Page 146 - Darwinism Refuted

DARWINISM REFUTED

In order to explain these two facts within the theory of evolution,
Gould and Eldredge proposed that living species came about not through
a series of small changes, as Darwin had maintained, but by sudden, large
ones.
This theory was actually a modified form of the "Hopeful Monster"
theory put forward by the German paleontologist Otto Schindewolf in the
1930s. Schindewolf suggested that living things evolved not, as neo-
Darwinism had proposed, gradually over time through small mutations,
but suddenly through giant ones. When giving examples of his theory,
Schindewolf claimed that the first bird in history had emerged from a
reptile egg by a huge mutation—in other words, through a giant,
coincidental change in genetic structure. 174 According to this theory, some
land animals might have suddenly turned into giant whales through a
comprehensive change that they underwent. This fantastic theory of
Schindewolf's was taken up and defended by the Berkeley University
geneticist Richard Goldschmidt. But the theory was so inconsistent that it
was quickly abandoned.
The factor that obliged Gould and Eldredge to embrace this theory
again was, as we have already established, that the fossil record is at odds
with the Darwinistic notion of step by step evolution through minor
changes. The fact of stasis and sudden emergence in the record was so
empirically well supported that they had to resort to a more refined
version of the "hopeful monster" theory again to explain the situation.
Gould's famous article "Return of the Hopeful Monster" was a statement
of this obligatory step back. 175
Gould and Eldredge did not just repeat Schindewolf's fantastic
theory, of course. In order to give the theory a "scientific" appearance, they
tried to develop some kind of mechanism for these sudden evolutionary
leaps. (The interesting term, "punctuated equilibrium," they chose for this
theory is a sign of this struggle to give it a scientific veneer.) In the years
that followed, Gould and Eldredge's theory was taken up and expanded
by some other paleontologists. However, the punctuated equilibrium
theory of evolution was full of contradictions and inconsistencies at least
as much as the neo-Darwinist theory of evolution did.

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