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108-410: (Redirected from Creative Evolution ) Creative evolution may refer to: Theistic evolution Creative Evolution (book) , a book by Henri Bergson Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Creative evolution . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change

216-436: A special creation consisting of at least the addition of a soul just for the human species. Scientific accounts of the origin of the universe , the origin of life , and subsequent evolution of pre-human life forms may not cause any difficulty but the need to reconcile religious and scientific views of hominization and to account for the addition of a soul to humans remains a problem. Theistic evolution typically postulates

324-483: A book in which he considered that new varieties of plants could arise through hybridization , but only under certain limits fixed by God. Linnaeus had initially embraced the Aristotelian idea of immutability of species (the idea that species never change), but later in his life he started to challenge it. Yet, as a Christian, he still defended "special creation", the belief that God created "every living creature" at

432-441: A branching tree of forms, as Darwin had suggested. Each evolutionary step was however non-random: the direction was determined in advance and had a regular pattern (orthogenesis), and steps were not adaptive but part of a divine plan (theistic evolution). This left unanswered the question of why each step should occur, and Cope switched his theory to accommodate functional adaptation for each change. Still rejecting natural selection as

540-457: A deceitful guide. Nevertheless all living things have much in common, in their chemical composition, their germinal vesicles, their cellular structure, and their laws of growth and reproduction. We see this even in so trifling a circumstance as that the same poison often similarly affects plants and animals; or that the poison secreted by the gall-fly produces monstrous growths on the wild rose or oak-tree. I should infer from analogy that probably all

648-672: A definite course". He added "On the other hand, we do not mean to deny that such intelligence may act according to law (that is to say, on a preconceived and definite plan)". The scientist Sir David Brewster (1781–1868), a member of the Free Church of Scotland , wrote an article called " The Facts and Fancies of Mr. Darwin " (1862) in which he rejected many Darwinian ideas, such as those concerning vestigial organs or questioning God's perfection in his work. Brewster concluded that Darwin's book contained both "much valuable knowledge and much wild speculation", although accepting that "every part of

756-483: A diagram showing that random events create a process of branching evolution, a view that Tucker notes is broadly acceptable to modern biologists. But Huxley's image recalled the great chain of being, implying with the force of a visual image a "logical, evenly paced progression" leading up to Homo sapiens , a view denounced by Stephen Jay Gould in Wonderful Life . Popular perception, however, had seized upon

864-408: A feature belonging to all the members of a sequence in such a way that posterior members of the sequence exhibit an improvement of that feature". He argued that there are two elements in this definition, directional change and improvement according to some standard. Whether a directional change constitutes an improvement is not a scientific question; therefore Ayala suggested that science should focus on

972-510: A higher rate of acceptance. Countries more developed or developing faster also have higher rates of acceptance. Muslim societies in non-Muslim countries (such as in the West) are inconsistent and can be high or low depending on the specific countries. The American botanist Asa Gray used the name "theistic evolution" in a now-obsolete sense for his point of view, presented in his 1876 book Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism . He argued that

1080-470: A larger idea of Divine Prescience and Skill ... and I do not [see] that 'the accidental evolution of organic beings' is inconsistent with divine design—It is accidental to us, not to God." In 1871 Darwin published his own research on human ancestry in The Descent of Man , concluding that humans "descended from a hairy quadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed ears", which would be classified amongst

1188-522: A lot of conflict and political tension. Regardless, a large majority of Muslims accept evolution in Kazakhstan (79%) and Lebanon (78%). However relatively few in Afghanistan (26%) and Iraq (27%) believe in human evolution. Most other Muslim countries have statistics in between. Belief in theistic evolution is increasing in a lot of Muslim countries and societies. The younger generations have

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1296-446: A noticeable direction, above all in specialized groups". In 1922, the zoologist Michael F. Guyer wrote: [Orthogenesis] has meant many different things to many different people, ranging from a mystical inner perfecting principle , to merely a general trend in development due to the natural constitutional restrictions of the germinal materials, or to the physical limitations imposed by a narrow environment. In most modern statements of

1404-426: A plausible alternative appeared on the scene. The modern synthesis of the 1930s and 1940s, in which the genetic mechanisms of evolution were incorporated, appeared to refute the hypothesis for good. As more was understood about these mechanisms it came to be held that there was no naturalistic way in which the newly discovered mechanism of heredity could be far-sighted or have a memory of past trends. Orthogenesis

1512-407: A point at which a population of hominids who had (or may have) evolved by a process of natural evolution acquired souls and thus (with their descendants) became fully human in theological terms. This group might be restricted to Adam and Eve , or indeed to Mitochondrial Eve , although versions of the theory allow for larger populations. The point at which such an event occurred should essentially be

1620-563: A process demonstrating design. His conclusion to his On the Nature of Limbs of 1849 suggested that divine laws could have controlled the development of life, but he did not expand this idea after objections from his conservative patrons. Others supported the idea of development by law, including the botanist Hewett Watson (1804–1881) and the Reverend Baden Powell (1796–1860), who wrote in 1855 that such laws better illustrated

