Hermanrd

CREATION AND EVOLUTION

First published inPhilosophia Reformata

Vol. 24, 1959, p. 113 - 159.

Translation and separate publi-cation authorised by the Editorin Chief Philosophies Reformata.

www.ReformationalDL.org

The book of Prof. Pr. J 11/4 LEVER, entitled"Creation and Evolution" (1956), which appeared inan excellent English translation from the hand of Dr.P. G. Berkhout in June last year, is at present amongthe most discussed works in Reformed theologicalcircles, both here and abroad, in the sphere of therelation between faith and science. This fact alonealready proves its importance, insofar as it pene-trates deeply into theological problematics. Yet itwas certainly not written from a theological point ofview. The writer is professor of zoology, special-ising in morphology, at the Free University ofAmsterdam. In his preface he accounts as follows forthe purpose of his work:

"The problem of how the Christian should approachthe origin of organisms in connection with the presentstate of investigation in the field of natural sciencehas already set many a pen in motion. The opinionswhich have been launched from orthodox quarters onthis subject during the last fifty years were, almostwithout exception, variations on fundamentalistic andsupra-naturalistic themes. This meant that everyonewho could not agree with these views in every respect,was often warned that he was on the wrong road andpermitted himself to be influenced too much by thequasi-certainties of natural science. On studying thehistory of the Christian attitude towards the problemof origin, however, one comes to the surprising dis-covery that both the fundamentalistic and the supra-naturalistic approaches themselves originated fromtoo strong an orientation towards the quasi-certain-ties of natural science (of some centuries ago), sothat they can certainly not be regarded as fundamen-tally Christian. The biologist who has become con-scious of this, and who is nevertheless convinced that

2

he must also live and think as a Christian when itcomes to the important questions on origin, meaningand purpose of life, comes to the conclusion thatthere must be another way.

This book originated from the tension of thissituation and is an attempt to find this new way."

This is not said by a theologian, but by aChristian biologist who wishes to be serious aboutthe biblical starting-point of his scientific think-ing. Precisely for this reason he takes a criticalattitude towards theological interpretations of thedivine revelation concerning creation in which, ac-cording to his opinion, the central religious meaningof this revelation is obscured because of the admix-ture of (outdated) natural-scientific conceptions. Ishall not enter into the question whether he is beingaltogether fair towards the theological interpreta-tions which he disputes by entitling them either fun-damentalistic or supra-naturalistic. But it is agreat step forward, in any case, that the author hasbroken in principle with the traditional theologicalconfusion of creation with the process of genesiswithin the order of time, a confusion which has beenincreased undoubtedly under the influence of Creekphilosophy and is largely responsible for the lack ofinsight into the true relation between the Word-reve-lation and scientific research. The Word-revelationconcerning creation is not situated in the plane ofscientifically ascertainable facts and scientific con-ceptions. It has an absolutely CENTRAL, religiousmeaning and stands, for that very reason, in relationto the WHOLE of empirical reality in the temporal or-der, so that, without it, we can never see that real-ity in its proper light.

This is, in brief, the trend of the first chapterunder the title The Bible and reality". This chapter .

the can only be understood against e background of thePhilosophy of the Cosmonomic idea, of which the authoris a convinced adherent, which does not mean, ofcourse that he accepts its philosohical Ideas asunassailable. No one who has truly understood thisphilosophy would do this, for that matter. One should

3

not hold it against the author that, in this connec-tion, he has not expressly dealt with the cardinalpoint of the embodiment of the Word-revelation inhistorical facts within the order of time, throughwhich these facts themselves form an integral partof this revelation under the aspect of faith. Thisis understood, by virtue of his Reformed biblicalstandpoint.

When he writes: "Consequently we can never de-rive from the Bible exact physical, astronomical andbiological knowledge, and therefore no exact histori-cal knowledge either, as this is simply not the pur-pose of the Bible", we should certainly not interpretthis as if he e.g. holds that the facts of the salva-tion story as recorded in Holy Scripture are omen toargument. His intention is merely to emphasise thefundamental difference between the theoretical scien-tific point of view and the concrete way in which holyScripture imparts such facts to us in the language ofnaive experience. The author justifiably takes forgranted knowledge of the relevant elaborate exposi-tions in the transcendental critique of scientificthought, as developed by the Philosophy of theCosmonomic Idea. That the creation as God's work can-not be a scientifically ascertainable "historicalfact" within the temporal order, however, must beclear to anyone who has arrived at the Biblical in-sight that the temporal order with its historical as-pect PRESUPPOSES creation. The "in the beginning",with which the book of Genesis commences, can there-fore, itself never fall within this temporal order.The writer answers the question what should be under-stood by the six "days of creation" in the vein of thewell-known "cadre theory", as it was developed inReformed circles a.o. by Prof. Dr. N. J. Ridderbos.

CREATION AND THE TEMPORAL ORDER.

I do not regard this theory as completely satis-factory, and I pointed out recently in my treatise"The relation between Philosophy and Theology" which

4

appeared in the previous volume of this journal, thatthe religious relation established in the decaloguebetween the six days of work and the "days of crea-tion", is of essential significance, and that thissignificance can only be understood in the faith-as-pect of time.

But the cadre concept, already defended byAUGUSTINE, may in any case be accepted in as far as itrecognises, in its modern development, that God's actsof creation can never be set within an astronomical orgeological concept of time and in essence transcendthe entire temporal order.

CREATION AND THE TEMPORAL GENETICAL PROCESS.

Of the creation alone may it be said, accordingto Gen. 2:1, that it is COMPLETED. This can never besaid of the genetical process in the temporal order.For this process is still going on; individual men,animals, plants, etc. are formed, and this is not atemporal CONTINUATION of God's work of creation, butonly a CONSEQUENCE, within the order of time of thecompleted creation.

A tremendous period preceded the forming of theindividual created things and beings within a cosmosalready developed in its basic structures, a periodin which these basic structures have realised them-selves in a, since then closed, process of successivecosmic evolution. But this primeval process of cos-mic evolution was merely the elaboration of God's com-pleted work of creation within the temporal order,which only brings to successive expression, in a richdiversity of modal aspects and typical structures ofindividuality, creation's order which God has esta-blished.

An example of the un-biblical views theology wasable to adopt as soon as it lost sight of this funda-mental difference between creation and temporal genet-

* development: elaboration (uitwerking).

5

is process may be seen in the renowned psycho-creationistic theory which states that God stillcreates the "rational immortal soul" in the humanbody during its temporal process of development andthat only this gives it its human essence. Here wemay ask the sensible question at which moment thiscreation takes place. Gen. 2:7 does not deal withman's CREATION- but speaks in an anthropomorphic wayabout God's dealing with his BECOMING on earth; 1 butit has been explained in this psycho-creationisticsense negating the clear statement at the commence-ment Of this chapter.

Under the influence of the dualistic form-mattermotive of Greek philosophy the centrally religiousmeaning of the biblical creation-motive had been lostsight of. For how could man BECOME a "living soul"within the order of time if God IN THE BEGINNING hadnot spoken His creating word which called the wholeof mankind in its totality, represented in its progen-itors into being, a being which would only DEVELOPitself in the temporal genetic process? Or does onethink that the completion of man's creation only re,.fers to two human individuals and that their descend-ants were not included in God's completed work ofcreation? But the first people who appeared on earthwithin the temporal world were also subject to theprocess of physical formation of which Gen. 2:7speaks » and in which they BECAME "living souls"cause God "breathed the breath of life" into them.However such formation is a consequence of God's wordof creation, it is in itself not creation but the giv-ing of form to material which already existed in thetemporal order and , in turn , had come into existencethrough the divine word of creation as had also the

¹"and man became a living soul". This statementspeaks clearly of man's becoming a temporally livingbeing. MAN'S becoming a living being supposes thatman had already been created. Men already stoodbefore God through the Word that called him intobeing.

6

"breath of life", •In other words . creation comprehends than in his

totality. a

in his central dependence on God , bearingthe image of his divine Origin; formation and receiv-ing the breath of life is the consequence of God'screative work in the temporal genetical process ; inaccordance with the dispositions and structures whichGod has laid down in the temporal order. Creation it-self surpasses all human understanding and all humanimagination because it is not a temporal happening

but God's work "in the beginning".²This entire temporal order, together with the en-

. tire genetic process which was to take place withinit was undoubtedly comprised in creation , but only asCREATURELY RESULT of God's completed work of creation.This work of creation is not , conversely * comprised inthe creaturely order of the temporal genetic proc-ess. We may never use the fact that God's work ofcreation is revealed to us in Holy Scripture in lan-guage which is human and bound to the creaturely orderof time_ as an argument for the conclusion that thework of creation itself took place in the creaturelytemporal order. The revelation CONCERNING creation

■•••••••■■•■•11110

²02,1c should therefore guard against the specula-tive conception of seeing the calling into beingthrough God's Word as a pre-existence in idea of thecreated things in God's mind, This , too • is an inva-lid attempt of human thinking to penetrate into thesecrecy of God's work of creation. Ott thinking istied to the temporal order and is therefore only ableto approach creation's order in the temporal struc-tures which can only be DIRECTED towards the DivineOrigin of all things in the religious concentration ofthe believing heart. For this reason our transcenden-tal idea of creation is merely an IDEA OF TILE direc-ted towards the Divine Origin by the central creation-motive of God's Word. It has noMETAPHYSICAL-ONTOLOGICAL significance as in "natural theology" ,

but its meaning is fulfilled only in theCENTRAL-RELIGIOUS MEANING of the REVELATION CREATION'S.

7

ray not be identified with creation. This revelationis primarily directed to the human heart, the reli-gious centre of our existence, in which God has placed"eternity", 3 and in which, by the work of Ills Spirit,

411111011111.0111•■••■■•

³The theological exegeses of this text (Ecc.3:11) which translate "the times" or "history" or "the

world" instead of "eternity", deprive it of itscentral-religious meaning; just as the well-known text in

Proverbs: "Out of the heart are the issues of LIFE",in consequence of a certain theological exegesis, lostits central-religious meaning, when the heart cameto be understood as "seat of feeling". If it onlyconcerns "history", it does not matter if the expres-sion "heart" in the first mentioned text is replacedby "historic consciousness" or, according to an olderscholastic view, by "human reason" or "human thinking':But there is definitely no sense in putting "thetimes" or "history" instead of "eternity" if one main-tains, as SPIER does in his book Tijd en Eeuwigheid,that the word, "heart" is meant here in the sense ofRELIGIOUS CENTRE OF HUMAN EXISTENCE. For it is inearl's heart that "history" in its temporal sense mustget its CONCENTRATION ON GOD'S ETD AL Flak; OF SALVA-TION. Without this concentration, history remains atemporal process that is not in any way directed to-wards that which transcends time, unless towards aneternity-IDOL in the sense of the "idea" which unfoldsitself dialectically. But how can the "heart", in theabove mentioned sense, function as RELIGIOUS CONCEN-TRATION-POINT OF HISTORY if it were entirely contained"within time"? The introduction of a "religious time"is of no avail here, because the religious concentra-tion precisely implies a central relation between thehuman I and eternal God, which can never merge intotime. It is moreover hard to see how such a religioustime could be anything else than what is called thefaith aspect of time in the Philosophy of the Cosmo-nomic Idea. As regards its possible SENSE, the term"religious time" remains highly problematical.

8

all temporal happenings are seen in central relationto Him. But this revelation also enters tie temporalhorizon of our experience and speaks within the tem-poral order to man's faith. WITHIN the temporal orderthe Word-revelation often speaks about God himself intemporal terms, but that does not mean that God andHis acts of creation are contained within that time.

I therefore believe that J. It SPIER is mistakenwhen he, in his critical discussion of LEVER'S book,4thinks that he does more justice to the "creationstory" by assuming "three kinds of divine creativeactivity", viz. creative CALLING, creative ORDERINGand creative PROVIDING. The former was meant in Gen.1:1 and had taken place before and above all time.The creative calling into existence of heaven andearth "did not take up any time. The result of thecalling is simultaneous with this divine calling."

THEREAFTER for now- that the cosmos and time has beencreated with it is it possible, according to him, tospeak in terms of time - followed, in God's dealingwith his creation, the creative ordering of the cos-mos, which has been described anthropomorphically forus from Gen. 1:² onwards. Now, according to SPIER,"God takes time to fill the primary cosmos, which atfirst was still "empty", with concrete creatures andto relate those creatures one to the other and to com-bine them to a beautiful whole". Although in the pri-mary creation some aspects and structures had alreadybeen given, now God creates periodically new aspectsand new structures, not just as POSSIBILITIES whichwould have to await their providential unfolding, butrealized in concrete creatures and structures of indi-viduality. And after the completion of this creativeordering, the last of God's creative activities was tobegin, viz. his creative providing, or providence,which now extends over the totality of created things.

This threefold theological differentiation inGod's creative activity leads us - surely against

4 Over creationisme y Dr.ning, 1³° jrg.1958, No. 1, p. 44.)

ver (Bezin-

9

SPIER's intention - again into the centre of a way ofthinking in which the central meaning of the revela-tion concerning creation is derogated and also a newattempt is made to interpret the "days of creation" as"periods" (the "periodical creative ordering" inSPIER's sense). It comes in conflict with the teat ofGenesis I, in which God's creative calling into exist-ence is emphatically related to all six "days of crea-tion" • 'oath his differentiations the writer entangleshimself in contradictions which should have warned himthat he was on a wrong track. On the one hand, al-luding to Genesis 1:1, he says that the result ofGod's creative calling into existence is SIMULTANEOUSwith the calling; what he intended to argue, though,was that the creation of heaven and earth took placeOUTSIDE and Al time "in the beginning". On theother hand he declares that the six words of creation,recorded from Gen. 1:2 on, do not imply creative "cal-ling", but "ordering", and that God "took time" forthat purpose, and created periodically in the time.Does this mean then that God's "creative ordering" andits results are not simultaneous? Or does he want usto assume simultaneity here as well? In both casesGod's word of creation is deemed to be subject to de-finitions of time which are of a creaturely order s

and we come dangerously close to the un-biblical no-tion that God, in speaking the sin words of creation,really acted merely as a Greek Demiurge, as"Organiser".

This of course is not SPIER's intention at all ,

and he wished to cut this conclusion off in advance byspeaking of CREATIVE ordering. But by opposing thiscreative ordering to "creative calling," and to "crea-tive providing" (contrary to the clear wording of Gen.I), the integral and central meaning of the revelationconcerning creation is lost, and we are back on thetrack of a scholastic way of thinking which used totry to accommodate the Creek view to the ecclesias-tical doctrine of creation. God's work of creationand its creaturely result are not of the same order s

consequently they cannot have a creaturely definitionof time in common. The confession of the essential

10

difference between Creator and creature will, in myopinion, stand or fall with the distinction betweencreation and temporal creaturely genesis. And SPIER,after all, wishes to maintain this essential differ-ence to the full.

THE CENTRAL RELIGIOUS MEANING OF THE REVELATION CON-CERNING CREATION, AND SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH.

