I am reading "The Intelligent Universe."
On page 40, there is a brilliant illustrated display of examples showing how evolution is impossible--if I understand correctly.
Now I'm up to page 91, where he says that our forefathers arrived in a meteor shower in a microbial state, and that we have since evolved therefrom--if I understand correctly.
Is he going to reconcile all this?
2007-12-12 01:54:12 · 3 answers · asked by suhwahaksaeng 7 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Biology
Well Fred Hoyle is no longer alive, so I assume that your use of the present tense is metaphorical.
Hoyle was a smart guy, and a willing curmudgeon, but he turned out to be wrong about a great many things. For example, his atheism steered him to rejecting the Big Bang theory, as being uncomfortably close to Creationism (indicating a specific moment for the creation of the universe).
He was also a supporter of the theory of panspermia ... that life on earth was seeded from outer space, perhaps in the form of viruses in comets. So a lot of his comments were intended to show that there wasn't enough time for life to have originated on this planet.
Nevertheless, he did not reject evolution (if by this you mean the evidence of an old earth, common ancestry, and slow development of life from simple cellular life to complex modern life over the course of billions of years). He was a curmudgeon, but he was still a scientist, and could see the evidence for biological evolution. He resisted the concept of "chemical evolution" ... the development of the first cells from chemical origins. And he also postulated that natural selection was not the only driving force for biological evolution, but got some panspermic help (that constant shower of comet-borne viruses), or possibly that some intelligence drove evolution.
So you could say that Hoyle rejected abiogenesis, and the unasisted role of natural selection in evolution ... but not biological evolution itself.
2007-12-12 02:06:48 · answer #1 · answered by secretsauce 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Fred Hoyle was an astronomer and a second-rate science fiction author. Pay no attention to his musings in other fields.
"Panspermia" is as useless as "Steady-State." Don't get me started on "747 in a junkyard."
2007-12-12 14:39:43 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
He is against chemical evolution.
That is: that life originated from molecules, ie abiogenesis.
He supports biological evolution, because it is impossible to deny.
2007-12-12 10:01:11 · answer #3 · answered by mountainpenguin 4 · 1⤊ 0⤋