1728-486: A purposeful divine plan aimed at forming humanity. These scientists rejected transmutation of species as materialist radicalism threatening the established hierarchies of society. The idealist Louis Agassiz (1807–1873), a persistent opponent of transmutation, saw mankind as the goal of a sequence of creations, but his concepts were the first to be adapted into a scheme of theistic evolutionism, when in Vestiges of

1836-449: A sequence of 14 walking figures ending with modern man, fitted the palaeoanthropological discoveries "not into a branching Darwinian scheme, but into the framework of the original Huxley diagram." Howell ruefully commented that the "powerful and emotional" graphic had overwhelmed his Darwinian text. Scientists, Ruse argues, continue to slide easily from one notion of progress to another: even committed Darwinians like Richard Dawkins embed

1944-422: A serious challenge, replying that "There must be some efficient cause for each slight individual difference", but was unable to provide a specific answer without knowledge of genetics. Further, Darwin was himself somewhat progressionist, believing for example that "Man" was "higher" than the barnacles he studied. Darwin indeed wrote in his 1859 Origin of Species : The inhabitants of each successive period in

2052-476: A sign of a benevolent Creator, but his uniformitarianism envisaged continuing extinctions, leaving unanswered the problem of providing replacements. As seen in correspondence between Lyell and John Herschel , scientists were looking for creation by laws rather than by miraculous interventions. In continental Europe, the idealism of philosophers including Lorenz Oken (1779–1851) developed a Naturphilosophie in which patterns of development from archetypes were

2160-467: A sweeping narrative account of cosmic transmutation, culminating in the evolution of humanity. Chambers included detailed analysis of the fossil record. Ruse observed that "Progress (sic, his capitalisation) became essentially a nineteenth-century belief. It gave meaning to life—it offered inspiration—after the collapse [with Malthus 's pessimism and the shock of the French Revolution ] of

2268-463: A wide range of beliefs about the extent of any intervention by God, with some approaching deism in rejecting the concepts of continued intervention or special creation , while others believe that God has directly intervened at crucial points such as the origin of humans . In the Catholic version of theistic evolution , human evolution may have occurred, but God must create the human soul , and

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2376-559: Is considered to be the most viable because it synthesizes the miraculous creation of Adam and Eve and agrees with Muslim theology. At the same time, it is considered as compatible with evolutionary science—any questions regarding Adam and his miraculous creation, the lineage that leads to him, or whether this lineage mated with other "human-like" beings are irrelevant to science and are not obstacles to any established scientific theories. David Solomon Jalajel, an Islamic author, proclaims an Adamic exceptionalism view of evolution which encourages

2484-421: Is controversial in plenty of contemporary Muslim societies due to negative social views and misconceptions such as "the theory is atheistic " and lack of understanding about views such as human exceptionalism and Adamic exceptionalism. A lot of people suggest that it also has a lot to do with lack of proper scientific facilities and development in a lot (but not all) Muslim countries, particularly where there exists

2592-617: Is embedded in the mediaeval great chain of being , with a linear sequence of forms from lowest to highest. The concept, indeed, had its roots in Aristotle's biology , from insects that produced only a grub, to fish that laid eggs, and on up to animals with blood and live birth. The medieval chain, as in Ramon Lull 's Ladder of Ascent and Descent of the Mind , 1305, added steps or levels above humans, with orders of angels reaching up to God at

2700-479: Is held to a regular course by forces internal to the organism. Orthogenesis assumes that variation is not random but is directed towards fixed goals . Selection is thus powerless, and the species is carried automatically in the direction marked out by internal factors controlling variation. In 1996, Michael Ruse defined orthogenesis as "the view that evolution has a kind of momentum of its own that carries organisms along certain tracks". The possibility of progress

2808-416: Is involved to a greater extent than the theistic evolutionist believes. Canadian biologist Denis Lamoureux published a 2003 article and a 2008 theological book, both aimed at Christians who do not believe in evolution (including young Earth creationists), and at those looking to reconcile their Christian faith with evolutionary science. His main argument was that Genesis presents the "science and history of

2916-410: Is not progressive, it does sometimes proceed in a linear way, reinforcing characteristics in certain lineages, but such examples are entirely consistent with the modern neo-Darwinian theory of evolution. These examples have sometimes been referred to as orthoselection but are not strictly orthogenetic, and simply appear as linear and constant changes because of environmental and molecular constraints on

3024-457: Is possible for humans to exist or not exist before the appearance of Adam on earth with either belief being possible due to the Quran, and that it is possible that an intermingling of Adam's descendants and other humans may or may not have occurred. Thus, the existence of Adam is a miracle since the Quran directly states it to be, but it does not assert there being no humans who could have existed at

3132-668: Is the view of creation taught at the majority of mainline Protestant seminaries , and despite the Catholic Church having no official position, it does support belief in it. Studies show that acceptance of evolution is lower in the United States than in Europe or Japan; among 34 countries sampled, only Turkey had a lower rate of acceptance than the United States. Theistic evolution has been described as arguing for compatibility between science and religion , and as such it