LEVER, in the first chapter of his book, has con-tinued to build on this distinction, and from it hehas drawn conclusions for the relation of the firstchapter of Genesis to natural-scientific research.

Although the formulation of these conclusionsis not always unambiguous and clear, there is no doubtthat what LEVER MEANS to say gives evidence of abiblical-critical insight that may be called "libera-ting" indeed for biology and natural philosophy aspractised from the Reformed point of view. It alsomeans a call to renewed reflection for those theolo-gians who cling to the traditional scholastic con-ceptions of Genesis I andli. It is far from Lever totreat these conceptions with hauteur. On the con-trary, he shows that he fully understands the deeperintentions of the advocates of these conceptions,viz, to uphold unabridged what Holy Scripture re-veals to us concerning creation. Hut the predominantquestion is whether the traditional interpretationsof Genesis I and II have not just derogated thecentral and radical meaning of this revelation.

THE ANTINOMIES IN A CONCEPTION OF THE DAYS OFCREATION AS ASTRONOMICAL OR GEOLOGICAL PERIODS.

One should not forget that when God's work ofcreation, either wholly or partly, is conceived ofas a successive series of TEMPORAL happenings, onebecomes entangled immediately in the modal diversityof aspects which is inherent in the temporal order asa creaturely order. One can then no longer refer to

11

that time-order in its integral and universal meaning,which also comprises the aspect of faith, but one isforced to suppose that the modal aspects of time them-selves were only CREATED in the successive order ofthe six days of creation, and the latter must thenhave been of temporal duration. Before, within thetemporal order, the first organic life came into beingin living organisms on earth, that temporal orderwould therefore have had only the first four aspects.But within which aspect of time then did the creationof the succeeding aspects of time fall? By situpasking this question, the antinomies are already un-covered in which one becomes entangled by fixing thedays of creation in theoretically abstracted aspectsof time.

That any attempt to determine them according toobjective astronomical and geological measurements oftime, either as days of twenty-four hours or as geolog-ical periods with the story ofcreation itself'' is already evident because "seasons ,

days and years" are only established on the fourth"day of creation", so that "day of creation" cannotpossibly mean day or period in the sense of durationof time. And any such attempt finally runs agroundcompletely on the seventh day, the day of God's sab-bath rest, every interpretation of which as a space oftwenty-four hours or geological period would lead toblasphemy.

One can ask oneself if perhaps SPIER has meantthe "time of creation" in the supra-modal sense of aso-called "religious time", a central dimension ofcosmic time where, according to him, the "human ego"

would be. But this conception of tin-, which he de-veloped in his interesting book Eeuwigheid en Tijd (Eternity and Time) and which was apparently stronglyinfluenced by VOLKELT's views concerning the innertime of the ego, 5 cannot possibly be taken into con-

5When SPIER, in his above mentioned work, appealsto various Scripture texts in order to show thebiblical foundation of his conception concerning re-

is no more convincingof Gen. 1. to show that,God's "creative ordering"time. My remarks regard-apply to the former.

12

sideration here, for SPIER expressly speaks ofprimeval time which was created together with theprimary creation of heaven and earth and in whichsome aspects and structures had already been given.For that reason it was possible to speak about God's"creative ordering" in terms of time. Those terms oftime can therefore, in SPIER's line of thought, onlyhave a NODAL and TYPICAL STRUCTURAL character, andthis emphasizes again that with such a conception therevelation concerning creation loses its central re-ligious meaning and is scattered entirely in the modaland structural diversity of our temporal experientialhorizon. As it appeared moreover that this conceptionis not in keeping with the text of Genesis I, eventhough the latter uses terms of time (the meaning ofwhich can only be understood in faith), it is hardlypossible to maintain that it does more justice to the"story of creation" than does LEVER's view.

In as far as these first two chapters of Genesisalso speak of the genesis of the world and of man

WITHIN ThE TEMPORAL ORE ER, as a RESULT of creation,they do not do this, as LEVER rightly observes, in a

natural-scientific sense, but purely to reveal to usthat it is God who takes care of the elaboration ofhis words of creation in the temporal order with thestructural laws which He has enclosed therein. Thisimplies that in no way any scientific conclusions canbe drawn from the communications of Genesis in question, and that therefore the traditional confronta-tion of these communications with the SCIENTIFICALLYASCERTAINED facts is on the wrong track. The factswhich are revealed to us in thc first two chapters ofGenesis are of a different order than those whichnatural scientific research is able to bring to light.

(5 contd.) ligious time, itthan his appeal to the wordsaccording to Holy Scripture,is subject to definitions ofing the latter argument also

13

Precisely for that reason they are of central FUNDA-MENTAL significance for this research.

THE TERMS "CREATIONISM" CAUSES. CONFUSION.

Although 1 can generally agree with the point ofview about the relation of creation and temporalprocess of development as LEVER has developed it inthe first chapter of his book, I regard as less felici-tous the term "creationism" with which he character-ises tile point of view as opposed to "evolutionism".

By "creationism" he means "every biological ap-proach to the problem of origin which, starting fromthe central credo of the Christian Church, is pre-pared to confess also in science that Cod created thisreality and daily guides all processes" (p, 26).

Although the words "starting from the centralcredo of the Christian Church" are obviously meantto prevent the isolation of the creation-motive in theauthor's starting-point, the term "creationism" remainsin my opinion doubtful because it rather suggests thisisolation and cannot express in any way the ReformedChristian starting-point of the author. Any suchterms as "creationism", "theism", etc. are stronglytainted by a scholastic tradition of "natural theolo-gy" and can only create misunderstanding and confusionwhen used in a framework of thought which takes itsbearings on the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea.

In the second chapter of his book the writergives a very interesting and absorbing critical-histo-rical survey of the theories about "the origin oflife". He dwells at some length on the conception ofthe so-called generatio spontanea, which holds, thatliving organisms may originate spontaneously fromlifeless matter. This theory, which was accepted from

ARRISTOTLE's time until well into the nineteenth cen-tury on the strength of apparently convincing experi-mental data, was finally refuted in 1862 by the in-vestigations of PASTEUR into the origin of Infusoria.We see its revival, nevertheless, in classical evolu-tionism, when HAECKEL posits the theorem that all

14

higher organisms have developed from so-called"monera", formless bits of living protoplasm whichhave originated through spontaneous generation.

EVOLUTIONISM, THE IDEA OF GENERATIO SPONTANEA, ANDTHE VIRUS-PROBLEM.

The would-be experimental confirmation of thishypothesis appeared to be based on an error and the"monera" were ruled out from scientific discussion,but in the twentieth century the generatio spontaneaidea came up once again in a slightly different formin connection with the discovery of viruses. LEVER' s

opinion is, that the viruses cannot be considered inorder to support the thesis that vegetable and animalorganisms could hove originated spontaneously from akind of link between lifeless matter and living or-ganisms, and the viruses themselves, in their turn,from absolutely lifeless matter. He bases thisopinion on the three explanations for the origin ofviruses which are most current and present and whichall take as their starting-point that viruses owetheir existence to the fact that living organisms havebeen present before then. This does not appear to bea strong argument to me, because these attempts atexplanation are only hypotheses themselves.

Since we are unable to say anything with certain-ty about the origin of viruses, it would have beenbetter, in my opinion, simply to state the fact thatall processes of multiplication, assimilation, etc.of these causes of disease, which appear to have acertain similarity to processes of life, depend on aparasitic relation to living organisms and have neverbeen shown independent of them. Fier this is suffi-cient to remove the factual basis from the evolution-ist interpretation of these processes, as far as ourpresent knowledge of the factual material goes.

THE EVOLUTIONISTS' POSITION OF THE PROBLEM REGARDINGTHE ORIGIN OF "LIFE" IS UNACCEPTABLE.

15

I wish to draw particular attention now to theconclusion at which LINER arrives on the basis of hishistoric survey about the development of the generatiospontanea idea; he writes:

The origin of organisms remained hidden fromobservation and research. This had two conse-quences: firstly, there was from now on no furthertalk about the origin of distinct organisms (frogs,

Infusoria, monera), but about the origin of "life".a concept even more difficult to define than the

monera! Secondly, the absence of data enabledworld-views to influence scientific hypotheses with

maximum boldness. (p. 42.)It is regrettable that the writer did not immedi-

ately subject the positing of the problem concerningthe origin of "life" to fundamental criticism, but forall practical purposes accepts it with only the re-serve that "life" is a concept which is even more dif-ficult to define than the monera.

In the introduction to the third chapter hewrites: "Life on earth, however, does not exist assuch, AT LEAST NOT NOWADAYS, but is only found inLIVING ORGANISMS" (p. 59).

But what meaning can the question about the ori-gin of "LIFE" have then? Not only NOWADAYS, but asfar in the past as the palaeontological material offossils reaches, organic life-functions were only pre-sent in living organisms. The oldest known fossilsare those of algae. The debut of life on earth meanstherefore, If we stick to the data of experience, thefirst appearance of these living organisms.

That ever does one mean by the noun "life" asdistinct from living organisms? We may say that ourtemporal experiential world has an ORGANIC

LIFE-ASPECT, but this is not a concrete WHAT, but a fun-damental experiential and empirical MODE of exist-ence which cannot be identified with any living "some-thing". A "living organism" is a typical totality-structure, QUALIFIED by the organic life-aspect, butin which this aspect is revealed on lii INFRANGIBLECOHERENCE WITH OTHERS. It is not possible that, with-in our time-horizon, any living being should exist or

16

have existed that has MERGED* in its biotic ASPECT.This is impossible because of the modal structure ofthis aspect, which refers back in its retrocipatingor retrospective analogous moments to all earlierranking aspects, and therefore PRESUPPOSES them,

In modern biology and philosophy of organic na-ture, however, the term "life" is never used in thesense of a modal aspect of our temporal horizon ofexperience, but in the sense of a concrete phenomenon,a SOMETHING. It would depend entirely on the specu-lative view of reality that was used as a starting-point whether by this "something" a complex proteinstructure was meant, or an invisible entelechy, animmaterial substance which has a controlling influ-ence upon a mechanical constellation of matter, or avital force, or a so-called bio-molecule, a "

protomeries", etc. In the Neovitalist sphere of thought(DRIESCH) one spoke of "life" in the

phylogenetical-sense as of a "supra-individual substance" which hasno origin in time, and all visible individual organicforms are merely its materializeq products. And inmodern sociology FR. OPPENHEIMER6 joined in this con-ception and argued that human society is only a branchof this one immortal substance "life".

THE TERMINOLOGICAL CONFUSION IN LEVER'S THREE HYPO-THESES CONGERNING THE ORIGIN OF "LIFE".

Because he adopts the term "life" in its pluralityof meanings, LEVER does not succeed in definingpoint of view clearly from other , conceptionswhen he discusses the three possible answers whichPresent-day Christian thinking may give to the ques-tion about the origin of "life", viz.:

1. primary life was created out of nothing;2. a vital element was introduced into a certain

A dissolved, evaporated (opgegaan).

6System der Soziologie, 2e Halbband (Jena, 192³)S. 443.

17

material construction, causing it to becomealive;3. the essence of the LIFE-ASPECT in the organ-ism lies in its specific structurality which wascreated "in the beginning", and has been realisedunder God's continuous guidance in a series ofprocesses which may seem improbable to us but werenatural just the same, since it was given increation as possibility (or necessity). (p. 57.)The third conception, which he announces as his

own solution, clearly starts from the view, developedin the „Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea, that an or-ganic life-aspect has been given in our temporal orderof Experience and in the temporal order of empiricalreality, which is comprehended in the creationorderand which can only realize itself in living organisms.

But what is meant by "primary life", which, ac-cording to the view mentioned under 1, "was createdout of nothing"?

Are not, according to the author's own recogni-tion of the integral universal meaning of the reve-lation concerning the creation, all living organisms-.therefore also the ones which first appeared onearth—an integral product of God's creative callinginto being, and were they not therefore in that sense"created out of nothing"?7 Or does he mean by "pri-mary life" something different than the "first livingorganisms"? If so, what may that be? By rejectingout of hand IN THIS WORDING, the conception mentionedunder 1, a CONTRADISTINCTION between creation and tem-poral genesis is suggested which is incorrect and,viewed from the author's own starting-point, untenable.This is certainly not LEVER's INTENTION, and it CANNOT

7Apart from that, the expression "creation outof nothing" cannot be recommended, and it has cer-tainly not been derived from the Bible. The onlyexplanation is the attempt to formulate metaphysi-cally the fundamental difference between creation inthe biblical sense and the Greek idea of a divineaction which gives form to un-created "natter".

18

be his intention, after having stated the true rela-tion between creation and temporal genesis so clearlyin the first chapter. By the first conception, whichhe rejects, he probably meant the so-called "

fundamentalist" point of view, discussed by him earlierand according to which it is clear from Genesis I thatGod created the living organism in such a way that Heplaced them ready-made, after their constant kind, onthe earth or in the water. This is the theory of theso-called special creation, which in turn implies thatGod's work of creation took place within the

time-order. KUYPER, in his well-known address on the ques-tion of evolution, already seriously doubted whetherthis theory is scriptural. If it is thought out con-sistently it must, according to LEVER, lead either tothe acceptance of the generatio spontanea (followingon the words of Gen. I verse 11 and 12 and 24 and 25:"let the earth bring forth"), or, since this ideaevidently does not fit in with what the fossil dis-coveries tell us about the successive appearance ofmany groups of organisms in flora and fauna, to thehypothesis that CONCRETE GERMS of these groups werecreated at first, which developed only much later. Ifone does not accept the latter view, "one lapses intothe evolutionist idea that the newly appearing formsare descended from the existing ones, which would becontrary to the constancy of kinds". (p. 55.)

I doubt that the present-day THEOLOGICAL pro-tagonists of the conception which is disputed herewill feel "touched" by these arguments. Probably theywill accept neither the generatio spontanea theory northe doctrine of created "germs" of living beings,which was advocated by AUGUSTINE and was merely an at-tempt toto adapt the stoic and neo-platonic conceptionson this matter to the church's doctrine of creation.For I do not believe that they will attach any im-portance to the results of palaeontological investi-gations in the face of what they consider to be theclear teaching of Holy Scripture on this point.'Undoubtedly they would have a strong case if they hadkept in mind that the facts of creation, revealed inGenesis I, are of a fundamentally different order than

19

the data which scientific investigations can bringto light. But exactly because they bring these factsinto the plane of temporal creaturely events, the dis-cordance between their idea of Gen, I and the fossildiscoveries of palaeontology cannot be a matter of in-difference to any Christian biologist who takes theradical biblical starting-point of his thinking seri-ously. For this discordance does not concern a con-flict between the 'Word-revelation and an evolutionisttheory which rejects creation, but scientifically as-certained FACTS which cannot possibly be subjected torational doubt. And a conflict like this is always astrong indication that the theological conception con-cerned is on the wrong track.

