Evolution Theory and Differentiation among Species
The differentiations that discriminate the mammals, birds, reptiles, and fishes from one another, though tremendous, all the same appear to be of a similar nature as those which distinguish a mouse from an elephant or a finch from a goose. But the vertebrate animals and the insects are so vastly distinct in their form and structure and in the very plan of their anatomical structure, that dissidents may not wonder whether it true that they can all have been derived from one common ascendant by way of the same laws that explicate the differentiation of the diverse species of birds or of reptiles.
Before Darwin’s work was published, the broad majority of naturalists held firmly to the theory that species were ontologically produced, and had not been descended from other species by any action available to us. There was, then, no dubiousness relating to the bloodline of families, orders, and classes, since the “origin of species” was believed to be an unsolvable problem. But now this is all transformed. The whole scientific and literary world assumes, as a thing of commonplace knowledge, the origin of species from other allied species by the general process of natural birth.
We might require that a legitimate theory will allow us to comprehend and carry through in some detail those changes in the form, structure, and relations of animals and plants that are modified in short periods of geologic time and which are now going on around us. We may expect it to explain satisfactorily most of the lesser and superficial divergences which differentiate one species from another. And, in conclusion, we might ask that it explain many difficulties and to reconcile many incongruities in the overly complex kinships and relations of living things. All this the Darwinian Theory undoubtedly does. It shows that new species are necessarily produced, while the old species become extinct. Evolution theory also enables us to realize how the ceaseless process of these laws during the long periods is calculated to bring about those greater differences represented by the distinct genera, families, and orders into which all living things are classified by natural scientists.
There is a great deal of disagreement on this, in the evolution creationism controversy, as well as some fine evolution humor has evolved for much needed comic relief.