3240-524: Is theologically compatible, but has some issues with science due to the rejection of common ancestry of modern humans. "Non-exceptionalism" is scientifically compatible, but it's theological validity is a matter of debate. Proponents of human-exceptionalism include: Yasir Qadhi , Nuh Ha Mim Keller , etc. Proponents of Adamic-exceptionalism include David Solomon Jalajel. Proponents of non-exceptionalism include: Rana Dajani , Nidhal Guessoum , Israr Ahmed , Caner Taslaman , etc. The theory of evolution

3348-634: Is viewed with disdain both by some atheists and many young Earth creationists . Hominization , in both science and religion, involves the process or the purpose of becoming human . The process and means by which hominization occurs is a key problem in theistic evolutionary thought. This is noticeable more so in Abrahamic religions , which often have held as a core belief that the souls of animals and humans differ in some capacity. Thomas Aquinas taught animals did not have immortal souls , but that humans did. Many versions of theistic evolution insist on

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3456-482: The Church of England , promoted a theology of creation as an indirect process controlled by divine laws. Some strict Calvinists welcomed the idea of natural selection , as it did not entail inevitable progress and humanity could be seen as a fallen race requiring salvation . The Anglo-Catholic Aubrey Moore (1848–1890) also accepted the theory of natural selection, incorporating it into his Christian beliefs as merely

3564-592: The Duke of Argyll published The Reign of Law , which explained beauty in plumage without any adaptive benefit as design generated by the Creator's laws of nature for the delight of humans. Argyll attempted to reconcile evolution with design by suggesting that the laws of variation prepared rudimentary organs for a future need. Cardinal John Henry Newman wrote in 1868: "Mr Darwin's theory need not then to be atheistical , be it true or not; it may simply be suggesting

3672-509: The Quadrumana along with monkeys, and in turn descended "through a long line of diversified forms" going back to something like the larvae of sea squirts . Critics promptly complained that this "degrading" image "tears the crown from our heads", but there is little evidence that it led to loss of faith. Among the few who did record the impact of Darwin's writings, the naturalist Joseph LeConte struggled with "distress and doubt" following

3780-453: The conflict between religion and science ; they hold that religious beliefs and scientific theories do not need to contradict each other. Diversity exists regarding how the two concepts of faith and science fit together. Francis Collins describes theistic evolution as the position that "evolution is real, but that it was set in motion by God", and characterizes it as accepting "that evolution occurred as biologists describe it, but under

3888-415: The developmental-genetic toolkit studied in evolutionary developmental biology . An example is the development of wing pattern in some species of Heliconius butterfly, which have independently evolved similar patterns. These butterflies are Müllerian mimics of each other, so natural selection is the driving force, but their wing patterns, which arose in separate evolutionary events, are controlled by

3996-411: The modern synthesis of the 1930s and 1940s. That made biology a professional science, at the price of ejecting the notion of progress. That, Ruse argues, was a significant cost to "people [biologists] still firmly committed to Progress" as a philosophy. Biology has largely rejected the idea that evolution is guided in any way, but the evolution of some features is indeed facilitated by the genes of

4104-404: The 1890s to the 1920s: " Orthogenesis " (goal-directed evolution), " nomogenesis " (evolution according to fixed law), " emergent evolution " , " creative evolution " , and others. The Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) was an influential proponent of God-directed evolution or "orthogenesis", in which man will eventually evolve to the " omega point " of union with

4212-520: The Antiquity of Man by turning to Asa Gray's belief that God had set the rules at the start and only intervened on rare occasions, as a way to harmonise evolution with theology. The idea of evolution did not seriously shake Wright's faith, but he later suffered a crisis when confronted with historical criticism of the Bible. According to Eugenie Scott : "In one form or another, Theistic Evolutionism

4320-612: The Creator. Others see "evolutionary creation" (EC, also referred to by some observers as "evolutionary creationism") as the belief that God, as Creator, uses evolution to bring about his plan. Eugenie Scott states in Evolution Vs. Creationism that it is a type of evolution rather than creationism, despite its name. "From a scientific point of view, evolutionary creationism is hardly distinguishable from Theistic Evolution ... [the differences] lie not in science but in theology." Those who hold to evolutionary creationism argue that God

4428-543: The German paleontologist Otto Schindewolf argued that variation tends to move in a predetermined direction. He believed this was purely mechanistic, denying any kind of vitalism , but that evolution occurs due to a periodic cycle of evolutionary processes dictated by factors internal to the organism. In 1964 George Gaylord Simpson argued that orthogenetic theories such as those promulgated by Du Noüy and Sinnott were essentially theology rather than biology. Though evolution

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4536-464: The Natural History of Creation published in 1844, its anonymous author ( Robert Chambers ) set out goal-centred progressive development as the Creator's divine plan, programmed to unfold without direct intervention or miracles. The book became a best-seller and popularised the idea of transmutation in a designed "law of progression". The scientific establishment strongly attacked Vestiges at

