PHILLIPS, John.

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Life on the Earth, its Origin and Succession. First edition of this treatise on the development of life which, in the final chapter, opposes Darwin's theory of natural selection, proposing it to be unprovable. "Convinced that Darwin had exaggerated the incompleteness of the fossil record, Phillips believed that its discontinuities were explicable only in terms of separate creations which were transcendental and inscrutable acts of God" (ODNB).John Phillips (1800-1874) was a prominent English geologist and academic who planned and arranged the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. He was keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, between 1854 and 1870, and was keeper of the University Museum from 1857 to his death.

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