In the conception mentioned under 2, LEVER takes"life" in the sense of a "vital element" that causesa certain constellation of matter to become alive. Ico not know which Contemporary Christian conception he

has in mind here. Does he perhaps mean aneo-Thomist conception, But this would never speak of

"vital element", only of a PSYCHE as substantial formand entelechy of a material body. And it teaches onlywith respect to the human "anima rationalis", alongscho-creationist lines, that the soul as principleof life is still being created into the material body.On the other hand, ecclesiastical teaching does notforbid neo-Thomist biologists to accept the evolution-ist doctrine in respect of plants and animals, accord-ing to which natter comes to life (and therefore, inthe neo-Thomist frame of thought, becomes "animated"matter) as a result of a natural process of

development.

THIRD HYPOTHESIS CONCERNING THE ORIGINOF "LIE;:"

The third conception, which he prefershimself,is elucidated and elaborate in such a waythat we at least get a basis for comparison withmechanistic evolutionism and are enabled to determinethe apparent conformity as well as the fundamental

20

difference between the two. Even at present the vastmajority of scientists who occupy themselves with thequestion concerning the origin of "life" adhere tothis evolutionism, which teaches that the organic

life-function has developed of its own accord BY APURELY PHYSICO-CHEMICAL PROCESS OUT OF lifeless mat-ter. It reduces all modal aspects, which in theuniversal time-order follow that of energy, to meremodalities of the latter. It eliminates all indivi-duality-structures, basic to the temporal geneticprocess of all transitory living beings according tothe divine order of creation. It has its root in thebasic religious motive of Humanism: NATURE AND FREEDOM,which is irreconcilable with the creation-motive inits biblical meaning.

LEVER naturally rejects this evolutionism assharply as possible. He nevertheless recognizes thatthe hypothesis about the origin of life mentionedunder 3, which he himself prefers, "appears to be verysimilar to the materialistic approach to the problem".Therefore he further explains its real purport as fol-lows: "Suppose that this hypothesis afterwards ap-pears to be correct and that life made its appearancevia aminoacids, proteins, aggregates, etc. TheChristian will then see it in this way: he believesthat God in the beginning created nature in a veryspecial manner with a certain number of very specificelements which possess special properties, and withthe task and the potential for the later developmentof certain aspects (in other words, at the creationthese were placed in what was created), and that Hethen brought about such conditions of humidity, pres-sure, temperature, etc. that all conditions for the

realization of life as He desired it were fulfilled.Then came a succession of processes (perhaps statis-tically improbable to us in their nature and in thissuccession) according to the laws which were placed innature at creation, so that the atoms and molecules,step by step and very purposively, were arranged and

combined in such a way that a very special constructedprotoplasm was formed in which the created life-aspectwas revealed" (p. 58).

21

I regret that I cannot follow my friend LE VERhere any more. On the one hand because he, in myopinion, breaks faith with his own starting-pointand includes certain natural-scientific hypothesesin his belief in the divine creation, with the inten-tion of adapting it to his natural-philosophical hypo-thesis concerning the origin Of life. This means areversion to the scholastic line which he had rejectedso clearly in the first chapter of his book. Forthere he declared that we do not know HOW God hascreated the world. Apparently he does know it now,with the proviso that his own natural-philosophicalhypothesis proves afterwards to be correct. On theother hand he elaborates this hypothesis, to whichdo not object in its first wording, in such a way thatit comes very close, if I see it correctly, to theconception of the evolutionary process as it is devel-oped in the so-called "emergent evolutionism",(C, LLOYD, MORGAN 9 WOLTERECK, BERNARD BAV

THE INNER ANTINOMY [N THE SO-CALLED EMERGENTEV OLUT tONI Ski. WOLTERECK.

he latter conception; which starts on tie one hand from a "Stufen-bau" of reality where every "Stufe" has its own ir-reducible character and is determined by structuralconstants (in a Christianised version: by divinecreational ideas). On the other hand it wishes to beas accommodating as possible to mechanistic evolution-ism in the explanation of the evolutionary process.For this purpose it assumes a continuity in this pro-cess of evolution as follows: out of a-biotic matter,through an over-complication of its physico-chemicalstructure, "organic life" is formed of its own accordas an "emergence" of a certain material constellation;in a similar continuous manner the higher sphere of

8Het Substantiebegrip in de moderne Natuurphilo-sophie (Phil. Ref. 15° jar., 1959, p. 66 -139J.

²2

the "psyche" is formed out of "organic life", and"mind" out of psychical life.

WOLTERECK has openly recognized the antinomy inthis conception between the DISCONTINUITY acceptedapriori, of the various levels of reality according totheir ideal structural constants, and the CONTINUITYof their realization in the temporal process of evolu-tion. And he cannot find a solution for it. Theorigin of this antinomy can be traced back to the in-ner conflict in the humanistic basic motive of NATUREANT) FREEDOM. The evolutionistic conception, afterall, is firmly in the hold of the classical, human-istic science-ideal, which is directed towardsautonomous domination of nature and has an inner ten-dency towards continuity which is irreconcilable withthe acceptance of the irreducible modal aspects andstructural types. Over against the idealistic theoryof a discontinuous "Stufenbau" of reality, orderedaccording to the timeless idealistic structural laws,

WOLTERECK himself in his Ontologie des Lebendigen re-turns to the freedom motive: the non-determinedcreative freedom of the Meet subjekt" (see p, 9 andthe entire paragraph #176).9

Entirely isolated from this evolutionism onefinds for example in -0/e Kantian transcendental ideal-ism the typical dualistic trends to abandon, on theone hand, the genetic question with respect to thegenesis of the categories of thought to a naturalcausal psychological explanation or, on the other hand,to root the idealistic universal validity in the tran-scendental freedom of the autonomous law-giving mind.

THE THREATENING ANTINOMY IN LEVER'S HYPOTHESIS,

In the developing of LEVER's hypothesis with re-spect to the origin of "organic life" I seem to detecta TREND which fives rise to a similar ANTINOMY (al-though with an entirely different background). On the

9See my A New Critique 2L Theoretical Thought,Vol. III, (1957), p. 762 ff.

2³

one hand he begins along with the philosophy of theea with the structures as these have

been ordered by God in His creation order. In thisline of thought he is careful to avoid agreeing withmaterialistic evolutionism that "organic life" hasdeveloped out of lifeless materia and he speaks onlyof the appearance of organic life through a constantlymore complex protein structures. On the other handat the end of the above given quote where he developshis hypothesis more fully he allows for the origin ofliving protoplasm THROUGH a-let it be a - morepurposeful arrangement and combination of atoms andmolecules, "according to the laws given at creation tonature.

Does this last presentation of the matter at handrest upon a lapse in formulation? I do not think so.For in this case his own observation that his hypothe-sis manifests an apparently great similarity withmaterialism would have no meaning. The "apparentsimilarity" can only mean that in his thinking theorganisms which first appeared in the temporal geneticprocess have originated from a collaboration of cli-matic, atmospheric and other factors with physio-chemical processes of increasingly more complex prote-in compounds which do take place "very purposively".under God's guidance , but in which the organic life-function itself can evidently not yet play a rolejust because its appearance is seen as a RESULT of thephysico-chemical processes. A CONTINUITY in the con-ception of the process of evolution is certainlyachieved in this manner , but it is difficult to re-concile this continuity with the irreducibility of theorganic life-aspect to the (physico-chemical) aspectof energy which the writer has so emphatically recog-nized. This caused the threat of an antinomy betweenhis GENETIC and COSMOLOGICAL views.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE COSMONOMIC IDEA AND THEDYNAMIC PROCESS OF BECOMING.

I must dwell a little more here on this critical

²4

point in LEVER's conception because it is of the ut-most importance for the future development of thePhilosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea. In certain quar-ters it has been asserted¹° that this philosophy couldonly develop a (in itself very valuable) theory of thestatic structure of temporal reality . but is not ableto Co justice to the DYNAMIC PROCESS OF BECOMING. Ifthis criticism were justified I could not but welcomeany attempt to fill in such a gap. But this is a mat-ter of 4 fundamental misunderstanding. The Philosophyof the Cosmonomic idea itself has warned emphaticallyagainst absolutizing the constant structural princi-ples of created reality, comprised in the temporalorder. It has pointed out that those structural prin-ciples have only been realized successively in theFACTUAL PROCESS OF BECOMING and that this geneticprocess blends into the CONTINUITY of cosmic time whichguarantees an INTER-MODAL coherence between its modalaspects.

Evolutionism in its pseudo-natural-scientificforms, however endeavours to achieve the continuityin conception of "the origin of life" by givinga genetic causal explanation of the organic life-function according to which the latter has come intobeing merely through a co-operation of physico-chemi-cal factors.

LEVER undoubtedly does not go as far as this. HeCANNOT mean a causal genetic explanation of theorigin of organic life out of an increasingly complexcombination of proteins for such an explanation wouldimply that the organic life-aspect could be REDUCED tothe physico-chemical energy-natural-scientific evolu-tionism insofar as he thinks of the INTERNALPHYSICO-CHEMICAL STRUCTURE of the living organisms whichfirst appeared on earth as being already developed,BEFORE their actual biotic function was unfolded.This energy-structure which is typically directed atthe biotic function and therefore opened, is thus con-

10E.g. Jr. J. Kalma in his book De Mensch EenEvolutiebeeId. (Tjeenk Walla* , 19³8-1940).

²5

sidered as the "condition for the realisation ofthe -or-ganic life-aspect given by God in His creationalorder". and a continuity in the conception of theevolution of lifeless matter to living organismsappears to nave been achieved without having reducedthe organic life-function itself to a mere product ofphysico-chemical material processes. Now this appearsto me to be a THEORETICAL REVERSAL OF THE GENETICORDER in the factual process of development of aliving organism which has no scientific justifica-tion whatsoever and which fails to recognize thecharacter of the actual process of disclosure in theinternal hysico-chemical aspect of the living organ-ism.

THE REVERSAL OF THE ONTO-GENETIC ORDER INLEVER'S HYPOTHESIS.

For what is the case? The complex and highlylabile protein structures as they are found in theinternal sphere of a living organisms are not, as faras our present and past experience goes being met withANYWHERE OUTSIDE OF THE LIVING ORGANISM. Their build-ing-up and breaking-down take place in so-called BIO-chemical and BIO-physical processes in which the or-ganic life-function itself has the leading and govern-ing role. In other words these processes take placewithin the typical totality-structure of this organism ,

and can therefore never serve as an explanation forthe ORIGIN of the organic life-function in the greatprocess of evolution of our temporal world.

As long as the actual BIO-physical and BIO-chemical processes are not considered to be open to aPURELY physico-chemical causal explanation nothinghas been achieved yet for the explanation of the ori-gin of "life" with the hypothesis that the ost com-plex protein structures may have been brought aboutalong purely physico-chemical lines. 11 For thephysico-chemically qualified mateirals of a cell-bodyare not part of the actual living organism , but only

26

have an ENKAPTIC FUNCTION in the latter, viz. inthe purpose assimilation - and dissimilationprocesses. Even the most complex protein moleculelacks the typical hylocentric, kinocentric andmorphocentric structure of a living cell. It lacksthe typical totality-structure of a living cell-body, that maintains itself in sal metabolic pro-cesses of its physico-chemically qualified materials.The realisation of this totality-structure cannotpossibly be explained from the writer's own philoso-phical point of view by a successive and "very pur-posive" arrangement and combination of atoms andmolecules. The concluding words of the amplifica-tion of his hypothesis about "the origin of life"in the above-mentioned passage of his book (p. 58):"SO THAT a very specially constructed protoplasmwas formed in which the created life-aspect was re-vealed," therefore, are entirely without a basis inhis line of thought.

As the writer recognized emphatically, , e knowNOTHING scientifically about the origin of the firstliving organisms on earth. Any evolutionistichypothesis which attempts to explain this origin alongphysico-chemical lines oversteps the bounds of naturalscience, and ' ,oyes into the field of a philosophicaltotality-view of the genetic process of our worldwhich obliterates the modal borders between the energyaspect and the organic life-aspect. In my opinionany concession to such an evolutionistic hypothesisshould be avoided, even if it is adapted as well asossible to the doctrine, governed by the biblicalcreation-motive, of the modal aspects and individuali-ty structures of our experiential world.

HAS LEVER IS HYPOTHESIS A SCIENTIFIC CHARACTER,OR IS IT PURELY SPECULATIVE?

When the writer remarks about his own hypothesis:

11 I left this possibility open myself in Vol.III of my A New Critique.

27

"Suppose that this hypothesis afterwards appears tobe correct", the question arises: How do you imaginethat such a confirmation of its correctness could beobtained') Along the road of further physico-chemicalexperiments?12 I can only think here of experimentsin the field of synthetic production of so-called"living protein". For, as I said previously, nothingwould have been achieved yet for the exlanation ofthe origin of living protoplasm, if complex proteincombinations 'ere composed synthetically or broughtinto existence with the aid of physico-chemicallyqualified processes. But if man should manage toform "living protein" in a purely physico-chemicalway, the writer's entire philosophical view concerningthe irreducibility of the organic life-aspect wouldhave been refuted by the facts. In that case I wouldpersonally say: We must surrender to the facts, be-cause our philosophical theories evidently do notagree with them. And. I cannot see how LEVER thenwould manage to reconcile these "facts" to thePhilosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea's doctrine concern-ing the irreducibility of the organic life-aspect andof the individuality-structures of living organisms.Meanwhile, there is not the slightest indication inthe facts known to us that synthetic composition of

12 Apparently something is also expected of afurther investigation of the recently discoveredtraces of organic life on the planet Mars. Again,such investigation cannot teach us anything about thequestion how that life has originated there, if thehypothesis were confirmed that - in view of theclimatological conditions on this planet - only algaewould have a possibility of life there. For thenagain it would be in living organisms that the or-ganic life-function would be revealed. And the pointwas to obtain confirmation of the hypothesis that"organic life" has developed via increasingly complexformations of protein compounds which have come intobeing even before the organic life-function appearedas directing and leading factor.

28

living protoplasm is possible. Leading biologists,such as WOLTERECK, BERTALANFFY, and others, haveclearly set forth the reasons why such a synthesismust be deemed impossible in principle. In Vol. IIIof my A Jew Critique of Theoretic a l Thought I haveendeavoured to explain in detail why the question how"living protein" can originate in a purely physico-chemical way is an incorrectly posited problem. And

LEVER himself has also firmly rejected this positingof the problem.

But what then is the explanation for the sugges-tive influence, even on biologists who from true con-viction reject its philosophical basis, of the evo-lutionistic hypothesis about the origin of organiclife out of increasingly complex protein combinations?

