THE METHOD OF ARGUMENT

The Method of Argument ~ 88 ~ According to Mander, ‘We may say that finding a theory is like discovering the pattern into which a number of particular facts and the general laws which govern them will fit. It is like putting together the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle from which one or more pieces are missing. When we have fitted together all the pieces available (the known facts), we can see what the missing pieces must be like to enable them to fit into the gaps’ (p.123). On the basis of this very principle, scientists have agreed upon the truth of organic evolution. To Mander, this doctrine has so many arguments in its favour that it may be regarded as an ‘approximate certainty.’5 The authors of Science of Life assert that “no one now denies the truth of organic evolution except for those who are ignorant, or biased or superstitious.” New York’s Modern Pocket Library has published a series of books entitled Man and the Universe, the fifth of which series hails Darwin’s The Origin of Species as an epoch-making work, and points out that of all theories of genealogy, this one has at, one