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<blockquote type="cite" cite>BOOK REVIEW | June 10, 2002<br>
<br>
The Evolution of Darwinism<br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>by DAVID HAWKES<br>
</blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>"....Although it represents a mortal threat to mainstream
Darwinism, the<br>
theory of catastrophic evolution is quite consistent with Stephen
Jay</div>
<div>Gould and Niles Eldredge's epochal discovery....that
evolution</div>
<div>does not take place incrementally but rather in spurts that are
divided</div>
<div>by long periods of stasis. It departs from Darwin by implying
that<br>
natural selection by competition among individual organisms cannot
be<br>
the exclusive cause of evolutionary change, since such competition
does<br>
not pause for periods of equilibrium.<br>
<br>
Darwin is often thought to have rescued the history of life from
the<br>
superstitious fantasies of religion, by basing his theory on good,<br>
solid, empirical evidence. But, as Gould and Eldredge noticed, the<br>
empirical evidence does not indicate that evolution proceeds by<br>
incremental, incessant natural selection, as Darwin claimed. In
fact,</div>
<div>the empirical evidence indicates quite the
opposite...."</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>While hailing--and rightly so--"catastrophic evolution,"
Hawkes</div>
<div>pusillanimously fails to credit the originator of both the
phrase</div>
<div>and the concept: Immanuel Velikovsky, in his book<i> *Earth
In</i></div>
<div><i>Upheaval*</i> (1954). Also, in his comments on
"intelligent design,"</div>
<div>Hawkes fails to mention the real alternative to an
"intelligent</div>
<div>designer"--the modern neoplatonic concept of
"morphogenic fields"</div>
<div>propounded, and experimentally validated to some extent, by
the</div>
<div>British biologist Rupert Sheldrake.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Shane Mage<br>
<br>
"Thunderbolt steers all
things." <span
></span
> <span
></span
> <span
></span
> <span
></span
> <span
></span> <br>
</div>
<div>Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64</div>
<div><br></div>
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