Why do they make certain concessions to this hypoth-esis, which threaten to cause a conflict betweentheir cosmological and their genetical views? LEVERgives the explanation of this fact himself on page 53of his book. "The mechanistic hypothesis", he says,"is certainly the most attractive for anyone who hasreceived his education as a biologist in the twentiethcentury. For with the aid of an, admittedly, specu-lative and yet scientific-like complex of hypothesisthe transition from life-less to living can be madecomplete". But he immediately ads that such an ideahas fundamentally unacceptable consequences, and thatthrows a clear light on its real intention. Thehypothesis concerning the origin of organic life whichhe develops should therefore certainly not be inter-preted without further ado in this evolutionistic vein.But, because of the concessions to this pseudo-naturalscientific point of view, a fundamental obscuritycreeps into his argument, so that it becomes difficultindeed to demarcate clearly his SCIENTIFIC point ofview concerning the genetic problem from the mecha-nistic viewpoint. And I really regret this, becauseit creates misunderstandings which could be quite in-correctly ascribed to the standpoint concerning therelation of Gen. I and II to biological research,which he argued in such an excellent manner in thefirst chapter of his book.

29

REVERSION TO THE SCHOLASTIC LINE?

I have already mentioned a certain reversion tothe scholastic line in the explanation and amplifica-tion of his hypothesis about the origin of life".I believe that this had consequences also for thefurther elaboration of his conception about the rela-tion of his biblical starting-point to biologicalscience. These consequences already reveal themselvesat the end of Chapter 2, where we read concerning thethree aforementioned hypothesis:

From the fact alone that these possibilities areput forward it is already evident that Christiani-ty does not pretend to know doctrinally HOW

primary life originated, but only THAT it finds itsorigin in Cod's creation The fact thatthe Christian biologist does not pronounce on the"how" is an indication that there is no need forhim to introduce a DEUS EX MACHINA into the

natural-scientific problematics, as is argued so of-ten, but that his attitude towards these problemscan be scientifically even more free than that ofe.g. the doctrinarian mechanicist who is forcedby his philosorhy to speculate, because his philos-ophy stands or falls with a certain solution ofthis problem. The Christian knows that all as-pects of reality were created in the beginning.By which course these aspects have come to berealised is a problem for science.In connection with the first sentence of this

conclusion the following remark could be made: Thethree possible answers, put forward by the author froma Christian point of view, to the question how firstorganic life originated, do not show at all that"Christianity" does not pretend to know doctrinallyhow this happened, but only that he himself deniesthat the answer to this question can be found a prioriin Oen. I. But, more importantly, will not the ad-herent of mechanistic evolutionism be able to object,and rightly so, that the greater freedom towards the"natural-scientific-problematics", about "the originof life", which the writer claims to have, exists in

³ 0

the latter's imagination only and that, rather, he ischecked doctrinally by his own "philosophical apriori" concerning the mutual irreducibility of themodal aspects?

This consideration is bound to raise the ques-tion: What actually does LEVER understand by thefreedom of the scientific investigator with regard tothe question how first life originated , Is it hisopinion indeed that this problem can only be finallysolved by unbiased scientific investigation, and thatthe religio-philosophical view of reality ought notto have a DIRECT, leading role in it, but should comein only AFTER THE EVENT, in a philosophical inter-pretation of the scientific theory of genesis? If so,then his conclusion would only lead us back to ascholastic conception about the relation of faith andscience which seeks to accommodate the results of asupposedly autonomous scientific investigation to theChristian religious view, whereas in reality this so-called autonomous investigation was determined by anun-biblical starting-point.

But can this really be LEVER's intention, after,in the first chapter, having thrown such a clear lighton the central significance for biology of the bibli-cal creation-motive? No, but in my opinion the authorgets entangled here in his endeavours to meet pseudo-scientific evolutionism as far as possible. Conse-quently his answer to the question whether naturalscience will be able to explain the origin of "organiclife" by continued investigation, is not clear-cutany more. he started off by recognizing that, scien-tifically, we know nothing about it. Then came thefirst concession to evolutionism, in the elaborationof his own hypothesis, with the enigmatic supposition:"Suppose that this hypothesis afterwards appears to becorrect". With this supposition he was already on hisway to the last concession to this evolutionism, viz,that the question about the origin of life is essen-tially a question of NATURAL SCIENCE, which theChristian biologist should approach without doctri-naire prejudices. But the evolutionist does not needanything more in order to be completely satisfied.

³1

For he can then ignore all of LEVER'S view abcut modalaspects and individuality-structures. because it isphilosophical in character and has its roots in areligious point of view that he cannot accept.

"Erkenne nur das Recht der Wissenschaft,Des Menschen allerhochste KraftSo hab'ich dich schon unbedingt".

(If you recognize only the right of science, man'shighest power,..... then I've got you completely).

With this radical variant of MEPHISTO's well-known words in GOETHE's Faust he would be able to re-pulse LEVER's attack on his mechanistic starting-point.Therefore I am inclined to object to LEVER 's conclu-sion that the question HOW the organic life-aspect hasbeen realised in the process of becoming . is a SCIEN-TIFIC problem. 13 At least if he means that as such ithas no philosophical and religious implications. Butthe trouble is that I do not know exactly whether hemeans that. For there are plenty of statements in hisbook which point in the opposite direction and areevidence of the view that the question about the ori-gin of the first living organisms leads us of neces-sity outside the bounds of natural science to thesph e of the philosophical total-view of reality. So that I can establish with certainty only

13Comp. p. 96: "The Christian knows that Godbrought organisms into existence at His command butnot HOW and WHERE and IN WHICH WAY this happened.These questions belong in the sphere of science"

14Comp. e.g. p. 5², where the writer after anenumeration of the data about "the origin of life"which according to our 'resent knowledge are certain,draws this conclusion:

If we want our judgement to be PURELYNATURAL-SCIENTIFIC therefore we must leave it at this

So that we may come to the conclusion that we FAC-TUALLY KNOW NOTHING about the origin of life. If

³²

that the writer has become somewhat entangled in hisproblems by making concessions (traditional inbiological circles) to the evolutionistic way ofthinking, although he cannot accept its consequences.

THE SUCCESSIVE REALISATION OF THE INDIVIDUALITY-STRUCTURES AS TYPES OF ORDERING OF THE VEGETABLE -AND ANIMAL WORLDS.

In the third chapter, entitled: "The origin ofthe types of organisms", the author raises the ques-tion in what terms we should think of the gradual re-alisation of the tremendously ramified structural-typical ordering of the vegetable - and animal king-doms in the temporal genetic process, in the light ofthe central creation-motive of the Word-revelation.This is not LEVER's formulation of the question, butit expresses his intention undoubtedly better than theone he chose in the title of this chapter, which fol-lows current biological usage.

For the structural types of plants and animalsare as such not individual subjects, originating inthe temporal process of becoming, but rather types ofordering which belong to the law-side, and not to thefactual side, of our empirical world. They can onlybe realised in temporal individual living beings, butas TYPES OF ORDERING they have necessarily a constantand fundamental character in the temporal order be-cause it is only through them that our experience ofthe vegetable - and animal worlds becomes POSSIBLE,irrespective of one's THEORETICAL conception regarding

---(a contd.) we want to work on this problem in apurely natural-scientific way, we can e.g. performanalyses of the oldest rocks. This may possiblyproduce further data. Any line of thought thatgoes beyond this and pretends to know more aboutit, is not purely natural-scientific any more andhas its origin in a philosophy, a world-view orin a religion," This statement contradicts theone on p. 96 of LEVER's book quoted above.

³³

the GENETIC PROCESS of living organisms.This does not mean, of course, that we may simply

identify this structural-typical ordering with thesystematic categories of LINNAEUS' system of classi-fication. This has already been pointed out by Dr. H.

DIEMER in several of his publications. In this re-spect, too, LEVER takes, with DIEMER the point ofview of the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea, as evi-denced in his statement (p. 137) concerning the pos-sibility of a new concept of species, which can givea synthesis of the modern discoveries about the geno-and phenotypical structural peculiarities in the veg-etable -- and animal kingdoms. "Only a view of reali-ty", he says here, "which recognizes every single as-pect and every single individuality-structure as spe-cifically laid down in creation and therefore as forthe present irreducible realities, and which has anopen eye for their mutual interlacements, will beable to achieve this synthesis in accordance with thereal structurality of the organisms. On present evi-dence, however, this is beyond reach for the timebeing." Just the same, this statement contains a cer-tain reserve which is not immediately clear. Why doeshe refer to modal aspects and individuality-structureslaid down in the creational order as "FOR THE PRESENTirreducible realities?" Does it not rather concernhere FUNDAMENTALLY mutually irreducible structurallaws, and is not therefore the reserve, express in thewords "for the present", meaningless?

I can only find one answer to this question. IfLEVER CONSCIOUSLY chose the term "realities", he evi-

dently had in mind the structures as they have beenFACTUALLY REALIZED within the temporal order in plantsand animals which are subject to generation and decay.In that case he would have wanted to keep the dooropen for the hypothesis that in the great process ofevolution the entire flora and fauna as we now knowthem in their tremendously differentiated and ramifiedstructural-typical articulations have sprung up VIAone and the same stem, which in turn originated VIAthe formation of complex protein compounds. But nowit appears to be much more difficult to maintain the

34

fundamental difference between "VIA" and "OUT OF"which, in the second chapter, could still be moreor less clearly discerned in LEVER's hypothesisabout the "origin of life". And for that reason itwill also become more and more difficult to dis-tinguish the writer's GENETICO-BIOLOGICAL point ofview from that of evolutionism, in as far as hecounts the hypothesis concerning the origin of allliving beings from one common stem as a scientificattempt at explanation, which is acceptable from theChristian point of view, even though it is not theonly one. Here again one gets the impression, strong-er this time, that the author has not sufficientlyconsidered the critical prior question whether ahypothesis concerning the origin of the present veg-etable — and animal worlds FROM THE PURELY SCIEN-TIFIC BIOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW IS POSSIBLE AT ALL,or at least that he has not yet arrived at a CLEAR,unequivocal answer to that question.

LEVER's exposition of the problem concerning"the origin of the types of organisms" follows thesame course as that of the question concerning "theorigin of life". First of all he establishes that,in medieval scholastic-christian as well as in Greekthought the doctrine, of generatio spontanea led tothe unquestioning acceptance of the transition of oneform of plant or animal into another or even of theformation of animals out of lifeless matter, althoughat the same time the ultimate cause of the appearanceof the various types of organisms was seen in divinecreation. I wish to point out here that this cannotbe used as an argument from THE AUTHOR'S OWN REFORMEDSTARTING POINT for the compatibility of such a con-ception with the biblical creation-motive. Thisscholastic-christian view of the genesis of plants andanimals, after all, was not dominated by the biblicalcreation-motive in its radical and integral character,but rather by the Greek form-matter motive which wasonly ADAPTED to the ecclesiastical doctrine of crea-tion.

³5

DID THE CHANGE IN SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURYBIOLOGICAL THINKING TAKE PLACE UNDER THE INFLUENCEOF CLASSICAL PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY?

But it is subject to serious doubt whether, asthe author thinks (p. 61), the change in seventeenthand eighteenth century biological thinking whichled to the acceptance of a constant systematicorder in vegetable - and animal groups, took placeprimarily under the influence of mathematicalphysics and chemistry. Classical physics at leastfounded by GALILEO and NEWTON, was not at all directedtowards the search for the structural-typical orderingof phenomena. On the contrary, it eliminated allindividuality-structures in order to be able to under-stand the physical phenomena in the entire universeas a closed cause-functional coherence. The influ-ence which this way of thinking exercised on biologyrather took place in a mechanistic direction, whichwas further stimulated by HARVEY's discovery of thedouble circulation of the blood, so that DESCARTESalready had declared animals and plants to be inani-mate mechanisms. For the Aristotelian doctrine ofthe substantial forms, which deemed at least the idealentity-types of the natural substances to be not sub-ject to the genetic process, had been generally dis-carded under the influence of the basic motive ofmodern Humanism.

LEIBNIZ AND THE CONSTANCY-IDEA IN SYSTEMATICBIOLOGICAL TYPOLOGY.

It should be admitted, though, that in LEIBNIZphilosophy a point of contact may be found for theidea of a constant structural-typical ordering of thevegetable-and animal worlds. LEVER assumes with anappeal to E. UHLMANN (Entwickl ungsgedanke untArtbegriff, Jena, 192³ p. ²1), that this line ofthought in LEIBNIZ' philosophy of organic natureleads to LINNAEUS and from there via CUVIER to the so-called idealistic morphology (p. 64). But I must say

³6

that UHLMANN'S own expression is more cautious andonly speaks of "a certain dependency of LINNAEUS'epistimology on the Platonic ideology via LEIBNIZ",whereas LEVER writes: "LEIBNIZ' great significancefor the history of biology was that his monadologyreally combines the old concept of creation-ideas,as it is found both with the Greeks and the Churchfathers (e.g. AUGUSTINE) and which predominantlyinfluenced natural-scientific thought for a longtime, with the lex continui element which opens thegate to evolutionism" (p. 64).

This statement contains two misunderstandingsto which I call attention only for the sake of his-torical truth, and not to reproach LEVER who is,after all, far from presenting his exposition as theresult of an independent investigation into the his-torico-philosophical connection between LEIBNIZ'thought and the constancy-idea in systematical typology. The first misunderstanding is that theGreeks already would have known "creation-ideas".That can definitely not be maintained, since theGreek form-matter motive excluded any thought of adivine creation. I presume that this is a slip ofthe pen, as for the rest he appears to be completelyaware of the fundamental contrast between the Greek-and the biblical basic motives. The second misunder-standing is the LEIBNIZ' theory of the "veriteseternelles" would be the same as the doctrine of thecreation-ideas, which appeared already at the time ofthe Church fathers and was based on an adaptation ofthe Platonic e.g. Neo-platonic ideology to the eccle-siastical doctrine concerning creation. In this con-nection I would like to refer to my detailed analysisof LEIBNIZ' metaphysical theory of monads and eternaltruths in Vol. I (p. ²40 f.) of my A NEW CRITIQUEOF THEORETICAL THOUGHT. As I have endeavoured to showthere, this theory, notwithstanding its scholasticterminology, is primarily oriented towards the modernmathematical science-ideal which has got an entirelynew perspective through LEIBNIZ' discovery of infini-tesimal calculus and secondarily also towards theautonomy-postulate of the Humanistic personality-ideal.

³7

LEIBNIZ' METAPHYSICAL THEORY OF T "ETERNAL TRUTHS"IS NOT CONNECTED WITH HIS HYPOTHESIS CONCERNING THEEXISTENCE OF CONSTANT SPECIES.

If in LEIBNIZ' views about the organisms a pointof contact may be found, as I admitted previously, forLINNAEUS' idea about the constancy of kinds, no directconnection can be shown, as far as I can see, with themetaphysical theory concerning the "veriteseternel-les". LEIBNIZ' pronouncement in question, quoted byUHLMANN, merely says that "if we possessed the dis-cernment of higher spirits, we NIGHT find constantattributes for every species which all the individualsbelonging to it have in common and which are alwaysconstantly present in the same organism etc. This"might" expresses uncertainty rather than certaintyand shows that LEIBNIZ thought that the limited humanmind, whose definitions of the natural genera oforganisms are in his view only provisional and adap-ted to our cognition, is not equal to the task ofdiscovering such constant attributes of species.

