Darwin and the Pygmy planet

Continuing with our look at some classic Sf stories and how they shed light on the Origins debate, I want to take a look at the story 'Pygmy Planet' by Jack Williamson. [1932]

Summary; An eccentric scientist comes up with a radical way to test the theory of evolution. In a private laboratory he builds a miniature planet (about three feet in diameter) complete with life forms and intelligent life. He then shrinks himself down to size to investigate the planet in person. As you might expect, trouble soon ensues. A reporter is called to the scene, and interviews a distraught employee.

Quotes and comments;

A. 'His mind quickened at the idea, and he half forgot the weird mystery gathering about him. He stepped nearer the sphere. It was curiously like a miniature world. The irregular bluish areas would be seas; the green and the brown spaces land. In some parts, the surface appeared mistily obscured--perhaps, by masses of cloud.
"A toy world!" he cried. "A laboratory planet! What an experiment. A pygmy planet, spinning in the laboratory like a world in the gulf of space!"

- Sad to say, but to a certain kind of scientist our planet Is an experiment; i.e. they treat it as a toy, or as some model they built in the laboratory.

- When men treat men like experiments they reduce them to pygmy size... and well beyond that. To treat man or society, as an experiment is to murder man, to reduce him to an object; to 'unman' man. The desire to treat 'humanity' as an experiment betrays a wish to have comprehensive knowledge, the desire to have the kind of knowledge only god has. Man can only be an object of experimental science if he's first reduced; reduced from a human being made in the image of god, to a little bit of matter. Science can never deal with the whole man, but merely with man as matter, man as material object.

B. "You see that little planet? The monster came from that and carried the doctor back there. And I know it will soon be back for another victim--for sacrifice!"

- We might say that 'monsters' come from man made inventions... that it's the human imagination that is responsible for much of the evil in the world.

C. "Yes, it is a planet. The Pygmy Planet, Dr. Whiting called it. He said it was the great experiment of the century. You see, he was testing evolution. We began with the planet, young and hot, and watched it until it is
now almost as old as Mars. We watched the change and development of life upon it. And the rise and decay of a strange civilization. Until now its people are strange things, with human brains in mechanical bodies, worshiping a rusty machine like a god--"

- Apparently, due to its faster life cycle perhaps, the intelligent beings on the planet had evolved further than men from earth.

- Of course testing evolution is the one thing you can't do; but the pulp writers (thankfully) never paid any attention to what was impossible.
This is an evolutionist's fantasy come true. Williamson has even found a fictional way to manufacture time. In addition he's taken an observer back to the moment of origins, the emergence of life. (The evolution apologists of our time grew up on stories like this.)

- This is absolutely amazing! There's nothing like the pulps to give you popular culture in its naked audacity.

D. ''Every atom, you know, is a sort of solar system, with electrons revolving around a proton. And time passes far more swiftly for the tiny objects--probably because the electrons move faster in
their smaller orbits. That is what suggested to Dr. Whiting that he would be able to watch the entire life of
a planet, in the laboratory... on the Pygmy Planet, we have watched the life of a world--the whole panorama of evolution--"

- Dr. Whiting made the study of evolution truly scientific; something no one else has been able to do.

E. "It seems too wonderful!" Larry muttered. "Could Dr. Whiting actually decrease his size and become a dwarf?"
"No trick at all," Agnes assured him. "All you have to do is stand in the violet beam, to shrink. And move over
in the red one, when you want to grow. I have been several times with Dr. Whiting to the Pygmy Planet."

- No trick at all! I love it. (They travel to the planet in a miniature plane... and drop down through the atmosphere. No trick at all if you know how to do it.)

F. "You--you've actually done that?" he gasped. "It sounds like a fairy story!"

- The real fairy story is treating evolutionary speculation as if it were true science.

G. "What can we do?"
"I don't know," she said slowly. "I'm afraid one of the monsters will be back after a new victim. We could smash the apparatus, but it is too wonderful to be destroyed.''

