Customer Reviews

The Neck of the Giraffe (Meridian)

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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.

(...)

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.

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.

1. The book was written in 1983 so it's more than a little dated.

2. Hitching has NO credentials whatsoever in the field; he is neither scientist or biologist.

3. Most of his other writing is on the subject of the paranormal, like dowsing and earth magic. Since he believes in these things his judgement and reasoning is more than a little questionable in my opinion. Scientific reasoning, method and thinking does not appear to be his long suit.

4. Richard Dawkins who IS an expert in the field has the following to say: "I know nothing at all about Francis Hitching. If you are uncovering the fact that he is a charlatan, good for you. His book, The Neck of the Giraffe, is one of the silliest and most ignorant I have read for years."

The book is all but useless.

The author states in the Introduction to this 1982 book, "The mystery of how life began, and then proliferated into the myriad forms on Earth today, is one that crosses the barriers of science, religion and philosophy. For many years now, as we shall see, it has been taken for granted that Darwin had solved the question once and for all. But had he? When I began to look beyond the orthodox textbook explanations, I found many scientists with private doubts; rather fewer who had come out with them in public; and a handful who went so far as to say that Darwinian evolutionary theory had turned out not to be scientific theory at all."

Here is a fascinating section: "Duane Gish and others of his standing are well aware of this problem, but in the end they let their faith override it. When I asked him what were the biggest difficulties for creationist science---the points in a debate which he felt least comfortable in answering---he answered after a moment's thought that it was the apparently great age of Earth as shown by the fairly recent advances in radiometric dating; and that the fossil record could be interpreted as showing ecologically complete ages---the age of invertebrates, the age of fishes, the age of reptiles, and so on to the present. It was possible to see these as self-contained epochs succeeding each other, whereas the Bible said they were all laid down during a single episode of the Flood.... Some of the questions Gish said must be answered are as follows: ... If man is several million years old, why was it that post-flood man developed agriculture and animal husbandry only a few thousand years ago when according to Genesis, these skills were known from the very beginning?"

Concerning the Tasmanian wolf in Australia, he writes, "It seems highly unlikely that natural selection of chance mutations, if this were the supreme governing principle, could ever have arrived at the same near-identical solution, given the differeing circumstances over such a huge timespan. Simply, it is far more probable that there is some kind of wolf 'blueprint' that determines they shall evolve as wolves."

Concerning the giraffe's neck, Hitching writes, "there are underlying laws of form and development that give much variation within certain restrictions; that individual species can express these laws in a somewhat prdetermined way (the giraffe has a 'tendency' to long neck and legs'); that evolution may develop rapidly (the 'sudden' appearance of the modern giraffe); and that these basic evolutionary drives have a momentum of their own, largely unaffected by considerations of competition."

An extremely well written and level-headed book that tackles this big question in a comprehensive and methodical manner. If you are looking for hard evidence to debunk the Neo-Darwinists such as Dawkins then look no further. The so-called "transitional forms" are all explained in delightfully non-technical language. A thoroughly good read.

Think free! Creation, evolution, is there a Creator or not? What are the arguments against the theory of evolution, that you don't hear in school and that most scientists are not forthcoming to tell you? Read them here. This is a standard work for anyone who wishes to go deep into these questions.