In any case, he cannot be dealing here with theeternal truths, but rather with a divine choice fromthe logical possibilities contained in the "veriteseternelles". For the "eternal truths" may, accordingto LEIBNIZ, also be discerned by human thought and cantherefore never be subject to doubt. They are merelymetaphysico-logical possibilities. But we may un-doubtedly say that the hierarchical arrangement inseries of the monads in their windowless enclosednessexcluded any evolutionistic conception about the for-mation in mechanical ways of the higher ranging onesout of the lower ones. And it is probable that thisbasic characteristic of discontinuity in LEIBNIZ'monadology, together with the traditional doctrine ofthe creation-ideas, has influenced the later concep-tions concerning a constant structural-typical or-dering of living nature, because LEIBNIZ in fact brokewith the Cartesian mechanistic conception of the vege-table-and animal worlds. Especially the drawing up,

-

as part of a constant building plan, of the MORPHOLO-GICAL SERIES OF LIVING ORGANISM BY IDEALISTIC MORPHO-

³8

LOGY betrays the influence of LEIBNIZ' thinking inseries.

LEIBNIZ' LEX CONTINUI AND EVOLUTIONISM.

Whether on the other hand the continuity trendin LEIBNIZ' metaphysical conception of the world-orderhas paved the way for evolutionism, is a question Ifind harder to answer. It is certain that LEIBNIZ'lex continui did not intend in the least to give amechanistic explanation of the origin of livingbeings. According to him all monads, including thematerial monads, are animated and have the same per-ceptions in which the entire universe is mirrored.They differ only in the degree of clarity of theirperceptions, and the lex continui intended to bridgethese differences, after the example of infinitesimalcalculus, by infinitesimally small transitions, in or-der to explain the harmonia praestabilita between themonads, in particular between those of the soul andthose of the body. But there is no question of anevolution of higher monads out of lower ones inLEIBNIZ ' metaphysics.

THE EVOLUTIONISTIC HYPOTHESIS IN KANT'S"KRITIK IQ URTEILSKRAFT".

If, therefore, the continuity principle were toacquire an evolutionistic-biological meaning, it hadto be disengaged at all events from LEIBNIZ I mathe-matical metaphysics and, with that, denatured in prin-ciple. This occured for the first time, as far as Iknow, in KANT's "KRITIK DER URTEILSKRAFT" (1790) whichderived from LEIBNIZ the connection of the mechanisticwith the teleological view of nature. In the analogyof the forms of the various classes of organisms hefound a basis for the supposition that they aredescended from a common mother-organism. He called a"gewagtes Abenteuer der Vernunft" (daring adventureof the mind) the hypothesis that specifically differ-

.39

ing living beings have been formed out of each other,e.g. out of aquatic animals - marsh animals, out ofthese after a series of generations - land animals.But he had a faint hope that something could be donehere with the principle of nature's mechanism, pro-vided that the teleological view would always haveto indicate the direction of evolution out of thecommend progenitrix.

THE SPECULATIVE AND IRRATIONALISTIC EVOLUTIONISM' INSCHELLING'S AND OKEN'S NATURAL PHILOSOPHY.

It is only via KANT'S Kritik der Urteilskraftthat LEIBNIZ' conception of continuity acquires anevolutionistic interpretation in SCHELLING's workVon der Weltseele (1798) and in the natural philo-sophy of his pupil OKEN. But it concerned a specu-lative and irrationalistic evolutionism which, inits philosophy, had a transcendental-idealisticbasis and is therefore diametrically opposed to thelater classical mechanistic evolution-theory of

DARWIN and HAECKEL, who finally led the dogma ofevolution to its victory in scientific, biologicalthinking. No connection can be demonstrated betweenLEIBNIZ' principle of continuity and the rise of thistheory of evolution. The latter merely gave a

pseudohistorical turn to the thought-pattern about organicnature which hails from DESCARTES, and with it theidea of the stead,/ upward development from lower tohigher was transferred from the eighteenth centuryHumanist view of history to the genetico-biologicalway of thinking.¹5

15 In HERDER'S Ideen zur Philosophic; derGeschichte der Menschheit (1784) we already find theidea of historical development based on an idea ofnatural development, which sought to explain theentire upward line in the formation of groups oforganisms, culminating in man as animal destined toreason from the unity of organic force and its dif-

40

A certain influence of LEIBNIZ' continuityprinciple (without the monadology) on nineteenth cen-

(15 contd.) ferent methods in keeping with the dif-ferences between organs. He already views the entirecultural development of mankind as the inevitable con-sequence of the development of organic nature. Ac- cording to him, man was predestined for rationalthought, cultural activity and religion, by virtue ofhis natural organic development and, particularly hiserect posture..

In his well-known review of the first volume ofHERDER'S ideen, KANT sharply criticised this concep-

tion. "But the unity of organic force (p. 141)", hewrote, "which, whilst it forms the multiplicity of or-ganic creatures and works in different ways accordingto the differences between organs, wipes out thewholedistinction between its many genera and species, is aconception which lies entirely outside the field ofnatural science and belongs to purely speculativephilosophy, where, if it found entrance, it would bebound to play havoc among the accepted ideas. But towant to determine which arrangement of the head, ex-ternally in its shape and internally 4th regard tothe brain, is necessarily connected with the predis-position to erect posture, and, even more, in what wayan organisation which is solely aimed at this objec-tive, can contain the basis of rational pourer so thatanimals acquire it, that clearly goes beyond all humanreason, whether it is groping physiologically or fly-ing metaphysically". (Kant's W.W. Grossherzog WilhelmErnst Ausg. I p. 254).

Undoubtedly HERDER was strongly influenced byLEIBNIZ' from whom he borrowed his organic force idea.

But he rejected LEIBNIZ metaphysical monadology. Hetook only one motif out of it, viz. the independentvalue, which in the complete coherence of the universeis due to every individuality and finds expression inits development. In his view of the development ofnature not a single point of contact can be found fora mechanistic-materialistic theory of evolution, as

KANT also recognized in his review.

41

tury scientific-biological thought can be shownonly in DE LAMARCK'S theory of evolution and thisvia BONNET who was an adherent of philos-ophy. In it was not LAMARCK who determined thetriumphal -larch of evolutionism. LEVER'S thesis, that

LEIBNIZ' lex continui opened the way to evolutionismcannot therefore be maintained in its generality.

The writer shows us very instructively howmechanistic evolutionism since HAECKEL often aprioritransformed into a phylo-genetical series of

morphological series which idealistic morphology haddrawn up and which related to constant types of livingorganisms.

he establishes emphatically that it is onlypalaeontology which is in a position to supply irref-utable data concerning the relation between the vari-ous groups of organisms and that embryology and com-parative anatomy can give us pointers in this respect

only if a phylo-genetic relation has already beenroved palaeontologically. Put he r emarks the fos-sil discoveries Five no factual basis at all to clas-sic evolutionism. From the pre-Cambrian only algaefossils have been preserved. Fossil records tell usthat in the Cambrian fossil representatives of virtu-ally all prominent groups of invertebrates a pearfairly abruptly. "We are bonne to conclude from thoseremarkable data that nothing can be said with anycertainty or even with any probability about themutual genealogical relations between these groups"

(p. 78). or does palaeontology provide us withany evidence about the descent of vertebrates frominvertebrates.

"We are therefore bound to conclude that nothingis 'mown about the origin of the main groups of organ-isms that phyla" (p. 10). but what about the classes.orders etc. into which these phyla can be subdividedin a natural way? The writer points out that forseveral of th e se sub-groups the same holds as for thephyla. E.g. the classes of Mollusca and several clas-ses of Echinodermata have existed separately eversince the Cambrian, and here again, nothing can besaid with any certainty about their origin and their

42

mutual genealogical relations.It has been shown, though, that the different

classes of vertebrates, viz. cyclostoma, fish,amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds appeared oneafter the other. But, after the intensive researchof the last hundred years, no fossils transitionalforms have been found here either. The same hold foralmost all orders (sub-groups) of all classes ofanimals, both vertebrates and invertebrates, as G. G.SIMPSON, a true evolutionist of (neo-) classicalpersuasion, had to point out: "A fortiori, it is alsotrue of the classes themselves, and of the majoranimal phyla, and it is apparently also true of analo-gous categories of plants". (16).

SO-CALLED NEO-EVOLUTIONISM.

This state of affairs led to the rise of a so-called neo-evolutionistic trend which, in contrastto the classical evolutionists, accepts originaldiscontinuities, nature] jumps in development, bymeans of which the higher categories of the types ofliving organisms have separated from each other with-out continuous transitions. According to the neo-evolutionists the further differentiation into lowersub-types (species and genera, and possibly families)took place al ng continuous lines with the aid of themechanisms of selection, mutation, isolation etc.,only after these higher types had formed themselves,by jumps, in an earlier ontogenetic phase.

In order to explain the development, in jumps ofthe higher types, LEVER discusses three neo-evolution-istic hypotheses, viz, those of BOKER, SCHINDEWOLF andA. MEYER. He deems all three of them speculative andhardly suitable to give an acceptable explanation forthe gaps in the evolutionary process, with which theavailable fossil material confronts us. Coming backto classical evolutionism, the author points out em-

16Tempo and Mode in Evolution (New York 1947)p. 106 f.

4³

phatically that large numbers of biologists havecontinued to defend it against the neo-evolutionists.They are of the opinion that it is definitely possi-ble for the continuity-mechanisms of the micro-evo-lution (mutation, selection, migration and geographi-cal isolation) to fill the gaps. And LEVER prefersthe views of these investigators to those of the nee-evolutionists, especially since experimental researchis possible in the sphere of the micro-evolution,although he also points out the restrictions to whichthis research is subject, and does refer to certainobjections which may be raised to the drawing of con-clusions with regard to the macro-evolution fromexperiments in the sphere of the micro-evolution.

LEVER'S POSITION WITH REGARD TO THE PROBLEM OF THEGENESIS OF THE TYPES.

At the end, of the third chapter he cones to thefollowing conclusion about the problem of the genesisof the types. Creationism can, according to him, optfor the position that in all probability an evolution-ary process has taken place within many phyla. Thishappened, however, according to a divine plan. "Anevolution e.g. of mammals CUT OF reptiles and ofamphibians OUT OF fish in view of the successionswhich palaeontology has ascertained must not be deemedimpossible. As we have seen, we get the impressionthat the intermediate forms are missing. It istherefore possible that a gradual transformation inthe sense of classical evolutionism did not takeplace at all. We should rather think in terms of a

complex of processes which took place once only in im-probable combinations." This holds, of course, forthe genesis of the lower categories as well.

LEVER'S POSITION VIM REGARD TO THE PROBLEM OFPHYLO-GENESIS. HIS HYPOTHESIS CONCERNING THE ORIGIN

OF THE PHYLA OUT OF A COMMON STOCK.

44

As far as the origin of the phyla, the highestprimary types, is concerned, the writer considersthree hypothesis as possible from the "creationisticpoint of view". Tho first of these, concern the"special creation", called "creation out of nothing"again, which is confusing. The writer points outthat this hypothesis cannot be contradicted by re-search. The second possible hypothesis correspondswith his hypothesis concerning the origin of "life",previously discussed, and says that "out of firstlife, the various phyla originated in a series in away which has not been understood at all (as yet).Which series that was, one cannot say". The thirdhypothesis is that the phyla all originated

independently. "If this view were confirmed, it would meanthat in the case of most of the phyla we are dealingwith really irreducible groups, in other words withseparate sub-kingdoms within creation. This would bein line with the views of CIA and of idealisticmorphology" (p. 99). 17

The first of these hypothesis, which confusedcreation and temporal genesis, had already implicit-ly been rejected by the author, and, in my opinion,rightly so. As regards the two other positions, itseems to me that the first of these should be the moreattractive one for the writer, in view of his, remarksin that respect in the second chapter. But it placesus immediately before a number of questions to whichwe receive no answer, because the writer himself doesnet ask them.

CRITICAL QUESTIONS CONCERNING THIS HYPOTHESIS.

First of all we should ask ourselves: Whatscientific significance can this hypothesis have, whenLEVER himself remarked a little earlier: "As we have

17It is not clear why, the writer , from a possibleconfirmation of a hypothesis which posits the irredu-cibility of ALL phyla, concludes that only MOST ofthem are irreducible.

45

seen, not a sensible word can be said, actually, aboutthe origin of the phyla" (p. 94). Are we still in thescientific field of biology, in fact, or have wemoved altogether into the domain of a speculativephilosophy about the origin of living nature? In thefirst case, we can only speak of a scientific hypoth-esis if it would be possible to either confirm ordisprove it by continued experimental research. Theneo-classical evolutionists ' investigations regardingthe micro-evolution are, of course, the only ones tobe considered. The writer says in this connection:"We shall have to watch closely, therefore, theresearch of the investigators with rather classicaltendencies, and to refrain for the time being frombringing in a verdict on the fundamental Possibilityor impossibility of their method of interpretationwhich is STILL hypothetical AT TIU MOMENT" (p. 92).

The writer , quoting DOPZHANSKY, states expresslythat it is impossible to reproduce in a laboratoryeven the genealogy of the horse, and therefore, be-cause all research into micro-evolution can be relatedto macro-evolutionary processes by inference only,without the possibility of verifying the correctnessof these conclusions experimentally, the questionarises whether such conclusions can ever amount tomore than speculations when they are brought to bearon the explanation of the origin of the highest prima-ry types (the phyla).

The very wording of LEVER's second hypothesisbetrays a speculative tendency. he again uses thespeculative term "first life". In consideration ofwhat he said when he elaborated his third hypothesisin chapter two with respect to "the genesis of life",one can here only think of a tiny limp of livingprotoplasm which should as yet not demonstrate even asingle typical cell-structure. For if the latter werethe case it would already appear within a highestprimary type (phylum), viz. that of the unicellularplants or animals, and it could not be considered asthe progenitor of the successive series of phyla . Itshould also lack the radical -type of plant or animal,in so far as this already is a structural-type, the

46

origin of which the hypothesis intends to explain.Have we not returned now to the discarded Haeckelian"monera", or perhaps to the more recent hypotheticalbio-molecule? Speculatively, of course, we can un-derstand anything by "first life", but SCIENTIFICALLYthis term does not offer us any hold at all because itcertainly does not denote any empirical datum. Inaddition, the hypothesis referred to now definitelyspeaks of an originating of the phyla OUT OF, and notjust VIA, this speculative progenitrix of all earthlyplant-and animal life, and that in a successive series.ACCORDING TO ITS WORDING this hypothesis can hardly bedistinguished from the evolutionistic view. For theaddition "in a way which has not been understood atall as yet" and because one cannot say which seriesit was, leaves intact the basic thesis that the phylathemselves have originated out of a common stock.

THE PHYLA AS HIGHEST TYPES OF ORDERING 'WITHIN THERADICAL-TYPES OF THE PLANT-AND ANIMAL WORLDS.

