Why is a Fly Not a Horse? [Paperback]

Giuseppe Sermonti (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0963865471 | ISBN-13: 978-0963865472 | Publication Date: July 11, 2005

This book's Italian title, Dimenticare Darwin, means "Forget Darwin," and its prologue bears the title "Evolution is dead!" The author, Dr. Giuseppe Sermonti, is a respected Italian biologist who boldly shatters the myth that all critics of Darwinian evolution are American religious fundamentalists. This delightful little book is loaded with scientific facts that aren't taught in standard biology classes, but it is also full of history and poetry. Why is a Fly Not a Horse? does not have all the answers, but it asks many of the right questions-in a style that is both entertaining and inspiring. Giuseppe Sermonti is retired Professor of Genetics at the University of Perugia. He discovered genetic recombination in antibiotic-producing Penicillium and Streptomyces and was Vice President at the XIV International Congress of Genetics (Moscow, 1980). Sermonti is Chief Editor of Rivista di Biologia/Biology Forum, one of the oldest still-published biology journals in the world, and he has published seven other books, including Dopo Darwin (¿After Darwin), with R. Fondi (1980-1984).

Editorial Reviews

Review

I am only halfway through, but the spell has already been cast. -- Jonathan Witt, Senior Fellow, Discovery Institute

The attentive reader of this book will be fascinated from beginning to end. -- Dr. Leendert van der Hammen, Founder of the Osaka Group for the Study of Dynamic Structures

With charming prose Sermonti describes biology which contradicts Darwinian expectations: leaf insects... before leaves, insects before plants. -- Dr. Michael Behe, Author, Darwin's Black Box

From the Publisher

This book is part of a series published by the Center for Science & Culture at the Discovery Institute in Seattle. Previous books in the series include Are We Spiritual Machines?: Ray Kurzweil vs. The Critics of Strong A.I. by Jay W. Richards et al and Getting the Facts Straight: A Viewer's Guide to PBS's Evolution by the Discovery Institute.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Discovery Institute (July 11, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0963865471
• ISBN-13: 978-0963865472
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,771,841 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Brings Up the More Interesting/Less Talked About Topics in the Origins Debate, December 23, 2006

By 

Saint and Sinner (South Pole, Antarctica) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Why is a Fly Not a Horse? (Paperback)

This is a good popular work that focuses on the more interesting/less talked about side of the debate. Dr. Sermonti, a famous and well-respected geneticist, speaks with much eloquence about the anomalies in nature that throw a monkey-wrench into Darwin's theory. However, he's not a creationist; rather, it seems that he takes more of a Platonist's view of biological organisms.

Such topics include:
A. The fact that organisms with varying complexity do not have proportional genome sizes. If neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory (NDET from now on) were true, shouldn't mammals have more DNA than amphibians, mollusks, or flowering plants? You would think so if NDET were true and an increase in DNA meant an increase in complexity, but you'd be wrong. They vary *widely*.
B. The sudden appearance and stasis of species in the fossil record. Though this is frequently discussed in other books in the origins debate, it is always good to throw it in.
C. How some animals seem not to be fitted for their environment, but rather, they seem to be works of art. As Sermonti put it: "In fish the colors can be bright and resplendent, even among species that never see the light of upper regions, but their patterning bears no relationship to internal structure; the colors just seem to be put there like paints on an artist's palette" (p.58). There are other things mentioned such as the beautiful mathematical shape of the mollusk's shell and the innate knowledge of some birds to know their bird-song without being taught it.
D. The fact that the same genes (such as hox genes) can create different structures in different animals. For instance, a cat's "eye" genes that are transferred to a blind fly's egg will create the multi-faceted eyes in a fly.
E. The ever-changing family tree of hominids.
F. The ever-increasing anomalies in molecular phylogenies. In fact, according to the molecular data, the mysterious "common ancestor" of chimps and humans should actually be much more closely related to man!
G. How the cell somehow innately knows how to make a certain enzyme even though most of the DNA molecule that codes for it is incomplete.
H. One of the more important ones in his book: the fact that the some of the biggest differences in body structure and function are not due to genes.
I. Homologies in unrelated species such as the mammalian eye and the eye of the octopus. Do Darwinists really expect us to believe that these very similar structures converged through evolution by chance?!?
J. The fact that protein folding occurs without instruction. This is very important since "the spatial information necessary for specifying the three-dimensional structure of a protein is vastly greater than the information contained in the sequence" (p.130).
K. Probably the most interesting one is the fact that some mimicking insects appear in the fossil record many of millions of years before the plants upon which they are supposed to mimic appear! Also, there are some insects whose mouths are made to eat a certain plant that also appears many millions of years before the plant they are supposed to eat appears. Any attempt to account for this in neo-Darwinian terms is absurd!

It is most certainly time for science to throw neo-Darwinism into the trash-bin of failed theories.

I gave the book only four stars for two reasons. First, although he is a great writer and is very eloquent, there were times when I felt that he would write a couple paragraphs just for the sake of being eloquent without any topic in mind. Second, he tries to say that Judges 14:8 in the Bible would lead one to believe in spontaneous generation. However, when you read the passage, all it says is that a swarm of bees had taken up residence in a lion's carcass. On the other hand, Sermonti is (or, perhaps, was) a Roman Catholic layman. So, I guess he's excused for not knowing the first thing about Biblical exegesis.

Overall, a very good and interesting book.

23 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars There's a jewel hidden in this text!, October 5, 2005

By 

Bruce Fast - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Why is a Fly Not a Horse? (Paperback)

I find the structure of this book to be surprising. Most of what Mr. Sermonti has to say is fairly irrelevant to the question of the veracity of NeoDarwinian evolution. He makes a strong case that there are other specific structures in living organisms beside DNA that must be carefully reproduced for life to reproduce. How this is consequential is beyond me. Reproduction is reproduction. Whether it is DNA or prions, if there is accurate reproduction, with rare but existing reproduction error (mutation), then the raw material for NeoDarwinian evolution exists.

