Theory of Relativity refers to an intellectual construct for which there has been continuous empirical demonstration since is was first promulgated. The attorney general and the school board, not being scientifically trained, mistakenly believe that a scientific theory is like a general theory which is a set of hypotheses which are established (proven) or not. But scientific theories are not proven or disproven per se. Various elements of them are, and elements of a scientific theory are modified and altered over time and research. Few scientific constructs has had as much empirical demonstration of the various elements as Evolution.
This is another oft quoted statement of Darwin’s. The phrase “by the Creator” is often cited to show that Darwin did not preclude the role of a prime mover of God in the process. God may have started the system going and created the laws of evolution and physics and then the world evolved. At the time, most religious authorities believed that the only way for a new species to exist is if God created the species. Darwin was trained in theology and was extremely sensitive to the effect of what he discovered on the religious leaders and believers of his day. However, this quotation is particularly interesting because the phrase “by the Creator” never appeared in his original manuscript, nor did it when the bombshell book was published. There was great excitement and great religious opposition to publication which Darwin had delayed for years. The mention of the Creator never appeared in the first 5 printings. Only in the 6th printing did it appear.
Laymen look at nature fondly and personify “Mother Nature” as kindly and beneficent. However, scientists have a more dispassionate view of nature and see it as a combination of forces that would kill most life-forms unless there is a combination of behavior and evolution to resist the normal forces of nature. While man has been responsible for the termination of a number of species, well over 99 percent of all the animal species that have ever lived are extinct today and that has been all “natural”. Schrodinger explains that nature is not a positive force, and in reality is the opposite—every species has to overcome nature and what is natural in order to survive.
This particular quotation is particularly distressful to some religious fundamentalists who not only will not accept that man evolved, but find it worse to accept that man is continuously evolving.
He was commenting on the seemingly brilliant designs of organisms that evolution has brought about, so sophisticated, that planners could hardly have conceived of them. His point is that those organisms are the great successes which the failures have become extinct and the moderate successes have constantly gotten better.
Vernon Lyman Kellogg was an American entomologist, evolutionary biologist, and science administrator. His father was Lyman Beecher Kellogg, first president of the Kansas State Normal School (now known as Emporia State University), and former Kansas Attorney General. In 1908, Kellogg married Charlotte Hoffman and the two welcomed their only child, Jean Kellogg Dickie, in 1910.