Earlier on I already implied that the phyla (inthe sense of highest primary types of the plant-andanimal worlds) cannot come into existence and die inthe genetic process, since they themselves are not"living being" but rather TYPES OF ORDERING ofindividual totalities, which make the latter possibleand which form the basis of all our experience ofplants and animals. Classical evolutionism eliminatedthose types of ordering, and consequently had to iden-tify the phyla in a radical-nominalistic way with com-prehensive groups of living individuals, to whichscience has given the collective name PHYLA. Itwished to give a naturo-causal, essentially mechanis-tic explanation of the origin of the phyla-character.-istics in large groups of individuals. This madesense from the mechanistic point of view. But LEVERin his position cannot eliminate the actual types ofordering. And since he rejects the mechanistic viewof classical evolutionism, the question arises what heactually has in mind with his second hypothesis.

47

Certainly not a natural-scientific explanation of theorigin of the phyla-characteristics in plants andanimals. For there is no sense in that when one re-cognizes that these characteristics belong to a typi-cal totality-structure of plants and animals, whichcannot be approached in any way with a functionalisticcausality conception which is oriented only towardsthe physico-chemical aspect of our experience. Apartfrom that, the entirely speculative idea of a commonprogenitrix of the phyla does not fit in with astrictly natural-scientific way of thinking. So that,in fact, the writer leaves us in the dark as to theway he pictures "the originating of the phyla" out of a common stock as well as to the real intention ofthis hypothesis. From a philosophical - point of viewthe question arises whether, and if so,in which way,he is able to place this hypothesis within the frame-work of the theory of individuality-structures asdeveloped by the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea.The individuality-structures of the plant-and animalkingdom, contained in the creation order, must ofcourse not be identified with the type-classificationof LINNAEUS' system. But the question is whether ahypothesis, which reduces even the highest primarytypes of the plant and animal worlds (and evidentlythe radical-types as well) to a structurally-typicalcompletely undefined common stock, leaves any room forirreducible individuality-structures which are foundedin the divine creational order. LEVER is silent onthis point, but I must assume of course, that hisanswer to this question will be affirmative in princi-ple. But then he will agree that his second hypothe-sis needs a further elaboration and explanation,giving a more detailed answer to this question.

THE MUTUAL IRREDUCIBILITY OF THE PHYLA ASHIGHEST PRIMARY TYPES (TYPES OF •ORDERING).

As far as the third hypothesis is concerned, viz.that the phyla all originated independent of eachother, this is - apart from its wording, which is

48

again debatable - entirely consistent in its in-tention with the present-day results of palaeonto-logal research. And compared with the second-hypoth-esis it has the undoubted advantage that it avoidsthe quicksands of evolutionistic speculations, andaccepts the highest types of the plant-and animalkingdoms unreservedly as mutually irreducible sub-kingdom. In other words, it is based on an honestrecognition of the limites of man's experientialknowledge. and as such it fits in entirely with the

anti-speculative way of thinking of the Philosophy ofthe Cosmonomic Idea, which does not mean of course,that it would therefore be the only WE POSSIBLEfrom the Christian point of view, or that thePhilosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea would have to re-ject LEVER's second hypothesis a priori, before wehave seen its further elaboration and explanation.

TAE CONCEPT OF SPECIES AND THE PROBLEM OF EVOLUTION.

The fourth chapter, entitled "The Concept ofSpecies and the Problem of Origin" is really a contin-uation of the third. In my opinion it is from aphilosophical viewpoint, one of the best parts, of

LEVER'S book. In an earlier, elaborate treatise,published in the fifteenth volume of Philosophia

Reformata,18 the author had already expounded thedevelopment of the biological concept of species,

which nowadays has broken up into a multiplicity oflargely unrelated points of view, am sot forth hisviews on their future synthesis. In the fourthchapter of his book, however, he demonstrates inmany respects a much keener critical attitude in hishistorico-philosophical method, together with a ;orethorough and particularly instructive application ofthe theory of structural types, as developed in the

18Rondom het biologisch soort begrip (Phil. Ref.1³, 119-138 (1948); Vol. 14, 6-32 (1949); Vol. 15,1-23 (1950).

49

Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea, to the scientificdata. Especially his views on p. 129-136 may in thisrespect be called an important continuation ofDIEMER's earlier attempt to make this structure-theory

of the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea fruitful forthe biological concept of species,

The question whether the species is constant ornot,naturally raises its head again in this chapter.If we distinguish sharply between the law-side andthe factual side of the evolutionary process - as wehave seen, LEVER does not do this explicitly - it isunderstandable indeed that, especially with regard tothe most individualized structural types (the speciesand the genera), the question of constancy has becomethe centre of biological interest, because factualscientific material is indeed available concerning theactual structural changes in the individuals of aspecies. One deals then with the REALIZATION of thesemost individualized and differentiated structural typesof plants and animals, and not with the structuraltypes as LAW-TYPES or TYPES OF ORDERING of the greatprocess of GENESIS of the flora and fauna within thetemporal order.

There can be no doubt that many of the "genera"and "species" which appear in LINNAEUS' system, aswell as e.g. the various classes of vertebrates, navecome to be realized only successively in the differentphases of the evolutionary process of the plant-andanimal worlds, nor that several of the species andgenera which used to exist in former times have becomeextinct. These undeniable facts, however, havenothing to do with the actual question whether thespecies and genera are constant or not. Correctly put,the question is whether it is possible for a group ofplants or animals, which belongs to an existing genusan species, to undergo a factual, inner, genotypicalstructural change of such a character that a newspecies and a new genus is revealed.

According to LEVER (p. 137) it is for the biolo-gist a rather unimportant question which position oneshould take up, as a Christian, with regard to theproblem of the origin of species, "because natural-

50

scientific research indicates a clear answer to it".This statement, considered in the light of anotherone to which I shall refer later and according towhich the inconstancy of the species has been proved,appears incomprehensible to me when I confront it withthe relevant state of scientific research.

If the concept of species is used, in what hasbeen the traditional sense, since Rai and LINNAEUSwe find indeed that more recent investigations intomutation have shorn irrefutably that, within so-called

poly-typical genera, inner structural changes in thecarriers of the hereditary factors from one generationto the next occur frequently. here I refer mainly tothe so-called GENO-MUTATIONS (changes in the entireset-up of the chromosomes), the most frequent andsimplest case of which is the so-called POLY-PLOIDY,i.e. the simple doubling, trebling, etc. of the pre-vious chromosome material. This has been found in thevegetable world, but also in the animal world, al-though in a much smaller number of cases. Suchchanges occur mainly as a result of hybridization, butalso sometimes in connection with external influenceson the organism.

HAS THE INCONSTANCY OF THE SPECIES BEEN PROVED BYMORE RECENT INVESTIGATIONS INTO MUTATION? SPECIESAND VARIETIES (RACES).

It is a vastly different question, however,whether the experimental material in the field ofsuch structural mutations, which is still increas-ing, can be used as proof for the "evolution of onespecies out of another, or of one genus out ofanother", species and genus used here in the senseof elementary structural types, realized in groupsof individuals.

Many leading biologists, among whom there are,in particular, many practitioners of systematicbiology, so-called taxonomists, regard this as ex-tremely doubtful or even deny it in principle.Their opinion is that the available data merely prove

51

that new races of varieties can be formed withinan existing so-called poly-typical species, whichis of itself impossible in mono-typical species,which do not form varieties. The only convincingproof that really new species could be formed by wayof mutation and with the assistance of other factors,would have to be supplied by the so-called MENDELIAN-

analysis, which naturally cannot be applied in inves-tigations concerning hybridization of species andgenera. 19

THE OBLITERATION OF THE BORDERS BETWEEN SPECIES ANDVARIETIES BY NEO-DARWINISM AND ITS DENOUNCEM ENT BYBORGMEIER.

The Neo-Darwinists have deliberately seized onthe poly-typical species, intending to blur the bor-ders between variety and species, to attach geneticpriority to the variety as so-called "sub-species"and thus to make plausible the gradual emergence ofnew species out of varieties. Recently THOMASBORGMEIER. in his treatise BASIC QUESTIONS OF SYS-TEMATICS (Systematic Zoology, Vol. 6, 1957, No.²),sharply, but in my opinion convincingly, denouncedthis evolutionistic erosion of the biological con-cept of species.

He correctly points out that, if one adheres tothe facts, one is bound to establish that the for-mation of a race is possible only within a species,in other words that the race or the variety cannotbe an independent category in systematics: "Conse-quently there is indeed a PRIMARY DIFFERENCE betweenspecies characters and race characters, and the factthat the specific characters are retained in everyformation of a race is clear evidence for the for-mation of races from species, but not of species from

19 See B. BAVINK-PIERZ, Ergebnisse and Problemeder Naturwissenschaften (9e Aufl. 194 8 P. 539f.)

52

races" (p. 65 above). And the well-known geneticist-biologist GOLDSCHMIDT stated: "Sub-species areactually, therefore, neither incipient species normodels for the origin of species. They are more orless diversified blind alleys within the species".(cit. op. BORGEIER)

The biologist NILSSON, also mentioned in LEVER'Sbook, summarized the opinion of many systematists inhis work Synthetische Artbildung (195³, p. 252) inhis pronouncement: "The species is constant".

It is certain, at any rate, that mutations ingenes, in chromosomes, or in the entire chromosome-pattern cannot, in themselves, cause an evolution ofthe species, but hinder it rather. For, if all thegeno-typically different individuals of a certainspecies were to interbreed without limitations, thesemutations would have to result in a certain equilibri-um in the distribution of all the available genic-material among these individuals. Therefore, for thepurpose of the current evolutionistic theories, muta-tion can be considered as a species-forming factoronly in conjunction with isolation and selection, thetask of the latter two factors being the prevention ofthe above mentioned equilibrium.

THE RELATION OF BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMATICSTO PHYLOGENETICS.

But the big stumbling-block of these theories isprecisely that they do not use a clear-cut concept of

species any more. It may be said of BORGMEIER thathe has tied himself up too much to the Ray-Linnaeanconcept of species, but for the time being no betterconcept of species has been WORKED OUT, and it appearsto me that his theses concerning the relation betweenbiological systematics and pnylogenetics are, AT LEASTIN PRINCIPLE, entirely correct: "Systematics isindependent of the theory of descent. This is admit...ted today even by convinced evolutionists. Thereasons are as follows: (1) Systematic methods pro-vide definite results without reference to the idea of

53

evolution; phylogenetics has no special methods, it isessentially the interpretation of systematic facts.(2) Systematics is a science; phylogeny is a hypothe-sis of a historical process containing a fundamentallyuniversifiable element (THOMPSON) and can thereforenever be the foundation of a science. (3) Systema-tics is investigation of facts; phylogenetics is often"a dangerous play with mere possibilities" (HENNY);KANT called it "a daring adventure of the mind". Ofcourse, any systematist is free to speculate on theprobable phylogeny of certain species or genera, onthe basis of systematic facts... But such theoreti-cal considerations can only be evaluated as a sup-plement to systematics; they have without effects ontrue systematic research" (p. 54, 55 above).

LEVER S DENOUNCEMENT OF THE "DOGMA OF THE CONSTANCYOF SPECS" LAC KS A FAC TUAL BASIS.

LEVER does not go into these important points,which is understandable in view of the book's inten-tion to avoid technical matter as much as possible.In opposing the "dogma of the constancy of species",still widely adhered to in orthodox Protestant circlesaccording to him, he remarks, however, that "by notaccepting the one and only point of the evolution-idea which had been proved, the philosophicallystrongly anti-Christian evolutionist was handed theweapon with which he could brand Christians as timid,narrow-minded deniers of facts" (p. 139).

It is regrettable that at the end. of this in-teresting chapter he puts the matter in that way.For has it, in fact, been proven convincingly thatthe structures of species in their subjective reali-zation are not constant, in the sense in which theevolution-theory had intended it? in view of whathas been said above, this is highly doubtful to saythe least, even if the Rae-Linnaean concept of speciesis used as basis. It is all the more doubtful, andit should even be denied, if one, believing that thistraditional concept of species does not meet the spec-

54

ifications of the "new systematics" any _ore, sharesLEVER'S opinion that a satisfactory concept of species

can only be achieved on the basis of the theory ofindividuality-structures as developed by the Philoso-phy of the Cosmonomic Idea. For this concept has notyet been defined. Now, then, could it nave beenproved that the species, as this concept sees them,are not constant in their realization in living indi-viduals and should be viewed only as variable evolu-tionary forms?

LEVER is quite right, of course, when he pointsout that one should not simply read the Linnaean con-cept of species into the creation of plants and

animals after their kind. But that the typical differ-ences between the species , however these may have tobe understood in their structural theory, are like-wise rooted in the divine creation-order and thatthese in the final analysis determine the nature ofplants and animals, will under no circumstances bedenied by LINER, nor that these at least as "orderingtypes" which make our specific experience of animalsand plants possible, cannot be variable.

THE CONCEPT OF SPECIES SUPPOSES TEE CONSTANCY OF THESPECIES IS LOWEST PRIMARY TYPES OF THE VEGETABLE-AND ANIMAL KINGDOMS.

Full recognition may be given, in that respect,to actual structural changes in the constellationsof chromosomes and genes. But they should not beadduced as arguments against the constancy of thestructural types as TYPES OF ORDERING OF TEE INDIVID-UALITY. Classical and neo-classical evolutionism havesimply ELIMINATED the latter, but in doing so theyhave also broken with any actual concept of species,as LEVER rightly points out himself. And, as AGASSIZalready observed, there is no sense in saying that thespecies are not constant if one does not have an actu-al concept of species. Of course, we may not aprioriexclude the POSSIBILITY that many of the species-typeswhich are now known as such, have in fact, as types of

55

ordering, realized themselves by way of a gradualor more sudden structural transformation of groupsof individuals whose ancestors revealed a

different species-type, even though that possibility can-not be verified scientifically. A. NAEF'S remark,quoted by LEVER: "If living organisms which arenowadays present as different species, have commonancestors, they are really one species", is notcorrect in its generality. Common ancestry is, inthe final analysis, not the decisive factor in de-termining whether the descendants belong to the samespecies-type. The type realized should be matchedwith the ordering-type of the species, which isconstant after its inner nature and in respect towhich the question of actual descent of the individ-uals belonging to a species is, up to a point, in-different. Although we may say that the ordering-type of the species implies the possibility of pro-ducing fertile offspring, we should qualify it thus:within the bounds of the same type of ordering. Theconcept of species which is oriented towards thisordering-type will therefore always be tied to thepostulate of the constancy of species, in the senseof constancy of the ordering-type of the species, nomatter how any "new systematics" may define itfurther.

LEVER recognizes (p. 122) that the scientificconcept of species "has always been, from the natureof the case, a concept of something constant" andthat consequently evolutionism, which views the wholeworld of organisms only as a stream of continuouslyvarying forms, cannot arrive at an actual concept ofspecies. Furthermore I might add that this concept ofspecies is not tied to the Greek-scholastic ideas norto form-realism. The ordering-type of the species, asthe Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea sees it, shouldcertainly not be understood in this Greek-scholasticsense. It is, therefore, meaningless to speak of a"dogma of constancy of species" which Christian natu-ral science ought to drop. For, as BORGMIER pointsout, the acceptance of the constancy of the species isthe basis of the entire biological systematics and is

56

founded in solid facts, whereas its negation is due toa dogmatic evolutionistic prejudice which has inter-preted the systematic factual material in a scientif-ically unverifiable manner.

