Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1913 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XIII Scientific Methods In Part One of this book I tried to examine into the facts and methods which are commonly supposed to prove that there has been a succession of life on the globe. We found that this life succession theory has not a single fact to support it; that it is not the result of scientific research, but wholly the product of an inventive imagination; that no one kind of fossil has ever been proved or can be proved to be intrinsically older than another, or than Man himself; and hence that a complete reconstruction of geological theory is imperatively demanded by our modern knowledge. In short, that ancient world whose ruins we now have as fossils was a unit, and simply an older state of our present world. All the important groups of living plants and animals have now been found as fossils, and their classification does not represent a time value in the one case any more than in the other. The geological series of fossils represents merely taxonomic relationships, just as would a similar arrangement of the living species, nothing more. In Part Two the following additional facts have been brought out: 1. The abnormal character of much of the fossiliferous deposits. 2. A radical and world-wide change of climate. 3. The marked degeneration in passing from the fossil world to the modern one. 4. The fact that the human race, to say nothing of a vast number of living species of plants and animals, has participated in some of the greatest of the geological changes--we really know not how to limit the number or character of these changes. These additional facts still further emphasize the unity or solidarity of that ancient world. They show how all its parts are indissolubly bound together in a common fate, and how sharply...
