IMPACT No. 176

There are at least seven significant approaches to macroevolution (see Impact article 173, November 1987). Two of these types of approach are discussed in this article.

The "transformed cladist" approach is a major part of one of the three major schools of classifying organisms, [1]*** and is "neutral or opposed to evolutionary theorizing of any kind in systematics," operating instead "in a non-evolutionary domain, according to Ball. [2] It is "at odds with evolutionary thinking" rather than "evolutionarily neutral," Beatty observes, [3] and concededly "calls into question much of conventional evolutionary history." [4] Transformed cladistics "is fundamentally a non-evolutionary classification," Oldroyd notes, [5] and "is not only anti-Darwinian" but "against evolution itself," Grene says. [6] The word "transformed" refers to a "Transformation away from dependence on evolutionary theory." [7] For example, Patterson has serious doubts about macroevolution:

It's true that for the last eighteen months or so I've been kicking around non-evolutionary or even anti-evolutionary ideas. . . .
So this is my first theme: that evolution and creation seem to be sharing remarkable parallels that are increasingly hard to tell apart. The second theme is that evolution not only conveys no knowledge but it seems somehow to convey anti-knowledge. [8]

Cracraft, another leading cladist, says that "neo-Darwinism is coming apart at the seams" and has "yielded a healthy amount of mindless pap." [9] Nelson and Platnick, other leaders, conclude that "Darwinism . . . is, in short, a theory that has been put to the test and found false," and that the "Darwinian theory of systematics . . . has been falsified." [10]

An anti-evolutionist approach is taken by many non-creationist scientists. Olson reports that there are "some among the biologists who feel that much of the [macroevolutionary] theory accepted by the majority today is actually false."[11]

Kerkut, a leading biochemist who has edited a significant series of books on physiology and teaches at the University of Southampton, systematically assesses the evidence for macroevolution and finds it weak:

What conclusions, then, can one come to concerning the validity of the various implications of the theory of evolution? If we go back to our initial assumptions it will be seen that the evidence is still lacking for most of them. [12]

Lipson, a British physicist, rejects macroevolution based on his scientific analysis of it:

I have always been slightly suspicious of the theory of evolution because of its ability to account for any property of living beings (the long neck of the giraffe, for example). I have therefore tried to see whether biological discoveries over the last thirty years or so fit in with Darwin's theory. I do not think that they do.
To my mind, the theory does not stand up at all. [13]

Denton, an Australian molecular biologist, discards Darwinism and macroevolution based on his assessment of the evidence:

In this book I have adopted the radical approach. By presenting a systematic critique of the current Darwinian model, ranging from paleontology to molecular biology, I have tried to show why I believe that the problems are too severe and too intractable to offer any hope of resolution in terms of the orthodox Darwinian framework, and that consequently the conservative view is no longer tenable.

The anti-evolutionary thesis argued in this book, the idea that life might be fundamentally a discontinuous phenomenon, runs counter to the whole thrust of modern biological thought. . . . [14]

Sermonti, the senior editor of Rivista di Biologia (Biology Forum), professor of genetics at University of Perugia, and former director of the Genetics Institute of the University of Palermo (Italy), and Fondi, an Italian paleontologist, reject macroevolution because of its scientific weakness. [15]

If we wish to keep to the substance of the matter, the new scientific Weltanschauung not only brings to mind the ideas of many distinguished men such as Goethe, Cuvier, Linnaeus, Vico, Leibniz, Paracelsus, Cusano and Aristotle, but . . . the traditional view of a cosmos or systema naturae perceived as a static whole. . . .
The result we believe must be striven for can therefore only be the following: biology will receive no advantage from following the teachings of Lamarck, Darwin and the modern hyper-Darwinists; indeed, it must as quickly as possible leave the narrow straits and blind alleys of the evolutionistic myth and resume its certain journey along the open and illuminated paths of tradition.