4644-603: The Result of the Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics According to the Laws of Organic Growth . He used examples such as the evolution of the horse to argue that evolution had proceeded in a regular single direction that was difficult to explain by random variation. Gould described Eimer as a materialist who rejected any vitalist or teleological approach to orthogenesis, arguing that Eimer's criticism of natural selection

4752-493: The Swiss botanist Carl Nägeli (1817–1891) proposed a version of orthogenesis involving an "inner perfecting principle". Gregor Mendel died that same year; Nägeli, who proposed that an " idioplasm " transmitted inherited characteristics, dissuaded Mendel from continuing to work on plant genetics. According to Nägeli many evolutionary developments were nonadaptive and variation was internally programmed. Charles Darwin saw this as

4860-465: The axiom of the continuous operation of the ordained becoming of living things ". In December 1859 Darwin had been disappointed to hear that Sir John Herschel apparently dismissed the book as "the law of higgledy-pigglety", and in 1861 Herschel wrote of evolution that "[a]n intelligence, guided by a purpose, must be continually in action to bias the direction of the steps of change—to regulate their amount—to limit their divergence—and to continue them in

4968-814: The beginning, as read in Genesis, with the peculiarity a set of original species of which all the present species have descended. Linnaeus wrote: Let us suppose that the Divine Being in the beginning progressed from the simpler to the complex; from few to many; similarly that He in the beginning of the plant kingdom created as many plants as there were natural orders. These plant orders He Himself, there from producing, mixed among themselves until from them originated those plants which today exist as genera. Nature then mixed up these plant genera among themselves through generations -of double origin (hybrids) and multiplied them into existing species, as many as possible (whereby

5076-451: The beginning, these plants in course of time became fertilised by others of different sort and thus arose Species until so many were produced as now exist ... these Species were sometimes fertilised out of congeners, that is other Species of the same Genus, whence have arisen Varieties. Jens Christian Clausen (1967), refers to Linnaeus' theory as a "forgotten evolutionary theory [that] antedates Darwin's by nearly 100 years", and reports that he

5184-621: The cause of adaptation, Cope turned to Lamarckism to provide the force guiding evolution. Finally, Cope supposed that Lamarckian use and disuse operated by causing a vitalist growth-force substance, "bathmism", to be concentrated in the areas of the body being most intensively used; in turn, it made these areas develop at the expense of the rest. Cope's complex set of beliefs thus assembled five evolutionary philosophies: recapitulationism, orthogenesis, theistic evolution, Lamarckism, and vitalism. Other palaeontologists and field naturalists continued to hold beliefs combining orthogenesis and Lamarckism until

5292-640: The concept of biological change well before Darwin. In the 17th century, the English Nonconformist / Anglican priest and botanist John Ray , in his book The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of Creation (1692) , had wondered "why such different species should not only mingle together, but also generate an animal, and yet that that hybridous production should not again generate, and so a new race be carried on". 18th-century scientist Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) published Systema Naturae (1735),

5400-425: The creation story in the book of Genesis should be read metaphorically. Some Muslims believe that only humans were exceptions to common ancestry (human exceptionalism), while some give an allegorical reading of Adam 's creation (Non-exceptionalism). Some Muslims believe that only Adam and Hawa (Eve) were special creations and they alongside their earliest descendants were exceptions to common ancestry, but

5508-448: The day" as "incidental vessels" to convey spiritual truths. Lamoureux rewrote his article as a 2009 journal paper, incorporating excerpts from his books, in which he noted the similarities of his views to theistic evolution, but objected to that term as making evolution the focus rather than creation. He also distanced his beliefs from the deistic or more liberal beliefs included in theistic evolution. He also argued that although referring to

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5616-542: The death of his daughter in 1861, before enthusiastically saying in the late 1870s there was "not a single philosophical question connected with our highest and dearest religious and spiritual interests that is fundamentally affected, or even put in any new light, by the theory of evolution", and in the late 1880s embracing the view that "evolution is entirely consistent with a rational theism". Similarly, George Frederick Wright (1838–1921) responded to Darwin's Origin of Species and Charles Lyell 's 1863 Geological Evidences of

5724-493: The deity supplies beneficial mutations to guide evolution. St George Jackson Mivart argued instead in his 1871 On the Genesis of Species that the deity, equipped with foreknowledge, sets the direction of evolution ( orthogenesis ) by specifying the laws that govern it, and leaves species to evolve according to the conditions they experience as time goes by. The Duke of Argyll set out similar views in his 1867 book The Reign of Law . The historian Edward J. Larson stated that

5832-500: The direction of God". He lists six general premises on which different versions of theistic evolution typically rest. They include: The executive director of the National Center for Science Education in the United States of America, Eugenie Scott , has used the term to refer to the part of the overall spectrum of beliefs about creation and evolution holding the theological view that God creates through evolution. It covers

5940-539: The direction of change. The term orthoselection was first used by Ludwig Hermann Plate , and was incorporated into the modern synthesis by Julian Huxley and Bernard Rensch . Recent work has supported the mechanism and existence of mutation biased adaptation, meaning that limited local orthogenesis is now seen as possible. For the columns for other philosophies of evolution (i.e., combined theories including any of Lamarckism, Mutationism, Natural selection, and Vitalism), "yes" means that person definitely supports