- It was, and is a common theme that science must go ahead, no matter what dangers are involved. This is the quest for comprehensiveness of knowledge; i.e. man's quest for complete or total knowledge. This involves denying the Creator/creature distinction, with man imagining he can have the kind of knowledge God can. It's part of man's nature to seek knowledge, but it's immoral for man to seek total knowledge. In addition, knowledge should never be made a goal in itself, should never be allowed to reign supreme. Man shouldn't relegate other goals and ideals to the quest for knowledge. Man's first responsibility always is to live a godly life. He should pursue knowledge, but not at the expense of godliness.

H. "What was it that Agnes had said, of machine-monsters, of human brains in mechanical bodies?''

- You see what you can learn by a properly scientific study of evolution? Here we learn that natural selection can evolve intelligent creatures with different body plans than man.... even radically different ones. We sure didn't know this before professor Whiting. We also learn that life can evolve in places other than earth. We learn that intelligence is just a material phenomenon. We learn that the e. theory is true; yes, darwin may have suggested it (I suppose he deserves a modicum of credit) but Whiting proved it; a far harder thing to do.

I. "And when this old hammer kept pounding on through the ages, using volcanic steam, I guess they got to considering it alive. They began to regard it as a sort of god. And when they got the idea of giving it sacrifices,
it was natural enough to place the victims under the hammer."

- And we see by this observation that Whiting proved that gods are the product of evolution. We might be led to believe by this that gods are an almost inevitable product of the evolutionary process. (Of course it would be nice to build more miniature planets to better test this hypothesis.)
- That Agnes can understand the metal beings shows that Evolution is a quite rational process; not beyond understanding as the creationists claim.

J. - 'When the hammer slowly lifted, only a red smear was left..."

- And so Dr. Whiting was a true martyr to evolutionary science. He gave his life to show the world Darwin was right. I don't know about you, but it kind of chokes me up.

K. "Wait a minute," she objected, slipping quickly from his arms. "What are we going to do about the Pygmy Planet? Those monsters might come again, even if you did wreck their god. And Dr. Whiting, poor fellow - But we mustn't let those monsters come back!"

Larry doubled up a brown fist and drove it with all his strength against the little globe that spun so steadily between the twin, upright cylinders of crimson and of violet flame. His hand went deep into it. And it swung from its position, hung unsteadily a moment, and then crashed to the laboratory floor. It was crushed like a ball of soft brown mud. It spattered.

"Now I guess they won't come back," Agnes said. "A pity to spoil all Dr. Whiting's work, though."
Larry was standing motionless, holding up his fist and looking at it oddly. "I smashed a planet! Think of it. I smashed a planet!"

- Williamson was known as the planet smasher I think.
- He smashed Darwin's planet! Good grief, he must have been one of those evil creationists... trying to destroy evidence of evolution. [2.]

- Just think of all that evidence for evolution that was lost. The best argument the creationists have is the origin of life one, and here Whiting had proven the critique false... but sadly the information was lost. However, we can take heart in knowing that naturalistic evolution is possible; that we don't even need a God to throw out a few seeds.

- Whiting proved that religion always has negative consequences, as the machine people of the Darwin planet (sorry, pygmy planet) sacrificed other races, and even humans (like you and me!) to their god.

Summary; 4/5 [mainly for imagination, and for the fun]
- So; what's this got to do with the subject of origins? I don't want to read too much into this story but I think see an indication here of how people have made the mistake of thinking of the theory of evolution as if it were science. They've made the mistake of assuming M2M evolution is something you can test in a lab or observe in the field. Origins on the other hand is a subject that has to be looked at in another manner altogether. Since it's something that happened in the distant past it requires a unique methodology when it comes to trying to ascertain what happened.
- M. Johnson [frfarer - at- Gmail.com]

Notes;
1. Pygmy planet - Jack Williamson [available online at Manybooks.net]
2. Didn't Robert Sawyer, in his novel Calculating God, have some creationist characters go around destroying evidence for evolution? It's possible they were related to our character Larry.
3. The god of the metal men was a machine of some kind.
4. On a more serious note, many people in our day are quite willing to turn our own planet into a laboratory experiment. (Our socio-political elite like to refer to Canada as an experiment. The globalists push continually for a one world government, thus offering us all up for a planetary experiment.
- What was Communism but an almost planet sized experiment? Unfortunately it wasn't the first, and I'm afraid it won't be the last.