No theory of evolution can be formed to account for the
similarity of molecules, for evolution necessarily implies
continuous change, and the molecule is incapable of growth
or decay, of generation or destruction.
None of the processes of Nature, since the time when Nature
began, have produced the slightest difference in the
properties of any molecule. We are therefore unable to
ascribe either the existence of the molecules or the
identity of their properties to the operation of any of
the causes which we call natural.
On the other hand, the exact quality of each molecule to
all others of the same kind gives it, as Sir John Herschel
has well said, the essential character of a manufactured
article, and precludes the idea of it being eternal and
self existent.
...
Science is incompetent to reason upon the creation of
matter itself out of nothing. We have reached the utmost
limit of our thinking faculties when we have admitted
that because matter cannot be eternal and self-existent
it must have been created.
-- James Clerk Maxwell (1873). "Molecules" in <Galileo's
Commandment>, ed. E.B. Bolles, WH Freeman 1997. From
a lecture given before the British Association and
reprinted in <Nature>, Sept 25, 1873.
Brian Harper
Associate Professor
Applied Mechanics
The Ohio State University
"It is not certain that all is uncertain,
to the glory of skepticism." -- Pascal