Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis

by Michael Denton

More than thirty years after his landmark book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1985), biologist Michael Denton revisits his earlier thesis about the inability of Darwinian evolution to explain the history of life. He argues that there remains “an irresistible consilience of evidence for rejecting Darwinian cumulative selection as the major driving force of evolution.”
From the origin of life to the origin of human language, the great divisions in the natural order are still as profound as ever, and they are still unsupported by the series of adaptive transitional forms predicted by Darwin. In addition, Denton makes a provocative new argument about the pervasiveness of non-adaptive order throughout biology, order that cannot be explained by the Darwinian mechanism.

Genres: Science, Evolution, Biology, Nonfiction, Intelligent Design, Audiobook, Christian

358 pages, Unknown Binding

Published January 26, 2016

About the author

Michael Denton holds an M.D. from Bristol University, as well as a Ph.D. in biochemistry from King’s College in London. A Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, Denton has had a critical impact on the debate over Darwinian evolution.

Reviews

[Greg Nigh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Next up for review is Michael Denton's Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis. The theory is "still" in crisis because Denton's first book on this topic was written over 30 years ago. Not much has changed, except that the explanatory power of the neo-Darwinian description of evolution has gotten much more bleak.

Hold your hand out in front of you, fingers spread. Witness an engineering feat: the pentadactyl limb.

Of course, to say "engineering" is a figure of speech. Evolution can't engineer anything, because it is blind to outcomes and purpose, two prerequisites of sophisticated engineering of *anything*. What evolution has done, we are told, is select from varied options in such a way that the 5 digits of the human hand represent an optimal fit of function to environment. We have each of our 5 digits because they worked well - best - as a quintet.

Function is the crux of evolutionary theory as Darwin formulated it and as the hordes of evolutionary theorists have reiterated it. We have 5 digits because neither 4 nor 6 fit the functional bill quite as well. Said another way, evolution *settled on* 5 digits for our lineage because they *functioned* best in the environment we were in over all that time. But, as with every good plot, there is a twist that makes it a bit more interesting.

Michael Denton's book about that twist. Like a boxer hammering an opponent's cut brow, Denton hits over and over at this and other related hidden-in-plain-sight cuts on the facade of evolutionary theory. One prominent cut is this: function and adaptation *cannot* be the primary motive for such structures as the pentadactyl limb, nor for dozens of other features of the natural world. Together, these features commonly distributed through the biological world are referred to as taxa-defining traits, because their presence in a living organism is used to taxonomically categorize that organism.

Our 5 digit limb and its basic underlying skeletal arrangement, it turns out, is not unique. It is shared by creatures as diverse as salamanders, whales, frogs, bats, lizards, moles, and crocodiles. In fact all modern 4-limbed creatures share this same architecture in their digits. The basic "floor plan," referred to as a Bauplan, of the pentadactyl limb apparently just sprung into place about 400 million years ago with no antecedent. Nature didn't try out 2-digit, or 4-digit, or 8-digit limbs. The 5 digits arose and stayed in the evolutionary chain through multiple phyla and their subsequent classes, orders and so on. They endured environments that range from deep oceans to swampy swamps to the plains of Africa to the jungles of the tropics.

Denton parades these diverse examples of the pentadactyl limb before us with the obvious question in hot pursuit. The functionalist explanation is that any given feature persists because it served an optimal function that improved survival. Shared features like a pentadactyl limb? Homologs, they are called, structures that are considered evidence of common descent from an ancestor that started it all, surviving because at least it didn't *hurt* survival.

But questions are begged: 1) If a structure persists, we call it a homolog and thus it was either kept because it was adaptive, or (by definition) it was ignored by adaptive selection; 2) if a structure *doesn't* persist we say it was selected against. But how do the homologs avoid selection against within this model? Is there the slightest wink of evidence that the 5 digits were no worse than neutral in all those vast and varied environments over 400 million years? Denton's point is that homologs arise and persist even in lineages with no common ancestor that preceded the homolog.

Nature, we are told, "selected" from among varied options (quotations there because it is a universally accepted misnomer; nature doesn't select, it eliminates). But Denton's book carves out the strong argument for a structuralist interpretation of evolution, one that has a surprising number of converts and that rivaled Darwin's approach even in Darwin's own time. The structuralist approach to evolution is rooted most strongly in Darwin's contemporary Richard Owen. A statue of Owen stood, until 2008, at the head of the main staircase of the Natural History Museum in London. Then it was moved to a suburb of the museum to make room for a statue of Darwin, no slightly symbolic exchange of figures.

The 5-digit limb is just the beginning of Denton's challenges based upon taxa-defining traits. The amniotic membrane, the petal arrangement of flowers, the structure of feathers, the insect body plan and others, they all just popped into being without known antecedent and persevered for many millions of years with nary a whit of change. The class Insecta, for example, is made up of around a million different living species that occupy a staggeringly diverse range of environments, and have for millennia. Yet, they all share a common set of parts, arranged in the same way among them all: 3 body divisions, legs with no more than 5 components, a mouth made of 4 parts, 2 mobile antennae, and many others. These features arose without antecedent, then survived all those millions of years in all those environments without budging.

Denton goes far beyond these taxa-defining features in his critique of Darwinism, though. At every level of biology, patterns suddenly appear and persist outside of any functional explanation, and often without any evolutionary precedent. These patterns span from the animal world all the way down to cells and molecules.

