George McCready Price - Reception

Reception

David Starr Jordan, president of Stanford University, and a leading American expert on fossil fishes, wrote a review of Price's Illogical Geology, in which he stated that Price should not expect "any geologist to take seriously." This led to a correspondence over the next twenty years in which Price once promised "to become an evolutionist within twenty-four hours" if "the foremost ichthyologist in the world" could prove that one fossil was older than another, and Jordan attempted to enlighten Price that his views were:

Jordan also unsuccessfully urged Price to "undertake some constructive work in Paleontology in the field and in laboratories."

Numbers says that Seventh-day Adventism is grounded on the Sabbath doctrine of a literal Creation week. To Price, the Sabbath doctrine is what saved Adventists from evolutionism. He adopted Ellen G. White’s position on creationism as his own and he sought to persuade the world that a recent creation was required by the Bible and science.

Price criticized the 'geologic ages' and strict Lyellian uniformitarianism on which they are based. As an alternative explanation of the geology of the earth, he re-invented Flood Geology. He pondered ways to reinterpret the apparent order of the fossils that seemingly implied ancient bygone eras. After studying a wide variety of geologic literature, Price deduced that the “facts of the rocks and fossils, stripped of mere theories, splendidly refute this evolutionary theory of the invariable order of the fossils, which is the very backbone of the evolutionary doctrine.” He had read of strata containing fossils of a young era lying conformably on strata containing fossils of very old eras. The geologist who described these lithically identical layers said that “one would naturally suppose that a single formation was being dealt with, were it not for fossil evidence.” To Price, that, and the lack of any evidence of erosion between the strata, implied that little time could have occurred between the two layers of rock. Price also discovered in the literature examples of similar conformable strata, but in the reverse order, the old rocks on top and the young strata below according to interpretation of the fossils. Although appearing “to succeed one another conformably” the Canadian Geologic Survey contended for over-thrusting principally based on the fossil content. Price's interpretation of the evidence was that “the geological record does not prove succession of ages, but rather shows a “taxonomic” series representing different but contemporaneous zones of antediluvian life.”

So, in Price's 1913 book, The Fundamentals of Geology, an expanded version of Illogical Geology, he presented the "Law of Conformable Stratigraphic Sequences" which states "any kind of fossiliferous rock may occur conformably on any other kind of fossiliferous rock, old or young." To Price this law was "by all odds the most important law ever formulated with reference to the order in which the strata occur."

Yale geologist Schuchert's review of The New Geology for the magazine Science stated that Price was "harboring a geological nightmare". However, the creationists welcomed the new book. Harry Rimmer claimed that it was "a masterpiece of REAL science explodes in a convincing manner some of the ancient fallacies of science 'falsely so called'". Within a couple of years, Price appeared prominently in several conservative religious periodicals. A Science editor described him as "the principal scientific authority of the Fundamentalists".

Price, concerned about scientific methodology, had read Whithead and other philosophers and understood that facts were always subject to interpretation. While Price was confident that "inductive geology" inferred a recent Creation, he acknowledged that debate between creationism and naturalism lay outside of science, "across the boundary-line in the domain of philosophy and theology." Just as naturalists regarded facts “through the colored spectacles of Darwin and Lyell" Creationists used the Bible to interpret the natural world. He said that the Creationary account of origins could never have been developed as a hypothesis from the study of nature alone, rather it was "suggested by our religion.” In choosing between "the two alternatives now before the world," naturalistic geology versus world-catastrophe, there was but one suitable inquiry: "Will it give the most rational account nature’s evidence?"

Price's defense of creation science (and attacks on evolution) first achieved wide notability in 1925 when his theories and arguments were utilized heavily by William Jennings Bryan in the famous Scopes Trial. Bryan had appealed to Price for assistance, but Price was busy teaching in England. Price advised Bryan to avoid science during the trial if possible. During the trial, defense counsel Clarence Darrow, sneered "You mentioned Price because he is the only human being in the world so far as you know that signs his name as a geologist that believes like you do . . . every scientist in this country knows is a mountebank and a pretender and not a geologist at all."

Price's ideas were borrowed again in the early 1960s by Henry M. Morris and John Whitcomb in their book The Genesis Flood, a work that skeptic Martin Gardner calls "the most significant attack on evolution...since the Scopes trial". Morris, in his 1984 book History of Modern Creationism, spoke glowingly of Price's logic and writing style, and referred to reading The New Geology as "a life-changing experience for me".