Vernet, in France, reaches a similar conclusion. [16]

Historically, most of the leading scientists at the time of Darwin rejected and continued to reject macroevolution. Hull acknowledges that their reasons were mostly honest scientific considerations rather than religious bigotry. [17] In the early 1900s, Fleischmann was a "competent zoologist" who "called the [macroevolutionary] theory a beautiful myth not substantiated by any factual foundation," according to Mayr. [18]

Some recent popular writers have launched attacks on Darwinism and all explanations of macroevolution, such as Hitching [19] , " etc. Taylor ("inadequate, implausible, or definitely wrong"), [20] Rifkin, [21] Himmelfarb, [22] and Koestler. [23] All the authors cited in this subsection, while rejecting the theory of abrupt appearance, also reject Darwinian explanations of both major schools (the neo-Darwinian synthesis and punctuated equilibria).

Of the various scientific approaches to macroevolution besides the theory of abrupt appearance, classical Darwinism is "wrong" on key issues, neo-Darwinism and punctuated equilibria cancel each other by denying the sufficiency of the other's mechanism, and three approaches are anti-Darwinian with one opposing and a second being agnostic toward macroevolution. Classical Darwinism "was wrong" that fossils "would fill in these gaps" (Eldredge and Tattersall), [24] that gradualism could explain the "extreme rarity of transitional forms" (Gould), [25] and that acquired traits could be inherited by a "pangenesis theory" (Rosen). [26] Neo-Darwinism is also "effectively dead, despite its persistence as textbook orthodoxy" (Gould), [27] has had its "obituary" written (Platnick), [28] is "very flimsy" in its "explanation of macroevolution" (Saunders), [29] and is "incoherent" (Cracraft), [30] according to punctuated equilibria proponents and others. Punctuated equilibria, in turn, is not "an important explanation for the evolution of complex adaptations" or macroevolution (Dawkins), [31] neo-Darwinians reply.

Anti-Darwinians consist of "a significant minority of first-rate biologists who have never been able to bring themselves to accept the validity of Darwinian claims" (Denton), [32] such as evolutionary saltationists, neutral selectionists, structuralists, non-equilibrium thermodynamics advocates, and others. Examples are Lovtrup's recent Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth (1987), Ho's and Saunder's Beyond Neo-Darwinism (1984), Ambrose's The Nature and Origin of the Biological World (1982), and Grasse's The Evolution of Living Organisms (trans. 1977). Transformed cladists operate "in a non-evolutionary domain" and are "neutral or opposed to evolutionary theorizing" (Ball), [33] such as Patterson, who has "been kicking around non-evolutionary or even anti-evolutionary ideas" while concluding that macroevolution "seems somehow to convey anti-knowledge" (Patterson). [34]

Anti-evolutionists include Denton's Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1985) with its "anti-evolutionary thesis" (Denton), [35] Sermonti's and Fondi's Dopo Darwin: Critica all' Evoluzionismo (1980), and others who find that "the evidence is still lacking" for most macroevolutionary postulates (Kerkut). [36] In such a climate of scientific dispute, it is clear to all but the blinded zealots that Darwinism and macroevolution are not compellingly established or immune to criticism.

