Page 120 - Once Upon a Time There Was Darwinism

Thus, what could be called the most popular supposed
proof of all time for evolution—the "recapitulation" theory—
was invalidated.

But even while Haeckel's fabrications came to light, an-
other falsification close to that of Haeckel continued to go un-
noticed: namely, Darwinism.
As we saw earlier, Darwin discounted other scientists'
Once Upon a Time There Was Darwinism
negative views of Haeckel's interpretative drawings at the
time and used them to bolster his own theory. But this was
not the only point where Darwinism diverged from the truth.

Much more striking is that he presented the views of Karl
Ernst von Baer—reputedly the most noted embryologist of
the time—as distorted. Jonathan Wells' Icons of Evolution ex-
plains in detail that von Baer did not accept Darwin's theory
and harshly refuted it. He was also firmly against evolutionist
interpretations of embryology, formulating the rule that "the
embryo of a higher form never resembles any other form, but only its
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embryo." He also said that Darwinists dogmatically "accepted
the Darwinian evolutionary hypothesis as true before they set to the
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task of observing embryos." But, after the third edition of The
Origin of the Species, Darwin distorted von Baer's interpreta-
tions and conclusions and used them to bolster his own the-
ory. As Wells explains:
Darwin cited von Baer as the source of his embryological evi-
dence, but at the crucial point, Darwin distorted that evidence
to make it fit his theory. Von Baer lived long enough to object
to Darwin's misuse of his observations, and he was a strong
critic of Darwinian evolution until his death in 1876. But

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