Customer Reviews

Darwin Retried: an Appeal to Reason

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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

"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.

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.

As it's name suggests, Darwin Retried basically puts the Darwinian evolutionary theory on trial. The author, Norman Macbeth, is a lawyer who has analysed the theory of Darwinism thoroughly, in a fair and balanced manner, and found it to be unsatisfactory.

Norman Macbeth's critique is not based on any religious or political ideologies, nor is it anti-evolutionary. It is merely a critique of that particular interpretation of evolution that is Darwinism.
The book shows the Darwinian theory to be flawed in many ways. Natural selection, for instance, is an empty tautology. The idea that the useful features of an organism were "selected" is an assumption rather than a testable idea. Also, in nature, female creatures will often mate with weaker males. Certain creatures also fight for reasons other than females or territory. And in some cases, the creatures thought to have "replaced" earlier creatures in evolutionary history could not met these earlier creatures in order to compete with them.

One particulary interesting aspect of the book is that it shows how the Darwinists themselves often have doubts about aspects of the theory. Macbeth presents numerous quotes from such well known Darwinist biologists as George Simpson and Ernst Mayr.

Macbeth offers no alternative to Darwinism, and sensibly points out that the main issue of his book is the flaws of Darwinism, not what should replace it. If Darwinism is wrong, then its wrong, and not having an alternative available at the moment is not going to change that fact.
While Macbeth himself does not have an alternative to Darwinism though, he does suggest one possibility. This possibility is Richard Goldschmidt's "hopeful monster" theory, which suggests that evolution occurs through sudden big changes in lifeforms (as opposed to the small gradualistic changes of Darwinism).

Overall, this book is a truly intriguing look at just how well (or, as the case seems to be, how poorly) Darwinism stands up to scrutiny.

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.

"Darwin Retried" amounts to little more than Mr. Macbeth's committing the fallacy of taking a failure of imagination as an insight into necessity time and time and time ... again. One's belief that something is impossible does not make that thing impossible. Mr. MacBeth does not make a serious effort to understand the neoDarwinian position or is of such limited intellectual ability he simply cannot understand it.

The author is a Harvard trained lawyer. (This book is definitely not a ringing endorsement of HLS.) However, he does not apparently understand the difference between making an argument qua lawyer and making one qua academic. In court, one can appeal to the authority of an expert or experts in order to advance one's point. Such is the pragmatic nature of court precedings. In academia appealing to authority is unacceptable. One must say why those authorities to whom one's appealing are right; reasons must be provided, since X's saying 'Y is true' is independent of the truth of Y.

I find that someone decided to publish this book very troublesome. Mr. MacBeth's gossamers of arguments, clumsily expressed half-truths, misunderstandings, and muddleheadedness do not lead us to doubt the pith of neo-Darwinists' claims anymore than a lunatic's eschatological ramblings lead us to prepare for an apocalypse.

I'm sorry that this was ever published, and if you read this, you will be too. All theories should be carefully assessed and challenge. However any assessment and challenge simply won't do. Mr. Macbeth's work is one that simply won't do.