6048-414: The early 19th century, confirming geology as showing a historical sequence of life. British natural theology , which sought examples of adaptation to show design by a benevolent Creator, adopted catastrophism to show earlier organisms being replaced in a series of creations by new organisms better adapted to a changed environment. Charles Lyell (1797–1875) also saw adaptation to changing environments as

6156-590: The embracing of Darwinian evolution, historian Ronald Numbers describes the position of the late 19th-century geologist George Frederick Wright as "Christian Darwinism". Jacob Klapwijk and Howard J. Van Till have, while accepting both theistic creation and evolution, rejected the term "theistic evolution". In 2006, American geneticist and Director of the National Institute of Health , Francis Collins , published The Language of God . He stated that faith and science are compatible and suggested

6264-563: The first humans, and that the rest of humanity descends from them. At the same time, this view asserts that modern humans emerged through evolution and that modern humans have a lineage leading up to the origin of life ( FUCA ), and that evolution occurred just as theorized (e.g. Austalopithecus afarensis to Homo habilis , H. habilis to H. eragaster , H. eragaster to H. heidelbergensis , H. heidelbergensis to H. sapiens , etc.) Adamic exceptionalists believe that Allah created human-like beings on Earth through evolution before Adam

6372-432: The flower structures were not changed) excluding from the number of species the almost sterile hybrids, which are produced by the same mode of origin. Linnaeus attributed the active process of biological change to God himself, as he stated: We imagine that the Creator at the actual time of creation made only one single species for each natural order of plants, this species being different in habit and fructification from all

6480-543: The foundations of the past." The Baltic German biologist Karl Ernst von Baer (1792–1876) argued for an orthogenetic force in nature, reasoning in a review of Darwin's 1859 On the Origin of Species that "Forces which are not directed—so-called blind forces—can never produce order." In 1864, the Swiss anatomist Albert von Kölliker (1817–1905) presented his orthogenetic theory, heterogenesis , arguing for wholly separate lines of descent with no common ancestor. In 1884,

6588-487: The gaps in scientific explanations, undermining biblical doctrines, such as God's incarnation through Christ . Orthogenesis Orthogenesis , also known as orthogenetic evolution , progressive evolution , evolutionary progress , or progressionism , is an obsolete biological hypothesis that organisms have an innate tendency to evolve in a definite direction towards some goal (teleology) due to some internal mechanism or "driving force". According to

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6696-431: The history of life leading progressively from mammals to dinosaurs to primates and finally man. Ruse noted that at the popular level, progress and evolution are simply synonyms, as they were in the nineteenth century, though confidence in the value of cultural and technological progress has declined. The discipline of evolutionary developmental biology , however, is open to an expanded concept of heredity that incorporates

6804-671: The human frame had been fashioned by the Divine hand and exhibited the most marvellous and beneficent adaptions for the use of men". In the 1860s theistic evolutionism became a popular compromise in science and gained widespread support from the general public. Between 1866 and 1868 Owen published a theory of derivation, proposing that species had an innate tendency to change in ways that resulted in variety and beauty showing creative purpose. Both Owen and Mivart (1827–1900) insisted that natural selection could not explain patterns and variation, which they saw as resulting from divine purpose. In 1867

6912-490: The idea of cultural progress in a theory of cultural units, memes , that act much like genes. Dawkins can speak of "progressive rather than random ... trends in evolution". Dawkins and John Krebs deny the "earlier [Darwinian] prejudice" that there is anything "inherently progressive about evolution", but, Ruse argues, the feeling of progress comes from evolutionary arms races which remain in Dawkins's words "by far

7020-474: The idea of linear progress. Edward Linley Sambourne 's Man is But a Worm , drawn for Punch's Almanack , mocked the idea of any evolutionary link between humans and animals, with a sequence from chaos to earthworm to apes, primitive men, a Victorian beau, and Darwin in a pose that according to Tucker recalls Michelangelo 's figure of Adam in his fresco adorning the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel . This

7128-466: The later descendants (including modern humans) share common ancestry with the rest of life on Earth because there were human-like beings on Earth before Adam's arrival who came through evolution. This belief is known as "Adamic exceptionalism". When evolutionary science developed, so did different types of theistic evolution. Creationists Henry M. Morris and John D. Morris have listed different terms which were used to describe different positions from

7236-541: The link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Creative_evolution&oldid=932777261 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Theistic evolution Supporters of theistic evolution generally attempt to harmonize evolutionary thought with belief in God and reject

7344-410: The mechanical. It ranged from theories of mystical forces to mere descriptions of a general trend in development due to natural limitations of either the germinal material or the environment ... By 1910, however most who subscribed to orthogenesis hypothesized some physical rather than metaphysical determinant of orderly change. In 1988, Francisco J. Ayala defined progress as "systematic change in

7452-414: The modern synthesis in the 1930s. The stronger versions of the orthogenetic hypothesis began to lose popularity when it became clear that they were inconsistent with the patterns found by paleontologists in the fossil record , which were non-rectilinear (richly branching) with many complications. The hypothesis was abandoned by mainstream biologists when no mechanism could be found that would account for

