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Sharks Have No Bones: 1001 Things Everyone Should Know About Science

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I have owned this book for a number of years. I keep it in the bathroom and pick it up at least a few times each week. I always learn something new or remember something I'd forgotten. I would love to see this book re-released in a new edition, though most of it will never get old.
The format makes it very easy to read in short sittings or to extend as interest warrants.

Written for even the casual reader on scientific matters, this volume filters out the redundant and the superfluous, wrings the waste from scientific understanding and allows the reader to digest information in intellectual mouthfuls, rather than being goose-fed with more than can be understood. Exceptionally appropriate volume for secondary students as a supplement to cultural literacy studies. Easily implemented for gifted students.

Most of the book is OK but heavily flawed most particularly regarding the subject of evolution. The author often gives his biased editorial opinion and leaves out essential facts, which if known, would change one's whole perspective. For example, item 421: Trefil points out, correctly, that visible light "is only one of many different kinds of electromagnetic radiation, occupying a very small part of the electromagnetic spectrum . . ." But then he says, "This is just another reminder of the relatively unimportant role the Homo sapiens plays in the grand scheme of things." This, my friend, is editorial opinion, not fact. I could just as well give you my editorial opinion that the above fact reminds us of just how special humans are to have been created to use a very small part of the electromagnetic spectrum. It's all a matter of perspective. Isn't it?

Editorial opinion is one thing, but cleverly (or ignorantly) leaving out facts is much more serious. For example, item 187: He mentions the Stanley Miller experiment in 1953 which supposedly proved that amino acids could form naturally to become building blocks of proteins in living things. He fails to mention a few vital details: 1) Miller produced only a few of the twenty needed amino acids to make a protein. 2) Miller produced a mixture (racemic) of left and right handed amino acids, when in fact only left handed amino acids are a basic building block of proteins in living organisms. All subsequent experiments have demonstrated the same thing. No one has ever been able to produce only left handed amino acid through natural means! And left handed amino acids do not separate themselves from a racemic mixture through natural means either. 3) Miller rigged the device in his experiment to get the desired result of squeezing out this racemic. He used special tubing and a trap to siphon off and catch harmful elements that he knew would destroy the amino acids faster than they would ever be produced. If anything, his experiment and all subsequent experiments proved just how impossible it would have been for natural means to have produced even this racemic mixture (which, remember, is still insufficient, because you need pure left handed amino acids, not a racemic mixture) . It proved the very opposite of what he wanted to prove. It proved the Law of Biogensis, life comes from life, not from nonlife! These aren't editorial opinions. These are facts. Do you think that maybe people ought to know these facts in order to form educated opinions? I do. Trefil himself speaks of the Law of Biogenesis (without calling it that) in items 92, 93, and 94. So why does he conveniently forget about it here?

Another example (I could list many): Item 186: It sets the author's teeth on edge when creationists remind him that the Second Law of Thermodynamics (law of entropy) is incompatible with evolution. First, he tells us that this law of science does not apply to us here on terra firma, because the earth does not constitute an isolated system. This is pure bunk! First, it could be argued that the whole universe is an isolated system. Second, where do you suppose the Second Law of Thermodynamics was discovered and is observed? That's right, right down here on earth, not in fantasy land or on some remote corner of outer space. If this law of science doesn't apply here, it applies nowhere. Third, it's wrong to say that the Second Law applies only to isolated systems. It applies to all systems. It might take longer for an "open system" to wear down, but it will wear down with time. There is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine! Further, the examples the author gives does not at all support his case. To support the old "open systems" argument, he uses what I call the old "sunshine argument," the idea that the earth is not an isolated system because it has an outside supply of heat energy from the sun. Besides the fact that the sun is itself wearing down daily (a result of the Second Law of Thermodynamics), Trefil fails to mention that sunshine destroys everything it comes into contact with. Sunshine (random heat energy) actually increases and speeds up entropy on earth. The only exception to this is when a highly complex mechanism such as photosynthesis captures sunlight and converts it to useable energy. But this begs the question: Where did photosynthesis come from? It cannot be produced in a laboratory or by natural means. So where did it come from? Organisms that use sunlight positively (i.e. slowing down the effects of the second law and turning it into useable energy) are examples of intelligent design mechanisms, not evolution. All that we have ever been able to observe is that only by a highly ordered intelligent ordering of energy can the ravages of entropy be slowed and harnessed. The problem with the ages-old "open system" argument is that "evolutionists confuse quantity of energy (of which there certainly is enormous amounts sent us from the sun) with conversion of energy" The Evolution Handbook(The Evolution Handbook, pg. 789, Vance Ferrell). The second example the Trefil uses to support his case, making ice cubes, does the same thing and is just as ridiculous and is just as much of a red herring argument. Does he not see that "using energy from your local utility" is a testimony of intelligent design? Local utitlities do not build themselves! No one with a brain could deny that things like water can become "more ordered" (be turned into ice cubes). The question remains, what is the highly ordered mechanism that temporarily averted entropy? And in the final analysis, the ice cube, if left to it's own devices will melt (go to a lower from of heat energy). The author fixates on "balancing the books" of energy. This has more to do with the First Law of Thermodynamics, not the Second. The First Law says that amount of energy remains constant. The Second Law says that everything is wearing down to a lower form of heat energy. And finally, "But even if `open systems' negated the Second Law, there could still be no evolution. The problem is how would the sun's energy begin and sustain evolutionary devolopment? How can sunlight originate life? How can it produce a living cell or a living species? How could it change one species into another one?" (Ibid, p. 179).