"As with other taxa-difining novelties, there is no evidence that any fundamental changes have occurred in the basic design of the cell system since its origination. The cell membrane, the basic metabolic paths, the ribosome, the genetic code, etc., are essentially invariant in all life forms on earth" (121).

Denton ushers in many conventional scientists to make his case. Appearance of *any* complex structure with no precedence is radically anti-Darwinian. Quoting origin-of-life heavyweights Eugene Koonin and Artem Novozhilov on the coding system of DNA:

"[W]e are unaware of any experiments that would have the potential to actually reconstruct the origin of coding, not even at the stage of serious planning ... We cannot escape considerable skepticism. It seems that the two-pronged fundamental question: 'why is the genetic code the way it is and how did it come to be?' that was asked over 50 years ago, at the dawn of molecular biology, might remain pertinent even in another 50 years. Our consolation is that we cannot think of a more fundamental problem in biology" (125).

Denton makes his point repeatedly: "If many of the homologs and ground plans [like 5-digit limbs and insect body plans] are indeed non-adaptive and **have never served any specific functional end**, the entire Darwinian narrative is rendered a house of cards. Darwinism can be dismissed on this count alone, and all other anti-Darwinian arguments - however cogent - are in essence superfluous" (222, emphasis in original). The full weight of this critique needs to sink in. Darwinism rests upon the idea that *optimal function* generates new structures and maintains them over time. Denton shows that a vast range of structures and gene networks arise with no precedent, and persist over hundreds of millions of years in some cases, with no functional explanation whatsoever.

Can evo-devo save the day? Actually, it has only made the problem much worse. Consider this:

The endometrial cell defines placental mammals and distinguishes them from the marsupial mammals. You don't get a placenta until you have an endometrial cell type. So what does it take to transform a spindle-shaped stromal fibroblast, its progenitor, into an endometrial stromal cell? Evo-devo can tell us exactly what it does take, but can't possibly explain how the hell it ever happened in the first place.

In a study of the genetic differences between fibroblast progenitor cells and the endometrial stromal cells they give rise to, researchers "found 322 annotated genes exhibiting significant differences in expression... of which 312 have not been previously related to [differentiation]" (138). In trying to capture the full complexity of genetic changes that are required to produce an endometrial stromal cell, they "found 1,532 genes were recruited into endometrial expression in placental mammals, indicating that the evolution of pregnancy was associated with a large-scale [unique] rewiring of the gene regulatory network "(139).

"Rewiring" is a formal process, the stuff that electricians and programmers do, not random tinkering. There is no such thing as random rewiring to meet a functional end, and especially not a rewiring that involves 1532 genetic switches that stumble as a happy accident upon a functional pattern of expression. There is no explanation within Darwinism to explain how an endometrial stromal cell pops into being, evolutionarily speaking, with an astoundingly complex set of genetic circuits already in place.

Again, I can't begin to do justice to the scope of Denton's critique. It travels from DNA and RNA, through enucleated red blood cells (losing a nucleus was not a functional accident; it required an astoundingly complex set of new machinery to accomplish), flower petals, cell membranes, loss of aortic arches and much else. Each one of his examples calls out the inability of a functional evolutionary explanation to suffice. Taken together, it is not overly dramatic to say that the theory is "still in crisis."

The structuralist interpretation of evolution that Denton advocates, which has been embraced by many luminaries including Stephen Jay Gould at the end of his life, posits something profound. That is, a vast and varied group of both structures and processes within living systems fulfill what are, for lack of a better term, archetypes that transcends any particular manifestation of those structures or processes. The pentadactyl limb was 'given' to every quadruped for evolution to do with what it pleased. Whales evolved 5-digit flippers and horses came up with 5-digit hooves. But the 5-digits were given with no antecedent, and no specific functional explanation in sight.

"I believe… that life is an integral and lawful part of nature and that the basic forms of life are in some sense built into nature. I see this notion massively reinforced by the evidence of 20th Century cosmology that the laws of nature are uniquely fine-tuned for life. Inevitably, therefore, this book is a defense of the typological world-view similar to that subscribed to by many 19th-century biologists: that the taxa- defining homologs represent a special set of natural forms which constitute the immutable building blocks of the biological world" (29).

If we take a materialist approach (which means methodological naturalism, scientifically speaking), even one that includes impressive and fun ideas like self-organization or emergence, we are casting our hat into the ring that says life is a happy accident, a side effect of things coming together as they did. Sure, an accident that is fascinatingly complex and all that, but it arose as a matter of circumstances that could have been otherwise. Denton uses dozens of very specific biological examples to illustrate that, in fact, the *organization* of both structures and processes are clearly informed by patterning and prescriptive programming that transcends any particular manifestation of those patterns and programs.

These are profound mysteries. All hand waving aside, no materialistic explanation even comes close.

[Randy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thirty years ago Allan Bloom wrote his bestseller, “The Closing of the American Mind,” in which he noted his observation that over his teaching career students had become much more relativistic in their epistemology, in how they regarded knowledge and learning. He further observed that what was remarkable was not this relativism, per se, but the dogmatism with which it was held. This, then, led to the closing of the American mind because this belief that all ideas are equal made students less willing to trade their own prejudices for the accumulated knowledge and brilliant insights of thinkers from the past.

