Miller - Introducing Darwin

WHY NOT? WHY DIDNT THEY SEE WHAT DARWIN SAW? WHEN A SCIENTIST RECOGNIZES A SIGNIFICANT NEW PATTERN WITHOUT ANY NEW FEATURES HAVING BEEN ADDED TO IT, THE PROCESS MUST BE SIMILAR TO WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A PUZZLE PICTURE SUDDENLY CHANGES APPEARANCE
THE PATTERN OF THESE LINES MAY LOOK LIKE THE PROFILE OF A BEAUTIFUL YOUNG WOMAN
BUT IF YOU LOOK AT IT IN ANOTHER WAY YOU MAY SUDDENLY SEE AN UGLY GYPSY
SEEING ME AS A RABBIT
PREVENTS YOU FROM SEEING ME AS A DUCK FACING IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION
THE PATTERN OF LINES IN A NECKER CUBE LOOKS LIKE THE CORNER OF A ROOM. BUT IT CAN AS EASILY BECOME THE OUTER EDGE OF A SOLID CUBE.

The point is that a strong preconception about what a pattern means, what it represents, can stop you seeing it in any other way. Presumably this happened to Darwins predecessors and some of his contemporaries as well. They failed to see what Darwin saw, not because they were short of facts, but because they had reasons for seeing the facts in a different way. They saw a duck and Darwin taught them to recognize a rabbit. Huxleys surprise was recognizing something that had been in front of his eyes all along.

The question is, what preconceptions led scientists to overlook the pattern that Darwin eventually saw? (Another question you will have to ask is whether Darwin really saw what he claimed to have seen, and whether his own position was quite as revolutionary as it has been said to be.)

There were several preconceptions which delayed the recognition of evolution in nature. And they arose from mans tendency to project the image of his own mind onto the world around him.
1. The biblical notion of special creation.
2. The Greek philosophical notion of Ideal Forms.

MOST SOCIETIES EXPLAIN THE ORIGIN OF THE LIVING WORD AS AN ACT OF PROVIDENTIAL DESIGN. FOR WESTERN EUROPE, THIS DOCTRINE IS ENSHRINED IN THE BIBLE

According to the Book of Genesis God formed the world and stocked it with a wealth of clearly distinguishable living forms. Christian theologians extracted several important dogmas from this myth.

The Relative Youth of the Earth

CHRISTIAN WRITERS ARGUED WITH ONE ANOTHER ABOUT THE EXACT DATE OF THE CREATION. BUT THEY ALL AGREED IT WAS A COMPARATIVELY RECENT EVENT
TIME WE MAY COMPREHEND, TIS BUT 5 DAYS ELDER THAN OURSELVES & HATH THE SAME HOROSCOPE WITH THE WORLD.
THE UNIVERSE IS 6000 YEARS OLD-THATS MY RULING!

For Christians, physical history was a short action-packed chapter bracketed between endless tracts of eternity. Such a short time-span ruled out the possibility of gradual change. Until scientists recognized that the age of the earth had to be reckoned in billions of years, evolutionary thought had no chance of gaining a foothold. This consideration will return to plague Darwin in his later years.

The Permanence of the Earths Physical Structure

According to orthodox Christian thought, the appearance of the modern earth was the result of two factors: 1. The shape God had given it in the beginning. 2. The damage he inflicted on it when he punished man with the flood. The globe was a static ruin, and hadnt changed its basic structure since the deluge ploughed up the mountains and excavated the valleys. In a scene of such changeless monotony there was no need for living things to alter.