Another example: Item 185: Trefil claims that creationism cannot be an "alternate `science'," because it can never be proven wrong, in other words, be falsified. Unfortunately, he is blind in recognizing that this is exactly true of the evolution hypothesis! Evolution can never be disproved. Whenever an "unexpected" finding comes along that contradicts the fairy tale, it gets simply labeled as an "anomaly" and forgotten. Meanwhile the fairy tale goes on and on like the Energizer Bunny. What experiment could ever disprove evolution under these circumstances? This only goes to prove that evolution is every bit as much of a "religious teaching" as creationism. Therefore, in the tradition of the pot calling the kettle black, what Trefil accuses creationists of doing--using the "tactic" of calling creationism an "alternate science" as a "roundabout way of introducing religious teaching into the public schools"-is exactly what evolutionists are doing. Evolution is a back door approach for introducing religions like Humanism and Athiesm (anything but Christianity) into classrooms! If you're looking for an example, let me give you one: In March of 1979, the Voyager I space probe gave us spectacular photos of Jupiter's moons, including Io. Io was seen to have at least sixty active volcanoes. According to the laws of physics, volcanic activity on Io should have ceased long ago if in fact the solar system were billions of years old. This was labeled as an "anomaly." Meanwhile the fairy tale that the solar system is billions of years old is still loudly proclaimed as if nothing was found! Many more examples like this could be cited not only in astronomy but in all fields of science! Why doesn't Trefil mention any of this? Is he interested in the truth or that we get brain washed with just one side of the story.

Another example, item 169: Trefil perpetrates the age old myth that "It is impossible to understand the modern biological sciences without understanding evolution." Of course, this self serving presupposition is exactly what you would expect if someone were feeding you a one sided line of bull and not wanting you to think or see outside of the box. Too many evolutionists live in this self imposed bubble, and obviously Trefil is one of them. He might want to get out more and face reality. Dr. David Menton, a distinguished professor who not only taught medical science for decades at Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, but wrote the textbook, would certainly beg to differ. Saying that you can't understand science without evolution is like saying you can't understand geology without believing in a flat earth. Trefil's statement is just further evidence that evolution is a religion that could never be disproved scientifically. Evolutionist Francis Crick appears to have expressed his own cognitive dissonance and inner struggle between seeing biology through the rose colored glasses of evolution versus trying to be unbiased: "Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved. It might be thought, therefore, that evolutionary arguments would play a large part in guiding biological research, but this is far from the case. It is difficult enough to study what is happening now. To try to figure out exactly what happened in evolution is even more difficult. Thus evolutionary arguments can usefully be used as hints to suggest possible lines of research, but it is highly dangerous to trust them too much." [Francis Crick, "Lessons from Biology," Natural History, vol. 97 (November 1988) pp. 32-39]

Item 170: Trefil states: "The central mechanism of evolution is natural selection." We know today that natural selection could never account for the magnitude and number and changes that would be needed to change one species into another. Neo-Darwinists have thus turned to mutations as the hoped for mechanism of change, but this has proven through experimental observation to be most unfruitful. Strange that Trefil doesn't have anything to say about mutations. Mutations cause harm to an organism, not good.

