The Neck of the Giraffe (Meridian) [Mass Market Paperback]

Francis Hitching (Author)

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 1 pages
• Publisher: Plume (July 1, 1983)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0452008964
• ISBN-13: 978-0452008960
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,511,319 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Grasp at any straw., July 15, 2005

By 

James K. Manning "I discuss politics and reli... (Memphis, TN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Neck of the Giraffe (Paperback)

Francis Hitching's literary credentials include writing TV scripts for "In Search of the Unexplained." Oh. he's written other books too, on subjects like pyramid energy, Atlantis, dowsing, and earth magic (whatever that is). So how did this running nut job become one of the foundational thinkers of the intelligent design movement?

Hitching is cited and quoted as an alleged scientist in the much more widely read, but only slightly less doubtful Phillip Johnson book: "Darwin on Trial." He is also listed among the "Doubters of Darwin" on the website Answers in Genesis, an online clearinghouse for leaders in creation science.

The irony of all this is that Fancis Hitching doesn't disagree with the concept of evolution per se, but rather with Darwin's approach to the subject. Neither is the book completely kind to the intelligent design movement. His pet argument is the absence of any transitional links between species that evolved (hence the title), but there are literally thousands and thousands of those available now for those who want to look at some real science. Read this book if you want to, but you'll have to find it at Goodwill or the flea market, for like all Hitching's books it is out of print.

I regret that this book review is going to be my first on Amazon, and the only one for a while to come. I had wanted to enter the fray with reviews of some far more legitimate works. But I stumbled across it while working on a small section of my much larger senior project for college, Evangelical Christians on the Right Wing of US Politics. So the good stuff will have to wait until I finish the project or get a minute. This was like shooting fish in a barrel.

(...)

15 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Bad then, outdated now, August 29, 2005

By 

Darby M'Graw (Treasure Island) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Neck of the Giraffe (Hardcover)

On the dustjacket, we are told that Hitching "has interviewed the leading exponents of creationism, and he rejects their arguments". How bizarre then that the first four chapters of the book consist almost entirely of creationist arguments.

Hitching points to the gaps in the fossil record, and is foolish enough to claim that the fossil record is complete; that no more gaps will be filled. That was in 1982, just think how many important fossils have been discovered since then, including transitional whale ancestors and feathered dinosaurs. His dismissal of transitional fossils, particularly Archaeopteryx, makes no sense whatsoever.

It is clear from Hitching's text that he himself does not understand biology well, which makes him poorly qualified to write about it for others. (I am a molecular biologist.) In addition, what he does manage to convey is hopelessly outdated. He says we have no understanding of how eukaryotes developed (actually, he didn't know the word 'eukaryote', meaning a cell with a nucleus). We now have quite a bit of info on how eukaryotes developed from the merger of prokaryotes (cells without a nucleus). He claims that the combination of DNA and protein in cells is too complex to have started on its own. He can probably be forgiven for not knowing about the RNA World Theory because most of the best evidence for that flagrantly successful theory has come about since publication of his book.

Finally in chapter 5 Hitching gets around to selectively rejecting some creationist claims. He rejects "Young Earth Creationism", choosing to believe the evidence for an old Universe and an old Earth. He accepts common ancestry of all life on Earth. He accepts natural selection, considering it to be an obvious truth, almost a tautology (which oddly he considers to be criticism of it), but he does not believe that natural selection explains all of evolution. He favors catastrophism over gradualism (uniformitarianism). He chooses to believe in a theory of neo-LaMarckism (inheritance of acquired traits) that has not held up well in the scientific arena.

But then, why should we care what he believes? He has established that he is not an expert at the science, and cannot discern good arguments from bad. I recommend that instead of reading this book, you get your science from someone who is and can.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Examining the Subassumptions of Darwin's Theory, June 10, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Neck of the Giraffe (Meridian) (Mass Market Paperback)

An excellent and informative book that examines the theory of evolution and the Darwinian assumptions that the theory is based on. The author has few preconceptions, and argues eloquently that while the theory itself is on solid ground, manyof Darwin's assumptions should be discarded as being extraneous or in some cases, simply incorreect.