---
product_id: 401214477
title: "Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis"
brand: "michael denton"
price: "B/.107"
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reviews_count: 5
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region: Panama
---

# Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis

**Brand:** michael denton
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- **What is this?** Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis by michael denton
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Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis

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## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Excellent, a daring and honest scientific explanation of the very real problems in the standard theory of evolution
  

*by L***D on Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 10 April 2018*

One of the good things about reading books is that you sometimes get to realise that someone else out there in the world has thought the same strange things that you have. Reading this book, as someone who has thought a great deal about the problem of evolution, it  is a relief to know that someone else has delved deeply into the problem and been left with some baffling difficulties.  As an atheist though, I am a bit concerned that Michael Denton, though he calls himself agnostic, works for an organisation known for its encouragement of religious creationism.Denton has recognised the simple indisputable fact that 'genes' cannot and do not make the organism - they only make the protein building blocks - the structural proteins and enzymes, but it is gene expression; where and how much, that builds us.  It seems incredible to me that Richard Dawkins (the man who I credit with getting me into this fine mess), and his many disciples, still talk of genes as if they somehow magically conferred characteristics on an organism.  They just don't, they make proteins; and the gap between making proteins and the development of an organism, the subject of morphology, is not explained by genes alone.  In fact it is quite clear that the same genes can have widely differing functions and effects in different cells and at different stages in the life of an organism.  Yet still the talk is of a 'gene for schizophrenia', or autism, or homosexuality, as if this was even remotely possible.  It isn't!  On this I am with Denton, as are many others now in the light of recent developments in genetics.The book, which is quite a hard read, and really requires that you know the basics of genetics - DNA, transcription, translation and so on, presents several well-reasoned problems that appear insurmountable in the accepted neo-Darwinian explanation of evolution by the accumulation of small changes resulting from random mutations.  Some of these concern large-scale development, such as the existence of distinct clades; features that persist in non-adaptive ways, although they might be expected to be changed in all directions by constant mutation and selection.  A similar problem arises with orthogenetic features - the observed tendency for some characteristics to keep changing in the same direction over often very long periods of time.  More convincing for me, though, are the small-scale problems that arise in the cell itself, which call up a 'chicken and egg' dilemma.Take, for example the evolution of the basic mechanism of triplet coding in the DNA, which codes for 20 amino acids, plus redundancy, while also allowing for the coding of binding sites.  This triplet coding can only achieve anything in conjunction with the translation machinery, which in turn can only function if it has the right amino acids available. How could there possibly be any intermediate steps to this process that enhanced survival of the cell or organism? The adoption of a simpler system of translation, for example, would result in all organisms being killed off by any mutation that led to a more advanced system, as the decoding would simply be broken.  The eye is often quoted as a seemingly impossible problem without intermediate forms, but of course there are in fact intermediate forms that can be imagined and that exist throughout nature for eyes.  The cellular problems seem much more intractable.  How could introns evolve without there being a splicing mechanism already in place, without completely breaking translation to proteins?  The red blood cell is something that Denton worked on that he has a special interest in.  It loses its nucleus.  Why?  So that the smaller cell can squeeze through tiny blood vessels, we think.  But the ejection of the nucleus is a complex process involving many mechanisms.  There cannot be a red cell with the nucleus half ejected!  What conceivable intermediate forms can we possibly imagine that would be selected for their beneficial effect?  Denton also marvels at the fact that DNA just happens to be capable of modification in so many ways, such as by the many forms of epigenetic modification that have recently been discovered.  Everything seems to point, as is often said in physics) to a universe that was 'designed' to enable life, and yet, for me, there just has to be another answer, although that is certainly not the accepted one!Denton, who is not exactly a creationist, then looks at the alternative of saltation - large 'lucky' changes in the DNA that happen to create the mechanisms in one go, but concludes as others have (and I am pleased to see that he mentions Sir Fred Hoyle) that the chance of this happening is not just very low, it's as good as zero!  I well remember going to a lecture by Fred Hoyle in 1967 at Bangor University, but sadly this fascinating man fell into disrepute, despite being knighted, and as many others have, for daring to espouse unconventional views.  Many people do not even realise that neo-Darwinism would be disowned by Darwin, were he still around, because he realised that he did not understand the mechanism of change in living things that is the raw material for selection, and turned in fact to Lamarck's idea of the inheritance of acquired characteristics to create his own hypothesis called pangenisis.In the end, Denton is drawn to the idea of emergence, in complex systems, as the only answer he can imagine.  The idea that somehow, the universe embodies in it's very laws the possibility of living things just coming into being, rather as some molecules embody the possibility for crystals to come into being.  For me, this is not a much better answer though than the idea of a creator.  I want a mechanistic solution, but I do not dispute the difficulties. Summing this up (p282), he tells us that the famous J B S Haldane famously proclaimed nature to be, 'not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can ever suppose.'  'And certainly far, far queerer than conventional Darwinian evolution supposes,' Denton adds.  Those 'experts' who assure us that evolution by natural selection has been 'proved' and is accepted by all sane scientists, need to take note. Darwinian evolution is in fact accepted by almost none of the really serious scientists who have worked in the field and discovered the intractable problems.  An excellent, daring, totally honest and well-reasoned,  if ultimately not very satisfying, book.

### ⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Just Who is in the details?
  

*by A***S on Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 3 August 2018*

The problem with this book, as with so many others arguing much the same thing, is this: Who's going to read it? Of course it's preaching to the converted, but that doesn't get the arguments to where they're most needed, viz. the dyed-in-the-wool Darwinists. Can you imagine, for example, Richard Dawkins spending any time reading it? Of course not. The hegemony of the Darwinist paradigm is so well-entrenched in schools, universities, and TV documentaries (via the BBC Horizon model of the universe, which allows of no dissenting voices from the mainstream of anything), that even the relentless accretion of sceptical points of view makes hardly a dent in the edifice.As someone once a committed Darwinist myself, and whose doubts emerged long-since with a reading of the French biologist Grasse, I've kept an eye on both sides of the debate over many years. Denton's book fails, where it fails, not because the detailed argument has no merit, but because the book itself gives too much away in its style to convince anyone who isn't already on his  side. This book cries out for a decent editor. I haven't seen this many exclamation marks in a text since marking first-year undergraduate essays. (I think it may have been Stephen King who said that using an exclamation mark was like laughing at your own jokes.) And the over-use, and indeed frequent mis-use of italics to emphasise a point is tiresome, and unnecessary: as is the author's relentless citing of his own previous work. If the point was well-made before, then he should just trust his reader, make the point again, and relegate its origins to a footnote. All of this makes the text an uneasy and unhappy mixture of dense academic argument and polemical journalism: the latter being enough on its own to turn away those putative readers (the Darwinists) who would have been most likely to benefit from the argument.Buried under the repetitions, the infelicities of expression, and the (somewhat) self-serving citations of his own work, there is as good a summary here of why the Darwinist hegemony should be failing (but isn't) as you'll find anywhere, even if, like me, you're certainly not a Creationist, nor perhaps even a structuralist.Which brings me to the point of my title. Creationists will read this book with profit - of course they will.Denton, at one point during his dense discussion, remarks that: "As ever, the Devil is in the details." What a pity, then, that Denton was not aware that this is a (probably late twentieth-century) misquotation. The original, owed (I believe) to St. Augustine, reads: "God is in the details." Given the thrust of the entire argument of the book, this would have made Denton's point rather beautifully - and better.One last point. I'll leave it to the reader to discover the silliest, funniest, and most inexcusable misprint I think I've ever seen. (Page 299, Note 52.) Now I know they're supposed to be intelligent...but really.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Needs either knowledge of biology or very good dictionary!
  

*by J***Y on Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 12 August 2018*

A very interesting glimpse into post-Darwinian biology. I have always felt that incremental evolution could not explain the emergence of complex interdependent systems. interesting to have a similar idea described by someone with far greater knowledge than I and no obvious axe to grind: neither rabid atheist for whom the collapse of Darwinism would precipitate a crisis of faith, nor a creationist for whom the collapse of Darwinism would eliminate a philosophical rival

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