7560-626: The most satisfactory explanation for the existence of the advanced and complex machinery that animals and plants possess". Ruse concludes his detailed analysis of the idea of Progress , meaning a progressionist philosophy, in evolutionary biology by stating that evolutionary thought came out of that philosophy. Before Darwin, Ruse argues, evolution was just a pseudoscience ; Darwin made it respectable, but "only as popular science". "There it remained frozen, for nearly another hundred years", until mathematicians such as Fisher provided "both models and status", enabling evolutionary biologists to construct

7668-630: The most significant of today's evolutionists are progressionists, and that because of this we find (absolute) progressionism alive and well in their work." He argued that progressionism has harmed the status of evolutionary biology as a mature, professional science. Presentations of evolution remain characteristically progressionist, with humans at the top of the "Tower of Time" in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. , while Scientific American magazine could illustrate

7776-485: The nature of a loving God with the process of evolution, in particular, the existence of death and suffering before the Fall of Man . They consider that it undermines central biblical teachings by regarding the creation account as a myth, a parable, or an allegory, instead of treating it as an accurate record of historical events. They also fear that a capitulation to what they call " atheistic " naturalism will confine God to

7884-462: The ordinary succession by generation has never once been broken, and that no cataclysm has desolated the whole world. Hence we may look with some confidence to a secure future of equally inappreciable length. And as natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection. [Chapter 14] In 1898, after studying butterfly coloration, Theodor Eimer (1843–1898) introduced

7992-546: The organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed by the Creator . Within a decade most scientists had started espousing evolution, but from the outset some expressed opposition to the concept of natural selection and searched for a more purposeful mechanism. In 1860 Richard Owen attacked Darwin's Origin of Species in an anonymous review while praising "Professor Owen" for "the establishment of

8100-609: The parental forms by a general law of reversion, and therefore, would not be responsible for the introduction of new species. Later, in a number of experiments carried out between 1856 and 1863, the Augustinian friar Gregor Mendel (1822–1884), aligning himself with the "new doctrine of special creation" proposed by Linnaeus, concluded that new species of plants could indeed arise, although limitedly and retaining their own stability. Georges Cuvier 's analysis of fossils and discovery of extinction disrupted static views of nature in

8208-777: The phenomena of evolution is provided by natural processes (in particular, natural selection ), and the intervention or direction of a super natural entity is not required. Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins considers theistic evolution a "superfluous attempt" to "smuggle God in by the back door". A number of notable proponents of theistic evolution, including Kenneth R. Miller , John Haught , George Coyne , Simon Conway Morris , Denis Alexander , Ard Louis , Darrel Falk , Alister McGrath , Francisco J. Ayala , and Francis Collins are critics of intelligent design . Young Earth creationists including Ken Ham prefer to criticize theistic evolution on theological grounds rather than on any scientific data, finding it hard to reconcile

8316-472: The physics of self-organization . With its rise in the late 20th-early 21st centuries, ideas of constraint and preferred directions of morphological change have made a reappearance in evolutionary theory. In popular culture, progressionist images of evolution are widespread. The historian Jennifer Tucker, writing in The Boston Globe , notes that Thomas Henry Huxley 's 1863 illustration comparing

8424-479: The possibility of evolution. In the 1860s, he accepted that evolution could occur, but, influenced by Agassiz, rejected natural selection. Cope accepted instead the theory of recapitulation of evolutionary history during the growth of the embryo - that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny , which Agassiz believed showed a divine plan leading straight up to man, in a pattern revealed both in embryology and palaeontology . Cope did not go so far, seeing that evolution created

8532-697: The powers of the Creator. In 1858 Owen in his speech as President of the British Association said that in "continuous operation of Creative power" through geological time, new species of animals appeared in a "successive and continuous fashion" through birth from their antecedents by a Creative law rather than through slow transmutation. When Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, many liberal Christians accepted evolution provided they could reconcile it with divine design. The clergymen Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) and Frederick Temple (1821–1902), both conservative Christians in

8640-411: The process, and the theory of evolution by natural selection came to prevail. The historian of biology Edward J. Larson commented that At theoretical and philosophical levels, Lamarckism and orthogenesis seemed to solve too many problems to be dismissed out of hand—yet biologists could never reliably document them happening in nature or in the laboratory. Support for both concepts evaporated rapidly once

8748-399: The question of whether there is directional change, without regard to whether the change is "improvement". This may be compared to Stephen Jay Gould 's suggestion of "replacing the idea of progress with an operational notion of directionality". In 1989, Peter J. Bowler defined orthogenesis as: Literally, the term means evolution in a straight line, generally assumed to be evolution that

8856-458: The rest. That he made these mutually fertile, whence out of their progeny, fructification having been somewhat changed, Genera of natural classes have arisen as many in number as the different parents, and since this is not carried further, we regard this also as having been done by His Omnipotent hand directly in the beginning; thus all Genera were primeval and constituted a single Species. That as many Genera having arisen as there were individuals in

