Nuggets from Cosmos, Creator, and Human Destiny

10^th April 1979

“Dear Mr. Sunderland, I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. You suggest that an artist should be used to visualize such transformations, but where would he get the information? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic license, would that not mislead the reader…?”

“Gradualism is a concept I believe in…because my understanding of genetics seems to demand it. Yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils…. You say that I should at least ‘show a photo of the fossil from which each time of organism was derived.’ I will lay it on the line—there is not one such fossil form which one could make a watertight argument. The reason is that statements about ancestry and descent are not applicable in the fossil record.

“Is Archaeopteryx the ancestor of all birds? Perhaps yes, perhaps no: there is no way of answering the question. It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favored by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way of putting them to the test. So, much as I should like to oblige you by jumping the defense of gradualism, and fleshing out the transitions between the major types of animals and plants, I find myself a bit short of the intellectual justification necessary for the job. Thanks again for writing. Yours sincerely, Colin Patterson”