I think that this attitude of unthinking dogmatism is evident as well today by many who weigh in on the broad subject of “evolution,” that wax nose of a word which can be shaped to mean a number of different things. That attitude, quite frankly, is intolerable. Human beings ought to be in the business of seeking after truth, finding out what reality is like, and engaging those with whom we might disagree in a spirit of respect.

Instead, what often happens is people are only interested in reaffirming what they already believe, and they are quick to smear, dismiss, and attribute the worst motives to those with other ideas. I am speaking of philosophical naturalists who can sniff out a “creationist” lurking behind any idea which challenges Darwinian evolution. But I am also speaking of creationists who see a compromise with “atheistic” evolution behind even a consideration that the earth might be old.

So rather than dismiss this book as worthless because it comes from the Discovery Institute, (and we already know that everything that comes from those guys is false,) if the reader could just put aside his prejudices and give the author a chance to build his case, he or she might be in for a real treat.

Now, the author didn’t do himself any favours with his choice of title, because what he is really talking about being in crisis is Darwinian evolution, not evolution broadly speaking, which can mean just about anything that involves change over time. In fact, what he is proposing as an alternative to Darwinism is not special creation, but another theory of evolution.

This theory of evolution, called “structuralism” or “typology,” is pretty much the antithesis of Darwinism because it advocates a top-down generation of complexity, one where complexity is built into the structure of nature, hard-wired, as it were, and it becomes actualized in a law-like fashion. Darwinian microevolution still occurs, but macroevolution, such as the generation of novel body plans, is the result of evolutionary saltations, or leaps, along particular pre-established pathways.

This concept of emergence, where forms and properties which are not foreseeable “from below” arise spontaneously in certain configurations of matter, is already an accepted principle in chemistry. For example, it applies to both the emergent properties of water as compared to those of its constituent parts, hydrogen and oxygen, and to the forms that water adopts under the agency of natural law. Denton concludes that “if water under the agency of natural law can be shaped into such diverse natural forms, it is hard to refuse the possibility that complex, unexpected, emergent form, from the molecular to the organismic level, may also arise under the agency of natural law in biological systems” (p. 274).

He continues: “If typology is right, then life on earth must be assumed to be an integral part of the world-order, its forms no less “intended” than the forms of the inorganic world, and life on earth the outcome of a generative program analogous to that which generates the atoms of the periodic table in the stars” (p. 275).

In contrast to the top-down rule of structuralism, Darwinism, as a form of “functionalism,” would build complexity in a bottom-up fashion, by cumulative incremental changes which are the results of adaptation to environment. If the clock could be rewound to the first cell, Darwinism would almost certainly give us a different picture of life than what we see today because what unfolded was not governed by a set of natural laws. Thus all the life we see around us, including ourselves, is utterly contingent.

But if the apparent beauty, order, design and purpose of the natural world, including us, is actually real, it would seem to me that on the face of it we ought to prefer an evolutionary theory that can account for these things, rather than one that cannot, and in fact claims they are illusory. Beauty and elegance has in fact a long history in scientific vocabulary and in criteria for evaluating or appreciating the adequacy of particular theories.

So what exactly are these laws that govern the emergence of biological complexity, according to structuralism? We don’t know. What we do know, Denton says, is that “a vast amount of organic order is clearly epigenetic [not residing in the genes] and far beyond any sort of genetic reduction, and [thus] it will be the task of twenty-first-century biology to characterize and determine the basic nature of the self-organizational processes involved” (p. 263).

What Denton says about genetics bears repeating because it is absolutely not controversial and has been borne out by many, many studies in the field of “evo-devo” (evolutionary developmental biology). Darwinism has everything residing in the genes, hence the term “genetic blueprint” that we have heard for years. However the reality is that the idea of genes containing a blueprint has become an inadequate model. Although genes carry the parts lists, the building blocks, for cells, there is no evidence that they contain the instruction manual for putting them together to produce a living cell (p. 255).

The structuralism versus functionalism debate actually goes back to the nineteenth century, with Richard Owen being the champion of the former and Charles Darwin being the champion of the latter. The last century has of course belonged to Darwin, but this book presents some compelling reasons why not only Darwin’s theory is proving to be unsatisfactory, but also why we might consider giving Owen a second look.

This should be completely disarming to nervous methodological naturalists (holding the view that nature is a closed system of natural causes and effects) who, like geneticist Richard Lewontin, are adamant to not let “a divine foot in the door,” because both theories are methodologically equivalent in this sense. Both invoke common descent, while one (Darwinist functionalism) appeals to cumulative small changes driven by natural selection, while the other (structuralism) would see big jumps (saltation) driven by some as-yet mysterious laws built into the fabric of nature.

Granted, speaking of “internal causal factors” as Denton does is a bit vague. But the fact that structuralism is in its infancy and needs much further development is almost beside the point. Because what Denton has done is to articulate the outlines of an alternative theory of evolution that is as scientific as Darwinism. This is impressive given that such a claim stands even by conceding the dubious definition of what makes something “scientific” which the courts have insisted upon. In other words, for the sake of argument, you could concede the demarcationist criteria for science spelled out at the 1981 Arkansas creation trial, and structuralism would meet those criteria.

