Icon of Evolution: Science or Myth?

Author: Jonathan Wells (USA) / Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-04-01
Features: Although the theory of recapitulation is as such, some American and British embryologists in the 20th century tried to salvage a sliver of truth from Haeckel's law. Hertwig knew that Haeckel's law had been experimentally proven wrong, and he also knew that von Baer's law could only be applied to a limited extent, because "no species' embryo is ever completely similar to a lower adult (adult), nor to the embryo of any lower species; the composition of the embryo has its uniqueness at every stage from the egg onward. Therefore, there is no difficulty in determining to which order an embryo belongs, and it is easily distinguishable." However, Hertwig still supported the theoretical idea that there is some parallelism between ontogeny and phylogeny. In 1922, the British embryologist Walter Garstang criticized Haeckel's law of recapitulation, arguing that "it can be demonstrated to be incorrect," because "none of the stages of ontogeny provide any features of ancestral adults." Garstang explained that it is illogical for Haeckel's theory to claim that newly evolved features are directly attached to the end of the developmental process: "A house is not just a shack with an addition on top. A house represents a higher level of residential evolution, even if it is made of the same bricks, the entire structure is changed—the foundation, the materials, and the roof are all different." With this insight, Garstang (like Hertwig) still insisted, theoretically, that there must be some fundamental correspondence between ontogeny and phylogeny—that is, that "recapitulation is a fact in a source and universal sense." Garstang attributed this idea to Meckel. Clearly, both Garstang and Hertwig knew that the law of recapitulation was at odds with the evidence, but because they believed in Darwin's theory of evolution, they were convinced that some form of recapitulationism must be correct. From 1940 to 1958, the British embryologist Gavinde Beer wrote a book on embryology and evolution that was published in three editions, all of which criticized Haeckel's law of recapitulation. He wrote: "Recapitulation, meaning the repetition of early stages of descent in the adult form of ancestors, simply doesn't exist." But the problem is not just in the claim of recapitulating adults, because "the most relevant changes related to evolution may often appear in the early stages of development." In other words, the early stages of development are the times when important distinctions are revealed, which is the opposite of Darwin's belief—that they are similar. Beer's conclusion was that recapitulationism was a "intellectual shackle" and that it "hindered and delayed" the development of embryology. If organisms truly descended from a common ancestor, then it would be reasonable to expect that ontogeny might provide some evidence for phylogeny. In some sense, recapitulation is a logical deduction from Darwin's theory of evolution. But the question is: in what sense? When discussing embryology and evolution, two views repeatedly emerge, both of which can be found in Darwin's On the Origin of Species: I. Early stages of embryonic development are more similar than later stages. In Darwin's own words: "In a class, dissimilar species still have very similar embryos, and only after development is completed do they become different." II. Embryonic development passes through the adult stages of ancestors. Darwin himself said: "Many animal embryos or larvae almost completely show us what the adult form of the ancestors of this group of animals was like." This is von Baer's view, though he would not extend it beyond the class level. Modern Darwinists call this "von Baerian recapitulation," though this term is merely contradictory rhetoric, like "Copernican geocentrism" or "Darwinian creationism." The second view is Haeckel's law of recapitulation, hence also called "Haeckelian recapitulation." Both views can be experimentally falsified. But throughout the 20th century, they were occasionally resurrected, like the phoenix, rising from the ashes of having been disproven. Because both are often used to support Darwin's theory of evolution, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between them. As we will see later, a perverse distortion occurs, where the same forged image is used to support both viewpoints. P92-94