その引用は、
パターソン博士から創造論者 ルーサー・D・サンダーランド(Luther D. Sunderland)へ
1979年4月10日付けで宛てられた個人的な手紙からのものであり、
パターソン博士の著書"Evolution" (1978, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.)に言及したものです。
まずは創造論者に使われる引用部分、原文で
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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 from? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic license, would that not mislead the reader? I wrote the text of my book four years ago. If I were to write it now, I think the book would be rather different. Gradualism is a concept I believe in, not just because of Darwin's authority, but 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. As a paleontologist myself, I am much occupied with the philosophical problems of identifying ancestral forms in the fossil record. You say that I should at least "show a photo of the fossil from which each type of organism was derived." I will lay it on the line, There is not one such fossil for which one might make a watertight argument.
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... 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 favoured by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way to put them to the test.
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I think the continuation of the passage shows clearly that your interpretation (at the end of your letter) is correct, and the creationists' is false.
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