The Formation of the World

Cosmogony is the part of cosmology which deals with the development of the world that follows upon its creation. Cosmogony seeks to trace to first material origins the world of natural bodies which we observe around us. It does not seek to account for the first origin of matter; it seeks to discover how matter has been shaped and formed into the marvellously arranged universe which we now behold.

It is manifest from the findings of physical science (notably, astronomy and geology) that the heavenly bodies and systems, and the earth itself as a tiny part of one such system, have been developed out of more unified material masses. Evidence of successive changes or stages of development in the earth is found in the rocky strata of its crust. There was certainly a time when no living thing (plant or animal ) could exist on the earth. There was a later time when plant life appeared, and a still later time when animal life came into being. Cosmogony, however, leaves to the special scientists,—the geologist, the seismologist and the biologist,—the detailed study of the development of this earth; it is concerned rather with the development of the universe.

b) COSMOGONIC HYPOTHESES

When a scientist takes up a problem he has usually no means at his disposal for its solution except the method of trial and error. He makes, at the outset, a supposition, a scientific guess, at the answer, and then sees whether this answer will meet all the facts. The scientist says, ‘Let us suppose that the thing under investigation is of such and such character,— as its appearance and activity seem to suggest; or let us suppose that the process in question has proceeded in such and such manner,—as really seems likely.” Then the scientist checks and tests his supposition to find out whether it will explain the facts, and all the facts, and only the facts; and whether it is the one explanation which can account for the facts.

The likely looking supposition which a scientist adopts in endeavoring to account for a reality or a process is called a hypothesis.

The true scientist does not attempt to defend his hypothesis. He tries earnestly to break it down. For he is after truth, and is in no wise concerned with the mere defence of a cleverly imagined scheme. And he knows that truth will stand up, and falsity will fail, if sufficient tests are available. Often the obscurity of the question investigated, or the lack of means for discovering evidence and for testing conclusions, prevents the scientist from advancing his opinion beyond the realm of possibility or at most of probability. In such a case, the hypothesis remains a hypothesis,—a more or less likely supposition, but a supposition after all. Such, for example, is the hypothesis that there is an upward evolutionary trend among the species of living things, and that a superior species is a development of an inferior species. And we speak of this doctrine as the evolutionary hypothesis. True scientists, even those who sincerely believe it to be the actual explanation of specific differentiations in organic bodies, are frank to admit that it is a hypothesis. Only the scientistic (and not scientific) writers and teachers assert evolutionism as a fact.

When a hypothesis stands up to every test, and looks more and more probable, it is advanced to the rank of a scientific theory. And when the theory is established by indubitable and compelling evidence, it becomes a scientific fact, and its bearing upon further scientific study is expressed in a scientific law or a law of science.

Coming now to the inquiry into world-development following world-creation, we find many hypotheses offered for our consideration. Perhaps one of these hypotheses (an emended form of that offered by Laplace) deserves to be called a theory. But we shall probably never attain to the unquestionable scientific facts in the case, since means of investigation are distinctly limited and no final check-up is available.

We shall here give a brief outline of two typical hypotheses of world-development. The first is that of the French astronomer, Pierre Simon, Marquis de Laplace (1749-1827). The second is that of a number of scientists among whom the German biologist Ernest Heinrich Haeckel (1834-1919) holds a position of prominence.

I. Laplace taught that the primordial state of the world was that of a great aeriform sphere revolving rapidly on an axis. The centrifugal force exercised by this mass in its violent whirling motion caused rings of its substance to be cast off into space. Yet the force of attraction, exercised by every bodily mass on every other, held the rings about the primal sphere, and in time (since the rings were drawn to one another as well as to the central sphere) pulled them apart, and their fragments went on whirling about the central sphere. These fragments took on spherical form themselves, and then they cast off rings of their substance, and the whole process which began with the original sphere of matter was repeated on a smaller scale with each of these fragmentary spheres. And thus came into being the universe of “solar systems,” that is, of central stars or suns with planets whirling about them. Our own solar system, as astronomers well know, is but one of a myriad of such systems, and a minor one in point of size; our own earth is but a planet, and, as regards size, but a minor planet in a minor system.

2. Haeckel, and others who, like himself, were wedded to the hypothesis of natural selection,—and who, incidentally, proved themselves unworthy scientists by their blind defence of a supposition as an established fact,—held that the original mass of matter had certain points and parts of durability, suitability, or fitness which caused them to endure when the moving mass ground and crushed its parts together. Thus, by chance motion and friction, the enduring parts or elements of the primordial mass were separated out. And since such separating was consequent upon the nature of the chance-moved matter, it may be rightly called the product of natural selection. By such chance selection the universe took form. By a further exercise of such selection, the universe took on its beautiful arrangement. Thus natural selection is invoked to explain the existence of the world (stars, planets, nebular masses) and also the harmony and beauty of its order and movement.

c) INORGANIC EVOLUTION

The term evolution usually suggests the biological hypothesis of the development of superior species of living things out of inferior species. But the term itself has no such implication. The term evolution means neither more nor less than development or growth, In our present use of it, the word excludes the whole order of living things, and is used to signify the development of the lifeless world,—the universe of “heavenly bodies” of which our earth is one.