I hope that the ideas put forward in this book will make defenders of this definition of science less skittish in discussing the explanatory difficulties of Darwinian evolution. If one is a methodological naturalist, one is not faced with a choice between Darwin and nothing. But it just may be that we’ll end up swapping out the statue of Darwin for that of Owen in biology’s hall of fame.

[James Downard · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have followed Michael Denton's work on antievolution since his 1985 work, in the course of my #TIP methodology of creationism project at www.tortucan.wordpress.com, and discovered his superficial analytical method (paying attention to very little of the available relevant data, and often drawing on dated or secondary resources). His bad ideologically-driven method (he doesn't like the idea that living things have been naturally evolving without the intervention of some unspecified designing intelligence, Denton being apparently a philosophical agnostic) has not improved in his 2016 book, which has only been compounded by the fact that so much more of the primary source data are directly available for inspection (not so back in 1985).

I recently did a comprehensive analysis of the reptile-mammal transition macroevolution case and how antievolutionists have ignored that evidence.
Print version at https://www.amazon.com/dp/1540736296/... and available in all ebook formats also. I document a 100% failure rate on the part of antievolutionists regarding this spectacular set of evidence (I'll note British paleontologist Christine Janis' take on my book, from her Amazon review, "an incredible tour de force").

Denton fell on that scope both on account of his old work and how he thought to tackle it in 2016. I examined at the source usage level four areas:

(1) the reptile-mammal transition (RMT) evidence, where Denton managed to avoid all of the actual paleontology and ineptly claimed that the jaw/ear evolution evidence somehow was inexplicable in any "adaptive Darwinian scenario" (his latest poorly thought out mantra). A check of the relevant technical literature showed that he had no idea what he was talking about, and since that work was readily accessible online (I found it) his inability to spot any of it spoke volumes about his superficial scholarly method.

(2) Unlike the RMT, which Denton relegated to a small section of his book, Denton put the evolution of feathers on his front burner, but when the sources he employed were checked it turned out it was Denton once again being painfully superficial. On the paleontology, Denton cited no direct science sources at all for his glib dismissal of feathered theropod dinosaurs. Instead, he drew on a Wikipedia article (what, was he doing a grade school term paper?) that had ironically cited several of the major relevant technical works that he managed to miss, including significant work on the developmental biology of feathers, and a dated and peripheral secondary account by Intelligent Design groupie Casey Luskin, who it turned out had made unsupported claims on a particular fossil find.

(3) Ant systematics. I had intended to call attention to how Denton had missed the predicted transitional wasp/ant fossil Sphecomyrma in his old 1985 book, but he only dug his bad scholarly hole deeper when in the 2016 book Denton tossed off a single jargon-laden paragraph to imply that ants were somehow typologically static and inexplicable from an evolutionary point of view. Not only had he failed to stumble onto any of the notable technical work that suggested otherwise, he managed to trip around them even in the few works he did cite, including three of his own sources that had explicitly covered the sphecomyrmids. Again this involved technical work that was easily accessible online, suggesting once again Denton's inability to scratch the surface of the technical literature.

(4) In the pre-publication hype for the book from his publisher, the Discovery Institute, including in a video done by Denton, it was suggested he would be documenting a claim that the shape of maple leaves was somehow non-adaptive, inexplicable again by any conceivable "Darwinian adaptive scenario". Come to the book, though, and that subject never arose, which seemed a missed opportunity for him, unless you realized that it was an assertion he could never have documented because it isn't true. Again it was simply a matter of doing some searching in the science literature, that had already pinned down a lot not only about the adaptive dynamics of leaf shapes in general, but even works directly on maple leaves.

Should anyone be impressed by Denton's level of scientific scholarship or reasoning? I contend not. Denton proved in 2016 how painfully far behind the data curve he was, a sin of laziness magnified by how easy it is these days to find so much of the primary technical literature freely accessible (no small item for this not well-heeled researcher).

By the way, in my assessment of Denton I tracked down all of his primary source citations, not just the ones I covered in the new ESD book. I plan in the course of my #TIP work to examine all those subjects (including bat evolution and the other topics Denton alluded to). It might be that Denton trotted out a sounder method on those subjects than the sloppiness he showed in the four I covered in depth, but you will pardon me if I don't hold my breath there.

[DrosoPHila · Rating 1 out of 5]

I quickly skimmed this. I don't think it will make much sense unless you've read the author's previous books Evolution: A Theory In Crisis (1986) and Nature's Destiny: How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe (1998). Creationists (particularly intelligent design creationists) often like his work, and Denton's writing forms a critical part of the latter's extensive body of books.

For background, Denton believes in his own pet theory of quasi-teleological, inherently progressive mystic history of life. Or something - it's quite difficult to characterise because of both its internal incoherency and its inconsistency with observed facts. Nevertheless, if you want to try (for whatever reason), I'd read his previous books first. If you like them, or at least found them somehow informative, then this is possibly the next step.

