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CHAPTER XIII - THE EVOLUTION OF THE WORLD

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2011

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Summary

The notion of creation. Miracles. Creation of the whole universe and of its various parts. Creation of substance (cosmological creation). Deism: one creative day. Creation of separate entities. Five forms of ontological creationism. Theory of evolution. I. Monistic cosmogony. Beginning and end of the world. The infinity and eternity of the universe. Space and time. Universum perpetuum mobile. Entropy of the universe. II. Monistic geogeny. History of the inorganic and organic worlds. III. Monistic biogeny. Transformism and the theory of descent. Lamarck and Darwin. IV. Monistic anthropogeny. Origin of man.

The greatest, vastest, and most difficult of all cosmic problems is that of the origin and development of the world—the “question of creation,” in a word. Even to the solution of this most difficult world-riddle the nineteenth century has contributed more than all its predecessors; in a certain sense, indeed, it has found the solution. We have at least attained to a clear view of the fact that all the partial questions of creation are indivisibly connected, that they represent one single, comprehensive “cosmic problem,” and that the key to this problem is found in the one magic word—evolution. The great questions of the creation of man, the creation of the animals and plants, the creation of the earth and the sun, etc., are all parts of the general question, What is the origin of the whole world?

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009
First published in: 1900

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