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CHAPTER 5 - GEOLOGICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL EVIDENCE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 May 2011

Alec L. Panchen
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Summary

It is assumed by most laypeople who concern themselves with evolution, and by many professional biologists, that the fossil record constitutes the primary and most important evidence that evolution has occurred. This also seems to be the assumption of many “creationists”, who attempt to refute all aspects of evolutionary theory in favour of their own religious beliefs. Thus creationist tracts are usually aimed at discrediting the evidence from the fossil record and, of necessity, the methodology of geological dating (Morris 1974; Gish 1979; see Kitcher 1982 and Newell 1982 for commentaries on “Creation Science”).

The fossil record

A position opposite to that of assuming that the fossil record is the primary evidence for evolution is taken by Kitts (1974). His review is concerned with the relationship of the fossil record to theories of evolutionary mechanism, but in the preamble he is concerned with the nature and interpretation of fossils:

Palaeontologists often claim that fossils tell us something. But fossils, by themselves tell us nothing; not even that they are fossils …When a palaeontologist decides whether or not something found in the rock is the remains of an organism he decides, in effect, whether or not it is necessary to invoke a biological event in the explanation of that thing. […]

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Classification, Evolution, and the Nature of Biology , pp. 85 - 108
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1992

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