Now, is it likely that this world has evolved out of some primordial mass of matter, created by God, and endowed by its Creator with the capacity and the equipment for developing into the world we now know? Is it likely that God, in the beginning, created the world as it now is, or that He placed it in embryo, so to speak, and gave it the powers and the movements needed to bring it to full form, harmony, beauty ?

Certainly, on the face of it, the question of worlddevelopment involves no conflict with Revelation, no matter which of the two suggested views is adopted. For God, the Creator, is wholly outside time, and outside temporal processes, and whether the world was set in form instantly by divine decree, or came into form after the long lapse of ages and the functioning of complex processes, it remains a fact that the world was created by God, and that the full form and development of the world is the work of God. We wholly exclude, as unscientific and irrational, the view of Haeckel that mere chance stirred the primal (created) matter and caused it to develop into an ordered universe. Chance is never an explanation; it is never a reason or a cause. Chance merely means something unforeseen or something unintended (or even something unimportant) in an effect which has its proportionate producing and sustaining cause. Chance marks (to our imperfect and partial view) some detail of an effect; it never is an accounting cause. It is only a badly muddled mind that can speak of anything as “the effect of chance.” For chance has no effects; chance is an effect, or the mark of an effect. The world, then, had its first cause, and in that cause must be radically discerned all that we find in the finished effect, whether this effect was produced immediately or through a long series of developmental stages for which the Creator equipped the primordial matter.

To say that the world was slowly developed out of a great nebular mass of primordial matter is to say what looks likely enough. To say that the world was set in order, much like the present order, at the beginning, looks less likely, but cannot be flatly dis- proved. But it seems more in harmony with the discoveries of philosophers and scientists, and also more in agreement with the infinite perfections of the Creator, that some process of development,—some inorganic evolution—has brought the world out of a primal state into its present form. Some process resembling the hypothesis of Laplace seems the most reasonable explanation of the forming of the universe.

That a system of development seems more in accord with the divine perfections is manifest from these facts: (a) The tremendously great and, at the same time, the minutely complex development of the universe is a striking evidence to man of God’s power and wisdom. The world is meant, as Christians hold, to speak to man of God and of His Providence and Love, and therefore man is to find admirable and impressive proofs of the divine perfections in the world. Now, as a work of art or of fine mechanical arrangement impresses the beholder with the skill and ability of the artist who made it, so the world impresses every observant beholder with the power and wisdom of its Creator. And as the admiration for a builder increases as the complexities of his work are unfolded, and the stages of its skillful construction are indicated, so with the world. We are all the more impressed by the limitless power and knowledge of the Creator when we consider His bodily universe as a development,—under the agency of material forces with which He endowed it,—from some nebulous primordial matter. We are indeed so impressed by the world as it stands; we are much more impressed by contemplating the world in a process of development. Just so, we are impressed by the skill of an artist in metals when we sce the finished product of his work; we are a thousand times more impressed when we see him take a mass of gold and, with sure hand and eye, bring it to finished form and beauty. (b) The development of the world from some primordial material substance which was created and dowered with forces for its further formation, causes us to envision portions of the substance moving off to make vast nebular, solar, and planetary systems, and impresses us with the vastness of space in which these developments occur. And the vastness of space, thus strikingly envisioned, is naturally suggestive of the immensity of God’s power and presence which control the activities of so measureless a field. (c) The long reaches of years, running into staggering millions and even billions, which scientists assign as necessary for each stage of worlddevelopment, indicate in a most telling manner God’s absolute independence from time, and impress us with an overpowering conviction of the divine eternity.

A doctrine of world-development by a process of inorganic evolution does not come into conflict with philosophy. Unlike the hypothesis of organic evolution, the hypothesis of inorganic evolution involves no difficulty (real or apparent) on the score of an effect superior to its total cause. For inorganic evolution (that is, the gradual formation of the non-living universe under the action of material forces) does not suggest the emerging of new and superior species from lower species. The species here in question (and these are the real stumbling block in the way of the organic evolutionist) are classes of essentially different living bodies, and hence do not concern the cosmogonist at all.

A doctrine of world-development by a process of inorganic evolution is consonant with the findings of physical science. The existence of nebulas, of “hot” and “cold” stars, of star-groupings that look like emerging systems, all suggest stages and states of a process of development. And the whirling movement of the heavenly bodies seems, in its direction, to suggest that these have broken away from one central whirling mass. Yet here there is a puzzling exception or so; for instance, the moons of Uranus are revolving in what may be called the wrong direction.

Summing up the whole question, we may say that the hypothesis of a gradual world-formation, by some evolutionary process affecting an originally created nebulous mass of matter, is not in conflict with philosophy, with science, or with the attributes of the infinite Creator; indeed, the hypothesis appears to be the most likely of the explanations suggested to account for the present form and harmony of the bodily universe.

SUMMARY OF THE ARTICLE

In this Article we have defined cosmogony as the science of world-development after the creation of an original mass of primordial matter. We have seen the meaning and value of a scientific hypothesis, and have noted its limitations. We have considered, in general outline, two typical hypotheses of cosmogonists, that of Laplace, and that of Haeckel. We have explained the sense of the term inorganic evolution, and, after contrasting it with organic evolution, we have found that some gradual development of worldform from primordial matter, by a process of natural development under the agency of material forces, appears to be the best available explanation of the physical universe. We have noticed that this hypothesis has reasons to support its probability, and that it is in no wise in conflict with philosophy, science, or Revelation.