The Earth's Shifting Crust by Charles Hapgood - wire of information

318
EARTH'S SHIFTING CRUST
geological eras would provide insufficient time for evolution.
Professor Dodson wrote:
In nature, neither mutation nor selection will ordinarily occur
alone, and so the two will act simultaneously, perhaps in the same
direction, perhaps in opposite directions. . . . Most frequently, selec-
tion will work against mutation, as the majority of possible mutations
are deleterious. This will result in very slow change, if any. . . .
(115:298).
He emphasized:
It appears that it is extremely difficult for mild selection pressures,
unaided by any other factor, to establish a new dominant gene in a
species. . . . (115:298).
By "mild selection pressure/'
Dodson means those condi-
tions of competition between life forms pointed out by Darwin,
that is, the competition that goes on at all times. What
he suggests here is that some more drastic influence must
have operated to produce evolutionary change.
After discussing Haldane's mathematical calculations indi-
cating the astronomical numbers of generations that might
be required to change a plant or animal under the influence
of mild selection pressures, Dodson quotes Dobzhansky (the
leader of the neo-Darwinian school) on their implications:
. . . The number of generations needed for the change may, however,
be so tremendous that the efficiency of selection alone as an
evolutionary agent may be open to doubt, and this even if time on a
geological scale is involved (115:298).
Thus the problem is clearly posed: it is the problem of
time. It is necessary to find some way of explaining how
natural selection can have operated at a sufficiently rapid
rate to account for evolution. A factor of acceleration is re-
quired.
Some writers, when they saw that evolution could not be
explained even with the enormous amounts of time available
under the current concepts of the lengths of the geological
periods, felt compelled to revert to mystical explanations.
Writers such as du Noiiy (119) concluded that evolution was