However, Mr. Sermonti presents data that is fundamentally contrary to NeoDarwinian evolution. If his data is correct, the only logical conclusion can be that mutation + natural selection, with all of it's subtleties, cannot adequately explain this data. If it cannot adequately explain this data, then it is not the complete answer to the question of how all the varieties of life came to be.

Some have questioned whether NeoDarwinian evolution is falsifiable. Certainly there have been many expectations from simple theory which have found to be too simplistic.
* Scientists expected gradualism to render in the rock record, and concluded that punctuated equilibrium was a better description of the rock record. Rather than finding the theory to be false, evolution adapted to absorb this new data, to the point where punctuated equilibrium is now considered to be a characteristic of NeoDarwinian evolution.
* Studies of animals with similar characteristics were found to have fundamentally different heredities. Seals and Manatees, for instance, are both primarily aquatic animals that have a lot of similarities, but do not have a common ancestry. This common characteristics with separeate heredities phenomenon was not predicted by NeoDarwinian theory, but was absorbed into the theory with a comfortable title "convergent evolution", and some reasonably plausible explanation.
* It was discovered that organisms from totally different branches of the tree of life had identical or near identical genetic code that their predecessors did not have. The term used to describe this phenomenon is "horizontal gene transfer". Horizontal gene transfer has been happening in genetic laboratories, under the careful hand of genetic engineers for a few years, however the engineers never expected that it would be occurring as a common phenomenon without the aid of their expertise. Horizontal gene transfer was clearly not predicted by NeoDarwinian theorists, yet it is proving to be a surprisingly common phenomenon. I believe that it is a phenomenon that scientists still recognize as "not well understood", however, it remains to be believed that this is evidence of DNA sharing mechanisms that must surely be something other than an unknown master genetic engineer at work.

THE PUNCHLINE

But hidden in the inner reaches of Mr. Sermonti's second last chapter is an incredible claim; he claims that insects which mimic sticks and leaves predate the sticks and leaves that they imitate. But NeoDarwinian theory is a theory of cause and effect. NeoDarwinian theory requires that the imitation come after the imitated because the imitation must offer it's selective advantage to the organism doing the imitating.
I understand how NeoDarwinian theorists have fit punctuated equilibrium into the theory, though I find the fit a bit shaky. I understand the NeoDarwinian explanation for convergences -- maybe multiple lines will fill the same niche in the environment, and maybe they will naturally end up taking on similar characteristics because of it. I understand that there is real hope of a purely naturalistic explanation for horizontal gene transfer. But how on earth can NeoDarwinian evolution explain the imitated predating that which it imitates.
Mr. Sermonti has established one thing already: NeoDarwinian theory is falsifiable! If any data can be found, tested and proved which establishes that an organism developed as an imitation prior to the imitated being developed, then that organism's development does not fit within the scope of the NeoDarwinian explanation, period. I have not had opportunity to check his source material. If his rendering of the source material is accurate, and if the source material itself passes careful scrutiny, then scientists are obligated, as far as I am concerned, to come up with an explanation for this phenomenon that is beyond random mutation + natural selection, or scientists are obligated to state publicly "I don't know" on this issue, and to state publicly that mutation + natural selection does not provide a complete explanation for all of the variety of life on earth.

27 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Flies in the Face of Tradition, December 17, 2005

By 

Nathan A. Mordecai "Gum Flip Flop" (Fremont, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Why is a Fly Not a Horse? (Paperback)

The proponents of intelligent design have exposed the weakness of neo-darwinism in much better ways than I could have, even though I've tried, even before the movement began. It doesn't take a scientist to recognize an underlying philosophy and the glaring absense of REAL proof of BLIND forces being the true origin of species. ID proponents acknowledge darwinian evolution's place as a means to SURVIVE but, as Sermonti points out, it's as much for animals to revert back to a previous state, as it is for them to change.

The typical mainstream scientist, not unlike the old clergy of the Dark Ages, means to avoid confusing the public with the real meat of the argument. Smart enough to realize taht people will "regress" to their "less fit" religious thinking, the hidden premises of neo-darwinism are never presented in their entirety to the public. Those days are over. With more and more scientists coming "out of the closet" the mission of the mainstreamers to "enlighten" the public with their senseless, empty dogma will fail.

This particular book has some excellent prose and the author clearly has a love of nature and its majesty. He exposes the emptiness and short-sighted emphasis on the genetic CODE, when nature is found in its FORM. He points out how code is merely a language. Not only that, the current evidence indicates that genes seem to do pretty much everything but determine form (with some exceptions). Furthermore, Sermonti asks, who or what is there to decipher the language--a language far too complex for any computer to utilize and predict what a genetic code will express in actual character. He discusses, for example, why tigers look so regal and fierce, as opposed to looking like a squirrel. Is that necessary for survival? No, that doesn't disprove neo-darwinism, but it is an example of what we miss, when all we care about is a bunch of protein molecules.

It is claimed that the genetic code evolved from a simpler code, but no evidence of this exists. Sermonti's book largely is about perspective and love of nature and creation. He illustrates much of the dogmatic, arrogant and narrow-minded views of the zealous neo-darwinists and proposes a new way to look at life. The prose is powerful and moving, expressing a love of nature and a passion for science at the same time. It may well have a few flaws, but it engages the important issues involved in the neo-darwinist vs. id proponent debate. I recommend this brilliantly entertaining and enlightening book.