Items 171 and 174: Trefil states, "Evolution is still going on today," and the peppered moth and panda's thumb are put forward as glowing examples. Trefil claims that the moths "evolved" due to changing conditions. Actually nothing evolved (if by "evolved" you mean changed from one species into another, and Trefil's use of these as evidence for evolution only goes to show the scarcity of the evidence. One type of moths (light colored) were picked off by predators and diminished in population as they were more easily spotted by predators while supposedly resting on dark colored trees during the Industrial Age. Meanwhile dark moths grew in number. This situation regarding population reversed when the atmosphere was cleaned up and soot no longer made the trees so dark. So, all that happened was population change. Where was the "evolution" from one species into another? Answer: There was no evolution. At best, all that was proved was variation within a species, not evolution from one species into another. If this is the best evolutionists have, then you can forget that evolution ever took place. The Panda's thumb is even less evidence. All we have there is evidence that what was once a thumb is now a stub. This would be devolution (a loss of information) not evolution! Furthermore, Trefil fails to note that the so-called peppered moth evidence was actually doctored. The moths were not found naturally resting on tree trunks but were deliberately pasted on the tree trunks before being photographed as supposed proof. Thus, actually the evidence is fraudulent and deceitful. In reality, what Trefil is doing is confusing microevolution (variation within a species) with macroevolution (changing from one species into another). Microevolution is simple variation within a species, which no one denies happens! Peppered moths, or panda bears or finches or humans or anything else change within their species according to DNA genetic reshuffling, but moths are still moths, panda bears remain panda bears, finches remain finches, and humans remain humans. Trefil is propogating the myth that microevolution (small changes within a species) leads to macroevolution (one species changes into another), for which he has no evidence! If he had evidence, he would have presented it instead of giving us two glaring examples of nothing more that microevolution. And if macroevolution happened in the past, it should be happening now and we should be able to observe it, but we don't. Instead, we see distinct kinds of creatures with DNA standing as a great barrier between them keeping these kinds separate and distinct! Yes, you can cross breed, but only up to a point limited by DNA. Darwin knew nothing about DNA.

Item 173: Trefil and his fellow evolutionists don't like it when creationists refer to evolution as just a theory, since in scientific parlance "theory" is more akin to a fact. He's partially right. "Theory" in science is regarded as a fact, but this is only evidence that evolution should not be called a theory but an "hypothesis"--and a shaky one at that! Evolution does not rise to the level of theory, and I couldn't disagree more when he calls it a fact. This argument is a game in semantics, since calling something a fact does not make it one. The question remains: Where is the evidence?

Item 171: Trefil mentions "punctuated equilibrium." He fails to mention that this was embraced by Stephen Jay Gould precisely because the fossil record showed no gradual evolution! Further, he fails to mention that Gould's hypothesis was nothing more than a revised edition of German geneticist Richard Goldschmidt's "hopeful monster" fairy tale of the 1930's, the idea that a bird layed an egg and out hatched a dinosaur. He fails to mention that punctuated equilibrium stands as a monument to the fact that the fossil record does not show evolution from one species to another. The fossil record shows distinct and separate species down through time. That's why Goldschmidt and Gould had to invent such utter nonsense and sell it to a gullible public!

Item 179: Trefil mentions that Francis Crick, one of the discoverers of the DNA molecule, believed in "Directed Panspermia," but he fails to mention why. It was because he recognized the utter mathematical impossibility of the DNA molecule arising by chance processes on earth. Incidently, astronomer Sir Frederick Hoyle believed the same thing for the same reason. These evolutionists did not turn to this because they wanted to but because they could see no other alternative other than to believe in a Creator, and that was unthinkable to them.

Item 180: Trefil writes: "Evolution does not say that humans descended from apes." This is really a distinction without a difference because everybody who has ever visited a museum or looked at an artist's rendition of our "common ancestor" knows that they always seem to look and act like walking apes. Don't they? Virtually all of the time the artist has nothing more to go on than a few bones or bone fragments and nevertheless draws some imaginary ape-like creature, complete with hair. "Nebraska Man" was no more than a pig's tooth, and based on just that an artist drew two complete ape-like creatures, a male and female (Nebraska mom), which appeared in The Illustrated London News of June 24, 1922. Why doesn't Trefil inform his readers of these things? Maybe it's because if they knew things like this, they might wise up and realize what baloney this monkey business is.

Item 183: Trefil mentions Lamarckism (the false idea that acquired characteristics can be passed on to one's offspring) but fails to mention that Darwin believed in it. In fact, in Darwin's later writings, he seemed to have abandoned natural selection in favor of Lamarckism. Since this was a major component of Darwin's hypothesis, one wonders why this is not mentioned. Even though German biologist August Friedrich Leopold Weisman (1834-1914) disproved Lamarckism, there are evolutionists today who still push this silly nonsense in some form or another, most notably, the fairy tale that a giraffe stretched its neck and its offspring inherited the trait of a longer neck.