Objections can only be reasonably raised againstthe dogmatic identification of the constant species-types as types of ordering with the CONCEPT of specieswhich has been traditional since Ray and Linnaeas, andagainst the connection of this concept of species withthe scholastic doctrine of the eternal creation-ideasin the divine Logos. And I believe that only this wasLEVER'S real intention. But the way in which he for-mulated this intention could lead to serious misunder-standings. Because of this I found necessary to gointo more detail.

THE ORIGIN OF AN AND THE: ORIGIN OF "LIFE". THELATTER PROBLEM LIES OUTSIDE THE SPHERE OF THECONCEPT OF BIOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT.

The fifth chapter is devoted to the origin ofman. And it is evident that the question concerningthe relation of creation and evolution becomes crit-ically significant here for the Christian biologist,because the central problem "what is man?" comes upfor discussion. In my review of the previous chaptersit became evident that in the traditional problem ofevolution much more is involved than the concept ofBIOLOGICAL development proper. For the latter pre-supposed the organic life-aspect of our temporalexperiential world. The question concerning the origin of "organic life" in the temporal process ofbecoming, therefore, can never lie within the sphereof the concept of biological development. This ques-tion belongs rather to a PHILOSOPHICAL EVOLUTION-IDEA,which implies a development of a-biotic constellationsof matter into expressions of organic life, and withinthe latter a further development from the most primi-tive to higher and finally to the highest expressionsof life in our temporal world. The adherents of thisidea, however, are not aware that the concept "life"

57

has an analogous character, i.e. possesses a plural-ity of meanings.

THE TWO AXIOMS OF MECHANISTIC EVOLUTIONISM.

This evolution-idea is unable in principle torecognize borders between mutually irreducible modalaspects and individuality-structures of our world ofexperience. It starts from two "axioms", the secondof which had already been posited in Greek thought,viz. NATURA NON FACIT SALMIS (Nature takes no jumps)and EX NIHILO NIHIL FIT (Nothing comes out of noth-ing). It is logical, therefore, that it cannot butview also all post-biotic aspects of our experientialhorizon from the evolutionistic view point, and thatit a priori implies man's descent from animals.

Dogmatic evolutionism, in the way it reveals it-self since DARWIN and HAECKEL as the predominatingview in biological science, intended to give a natu-ral-scientific explanation of the origin and develop-ment of "life" in all its stages, so it had to en-deavour to explain nattral-scientifically the originof man as well. The philosophical evolution-ideafrom which it started, however, was not a natural-scientific causality-concept at all, but rather atranscendental-philosophical IDEA OF ORIGIN whichpresented itself DISGUISED as a natural-scientificcausality-concept. This masquerade of a philosophicalPrejudice, influenced by religious considerations, asa natural-scientific causality view gave this evolu-tionism its (pseudo-) scientific aspect. The axiom"Ex nihilo nihil fit", which had originally a strictlylogical meaning, was thus automatically given apseudo-natural-scientific turn: In order to trace theorigin of "life" and in particular of man, one must beable, in this line of thought, to explain natural-scientifically how they came forth out of originallya-biotic matter, e.g. out of an animal stock.

In as far as neo-evolutionism acquiesced to thelack of transitional forms between the higher types ofplants and animals, it wished yet to put forward at

58

least a hypothesis for the natural-scientific expla-nation of the gaps in the great process of evolution.The (pseudo-) natural-scientific theory of evolutionimplies a FUNCTIONALISTIC way of thinking which triesto reduce the structural-typical in the temporalprocess of genesis of our created world to a geneticproduct of purely functional physico-chemical rela-tions which, in the process of evolution, only becomeincreasingly complicated.

The evolution-idea from which this way of think-ing starts has, in fact, nothing to do with the actualconcept of (ontogenetical) biological development.For the latter implies the presence in the initialsituation, either predisposedly or potentially, of thatwhich develops, and its unfolding out of this pre-disposition under the required environmental condi-tions in a purposive process. Although this conceptof development as such has only a modal character,since it relates to the organic life-aspect of ourexperiential world, it can only be applied to livingorganisms as individual totalities, determined bytheir internal structural types. For the same reasonthe actual biological causality-concept can only beused in relation to the typical totality-structuresof living organisms and their mutual interlacements.It can never serve to explain the typical totality-character of living beings out of a mechanism ofpurely functional factors.

THE PROBLEM CONCERNING THE ORIGIN OF MAN AND THEFOSSIL DISCOVERIES MADE. BY PALAEONTOLOGY.

The ontogenetic organic development of MAN'S lifestarts with the HUMAN, and not with an animal, germ-cell. But this germ-cell can develop into the ful-grown foetus only inside the human womb. How thenshould we imagine the temporal process of becoming ofthe first humans to appear on earth? Should we assumea phylogenetic connection between the human race anda certain species of higher animal primates? Thisquestion lies outside the sphere of the concept of

59

biological development, for it is biogeneticallyinexplicable how a HUMAN germ-cell could evolvefrom a not-yet-human parents. Classical mechanisticevolutionism, however thought that it was able togive the only possible answer to this question, evenbefore the interesting and still increasing discover-ies had been made of fossil remains of pre-historicmen and man-like beings which, together with archae-ological find, forced a thorotgh revision of theearlier, pre-evolutionistic ideas about the age of thehuman race.

LEVER gives a brief, but excellent survey ofthese discoveries. Their age places them in thePleistocene, the epoch of the four glacial periods:the Gunz Riss- and Wurm- glacial periodsand the three interglacial periods which can bedistinguished between them. The majority of the fos-sil remains in question belong to the four main groupof"man-like beings", viz. the PITHECANTHROPUS (ERECTUSand ROBUSTUS), SINFANTHROPUS, HOMO NEANDERTHALENSISand HMO SAPIENS DILUVIALIS, and only the latter cor-responded roughly in anatomical structure with "his-toric man" (HOMO SAPIENS RECENS). The former threeshow, in this respect, strongly animal, as well ashuman, caracteristics. That h01 ,10 SAPIENS RECENSdescended from HOMO SAPIENS DILUVIALIS ;Lust be ac-cepted, as LEVER correctly observes. But it is nota part of the problem of evolution, because diluvialelan, who lived during the Wurm glacial period (esti-mated from 60,000 - 100 , 000 to 10,000 - 20,000 yearsago) and produced the famous cave paintings, must beconsidered as complete man in every respect.Evolutionism naturally looks to anatomical transition-forms for support for its hypothesis concerning man'sdescent from animals, and the fossil discoveries onthe Pithecanthropus, the Sinanthropus and theNeanderthal man appeared to be just right for the pur-pose.

LEVER now shows us in a brief, butwell-documented exposition how the latest fossil discoveries

during the last few decades have removed all semblanceof probability from the supposition that diluvial man

6O

is descended from anthropoids via the Neanderthaler,the Sinanthropus and the Pithecanthropus . Sincethe sensational discoveries in South Africa or thefossil remains of the so-called Australopithecinae, italso appeared that the anatomical-skeletal charac-teristics, which so far had been the assumed criteriaof human beings, are not sufficient to answer thequestion whether the fossils are of human or of animalorigin. "These discoveries", LEVER writes;

greatly surprised the anthropologists. The reasonfor their surprise was that these discoveries showvery clearly that we are not descended from recentanthropoids or from quite similar beings, and alsothat the typically human characteristics must bemuch older than had ever been thought.

Or, as KALIN expressed it:The sensational aspect is rather, that in the eyesof the biologist the image of man becomes more andmore human, and that to a large extent it had be-come impossible to speak of early, animal-likestages of higher primates, where man's physicalindependence is concerned. In the place of thesavage, animal-like primitive who lived inERNST HAECKEL'S fantasy, an image of man has nowappeared on whose countenance the light of thespirit is visible from the very beginning.

THE INSUFFICIENCY OF THE CRITERIA OF ANATOMY FORTHE DISTINGUISHING OF 12711 AND ANIMALS

The above also means, however, that palaeontologyhas not been able, on the basis of its fossil discov-eries, to determine the age of the human race withincertain limits on the geological calendar. In orderto do that, it needs the help of archaeology, whichbrings to light and investigates the objectiveproducts of human culture, preserved in various layersof the earth. And this means that Science will haveto replace the criteria of anatomy for the distinctionbetween man and animal more and more with the culturalcriterion. Classical evolutionism had certainly not

61

expected this.

ARCHAEOLOGY'S OLDEST CULTURAL DISCOVERIES.

It appears that the oldest known culturalproducts, the remnants of which were found in Africa,date back to the early beginning of the Pleistocene.This means, assuming that the geological chronologyis correct and that the primitive stone implementswhich were found can only come from man (and thereare no reasonable grounds to doubt this); as LEVERpoints out, this would entail that man was alreadyfound on earth approximately 500,000 years ago. Itfollows then, according to the writer, that actuallynothing is known scientifically about the origin ofthose earliest humans. For we have no knowledge ofany remains of beingswhich, according to evolution-istic ideas, could be considered as man's ancestorsand lived in the Pliocene, a period of 10-15 millionyears which preceded the Pleistocene (they were sup-posed to be anthropoids). For it has not been provedthat the above-mentioned Australopithecinae, with thesurprisingly strong mixture of anthropoid - and man-like features in their anatomy, already lived at theend of the Pliocene.

About the human beings who made the oldestknown stone implements we have no further knowledge;but it is evident from the spread of the stone-cultures that mankind lived in practically the entireold world even as early as in the Lower Pleistoceneand in the beginning of the Middle Pleistocene (i.e.about 400,000 years ago according to the geologicalchronology). In the same sedimentary layers (nearPeking) in which the Sinanthropus remains were dis-covered, not only stone implements which showed thatharmer and anvil were already in use but also theremnants of fire-places where meat was roasted, werefound. To connect these cultural products with theSinanthropus, in whose habitation they were found, isobvious, although we cannot ascertain this with cer-tainty. Thus, cautiously, LEVER makes this connection.

6²

No doubt is possible however , with regard. tothe culture of the Neanderthalers who lived accordingto the geological chronology approximately 150,000 to60-70 . O00 years ago, and whose stone implements. how-ever primitive displayed a considerably . greaterretouching than those of the oldest stone cultures.It is certain that as for the anatomy of these humansis concerned the humans evidenced strongly ape-likefeatures. But it is also evident from the most recentdiscoveries that we should possibly think here interms of a degeneration symptom rather than of anoriginal presence of these features. For these dis-coveries proved that much older Neanderthaloid typebeings must have existed, who showed many featuresin their anatomy which were characteristic of diluvialman as well so that the latter was definitely not adescendent of the Neanderthal.

LEVER also goes into the religion of pre-historicman in as far as anything can be concluded about itfrom the manner of burying the dead the art -productsand the famous discovery made in 1920. in sedimentarylayers dating from the early Neanderthal period , inthe "Drachenloch" cave in East-Switzerland whichnowadays is connected either with ritual burials ofanimals or with the sacrifice of firstlings. as wellas the place of sacrifices discovered by German RUSTnear Ahrensburg in the vicinity of Hamburg whichdates from the last ice-age. He remarks that iffurther studies should conclude the opinion. thatNeanderthal and ice-age people believed in a God orin gods who control life on earth this world be an

s badded reason to consider them aelonging , completelyand in every respect, to the human race.

THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL VIEW OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF THECOSMONOMIC IDEA AND THE PROBLEM OF EVOLUTION.

We pay particular close attention of course,when LEVER in the latter part of the elaborate fifthchapter starts to draw his conclusions with regard tothe question how we should view, from the biblical

6³

creation-motive and in the light of the present daystate of science, the problem of the origin of firstman in the temporal genetic process. His standpointon this question is all the more important to thereaders of this journal because his philosophical-anthropological view agrees with the guiding prin-ciples which I previously developed out of thetheory of the enkaptic structural whole. He has thusfreed himself in principle from the dualistic viewof man which, under the influence of the Greek form-matter motive, was expressed in traditional-scholasticanthropology. Starting from the religious centre, asthe root of human existence and the focal point of thesin-obscured image of God, he sees man's entire tempo-ral form of existence as an integral whole only, inwhich, in spite of the fact that four individuality-structures are enkaptically interlaced in it, there isno room whatsoever any more for a dichotomy as it usedto be assumed between the material body and the so-called "rational soul" in the traditional theory.

But with that LEVER has also in principle blockedfor himself the neo-scholastic way-out of acceptingthe evolutionitic view with regard to the human"material body", and the psychocreationistic idea,sanctioned by the Roman-Catholic church's teachings,with regard to the so-called "immortal rational soul".Reading his circumspectly worded conclusions, one findsindeed that he does not enter upon this road at all.When he (p. 178 C.) brings up the question whether,from a Christian standpoint, the door should be closedin advance on the POSSIBILITY of a genetic connectionbetween man and animal, he is well aware that themechanistic-evolutionistic view of this genetic con-nection, which had a point of contact in the anatomi-cal and physiological relationship between the humanbody and that of the anthropoid, starts from aTOTALITY VIEW of man which incorporates him comp letelyin the animal world. LEVER realizes full Tell thatthis view cannot be taken over IN PART.

"This evolutionistic view of man," he writes,"has caused a shallowness and a loss of criticalscientific capacity which did not remain confined to

64

biology. For if man does not differ qualitativelyfrom the animals the human "spirit" must be studiedin the light of the soul of the anima: as well. Toapporach man's language we must start from the soundsmade by animals there is an evolution of language.human societies the nations must be compared withthe communities in the animal kingdom. Wars and thedictum "might is right", can be explained and justi-fied with "the struggle for rife" and "the survivalof the fittest" (p. 191),Quite so and we can add that in ethnology,where this evelutionism since HERBERT SPENCER firstmade its appearance its scientific untenabili ty alsofirst came to light when the ethnological factualmaterial was subjected to really critical cultural-scientific methods and was no long er interretedaccording to aprioristic evolution-diagrams.

THE HUMAN BODY AS AN ENKAPTIC STRUCTURAL WHOLE.

In the light of the concept of the human bodyas an enkaptic structural whole it is not surprisingthat important characteristics of anatomy and nhysio-logy can re found which are common to man and the re-cent anthropoids. The fossil discoveries of theAustralopithecinae have proved even, that beingshave lived in the past which have resembled manmuch more still than do the present-day anthropoids,so much more even as LEVER points out . that on thebasis of their skeletal remains it cannot be deter-minded any more whether they were animals or human:.