[Doa'a Ali · Rating 3 out of 5]

قرأت النسخة العربية ،، الكتاب لا يمكن قراءته في معزل عن باقي الاطروحات الاخرى ، استفدت من كونه يعاكس التيار بعض الشيء ،، ولكن لا يوجد فكرة واحدة واضحة منه فهو كأنه فقط يريد ان يعترض وبديله ضعيف او غير كافي ،، احببت انه أعطاني مساحة للتفكير في غير الإطار السائد
طبعًا هو لا يخالف التطور ك نظرية وإنما يعترض ع حكر التطور في الوظيفية التي تعتمد على البيئة وهو بالتأكيد محق في ذلك .. لم يعترض ابدا على حقيقة ان الكائنات تنحدر من بعضها او ان هناك سلف او أسلاف مشتركة نشأت الحياة بها ،، هو يختلف مع التفاصيل
انصح بقراءة كتاب (أشكال لا نهائية غاية في الجمال) الى جانبه

[Jeremy]

Read an excerpt here. I watched Is Genesis History? (available on Netflix) yesterday.

[Josiah Richardson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another one of these books that misses the point. Argues from the beginning about evolution being "just a theory" and makes the egregious 7/10 split between microevolution and macroevolution. There are fundamental flaws to point out with evolutionary theory, let alone darwinism and naturalism. Unfortunately, it does not happen here.

[Malec Kennedy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Too specialized for me. Made it through the first half arguments. Skipped over the remaining chapters of examples. Too thick. Maybe another year.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE CRITIC OF ‘CLASSICAL DARWINISM’ ARGUES FOR A STRUCTURALIST ‘LAWFUL BIOLOGY’

Michael John Denton (born 1943) is a British-Australian author and biochemist, who is a current Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture; he has also written books such as 'Evolution: A Theory In Crisis.'

He wrote in the Introduction to this 2016 book, “My main aim in ‘Evolution: A Theory in Crisis’ was to argue that nature is fundamentally discontinuous… the major taxa-defining characteristics, such as hair in … mammals or feathers in… birds, are not led up to from putative ancestral forms via a long series of functional intermediates … I argued that [this]… poses an existential threat to … classical Darwinian adaptive gradualism and the claim that macroevolution is no more than an extension of microevolution… I still adhere to this discontinuous typological view, although since… I have adopted a much more structuralist conception of organic order….

“When I wrote ‘Evolution’… I failed to see what is very obvious to me now… not all features of living things are there to serve some adaptive purpose, and many… give every appearance of being a-functional ‘primal patterns’ which have never served any specific adaptive ends… My major goal in this book is to review the challenge to Darwinian orthodoxy and the support for typology provided by the novelty and extraordinary invariance of the homologs. In addition, I will explore how the adaptive status of many homologs is clearly in doubt.” (Pg. 11-13) He adds, “The origin of the natural laws that generate the primal order is… its own important question… those laws may point to the intelligent design of the universe as uniquely fit for life. But arguing that thesis is not the purpose of this book.” (Pg. 18)

He continues, “there is now a growing chorus of dissent within mainstream evolutionary biology. A significant number of researchers… now argue that macroevolution requires an explanatory framework different from that of microevolution… In this new book, I will argue … that attempting to account for many of these [type-defining] homologs in terms of Darwinian cumulative selection poses an intractable problem. I will show further that advances since 1985 are not supportive of Darwinian claims… I will argue that many homologs appear never to have served functional ends… this fact… greatly strengthens my overall critique of Darwinian functionalism.” (Pg. 27)

He acknowledges, “As far as the evolution of finch beaks is concerned… I concur with classic Darwinism. The beaks are clearly adaptations and their evolution is entirely explicable within a classic functionalist framework.” (Pg. 35)

He outlines, “Practically all the novel, taxa-defining homologs of all the main taxa are NOT led up to via adaptive continuums… many … of these … do not convey any obvious impression of being adaptive… it is widely acknowledged … that the great majority of novelties which define the taxa are not led up to via the adaptive continuums that might have endowed selection with causal directive agency. Unfortunately, very few are prepared to follow the logical implication of this absence: namely, that the origin of the basic Types of nature must have been determined or directed by causal factors other than gradual cumulative selection.” (Pg. 42) Later, he adds, “Let me reiterate: If evolution has occurred as conceived of by Darwin, invariant taxa-defining novelties, not led up to via long sequences of transitional forms from some antecedent structure, SHOULD NOT EXIST. But they do!” (Pg. 53-54) He summarizes, “Darwinism … cannot supply an explanation for the origin of a significant fraction of the defining homologs of the Types and hence for the natural system itself.” (Pg. 73)

He argues, “While the fact that the same toolkit is used universally to make eye spots, fins and limbs, etc., supports descent with modification, it tells us very little about how the actualization of the homologs came about during the course of evolution. The mere fact that the same atoms are combined to make a brain or a paramecium… or that the same twenty amino acids are combined … to make the myriads of different proteins tells us nothing about how the different combinations were actualized.” (Pg. 87)

He notes, “One thing is clear: An incremental functionalist explanation for the origin of this developmental module [the insect limb] is fantastically hard to imagine. Can one really believe that a succession of small adaptive steps led to the gradual putting together of the arc-shaped gradients?... what would be the adaptive advantage of eight rows of bristles separated by angles of 45 degrees for a particular insect species? Why not six rows of bristles separated by sixty degrees? And what is the adaptive advantage of five segments in the limb? What environmental contingency could the number five have served?” (Pg. 93-94)

