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Evolution in the Genus of History
Why is scientific evolution not open to observation and experiment? Some indications involving the historical character
of evolution have already been given in the consideration of the probability of the evolutionary hypothesis. Some Neo-Scholastics
noted that a convergence of probabilities can often be reductive to certitude in areas such as court cases and history.51
There is a difference in method between the scientific method and the historical method, and it appears that the verification
of scientific evolution is closer to the historical method than it is to the scientific method. The scientific method calls
for observation, and then the formulation of a hypothesis, which is the provisional proposition apt to explain some phenomenon.52
The hypothesis has to be proved by experiment, which is an observation of the phenomenon needed to verify the hypothesis.53
Finally, there is a universal conclusion, which has already been proved, and which verifies the hypothesis.54 This
process is not the method that Nogar uses to show evolution, but Nogar uses the historical method of testimony and convergent
probabilities. Other Neo-Scholastic authors note the historical character of evolution.55 The participants in the
Darwin Centennial (1959) at the University of Chicago defined evolution historically.56 The various schools of
evolution differ among themselves about a number of issues, but all agree that evolution is a historical process.57
Evolutionary fact is circumstantial fact and the inferences of the Evolutionists are more like the judgments in legal cases,
"reconstructing the past history of events."58 Evolutionary statements, especially about the historical process
of evolution, have to be circumstantial facts.59 Compared the methods of modern science, the methods of prehistory
are limited.60 The study of prehistory does not yield absolute certitude, but only a degree of probability.61
There is a close alliance between Evolutionism and Historicism.62 There is also a common denominator of historicity
between Evolutionism and Existentialism.63 There is much truth that just as Historicism is evolution applied to
human history, Existentialism is evolution applied to human biography.64 Further, there is a relation between Dialectical
Materialism (Communism) and Evolutionism, based on historical process. Dialectical Materialism is that ideological system
and atheistic way of life governed by the principle that the universe, composed only of matter in motion, is in a continual
state of becoming and that out of this dialectical process of material evolution, human knowledge, society, economics and
moral behavior will emerge with historical necessity.65 Therefore, we can begin to conclude that the reason evolution
is not open to observation and to experiment is that "the fact of evolution is essentially in the genus of history"; it is
not science in the sense of tested knowledge of reversible natural processes.66 Although history has its own scientific
method, this is not the same as the methods of the physical sciences, and so it can be said that, "History, as such, is not
science."67 Here, accordingly, is discovered the ultimate cause of the impossible attempt to form a judgement or
a syllogism that "evolution is a fact."68
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