Review of Sutton’s second book

Science Fraud – Review by Ton Munnich, February 2022

Dr. Mike Sutton is a scholar of extraordinary qualities. Educated in law and criminology, his research forced him to acquaint himself with evolutionary biology and 19th century history. He did that so thoroughly that he was able to challenge the traditional narrative about Charles Darwin. That traditional narrative will take some years to fade away, but in the core it is proven wrong. Several authors contributed to that, the most important being Mike Sutton. His books of 2017 and 2022 show convincingly that Charles Darwin is not the originator of the idea ‘natural selection’. Darwin plagiarised Patrick Matthew who published the idea and the term 28 years earlier.

The stakes were high. Darwin, with Newton, is the top crown jewel of England’s intellectual tradition. Tearing down that monument affects reputations and positions. Authors, scientists, historians, venerable scientific societies, they all are embarrassed because for decades they published superlatives about Darwin’s genius and noble character. The highest English awards in the life sciences are called the Darwin Medal and the Darwin-Wallace Medal. Suddenly these Medal-winners have a Plagiator Medal on the wall of their study. No wonder there is resistance against Sutton’s findings.

To drive a point like this home is no small matter, Sutton’s energy and perseverance are remarkable. All the more because he works in England, which is Darwin-territory. Had he been French or Dutch, he would have been under less pressure. His well-written book presents dozens of clues and facts that support his point. Perhaps his opponents will refute one or two details, but there can be no doubt that his point is right. Since he finished the project very successfully, there is no reason to disturb Sutton’s victory boogie woogie. But there is a but.

English and American naturalists trumpet in superlatives not only about Darwin but also about the natural selection theory itself. They call it the deepest, highest, greatest scientific theory of all time. Sutton shows that the superlatives about Darwin are not justified, but he does not question the equally exorbitant superlatives about the theory. Sutton argues that the deepest, highest, greatest theory of all time is not Darwin’s but Matthew’s finding. However, that is not the way Patrick Matthew looked at it. He was fully aware that the idea is not particularly deep or brilliant. Here is how he said it:

• “to me the conception of this law of Nature came intuitively as a self-evident fact, almost without an effort of concentrated thought. … to me it did not appear a discovery. … it was by a general glance at the scheme of Nature that I estimated this select production of species as an a priori recognisable fact – an axiom requiring only to be pointed out to be admitted by unprejudiced minds of sufficient grasp.”
  That is Patrick Matthew’s sober valuation of natural selection. It was Darwin who inflated the idea to extravagant proportions. Darwin had a knack for pomposity, his favourite word was ‘grandeur’.

Patrick Matthew’s sober view on natural selection is in line with the notion among biologists that it is a very simple theory. In 1940 biologist Dr. Olive Dickinson Maguinness (Sheffield University) muses: “In outline the theory of evolution by natural selection seems so simple that we wonder why it was not thought of earlier.” In 1962 J. Tyler Bonner (Princeton) calls it “extremely simple”. And in 1999 the guru of Darwinism John Maynard Smith states: “… Darwin’s idea is simple – perhaps because it is so simple ….”. It is a simple idea, it seems useful to unhype the concept natural selection.

Natural selection is only half the explanation of Evolution. Evolution happens in two steps. The first step is the arising of variation. The second step is Nature making a selection from that varied range. Without the first step the second step is impossible. Without variation there is nothing to select from. Let us dwell for a moment on these two steps. The science that deals with variation is called Genetics. It is the science of Darwin’s Austrian contemporary Gregor Mendel, a.k.a. ‘the father of Genetics’. The key word in Genetics is heredity. Heredity creates new life forms by gene recombinations and, sometimes, by gene mutations. Look at ten brothers: they are all different, because each of them is a unique recombination of parental genes. Thus heredity creates a reservoir of unique and varied life forms. After that, natural selection eliminates the less adapted ones.

So a Mendel-step and a Matthew-step. In the Mendel-step heredity creates 100% of new life forms, in the Matthew-step natural selection mows away the 90% least fit. Many top biologists see this two-step character of Evolution. Nobel Prize laureate Thomas Hunt Morgan, for instance, calls them the creative step and the destructive step. Morgan: “Natural selection does not play the role of a creative principle in evolution”. His colleague William Bateson agrees: “its function is to select, not to create”. Lynn Margulis agrees too: “natural selection is intrinsically an elimination process”.

After the Second World War Darwinism reigns more than half a century, with its basic equation: Evolution = Natural Selection = Darwin. Mike Sutton saw a flaw in the equation, he successfully corrected it into: Evolution = Natural Selection = Matthew. That is better. But the correct equation seems to be: Evolution = Variation (Mendel) + Natural Selection (Matthew).

Dr. Mike Sutton made a brilliant contribution to the history of science. Out-arguing an army of Darwinists, he rendered to Patrick Matthew the credit he deserves. And in the process Sutton earned scholarly credit himself.