Unscientific?
Sir: Elizabeth Whipp is surprisingly unscientific in her dismissal (31 March) of the arguments for Creative Evolution and Lamarckism whether advanced by Bernard Shaw or Christopher Booker. She dismisses the arguments for biological Will, or Life Force, yet admits that Darwinist mechanism, which argues for survival of the fittest of existing forms, not only does not explain why inanimate matter became animate in the first place, but cannot explain such acquired characteristics, and their inheritance, as the ability to fly of creatures who formerly crawled. Of course, in the familiarly unscientific post hoc, propter hoc of titular scientists, we shall be told that the ability to fly was wrapped in the genes, and could be seen had we a sufficiently powerful microscope.
Shaw did not deny mechanism and blind struggle in primal life, and Will, not to be confused with 'will power', only gradually became conscious. Even David Attenborough, discussing his magnificent series, rejects ur-Darwinism for Neo-Darwinism, which lets in (as his studies of acquired characteristics compel) Lamarckism. And it is unscientific these days to treat Darwinism and Lamarckism as mutually exclusive theories. As G.B.S. wrote (What is My Religious Faith, 1949): `If I call myself a Vitalist I shall be classed as a Materialist by the scientists who admit the existence of a life force, but conceive it as purely mechanical like steam or electricity. If I call myself simply an Evolutionist I shall be listed as a Darwinian. Yet if I repudiate Darwin it will be assumed that I attach no importance to the part played in human destiny by Natural Selection and by Reason: for the popular imagination works only in two extremes: soot or whitewash.'
Henry Adler 3 Roland Gardens, London SVV7
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