Philosophical Notes: Asking questions on philosophical questions Mivart’s essay on evolution rewards the meditative reader. Mivart provides a brief but cogent outline of the changing circumstances and variations in thought that over centuries facilitated the development of naturalism and atheistic evolution. This sort of background is particularly useful because each generation, enmeshed in the peculiar conditions of their own time, often neglects to explore the past cultural twists, oversights, discoveries and aberrations that led to today’s assumptions and outlook. Mivart also highlights the internal contradictions that fracture naturalism and he indicates some of the problems in the evidence used to support atheistic evolution. These fractures and variations of these evidential problems remain today.