Item 188: Trefil, based on the Miller experiment, asserts that "Life might have started in the primeval soup." He fails to mention the contrary opinion of others, including astronomer Fred Hoyle's assessment. Hoyle placed the odds of just one protein forming by chance the same as 10 to the 50th power blind persons "each with a scrambled Rubik cube . . .all simultaneously arriving at the solved form." He concluded, "The notion that not only the biopolymers [proteins] but the operating programme of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial organic soup here on the Earth is evidently nonsense of a high order." [Fred Hoyle, "The Big Bang in Astronomy" New Scientist 92 (19 November 1981): 527]. Hoyle is most famously noted for saying that the odds of higher life forms starting by chance is comparable to "a tornado sweeping through a junk yard" resulting in the assembly of "a Boeing 747 from the materials therein." ["Hoyle on Evolution," Nature 294 (12 November 1981): 105]. Francis Crick came to similar conclusions: "Every time I write a paper on the origin of life, I determine I will never write another one, because there is too much speculation running after too few facts" [Life Itself (1981), p. 153]. In addition to omitting the input of these athiest evolutionists, Trefil omits something else. He fails to tell us why this "primordial soup" does not exist today so that we can observe the same thing today that supposedly happened millions of years ago. If this is something that was a one time event and no longer going on, then that's not science. That's religion. Science deals with measureable continuing processes, not one time events, like "miracles" ("miracles" being the word he uses, paragraph 179). This "primeval soup" nonsense smacks right up against a law of science known as the Law of Biogenesis, which says that life can only come from life. It's essentially a throwback to the Dark Ages when people believed in spontaneous generation (life coming from nonliving things), which was once and for all disproved by Louis Pasteur in 1861. This is not science but science fiction.

Item 194: Trefil writes, "The fossil record is imperfect." No kidding! In fact, it is so imperfect that Goldschmidt and Gould had to invent the fairy tales of "hopeful monsters" and "punctuated equilibrium" to explain away the huge gaps in the so-called fossil record (see my comment on item 171). Furthermore, the fossil record shows that creatures that lived way back when are exactly the same as creatures that live today with no change after supposedly millions of years.

Item 208: Trefil writes, "Dinosaurs may be related to modern birds." He says "some scientists" argue this. What he is talking about, without mentioning it, is the series of fossils known as "Archaeopteryx," a supposed link between dinosaurs and birds, found in 1861 and 1877 in Germany. Aside from the slimy way in which these fossils just happened to be found when money was offered to the limestone quarry owners, it has been observed that "in 1985, six leading scientists, including Fred Hoyle, examined the fossil-and found it to be a hoax" [[ASIN:B000XKDYX2 The Evolution Handbook]p. 64].

Item 219: Trefil says, "Deciding what a human being is has always been a hidden problem in unraveling human evolution." Isn't this a religious and philosophical question? Trefil must get humans to view themselves in purely materialistic terms (walking upright; having larger brain capacity) in order to swallow the naturalistic evolution presupposition. This point goes to show that evolution is a religion, a nature religion.

Item 221: Trefil chalks up the Piltdown Man hoax to an apparent belief that "mankind acquired intelligence early." He ignores the fact that this hoax, which lasted 40 years, led millions of people to abandon their faith in special creation-all because of a lie. During all of those years, Piltdown Man was taken very seriously by the scientific community as evidence for evolution. There were science textbooks with artists' drawings of Piltdown Man, and, as always, everything was presented as a fact that proves evolution. Over 200 people wrote their doctoral thesis about this supposed chief piece of evidence for evolution. Some 500 books and pamphlets were written. The whole thing was a fraud. Critical examination revealed that the jawbone came from an ape that had died within the last 50 years. In the same vein, I see no mention of "Nebraska Man," which was put forward as actual courtroom evidence in the Scopes trial (1925) to prove human evolution. It was later discovered to be nothing more than a pig's tooth-- Once again, false and misleading evidence used to tell a lie.

Item 223: Trefil writes: "There are large gaps in the human family tree as it is known today." Here he is absolutely correct. Because of the scanty and disparate evidence, he concludes, "Consequently there is an inordinate amount of argument about the exact set of branchings that led to modern man." Inordinate? I would conclude that the whole evolutionary tree hypothesis is pure imagination. If you have no evidence for a "family tree," then how do you know there is one? Furthermore, he describes the evidence as a skull of one species found here and the skull of another species found there. In reality, most of the time evolutionists don't even have complete skulls, only partial skulls. For example, Java Man (Pithecantropus Erectus, erect ape-man) was nothing more that a skull cap, a femur, a jaw bone, and a few teeth. It's been observed that you could take all of the bones that supposedly constitute man's evolutionary ancestry, and it would fit in one coffin or on a "billiards table" (as Walter Cronkite once put it). That's how scanty it is. Finally, I agree with Trefil that questions about the tree branches "cannot be answered from the data alone," but this places the "family tree" fairy tale in the category of faith (religion) and not pure empirical science! Apparently, Trefil fails to see this.