8964-574: The same as in paleoanthropology and archeology , but theological discussion of the matter tends to concentrate on the theoretical. The term " special transformism " is sometimes used to refer to theories that there was a divine intervention of some sort, achieving hominization. Several 19th-century theologians and evolutionists attempted specific solutions, including the Catholics John Augustine Zahm and St. George Jackson Mivart , but tended to come under attack from both

9072-443: The same view, the word arrangement in the term "theistic evolution" places "the process of evolution as the primary term, and makes the Creator secondary as merely a qualifying adjective". Divine intervention is seen at critical intervals in history in a way consistent with scientific explanations of speciation , with similarities to the ideas of progressive creationism that God created "kinds" of animals sequentially. Regarding

9180-423: The skeletons of apes and humans "has become an iconic and instantly recognizable visual shorthand for evolution." She calls its history extraordinary, saying that it is "one of the most intriguing, and most misleading, drawings in the modern history of science." Nobody, Tucker observes, supposes that the "monkey-to-man" sequence accurately depicts Darwinian evolution. The Origin of Species had only one illustration,

9288-519: The term effectively taboo in the journal Nature in 1948, by stating that it implied "some supernatural force". The American paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson (1953) attacked orthogenesis, linking it with vitalism by describing it as "the mysterious inner force". Despite this, many museum displays and textbook illustrations continue to give the impression that evolution is directed. The philosopher of biology Michael Ruse notes that in popular culture, evolution and progress are synonyms, while

9396-574: The term orthogenesis with a widely read book, On Orthogenesis: And the Impotence of Natural Selection in Species Formation . Eimer claimed there were trends in evolution with no adaptive significance that would be difficult to explain by natural selection. To supporters of orthogenesis, in some cases species could be led by such trends to extinction . Eimer linked orthogenesis to neo-Lamarckism in his 1890 book Organic Evolution as

9504-438: The term was strongly associated with orthogenesis, as had been common usage since at least 1647. His grandfather, the physician and polymath Erasmus Darwin , was both progressionist and vitalist , seeing "the whole cosmos [as] a living thing propelled by an internal vital force" towards "greater perfection". Robert Chambers , in his popular anonymously published 1844 book Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation presented

9612-489: The theological and biological camps. and 20th-century thinking tended to avoid proposing precise mechanisms. The Islamic scholar, science lecturer and theologian Shoaib Ahmed Malik divides Muslim positions on the evolution theory into four different views. Adamic exceptionalism is the current leading view, as it is considered to be compatible with both science and Islamic theology. Adamic exceptionalism asserts that Adam and Eve were created by Allah through miracles as

9720-429: The theological use of tawaqquf ; a tawaqquf is to make no argument for or against a matter to which scripture possesses no declarations for. With tawaqquf , Jalajel believes that Adam's creation does not necessarily signal the beginning of humanity as the Quran makes no declaration as to whether or not human beings were on Earth before Adam had descended. As a result, Jalajel invokes tawaqquf which insinuates that it

9828-431: The theory failed as an explanation in the minds of biologists from the late 19th century onwards as it broke the rules of methodological naturalism which they had grown to expect. The major criticism of theistic evolution by non-theistic evolutionists focuses on its essential belief in a supernatural creator . Physicist Lawrence Krauss considers that, by the application of Occam's razor , sufficient explanation of

9936-513: The theory of natural selection as the organizing mechanism in evolution for a rectilinear (straight-line) model of directed evolution. With the emergence of the modern synthesis , in which genetics was integrated with evolution, orthogenesis and other alternatives to Darwinism were largely abandoned by biologists, but the notion that evolution represents progress is still widely shared; modern supporters include E. O. Wilson and Simon Conway Morris . The evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr made

10044-447: The theory, the largest-scale trends in evolution have an absolute goal such as increasing biological complexity . Prominent historical figures who have championed some form of evolutionary progress include Jean-Baptiste Lamarck , Pierre Teilhard de Chardin , and Henri Bergson . The term orthogenesis was introduced by Wilhelm Haacke in 1893 and popularized by Theodor Eimer five years later. Proponents of orthogenesis had rejected

10152-427: The theory, the idea of continuous and progressive change in one or more characters, due according to some to internal factors, according to others to external causes-evolution in a "straight line" seems to be the central idea. According to Susan R. Schrepfer in 1983: Orthogenesis meant literally "straight origins", or "straight line evolution". The term varied in meaning from the overtly vitalistic and theological to

10260-455: The theory; "no" means explicit opposition to the theory; a blank means the matter is apparently not discussed, not part of the theory. The various alternatives to Darwinian evolution by natural selection were not necessarily mutually exclusive. The evolutionary philosophy of the American palaeontologist Edward Drinker Cope is a case in point. Cope, a religious man, began his career denying

10368-406: The time of Adam's appearance on earth and who could have come about as a result of evolution. This viewpoint stands in contrast to creationism and human exceptionalism, ultimately declaring that evolution could be viewed without conflict with Islam and that Muslims could either accept or reject "human evolution on its scientific merits without reference to the story of Adam". "Human exceptionalism"

