Futuyma, Douglas

In his 1986 book Evolutionary Biology, Douglas Futuyma maintained that natural selection was an evolutionary mechanism. The example Futuyma’s book cited was that of the color of a moth population turning darker in Britain during the Industrial Revolution—one of the best known such examples. (See Industrial-Revolution moths, the.) However, he admitted, “Organisms either appeared on the earth fully developed, or they did not. If not, then they must have developed from pre-existing species by some process of modification. If they did appear in a fully developed state, they must indeed have been created by some omnipotent intelligence.”188

In addition, Futuyma—one of the best-known exponents of the theory of evolution in our time—indicates the true reason for the importance of the theory: “Together with Marx’s materialist theory of hist ory and society. . . Darwin hewed the final planks of the platform of mechanism and materialism.”189

188 Douglas J. Futuyma, Science on Trial, New York: Pantheon Books, 1983, p. 197.
189 Douglas Futuyma, Evolutionary Biology, 2. b., MA: Sinauer, Sunderland, 1986, p. 4.