Item 229: Trefel states that "Lucy" (an Australopithecine=southern ape) "was perhaps one of the greatest finds in the human fossil record" and was "one of the most complete skeletons we have of any of our ancestors." If this is "one of the greatest" finds, then I would hate to see the worst. In reality, discoverer Donald Johanson found only 40 percent of a complete skeleton. Only in comparison to the other fossil skeletons can this one be spoken of as being "one of the most complete," which isn't saying much for the evidence. Secondly, Trefil fails to mention that Johanson did not find all of Lucy's bones in the same spot. He found Lucy's knee joint almost two miles away and buried 200 feet deeper! This knee joint was important because it supposedly proved that Lucy walked upright (like a human). When asked how he could put this knee joint together with the rest of the 40% skeleton (which appears to be nothing but a chimp), he justified it on the basis of what he called "anatomical similarity." This is science? How many people know about this tomfoolery? Thirdly, Trefil fails to tell the whole sordid story about how Johanson tried to lend credibility to his Lucy by assuming similarities to a species of skull found 1000 miles away by Mary Leakey, against the bitter protest of the Leakey's. Richard Leaky believed Lucy was an extinct form of ape and not related to man at all. Finally, Johanson himself later downgraded Lucy to ape only status.

Items 193 thru 195, 213 thru 217: Trefil speaks of fossil formation and "mass extinction." He studiously fails to mention that, as Ken Ham is wont to say: "Millions of dead things buried in limestone all over the earth is evidence of a world-wide flood," a world-wide flood of Biblical proportions. Trefil is willing and eager to believe in anything but, including the idea that a meteor hit the earth. This is not science, but a spin on science-a one sided story designed to lead budding minds into the religion of naturalism. I have no problem with people who have religious or philosophical reasons for not wanting to see a Biblical Flood in the fossil record, but a Biblical Flood appears to me to be almost like the proverbial elephant in the room, and to rule it out is a matter of Trefil's religious bias, not science. By the way, world-wide flood stories are found in various cultures all over the world, not just in the Bible.

Added to all of this, the omission of evidence that the earth is young, that radiometric dating methods are loaded with unrealistic and evolutionary assumptions, that the fossil record is riddled with gaps and problems as well as deceit and fraud (including things like "Java Man," "Nebraska Man," "Peking Man" and good old "Lucy"), that the so-called "geologic column" is totally imaginary and riddled with problems, that before the days when "science" was hijacked by the evolutionists, the founders of modern science-men like Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, Michael Faraday, Johannes Kepler, Carolus Linnaeus, Louis Pasteur, Joseph Lister (to name a few) were all creationists (and Bible believing ones at that), that Darwin and others used evolution to justify their racism, that the only degree Darwin ever had was in theology, not science, that a faker like Ernst Haeckel deliberately doctored his evidence to support the "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" baloney (which was used by atheist Carl Sagen to promote a right to an abortion; which was also held in admiration by atheist Stephen J. Gould, even though he knew that Haeckel was a fraud), that the science of mathematical probability rules out the possibility of even one protein molecule being arranged by chance (the odds being 1 in 10 to the 161 power), one can only conclude that there is quite a bit that is wrong with this book regarding the section on evolution. Naturally, this should lead one to question the accuracy of the rest of the book.

Hey there everybody, i hope you are enjoying your selfs! I hope everything is good. Anyway i hope you enjoy reading books. And watching movies and thing T.V shows that will help you in all you you'll lives! I hope you don't want to be eaten br a shark ethier :-). Anyway I love too read and i have read lots of books in my life. i hope everyone that is reading this loves to read too.
However this book Sharks is every intersting. I really think everyone will enjoy it. I think childern will to. I know i did any i hope everyone to. I think that James S. trefil most have love sharks alot to make a lond book about them, anywayy he is a great writer. He knows how to put words together, so that we could all enjoy it and undersand it. What I could really say is that everyone will fine it interesting. And you will have fun while you read it. Everyone that reads this book should go out and tell a friend about it and about the wonderful James S. Trefil. I hope you all had fun reading my short story, and that i didn't take toomuch of you'lls time. Happy wishs to everyone. And please pass the word of this wonderful book!
Peace -1-