He clarifies, “[In] my earlier book ‘Evolution: A Theory in Crisis’… I used the words ‘evolution’ and ‘Darwinism’ too loosely, conveying the impression that they referred to the same thing, when… they are two very different concepts… where I should have used the term ‘Darwinian evolution’ rather than ‘evolution,’ I created the impression that I doubted the notion of common descent…” (Pg. 111) He continues, “There is a tree of life. There is no doubt that all extant life forms are… descended from a primeval ancestral form at the base of the tree. But there is no evidence to support the Darwinian claim that the tree is a functional continuum where it is possible to move from the base of the trunk to all the… branches in tiny incremental adaptive steps… nature is clearly a discontinuum.” (Pg. 112)

He explains, “I would like to … say something in defense of my own typological model… I see the Types … as part of the order of nature… and the actualization of their defining homologs during the course of evolution to be the inevitable outcome of perfectly natural processes… I view the Types as being … analogous to the stable atoms of the periodic table.” (Pg. 114) Later, he adds, “to validate typology it is necessary to clearly establish that … no conceivable adaptive continuums are known that can plausibly bridge the discontinuities and account for the origin of the taxa-defining novelties.” (Pg. 120)

He suggests, “The plausibility of the claim that nature lent a hand in calling forth life from chemistry is enhanced by the discovery of the extraordinary fine-tuning of the cosmos of life as it exists on earth and even for advanced life-forms… And if the laws of nature are so fine-tuned for the generation of the ‘atoms of life’ in the stars… then it is surely not unreasonable to envisage that the fine-tuning is not just for the assembly of amino acids into polypeptides but also for the assembly of the first cell, and indeed, for the whole evolutionary progression of life on earth.” (Pg. 129)

He summarizes, “the evidence… provides overwhelming support for the radical structuralist notion that a considerable degree of organic order is the result of internal causal factors intrinsic to living systems. And in the case of the first self-replicating system and of the genetic code, again there is no evidence for believing that they came about gradually via adaptive continuums. The structuralist notion that natural organizational properties of matter may have played a crucial role is again impossible to refuse.” (Pg. 144)

He argues, “The fact that no Devonian vertebrate has been found with a partly developed autopod (with fin rays and digits) and that none has been found with a pectoral fin and a tetrapod hind limb, point… to the origin of the limb as a saltational event… perhaps the entire suite of developmental mechanisms involved in making the hand and foot were present were present in the very earliest tetrapods. As things stand, I believe that the evidence supports the structuralist interpretation of the origin of the tetrapod limb---i.e., that it represents a robust emergent natural form or composite form which was actualized relatively suddenly at a particular moment in vertebrate evolution as a result of internal causal factors rather than by cumulative selection to serve functional ends.” (Pg. 169)

He observes, “It is certainly mysterious that, although the human intellect was already on the ancient savanna fully-developed and prepared for its subsequent intellectual journey, equipped with all the basic linguistic and cognitive insights that all modern humans share, it lay DORMANT for millennia… It was only 5,000 years ago when linguistic symbols were first written down… And it was only during the past 500 years that humans finally began to use their intellects to uncover the laws of nature… Yet the biological capacity for such achievements was there all along. From an evolutionary point of view, the origin of man’s higher intellectual abilities is one of the greatest of all mysteries… It would certainly seem… that the origin and evolution of our intellectual powers must have involved causal factors beyond natural selection.” (Pg. 197)

He asserts, “Altogether, the current genetic evidence adds up to what is in effect a structuralist’s manifesto, because it suggests that our linguistic ability and intellect is not the result of … complex neuronal rewiring under the direction of natural selection … Rather, all the evidence points to the [Noam] Chomsky model, in which human language is an epigenetic, emergent phenomenon arising from a currently elusive self-organizational mechanism in the primate grain…The small genetic difference between chimpanzee and man is perfectly explicable if the differences… responsible for the emergence of language and our higher intellectual faculties are EMERGENT, arising primarily from self-organizational processes and not from genetic tinkering.” (Pg. 213-214)

He states, “One of the most curious aspects of the almost universal acknowledgement that the cosmos is uniquely fine-tuned specifically for carbon-based life is the failure to take this next logical step and infer that nature may be also fine-tuned for the origin and actualization of the basic forms of carbon-based life which characterize life on earth. Indeed, I would argue that this failure is one of the most striking failures of the human imagination in recent scientific history. Despite the eulogies of Paul Davies, George Barrow, Frank Tipler … on the fitness of nature for life, none of them is prepared to take the next logical step to nomogenesis (evolution by law) and the notion of ‘laws of biological form.’ … There is no doubt that cosmological fine-tuning for life as it exists on earth provides a very powerful line of circumstantial evidence … for a return to a structuralist biology and the notion that life’s origin and evolution were built into the order of nature from the moment of the ‘big bang.’” (Pg. 250)

He concludes, “I do concede that such a ‘lawful biology’ might be seen as a first step back to teleology and the notion that the laws of nature are ‘intelligently’ fine-tuned to generate the set of life forms on earth up to and including mankind. Indeed… they may be construed … as reflecting a reality beyond matter, a la Platonic forms… Whatever the ultimate cause of things, whether teleological implications or otherwise may be inferred, the validity of structuralist claims and my advocacy of a lawful biology are supported by the scientific evidence.” (Pg. 281)

This book will be ‘must reading’ for anyone seriously studying evolutionary theory, Intelligent Design, and related topics.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

A work suggesting that natural laws of form are the engine of evolution rather than natural selection.

An interesting book that gives evidence of growing unease within Biology as research that advances knowledge suggests that Darwinism is not correct.

