# Quotes from Michael Denton



## Toasty (Jul 11, 2016)

Here are some quotes from Michael Denton's book, _Evolution: A Theory in Crisis_:



> According to the typological model of nature all the variation exhibited by the individual members of a particular class was merely variation on an underlying theme or design which as fundamentally invariant and immutable. Each individual member of a class conformed absolutely in all essential details to the theme or archetype of its class. p.94
> 
> Typology implied that intermediates were impossible, that there were complete discontinuities between each type. p.96
> 
> Undoubtedly, if the various anatomical and physiological systems in the lungfish and the monotremes were all strictly transitional between fish and amphibia and between reptiles and mammals respectively, then the case for them being genuine transitional types would be far clearer. However, in the case of the lungfish, its fish characteristics such as its gills and its intestinal spiral valve are one hundred per cent typical of the condition found in many ordinary fish, while its heart and the way the blood is returned to the heart from the lungs is similar to the situation found in most terrestrial vertebrates. In other words, although lungfish betrays a bewildering mixture of fish and amphibian character traits, the individual characteristics themselves are not in any realistic sense transitional between the two types. p.109



In the first two quotes, Denton speaks of the typological view of nature, which is the view that there are certain kinds or classes of animals and one type of animal cannot evolve into another type of animal. 

The last quote is a response to the claim that the lungfish is an intermediate form between fish and amphibians. Denton is saying that although the lungfish has both fish and amphibian characteristics, its individual organs are not transitional between fish and amphibian. Its gills and intestinal spiral valve are not transitional between fish and amphibian. Its heart is not transitional between fish and amphibians.


----------

