From MICHAEL WALSLEY
Armstrong is surely naive when she considers legal eagles as ‘ . . .
fine-tuned to finding flaws in intellectual arguments’. Their talent is
usually for twisting the truth and bamboozling the gullible. This half-baked
attack on Darwin is a case in point, and not the first to have come from
a lawyer.
Of course the first stages of an evolving eye are of benefit – ask a
flatworm or a nautilus. As for a rudimentary wing, ask a sugar glider or
flying squirrel. The key to the development of complex structures is often
pre-adaptation, evolution for a simple use before further adaptation to
a more complex and perhaps quite different one.
Feathers developed first for insulation, perhaps later for display,
and only then did they become adapted first for gliding, then for flight.
If Johnson’s book is an example of incisive legal thinking, no wonder our
legal system is in such a state.
Michael Walsley Hereford
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