The Evolution Myth  Mejsnar, Jiří A.

         Přeložil: Paton, Derek

brožovaná, 116 str., 1. vydání   vydáno: řijen 2014

            The origins of life, species, and man continue to interest scientists and stir debate among the general public more than one hundred and fifty years after Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species. The Evolution Myth approaches the subject with two intertwined objectives. Jiří A. Mejsnar first sets out to convey the advances made in cosmology, molecular biology, genetics, and other sciences that have enabled us to change our views on our origins and our relationship with the universe. Scientific advances now allow us to calculate, for example, the age of the universe, the period in which biblical Eve lived, and, with good justification, to reconsider the possibility that the Neanderthals and primates might be our ancestors. The author’s second objective is to use biology to explain why evolution cannot have taken place in the way that is most commonly assumed. Mejsnar builds his case around gene stability and on the sophisticated modern techniques for gene manipulation, the complexity of which make these modified genes inaccessible to nature. Development of life on Earth is a discontinuous, saltatory progression that results in stages following from preceding latent periods in which new forms suddenly appear and possess new types of genome. This, the author argues, is difficult to reconcile with the hypothesis of continuous biological evolution based on the natural selection of random variations. Taking a new approach to a much-debated subject, Mejsnar distills complex information into a rreadable style. The result is a book that as sure to get readers talking.

Preface

Chapter I. Man in Natural Classification

Chapter II. The Age of Man

Chapter III. Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals

Chapter IV. The Origin of Man

Chapter V. On the Origin of Species

Chapter VI. The Idea Leading to Man

Epilogue

References

Glossary

Appendix 1. Mitochondrial (mtDNA)

Appendix 2. Radiochemical dating methods

Appendix 3. DNA structure and basic function

Appendix 4. An excursion into 'heterocyclic chemistry' Index

The book [...] does not contain speculations or hypotheses, and thus substantially differs from other publications on the topic. It rigorously remains in the key signature stated in the preface – that is, to present to a general readership the indisputable results of the natural sciences, which are incompatible with a hypothesis about continuous [...] biological evolution based on the natural selection of random mutations.

If the [...] main criterion of a scientific hypothesis, or theory, is its testability, or falsifiability, then hurrah! The evolution hypothesis bears all the signs of a questionable opinion, and one can, as J. A. Mejsnar [...] demonstrates, test it relatively easily with real or thought experiments, and then state one’s own conclusion: reject it or accept it.

František Vyskočil, Professor of Physiology and Neurobiology, Prague, member of the Czech Learned Society, the Czech Academy of Sciences, and the Physiological Society, Cambridge and London, writing in the Vesmír science monthly, February 2014