DARWIN RETRIED: An Appeal to Reason

by Norman Macbeth ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 16, 1971

. . .or retired or just plain tuckered out after a century of scientific replication, as the case may be. And a case it is. Way back in 1959 Macbeth, a lawyer with time on his hands, began wrestling with the suspicion that Darwinism (a la Darrow) was no longer considered the last word by some scientists, especially biologists, and the perusal of four paperbacks (e.g., Julian Huxley's Evolution in Action, Eiseley's Darwin's Century) confirmed it. Thereafter when dinner conversation lagged, says Macbeth, ""I asked friends whether they knew that Darwinism was going to pieces""; much to his dismay, they didn't; worse, they refused to agree with him. Piqued, Macbeth ""labored to put a coherent case on paper"" and we have it here: a tidy brief by a layman for laymen proving that not every contemporary scientific authority accepts the principle of natural selection -- some dismiss it as ""meaningless tautology,"" others now believe that all specialized species are ""dead ends,"" etc., etc. ""The purpose of this book is to make the news available to the public,"" particularly, we suspect, his hidebound dinner companions. This would have made a dandy little article for a scholarly quarterly (in fact it did, the Yale Review) because the point is not made ex nihilo; as a book, however, it is overdrawn, repetitive, and tiresome.

Pub Date: Oct. 16, 1971

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Gambit

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1971

Categories: NONFICTION