On- can go further and recognize that the humanbody displays striking characteristics in common withthe anthropoids in not only its physico-chemicallyqualified sub-structure but also in that of its liv-ing organism and in the sensorially qualified sub-structure above it. But none of these three sub-structures is QUALIFYING for the HUMAN body. Theyare enkaptically bound, in an INTEGRAL structural whole .

qualified by that I called the act-structure. Thisact-structure stands in an inseverable relation to the

65

human I-ness as the religious centre, from whichemanate all man's temporal inner acts and all actionswhich give expression to these inner acts. Therealization of this act-structure in the body of thefirst humans to appear on earth cannot possibly beexplained from a structural transformation of animalhereditary factors, which, after all, could lead atmost to the realization of a new animal species-type(although it has been shown that this possibilitycannot be verified scientifically).

MAN CANNOT BE UNDERSTOOD STARTING IRON THEANIMAL, BUT, CONVERSELY THE ANIMAL CAN ONLY BEUNDERSTOOD STARTING FUN ,: MAN, BECAUSE IT IS ONLY WITHIN

THE ACT-STRUCTURE OF THE HUMAN BODY THAT THE LATTER'SANIMAL SUB-STRUCTURE CAN DISCLOSE ITS ?ELATION TO OUR

INNER ACTS AND CAN THEREFORE BE KNOWN BY LS.Since the three lower individuality-structures

of man's body, in which he SHARES in the material-vegetable-and animal kingdoms, function enkapticallywithin the act-structure of his body and display thetypical HUMAN characteristics in it, the human bodyas enkaptic structural whole will continue to display,ALSO IN ITS RELATEDNESS TO THE ANIMAL BODY, itsFUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCES with the latter. That thesefundamental differences are, in recent times, es-pecially from a biological perspective, beginning tothrust themselves upon various investigators is not atall surprising. ARNOLD GEHLEN, in his well-known Der

Mensch, has even attempted to develop, from this view-point (which he absolutizes), a uniform image of manas '!acting being", bringing into focus in a strikingmanner the fundamental difference between man and theanimals which are specialised in their environment.This is all the more interesting because GEHLEN start-ed from NIETZSCHE'S view on man as the animal notfixed in evolution.

LIVER particularly points to A. PORTMANN's con-tributions to a new zoological view on the problem ofman'S descent, which emphasize especially the latter'Sentirely unique type of biotic development. (ThisSwiss author, for that matter, was strongly influencedby G7HLLN).

66

LINER'S HYPOTHESIS CONCERNING A POSSIBLEGENETIC RELATION BETWEEN MAN AND ANIMAL.

Surveying all recent data, the writer arrives atthe following statement, with which I can fully con-cur:

Correspondences in the lower individuality-structures between man and anthropoids, there-fore, do not constitute a "simple fact" withconsequences for the other structures. Going toextremes, we can even imagine beings living nextto each other who looked practically the same butwere characteristic anthropoids and complete

humans respectively. It does not in any way solvethe problem of the origin of this typically humanaspect", (p. 195).

And yet, at the end of this chapter he arrives at aconclusion which, however circumstpectly worded, in-tends to keep the door open, from a Christian stand-point, for the possible genesis of man by way ofanimals, as is evident from the further explanationin the sixth and last chapter of his book.

This conclusion reads: So that, putting togetherour knowledge of the life of the higher primates inthe Pleistocene and the revelation that man originatedwithin creation, we may not reject in advance thePOSSIBILITY of man's genesis mil. a being which was,at least in its skeletal characteristics, an animalaccording to our mores and criteria". (p. 197).

After all that has been said earlier in thischapter, this conclusion is rather unexpected, in theway that, in the previous chapters, the eventualconcessions to evolutionism actually came unexpected-ly because there did not appear to be any justifica-tion for them in the preceding survey of availablefactual material and results of scientific research.For only a little earlier we heard that theAustralopithecinae, who most likely were contempo-raries of the human beings who lived in the earlyPleistocene, were so similar to humans in their skele-tal characteristics that, on the basis of the fossildiscoveries alone, we cannot determine whether they

67

were humane or animals. It appeared that thestrongly ape-like features in the skeletal forms ofthe Neanderthalers were much less developed. in theolder Neanderthaloid types of skeleton. And all thegiant-size skeletal remains which were discovered ihrecent decades and belong to the Middle - or to theLover Pleistocene, also a peared to be "man-like"and not "anthropoid-like" according to the anatomicalcriteria :revelling so fr.

But I admit that judging by the fossil remainsof their skeletons , the Pithecanthropus. the

Sinanthropus and the Neanderthaler were built acreanthropoid-like. Even though we may be -ire that t his-

torical man and hie diluvial ancestors are certainlynot descendants of those beings. the fact remains thathuman (e.g. probably human) beings hew lived on earthwhich displayed these more animal-like anatomicalfeatures.

heat can be achieved with the hypothesis that manand animal used to be genetically related (the authorspeaks again . here, of a genesis of man VIA and ani-mal)? In the sixth cha rter LEVER relates this possi-bility to that of the origin of first life via life-less matter. Again he says (p. 2²1) that theChristian need not reject "the idea that a continuousconnection" (he presumably means e c ontinuousMETE connection) "used to exist between life andthe lifeless." And he continues: "The same holds fore.g. the origin of man. here also we may not rejectin advance the possibility that man and animal used tobe related genetically. The man act-structures,

however, cannot be reduced to the animal psyche. Theyfunction within the aspects of reality erected in thebeginning. How this possible development from animalto man took place is not known to -Le," etc. (p. 221).

His further explanation of this is important:"In order to avoid misunderstanding. but possibly un-necessarily, we must point out that we do not mean tosay that e.g. a mother gorilla suddenly gave birth toa human baby. That would be an absurdity. For man isa unity in all his structures. and we should thereforerather inn ine that within creation viz, within the

68

group of higher mammals, a separate line led to man,a line in which all lower structures were directedat the unfolding of the highest structures of man • "

This makes it clear, of course, that LEVER re-jects the pseudo-natural-scientific-evolution-theoryin principle, a fact which could not be doubted any-way.

CRITICAL ,QUESTIONS IN CONNECTION WITHLEVER'S HYPOTHESIS.

But here the same difficulty confronts us as inLEVER'S elucidation of his hypothesis concerning theorigin of "organic life" VIA lifeless matter. If Iunderstand the explanation of his hypothesis about theorigin of man via animals correctly, it implies in anycase that, in a transitional phase from animal to man,the individuality-structures of the material composi-tion and of the living organism and the sensoriallyqualified structure had already been opened and werethus DIRECTED at the human within this act-structure,which, therefore, should have been realized already.How else than within the act-structure of the humanbody could e.g. the function of feeling, which has theleading role in the sensorially qualified structure ofthe animal body, be already opened into sense of log-ic, of power, of language, of justice, etc.? Suchdisclosed functions of feeling are already TYPICALLYHEW in character and, consequently, cannot be re-vealed in a being which is still animal. Thehypothesis which supposes that the realisation of theact-structure is the result only of the disclosureof the animal sub-structure, therefore reverses againthe only known genetic order and leads to inner anti-nomies. It certainly does not belong to the conceptof psychological development, just as the hypothesisconcerning the origin of life via a purposive (andtherefore disclosed) ordering of the atoms andmolecules of complex protein compounds does riot belongto the concept of biological development.

If the continuity in the evolution from animal to

69

man in this hypothesis is to be maintained, the lat-ter is bound to resort to "transitional beings" whichare not animals any more, but not humans either. Butnobody is able to say what should be understood bysuch beings and in which way it could be ascertainedscientifically whether or not they ever existed. Andthe question how a human being could originate viasuch a transitional being, is in my opinion no lessinsoluble than the question how a human being coulddevelop from e.g. an impregnated ovum of a femalechimpanzee; a question which LEVER himself calls ab-surd. The writer has apparently realized this:"How man'S coming into being took place", he writes(p. 197) "the Bible does not reveal to us. Scienceis hot able to answer this question, either. We areonly just starting to realize that the origin ofan presents a much more complicated problem than hadever been imagined."

HAS LEVER'S HYPOTHESIS ANY SCIENTIFIC VALUE?

For anyone who, with LEVER, rejects mechanisticevolutionism, the hypothesis concerning the originof man via an animal line can, strictly speaking, haveno real scientific significance, since it has nothingto contribute to a scientific answer to the questionhow that which is TYPICALLY HUMAN originated. Theevolutionists' claim to an explanation, however, stillattracts the author, as evidenced by his statement inthe final chapter (p. 221), where he remarks, concern-ing the question how the possible development fromanimal to man took place and how, where and when the"act-structure" was realized in the first humans;"These questions may be for science to solve. Weshould, therefore, not keep aloof from these problemsas if we had already solved them, but occupy ourselveswith them among all other investigators".

THE "DOCTA IGNORANTIA" TOWARDS THE QUESTION HOW MANFIRST CA INTO BEING IN THE TEMPORAL GENETIC PROCESS.

70

I believe that it is possible to adopt a thirdattitude towards these questions, which does notfit in the dilemma posited here by LEVER, viz. thatof the DOCTA IGNORANTIA. If I have understood himcorrectly ADOLF PORTMANN also takes this attitude inhis above mentioned work. I readily admit that the

questions which LEVER refers to hero do not leave mein peace either, and that the hypothesis about theorigin of man via an animal line has a certain speculative fascination for me also. But as I cannotsee in which way these questions could be brought toa really scientific solution, and as I do not know ofany facts which would more or less force us inscientific respect into the direction of the saidhypothesis (unless we are biased already by the dogmaof evolution), I consider it more justificable toreconcile ourselves to the insolubility of these prob-lems. For if we were to occupy ourselves scientifi-cally with them among all other investigators, asLEVER wants us to do, we should at least be able toform some idea of the scientific significance of thehypothesis concerning man's descent from animals andof the methodical path we should have to follow inorder to proceed scientifically along its lines. Theevolutionist of the mechanistic type has undoubtedlyformed such an idea, but that cannot be LEVER's.objection to his hypothesis now is that he gives usno indication whatever of the way in which he pro-poses to use it in science.

Well worth reading are his views concerning thequestion to what extent God's guidance and directionof the 'recesses within the created temporal world maybe seen when it is not supernatural intervention. Ican fully subscribe to these views, but I do not thinkthat he himself wishes to contend that they show usthe way to a scientific application of his hypothesis.It seems to me that the latter is not necessary forthe Christian biologist, palaeontologist andarchaeologist in order to co-operate con snore withtheir colleagues who hold evolutionistic views ininvestigations regarding mutations, the genesis of ourpresent-day flora and fauna, and the earliest human

71

life upon earth.It is then my opinion that LEVER's hypothesis

is irreconcilable with the biblical creation-motiveand with the views, developed by the Philosophy ofthe Cosmonomic Idea, concerning the modal and typicalstructures of our temporal experiential world? Iwould certainly not like to say that, for it differsradically from the hypothesis of mechanistic evolu -

tionism. And he quite correctly points out (p.226f.)that already DR. A. KUYPER Sr. in 1899, in his well-known rectorial address on EVOLUTION, did not con-sider as irreconcilable the Christian confession andthe recognition of the possibility of a generalevolution from lifeless matter to man, guided by Godand originating in a creation in the beginning. LEVERhas, as he himself remarks, only put this possibilitymore positively, since none of the earlier classicalviews in Christian circles can nowadays stand up tocriticism.

And if he asked me whether I can offer a betterhypothesis concerning the becoming of the first humanswho appeared on earth and concerning the origin of thefirst living organisms on earth, I could only answerin the negative. But if it were so, that we standhere at the limites of human experiential knowledge,beyond which we can only go by way of unverifiableand basically sense-less speculations, then I wouldwant to maintain that the standpoint of docta

ignorantia is better than any speculative hypothesis.And that is in line with LEVER'S own statement whichrecapitulates his point of view: "He" (i.e. theChristian man of science) "should accept ALL data,regardless of the problems they cause him, but hemust not magnify or minimize their significance bypositive or negative speculations. He may, however,set up working hypothesis which are required forfurther research, provided that he continues to con-sider these hypothesis as POSSIBILITIES only" (p. 2³1).

72

RESUME OF MY REGARD FOR LEVER'S BOOK. LEVER'SCRITICAL STANDPOINT TOWARDS THE PROBLEM OF EVOLUTIONAND TEILHARD DE CHARDIN'S SPECULATION.

So far my comments on LEVER's book. From thelength this review has acquired it is evident thatI regard it as a very important work. It is especial-ly important for the readers of this journal becauseit expertly confronts the Philosophy of the CosmonomicIdea with the present-day position of science as re-gards the problem of evolution. In this regardLEVER's book is an, in many respect valuable, contin-uation of the work commenced by the biologist DR.HARRY DIEMER, who passed away under such tragic cir-cumstances. Tae book's attraction in particular isits completely open and honest attitude towards thefactual data brought to light by scientific investi-gations, its well-founded opposition to the tradition-al-scholastic Christian views on the one hand andclassical evolutionism'S dogmatic views on the other,and above all the author's earnestness in attemptingto find a new path by which, starting from thebiblical ground-motive, the basic problems connectedwith evolution may be approached, thereby putting touse the view of our temporal experiential worlddeveloped in the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea.In this respect his book came at the right time, asjust a year earlier the posthumans first edition ap-peared of the life-work of the famous French geologistand palaeontologist PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN (1881-1955), entitled La Phenomeme Bonne in which from theRoman-Catholic point of view an attempt was made tothrow new light upon the doctrine of evolution, andwhich made a deep impression in many circles.

Here, in an undoubtedly grand conception, ananti-mateialistic-evolutionistic view of life and ofman is developed, culminating in a future view ofhumanity, which only in our century has consciouslyaccepted evolution as its task and become consciousof its responsibility for the entire cosmos. Thegeneral evolution from primeval atom to civilized manof today is not, as it is with LEVER, a hypothesis

7³

only here, to be given a place alongside others, buta would-be scientific certainty which leaves no roomfor critical doubt. On the other hand, though, thisconception also keeps aloof from the scholastic viewof "special creation" as developed in modern biologye.g. by HEDWIG CONRAD MARTIUS in her well-known workAbstammungslehre (1949)

I have raised some critical objections to LEVER'scautiously worded hypothesis of a general evolutionfrom elementary matter to man with really no otherpurpose than to start off a discussion about it inour philosophical circle and to prompt him to furtherexpound his views on this matter. I have restrictedmyself to the critical philosophical questions whichhave to be asked regarding this hypothesis. I haverefrained from going into the questions he rased inthe fifth chapter of his book (p. 170 f.) concerningthe relation of Genesis 3 et. seg. to the results ofpalaeontological and archaeological research, thereasons being that these questions are theologicalrather than philosophical in character, that they donot concern the central basic motive of the Wordrevelation and, above all, that I do not considermyself competent to assess the hypotheses whichLEVER raises here and which I do not particularlylike if only because of their speculative nature.But must not refrain from referring, also in thisconnection, to my remarks in respect to the firstchapter of LEVER's book about this general view ofthe relation between Holy Scripture and the resultsof scientific research. This view appears to me tobe entirely correct IN PRINCIPLE, and in accordancewith Scripture'S testimony about itself. For theBible is not a scientific book, but the embodimentof God'S Word revelation. And only thus does itpresent itself.

)6 1-v /k