The book would be improved with a glossary for the general reader.

[Elwin Kline · Rating 1 out of 5]

Absolutely terrible.

I strongly oppose the way of thought that exhibits "I got it right, and the rest of the world is wrong" type mentalities when it comes to religion, science, you name it. It is amazing how many hours and years Dr. Michael Denton, the author of Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis, has spent hating on Charles Darwin. It is actually comical how much shade is being thrown about Darwin and his theory, notice it is not labeled and/or identified as Darwin's law. Again it really just amazes how much energy Dr. Denton has put towards trying to prove Darwin wrong within this book.

What is even more humorous and remarkable is how Dr. Denton totally puts his foot in his mouth and contradicts himself when he is trying to discredit Darwin at the same time. I cannot believe that someone with a PhD cannot see this. Maybe this is actually scientific satire? Sadly, I do not believe it is ...

This book just loops over and over again about the authors unsubstantiated and speculative perspective on evolution versus the biological process of structuralism. Essentially, stating that Darwin's miracle of adaptive gradualism through natural selection is wrong, and Dr. Denton's belief system is right!

However, the greatest joke of it all... is that the last chapter of the book, Dr. Denton announces that he can't prove anything, but he's got a "really good feeling" about his beliefs, and tells the reader to hang on tight... because over the next couple of decades, surely there will scientific break through that proves Darwin wrong and his beliefs right.

Rock solid 1/5.

This book has inspired me to create a new shelf, "Worst in Class" and is the honorary first addition to be placed within.

[Geoffrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very satisfying alternative to neo-Darwinism.

A detailed, systematic and readable explanation of structuralism as an account of evolution and descent with modification. The core argument is that imminent in nature itself is a very large set of types or forms or homologous that can both act as constraints on what an organism can become and that act as the central "seeds" of self-organization. It does not claim to be complete, is rigorously scientific, and yet offers a path into the notion that life and the shapes life take are not pure accidents.

[Peter · Rating 1 out of 5]

See https://ncse.com/library-resource/rev... for a well written review.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a surprising book because rather than being a creationist attack on evolution, it is a structural evolutionist attack on Darwinian gradualism. That is, it argues that gradual small improvements can not explain the major features that define the major classes, but rather, there are natural biological laws that define preferred configurations, and organisms hit a tipping point and jump to the next configuration (saltation).

This might explain the gaps in the fossil record, as well as the lack of experimental evidence for gradualism. It might also make convergent evolution more likely. It may also explain the fixity of many creatures who remain unchanged and unevolved since ancient times.

However, the reason this view was originally abandoned by scientists was that this type of large-scale change would require wholesale and successful changes across many interlinked systems simultaneously, something seen as literally impossible.

Additionally, it begs the question about the origin of these natural laws. It suggests an intelligence behind the creation. In this sense, this saltational view is also more in line with theistic evolution than naturalism.

Lastly, these provided biological laws and configurations are entirely hypothetical and undefined at this time.

As a young earth creationist sympathizer myself, I enjoyed the valid criticisms of Darwinian gradualism, as well as the obvious inference of a designer.

However, I still think evolution is a pipe dream for those who miss the obvious design of the universe and life, and believe against hope that mutations are leading to functional improvements rather than the degradation of nature according to Newton's second law.

But this book, at times impressively and challengingly technical, explains a broader view of what evolution could be, while being openly and freely critical from the inside. Well done.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book with a simple premise: evolution in the form of Darwinism is dead. After Denton had written his first book in 1995, the situation had not changed with the advance in the field of evolutionary biology.

Basically, Darwinism states that there must be gradual evolution spurred by functional advantage. However examples after examples shown by Denton revealed so such intermediaries were ever found. A simple example is our brain. No gradual advantage to be able to read or do calculus when we are still hunting mammoths! Many many other examples were given.

One shocking revelation after reading this book is the fact that the Darwinism orthodoxy is quite dead, and recent genetic papers would make statements like even a single gene could not have evolved as it would involve so many controlling elements from many other ‘silent’ regions, as well as epigenetic control, which must have evolved together but it is simply too impossible.

So if not Darwinian gradual evolution, what then? Denton suggested that evolution is an emergent phenomenon. Just like water is an emergent phenomenon which cannot be predicted from its source elements, water also has different properties depending on the size of the droplets etc. So evolution just had to happen like the development of the physical universe. He posited that we should not separate biological evolution from the development of other physical objects!

Denton refused to be drawn into a debate of meta-physics like Intelligent design; nonetheless this is an eye-opening book indeed!

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the book because of the reputation of the author and being familiar with his first book 30 years ago on evolution. I found myself wading through specialist terminology that made the book a challenge to read. The intended audience is not the neophyte biologist. While it was a challenge to read I think I still captured enough to appreciate the argument and I'm confident that those with a formal education in the life sciences will find the book a valuable critique of Darwinism. In case you are wondering, Denton is not a creationist though he admits that his argument may be a step toward a teleological view of life.

[Maxime N. Georgel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Belle critique du Darwinisme et magnifique défense du saltationnisme par émergence épi génétique. Beau rétablissement aussi de tous les biologistes du XIXe comme Richard Owen et les structuralistes. Belle interaction avec Aristote pour la typologie du vivant. Intéressante suggestion sur les « lois des formes »

30 ans après « Evolution a Theory un crisis », Denton réaffirme et précise sa critique du néodarwinisme. Toujours aussi convaincant bien que l’ouvrage soit plus spécialisé et donc difficile à comprendre.

