Darwin Retried

by Norman Macbeth

Book Overview

Fair, detailed, carefully reasoned critique of Darwinian theory. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0876451059
• ISBN13: 9780876451052
• Release Date: January 1971
• Publisher: Harvard Common Press
• Length: 181 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.4" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Not quite on point

"Darwinism" means at least two things: (1) the theory expounded by Darwin in The Origin of Species, or "classical Darwinism"; (2) Darwin's theory combined with genetics and other 20th-century elements, a.k.a. "the modern synthesis" or "neo-Darwinism". In this book, Norman Macbeth sets out to show that theory 1 has serious flaws and is no longer believed by most biologists, although this news has not really gotten out to the public. He manages to show this pretty well and cites well-known works by eminent biologists. Macbeth restricts himself to criticizing Darwin and does not propose any alternative theory. His writing is even-tempered and clear, and the book is short (maybe too short). The problem here, of course, is that theory 1 is dead; biologists nowadays hold to theory 2. Macbeth's criticisms are pertinent only to the extent that the elements of Darwin's original theory are still part of theory 2. He thinks that those elements are still quite prominent, in fact so prominent as to compromise the entire theory. He may have a point, but he should have been clearer about which theory he was criticizing. In short, a valuable contribution to the debate, but hardly the last word.

A Fair Assessment

It is many years since I read Darwin Retried, but I remember it as a thoughtful and careful book. MacBeth isn't trying to score big points, he is simply evaluating the Neo-Darwinian theories and pointing out some weak spots. The main critique I've seen of the book (in other places) is that the author has no alternative explanation for the evolution of life. This is an odd attitude. You can't say that someone is wrong unless you have another explanation for the phenomena at hand? Why ever not? I'd recommend the book because it is not strident, it is not part of any religious or political movement and it discusses some interesting problems with the "synthesis." On the other hand...it is pretty old...so some of the material is way out of date.

justice

I haven't read this book. I was reading the reviews to decide whether or not I should read it and saw that the previous reviewer decided to review it twice (giving it a single star twice) and decided in the interest of fairness to nullify that by adding a 5 star. I decided to check out this book because it was referenced by Jacques Barzun in his Dawn to Decadence history. And any book that generates the hostility witnessed in the previous review must be pretty good.

A lawyer's verdict: Darwinism guilty of many logical errors

I first read this book in 1980, and was quite impressed with its critique of Darwinism as a logical construct. Macbeth took up the study of Darwinist argumentation as a avocation. He does not appeal to any religious authority to contradict Darwinism, nor does he reject the idea of evolution in toto. Rather, he finds the evidence and arguments for Darwinism to be deeply flawed. Questions are begged, evidence is fudged, and extrapolations are unwarranted. The first edition of this book (1971) came well over a decade before Michael Denton's pivotal critique, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1986), and well before the theistic Intelligent Design Movement, spearheaded by Phillip E. Johson's book, Darwin on Trial (1991; revised edition, 1993). (Johnson is also a laywer, and a professor of law at UC-Berkeley.) MacBeth has also published a small booklet of interviews on the topic called, Darwinism: A Time for Funerals (1985). This is a thoughtful and fair critique well worth reading. Let me end with a quote from the author: "Any profession [he has biology in mind] that does not supply its own criticism and iconoclasm will discover that someone else will do the job, and usually in a way it does not like." Douglas Groothuis, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Philosophy Denver Seminary