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

LIFE 333
species can be compared with the life of an individual, with
its phases of youth, maturity, and old age. Thus, the ex-
plosive period is the youth of a species, the period of quiet
and prosperous enjoyment of its life niche is maturity, and
its degenerative phase is its old age. Finally, extinction re-
sults from the exhaustion of the vital force of the species.
This theory assumes an innate cause, and a natural order for
the succession of the phases.
This idea has been widely disseminated, and in one form
or another it has served to confuse all the issues and obscure
the known facts. It is one more of those philosophical abstrac-
tions that people resort to who come up against an unsolved
problem and cannot stand the psychological tension of per-
that the
severing in the search for truth. It is important
essentials of this matter should be made clear.
In the first place, the idea that a species is analogous to an
individual, and must go through similar phases, is a modern
revival of the Scholastic logic of the Middle Ages, like the
microcosm-macrocosm analogy (according to which some
people have recently argued that since planets
are satellites
of the sun, and electrons are satellites of the nucleus of the
atom, then planets are exactly like electrons, and must obey
the same laws of physics). The alleged vital force, which is
supposed to set a preordained limit to the life of a species,
completely escapes scientific observation and experiment.
It is not only a mere assumption, it is also an unjustified
assumption.
The facts of paleontology do not agree with the analogy of
the life phases of a species with that of an individual. In very
many cases the same phase may be repeated several times in
the life of a species, and other phases may be omitted alto-
gether, as we shall see below. For this reason the theory
brings caustic comment from Dr. Simpson. After discussing
the two phases of adaptive radiation (youth) and "intrazonal
adaptation" (establishment
ment), which is analogous to maturity
in a stable but limited environ-
which often do follow
each other in this order he explains their relationship thus: