Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

One doesn't have to open this book to appreciate how eager the authors are to make their point, even at the expense of truth and respectable scholarship. The blurb they wrote to attempt to get their work into the schools under guise of a textbook offers "in 1980 Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould pronounced the "neo-Darwinism synthesis" to be "effectively dead, despite its persistence as textbook orthodoxy." Anyone who has ever read Stephen Jay Gould (as opposed to merely fishing for anti-Darwin quotes out of context) would know that he is one of the most devoted proponents of evolutionary theory in the world today. Books such as "the Panda's Thumb" (ironic title given this book, eh?) blow to pieces the usual arguements about "structure of the eye", and similar complex biological structures, that are so often raised by creationists to discredit Darwin. In its place he presents the facts supporting a theory so elegant, logical, and just downright correct that the more we learn about biological systems, the more we see evolutionary theory supported down to the smallest microbe. What Gould and many other scientists have long acknowledged was that while Darwin's basic theory of evolution is cleary correct, the fine points of the mechanism of genetic change are not yet fully understood. Gould points out the flaws in Darwin's original assumptions on this count, and analyzes the fossil record and other scientific evidence in a SCIENTIFIC manner to offer up what is now one of the leading modern theories to explain this mechanism...Punctuated Equilibrium. In doing so he never ceases to support Darwin's original premise, but goes about questioning the details of the original theory in a scientific, logical manner, and arrives at deductions which continue to support Darwin's greater theory. The quote given above is not a denial of Darwin's theory as a whole, but of a particular school of thought regarding how it is to be applied. (His theory, BTW, blows out of the water 99.99% of all the creationist arguments against Darwin. Well worth reading, if you really care about this issue.) Anyone wishing to understand the workings of evolution, and the *facts* so often misquoted in pseudo-scientific works such as this, are recommended to read "ever since Darwin" and "the Panda's Thumb" by Gould. There you will see how a *scientist* handles the kind of "questioning" and "controversy" rightfully covered in a science class. You will also likely come away moved by his own belief that Darwin's theory is wholly compatible with God, that science and religion compliment one another, and that faith need not require setting science aside...nor does it excuse writing shamefully dishonest "textbooks" that feign scientific method, while not even being honest enough to quote a scientist in the proper context. Shame on the authors for abusing the writings of a great man to sell their book. Given how they handled that quote, I would not myself trust one other word they ever wrote, on anything.