10476-537: The time, but later more sophisticated theistic evolutionists followed the same approach of looking for patterns of development as evidence of design. The comparative anatomist Richard Owen (1804–1892), a prominent figure in the Victorian era scientific establishment, opposed transmutation throughout his life. When formulating homology he adapted idealist philosophy to reconcile natural theology with development, unifying nature as divergence from an underlying form in

10584-432: The top. The orthogenesis hypothesis had a significant following in the 19th century when evolutionary mechanisms such as Lamarckism were being proposed. The French zoologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829) himself accepted the idea, and it had a central role in his theory of inheritance of acquired characteristics, the hypothesized mechanism of which resembled the "mysterious inner force" of orthogenesis. Orthogenesis

10692-519: The unintentionally misleading image of the March of Progress , from apes to modern humans, has been widely imitated. The term orthogenesis (from Ancient Greek : ὀρθός orthós, "straight", and Ancient Greek : γένεσις génesis , "origin") was first used by the biologist Wilhelm Haacke in 1893. Theodor Eimer was the first to give the word a definition; he defined orthogenesis as "the general law according to which evolutionary development takes place in

10800-544: The way God worked. Darwin's friend Asa Gray (1810–1888) defended natural selection as compatible with design. Darwin himself, in his second edition of the Origin (January 1860), had written in the conclusion: I believe that animals have descended from at most only four or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or lesser number. Analogy would lead me one step further, namely, to the belief that all animals and plants have descended from some one prototype. But analogy may be

10908-536: The word "BioLogos" (Word of Life) to describe theistic evolution. Collins later laid out the idea that God created all things, but that evolution is the best scientific explanation for the diversity of all life on Earth. The name BioLogos instead became the name of the organization Collins founded years later. This organization now prefers the term "evolutionary creation" to describe their take on theistic evolution. Historians of science (and authors of pre-evolutionary ideas) have pointed out that scientists had considered

11016-470: The world's history have beaten their predecessors in the race for life, and are, insofar, higher in the scale of nature; and this may account for that vague yet ill-defined sentiment, felt by many palaeontologists, that organisation on the whole has progressed. [Chapter 10] As all the living forms of life are the lineal descendants of those which lived long before the Silurian epoch, we may feel certain that

11124-467: Was a pioneer in doing experiments about hybridization. Later observations by Protestant botanists Carl Friedrich von Gärtner (1772–1850) and Joseph Gottlieb Kölreuter (1733–1806) denied the immutability of species, which the Bible never teaches. Kölreuter used the term " transmutation of species " to refer to species which have experienced biological changes through hybridization, although they both were inclined to believe that hybrids would revert to

11232-546: Was brought into the world; however, these human-like beings do not fit the theological description of "humans". From a theological perspective, they're not true humans, but they are biologically human, since they fit the taxonomical description for it. Adam is still considered to be the first human from a theological perspective. Adamic exceptionalism also asserts that the early descendants of Adam mated or hybridized with these "human-like beings", yielding one lineage that leads to Adam and another that leads to FUCA . This belief

11340-636: Was common amongst many evolutionists of his generation; they were searching for alternative mechanisms, as they had come to believe that natural selection could not create new species . Numerous versions of orthogenesis (see table) have been proposed. Debate centred on whether such theories were scientific, or whether orthogenesis was inherently vitalistic or essentially theological. For example, biologists such as Maynard M. Metcalf (1914), John Merle Coulter (1915), David Starr Jordan (1920) and Charles B. Lipman (1922) claimed evidence for orthogenesis in bacteria , fish populations and plants . In 1950,

11448-658: Was followed by a flood of variations on the evolution-as-progress theme, including The New Yorker ' s 1925 "The Rise and Fall of Man", the sequence running from a chimpanzee to Neanderthal man , Socrates , and finally the lawyer William Jennings Bryan who argued for the anti-evolutionist prosecution in the Scopes Trial on the State of Tennessee law limiting the teaching of evolution. Tucker noted that Rudolph Franz Zallinger 's 1965 " The Road to Homo Sapiens " fold-out illustration in F. Clark Howell 's Early Man , showing

11556-465: Was particularly accepted by paleontologists who saw in their fossils a directional change, and in invertebrate paleontology thought there was a gradual and constant directional change. Those who accepted orthogenesis in this way, however, did not necessarily accept that the mechanism that drove orthogenesis was teleological (had a definite goal). Charles Darwin himself rarely used the term "evolution" now so commonly used to describe his theory, because

11664-678: Was seen to lie outside the methodological naturalism of the sciences. By 1948, the evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr , as editor of the journal Evolution , made the use of the term orthogenesis taboo: "It might be well to abstain from use of the word 'orthogenesis' .. since so many of the geneticists seem to be of the opinion that the use of the term implies some supernatural force." For these and other reasons, belief in evolutionary progress has remained "a persistent heresy ", among evolutionary biologists including E. O. Wilson and Simon Conway Morris , although often denied or veiled. The philosopher of biology Michael Ruse wrote that "some of

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