Impact of Denton's "Nature's Destiny"

From: James Mahaffy (mahaffy@mtcnet.net)
Date: Mon Jun 04 2001 - 16:15:16 EDT

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    Folks,

    I picked up a copy of Denton's Nature's Destiny about a week ago at a
    conference at Calvin. Denton does have an interesting thesis - that the
    earth and biological laws are such that only Homo sapiens or something
    very like it could have evolved.
    I am thinking of annotating this book for my bibliography but I would
    like feedback from anyone who has an idea of the impact of this book on
    the broader scientific community. Is it taken seriously by the
    scientific community? I suspect it has less of an impact than his
    earlier Evolution: A theory in crisis. In the earlier book he was
    probably seen as someone presenting some serious challenges to the
    established paradigm and as one of the few doing that in the scientific
    community worthy of note. I suspect this book may be dismissed. He is
    really saying the world is designed for the life it has (in fact he sees
    himself doing something similar to natural theology) - but does not want
    as far as I have read (and I have not read all of it) and designer.

    In any case, I would appreciate any comments of feel that any have on
    the impact of Denton's book. I did do a quick web search and found a
    number of hits but nothing that would indicate that it is being taken
    very seriously.

    -- 
    James and Florence Mahaffy    712 722-0381 (Home)
    227 S. Main St.              712 722-6279 (Office)
    Sioux Center, IA 51250
    



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