[1] Cladistics is a "philosophy of classification that arranges organisms only by their order of branching in an evolutionary tree and not by their morphological similarity." S. Lura, S. Gould and S. Singer, A View of Life 763 (1981). See also Platnich, Philosophy and the Transformation of Cladists, 28 Systematic Zoology 537, 538 (1979).
[2] Ball, On Groups, Existence and the Ordering of Nature, 32 Systematic Zoology 446, 446 (1983).
[3] Beatty, Classes and Cladists, 31 Systematic Zoology 25, 31 (1982).
[4] Patterson, Cladistics and Classification, 94 New Scientist 303, 306 (1982).
[5] Oldroyd, Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution: A Review of Present Understanding. 1 Biology and Philosophy 133, 154 (1983) (italics added).
[6] Grene, Introduction to Dimensions of Darwinism 1 (M. Grene ed. 1983).
[7] Patterson, Cladistics, 27 Biologist 234 (1980) ("But as the theory of cladistics had developed, it has been realized that more and more of the evolutionary framework is inessential, and may be dropped. . . . Platnick refers to the new theory as `transformed cladistics' and the transformation is away from dependence on evolutionary theory. Indeed, Gareth Nelson, who is chiefly responsible for the transformation, put it like this in a letter to me this summer: `In a way, I think we are merely rediscovering preevolutionary systematics; or if not rediscovering it, fleshing it out.'"); Forey, Neontological Analysis Versus Paleontological Stories, in Problems of Phylogenetic Reconstruction 119, 119, 124 (K. Joysey and A. Friday eds. 1982).
[8] Address of Dr. Colin Patterson at American Museum of Natural History, tr. at 1, 4(Nov. 5, 1981) (italics added).
[9] Cracraft, Book Reviews, 1 Cladistics 300, 300 (1985).
[10] Nelson and Platnich, Systematics and Evolution, in Beyond Neo-Darwinism 143, 143-146 (M. Ho and P. Saunders eds. 1984).
[11] Olson, Morphology, Paleontology, and Evolution. 1 Evolution after Darwin 523, 523 (S. Tax ed. 1960).
[12] G. Kerkut, Morphology, Paleontology, and Evolution 150 (1960).
[13] Lipson, A Physicist Looks at Evolution, 31 Physics Bulletin 138, 138 (1980).
[14] M. Denton, Evolution:A Theory in Crisis 16, 353 (1985) (italics added).
[15] G. Sermonti and R. Fondi, Dopo Darwin:Critica all Evoluzionismo (1980), translated by Montalenti, Darwinism Today, 77 Scientia 21, 29 (1983) (italics in original). See also Sermonti and Sermonti, The null hypothesis in vertebrate evolution, 80 Rivista di Biologia (Biology Forum) 55 (1987).
[16] M. Vernet, Revolution en Biologie (1969); M. Vernet, La Grande Illusion de Teilhard de Chardin (1964); M. Vernet, L'Evolution du Monde Vivant (1950).
[17] D. Hull, Darwin and His Critics 450-51 (1973) (U. of Chicago Press).
[18] E. Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought 218 (1982) (Harvard U. Press).
[19] F. Hitching, The Neck of the Giraffe: Where Darwin Went Wrong (1982).
[20] G. Taylor, The Great Evolution Mystery 137-38 (1983) ("the theory of evolution by natural selection seems either inadequate, implausible or definitely wrong").
[21] J. Rifkin, Algeny 135 (1983) ("Darwin and his twentieth-century apologists have been in error.")
[22] G. Himmelfarb, Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution (1959).
[23] A. Koestler, Janus: A Summing Up 185 (1978).
[24] N. Eldredge and I. Tattersall, The Myths of Human Evolution 45-46 (1982).
[25] Gould, Evolution's Erratic Pace, Natural History, May 1977, at 13, 14.
[26] Rosen, Book Review, 27 Systematic Zoology 370 370 (1978).
[27] Gould, Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging? 6 Paleobiology 120-21 (1980).
[28] Macbeth, How To Defuse a Feud, Kronos, Summer 1982, at 1, 3-4.
[29] Saunders, Book Review, New Scientist, Feb. 21, 1985, at 44, 44.
[30] Cracraft, Book Review of Beyond Neo-Darwinism, 1 Cladistics 300, 303 (1985).
[31] R. Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker 226 (1986).
[32] M. Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis 327 (1985).
[33] Ball, On Groups, Existence and the Ordering of Nature, 32 Systematic Zoology 446, 446 (1983).
[34] Address of Dr. Colin Patterson at American Museum of Natural History, tr. at 1, 4 (Nov. 5, 1981).
[35] M. Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis 16, 353 (1985)
[36] G. Kerkut, Implications of Evolution 150 (1960).

* This impact article is an extension of Impact Article 173 (Acts & Facts, November 1987). Both are excerpted from a new book entitled The Origin of Species Revisited: The Theories of Evolution and of Abrupt Appearance (New York, NY, 10025: Philosophical Library, P.O. Box 785, Cathedral Station, 215 West 104th Street, at $19.95 per volume, special price before February 28, 1988 (regular $26.95 thereafter).

** Wendell R. Bird, who argued the U.S. Supreme Court case on creation and evolution, is an Atlanta attorney, Yale Law School graduate, and bar member in Georgia, California, Alabama, and Florida.

*** All authors quoted are non-creationists, and their statements are not intended as endorsements of creation.