[Hank Pharis · Rating 3 out of 5]

(NOTE: I'm stingy with stars. For me 2 stars means a good book or a B. 3 stars means a very good book or a B+. 4 stars means an outstanding book or an A {only about 5% of the books I read merit 4 stars}. 5 stars means an all time favorite or an A+ {Only one of 400 or 500 books rates this!).

The great news is that I can listen to a book a day at work. The bad news is that I can’t keep up with decent reviews. So I’m going to give up for now and just rate them. I hope to come back to some of the most significant things I listen to and read them and then post a review.

[Philip Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed this. Obviously, outside of my area of expertise, so it's not going to be the first thing I will (or even could) argue about. Michael Denton used a lot of jargon, which is totally his prerogative: it's not a popular level book. But id did mean that there were a number of things that felt inaccessible to the common man. In saying that, I understood the gist of it and found his argument for structuralism instead of functionalism to be pretty compelling. Denton has no religious commitments that I'm aware of, which made the book all the more interesting.

[Enrique · Rating 2 out of 5]

It could have been an article instead of a book.

As a theory it looks intriguing, but once you research it out, it has very little support because of the few proofs behind, whereas the evolution has

Nevertheless, it is a way of looking through different ideas and eventually, it seems that the black or white approach does not work for either of them.

It is also a good reading to understand better the roots of creationists out of mystique and religion. But you don’t need all those pages. Again the opportunity cost compared to other books is huge.

[Stephen Greer]

Denton adds a great deal to the ever increasing host of voices showing the inadequacy of the Darwin and Neo-Darwinism. However his arguments for natural forces in nature moving unguided to the complexities we see daily is far from complete or adequate as he admits. No one out there will admit the obvious necessity of an intelligent designer. Maybe it the fear that the designer may come around asking for accountability one of these days.

[Aleksandar Shah · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazingly well stated redemption of Sir Richard Owen and the truth about Biology

Mr. Denton has brought back to life the logical necessity of reasonable opposition to Darwinism and, in doing so, he provided the tools of genuine scientific enquiry in biological research about the origins of life - exposing the sham science of Darwinism! BRAVO DENTON!

[حسن الهلالي · Rating 5 out of 5]

Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis
يالا اللهول لقد مر 30 سنة و أصبحنا في عام 2015 و قد بلغ د.مايكل دنتون من العمل 72 عاماً لابد أنه قد ترجع عن طرحة الذي طرحه مُنذ ثلاثون سنة حول التطور لا بُد أنه حينما كتاب كتابه الأول في 1985 كان يعني من بعض المشاكل المالية و أرد أن يحله بنقد النظرية التي يُبثت صحتها مع كل فچر يومًا جديد

[Gary Giberson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book had some very interesting points regarding evolution. And actually the misnomers that are still circulated regarding this theory. It was interesting to see and read information from someone who has a deeper understanding of this topic than I did. The author made some very good points.

[Syd · Rating 2 out of 5]

finished this and did not really like it at all. its just a difficult read and hard to comprehend - dont recommended reading unless youre smart (LOL that was a joke (sorta))

recommended ages 17\18 & up.

[Eric C 1965 · Rating 4 out of 5]

The ID book that preceded Phillip Johnson's "Darwin On Trial" has been updated 30 years later. From an agnostic, Denton decimates the functional view of Darwinism. Fantastic.

[Hellracer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Darwinism is dead. It's time to move on to a more scientific and modern structuralist model of interpretation of organisms. This book is a must-read if you are interested in modern biology.

[Carey Smoak · Rating 5 out of 5]

This updated book by Dr. Denton shows even more clearly how evolution falls apart at the molecular level.

[An Te · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly revelatory read. The book is excruciatingly exact in its details. Perfect.

This book by Michael Denton is an astounding piece of detective work. The pan-adaptationist (thorough-going Darwinian) simply cannot make sense of all the cases which point clearly towards a template, structure ('Bauplan', the term used in the book) that pre-exists and shapes the entire evolutional process by natural selection. The devil is truly in the detail. Such weighty figures supporting Richard Owen's structuralism include Noam Chomsky, Alan Turing (yes, the computer scientist, philosopher, cryptographer), Stephen Jay Gould, Thomas Nagel etc... The devil is truly in the detail.

Evolutionists need to re-consider their worldview that adaptation alone explains all the complexity of our biological world. (Denton even considers the design in physical world also in this final two chapters.) A splendid read which may be a nail in a pan-adaptationists coffin. I'll be sure to read more on this to ensure coverage and bias is kept to a minimum.

[Frederick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Imagine evolution without Darwin's natural selection reigning supreme. This book is very interesting although filled with scientific language that confused me at times. Denton's claim that, "life is an integral part of nature," and that the universe is, "biocentric,' does not admit by necessity of design. He only shows that there are alternatives to Darwin and his progeny. He has a great argument for absolute Types and if I understand him correctly that he believes that all of the possibilities for an organism to change or evolve are already present in it and not caused and created by environmental stresses, only revealed by such things. I apologize if I have got him wrong. But, this is what the book said to me after taking six months to read it.