J. Francis Hitching

J. Francis Hitching (born 1933) is a British author and dowser. He is an author of books on earth mysteries and paranormal phenomena. He is most famous for his book The Neck of the Giraffe in which he developed his own evolutionary theory.
Biography
According to the biography in his book, The World Atlas of Mysteries, Hitching was born in 1933 and grew up in Stratford-upon-Avon, where his grandfather, Randle Ayrton, was a noted Shakespearian actor. He attended school in Warwick, but in 1950 he left and became a newspaper reporter, then a magazine journalist, before producing the British music television programme '
Francis Hitching has appeared several times on television in Great Britain and the United States, discussing his alternative theories of archaeology, dowsing, psychic powers and other paranormal phenomena. He wrote or co-wrote several episodes of the television programme In Search of..., hosted by Leonard Nimoy, and appeared on-camera in three episodes: Haunted Castles, Magic of Stonehenge, and Water Seekers.
Evolution
In 1982 Hitching wrote a popular book on evolution titled The Neck of the Giraffe: Where Darwin Went Wrong. The book was widely read by both creationists and evolutionists and has received a mixed reaction from both.
In the book, Hitching criticized gradualistic theory of evolution, Neo-Darwinism and the modern evolutionary synthesis. Hitching was a catastrophist and non-Darwinian evolutionist who believed evolution had occurred due to a number of catastrophes; he was very critical of gradualism. He discussed in the book alternative evolutionary theories which he claimed have been ignored by the Neo-Darwinists.
Hitching defended Lamarck over Darwin and supported the work of the Lamarckian Ted Steele. Hitching believed in the Inheritance of acquired characteristics. Hitching also supported the hopeful monster theory of chromosomal jumps of Richard Goldschmidt, which Hitching claimed had been ignored because it was opposed to gradualistic evolution.
Hitching was very supportive of catastrophism as opposed to uniformitarianism; he cited the evidence of scientist Georges Cuvier, from geology and from the fossil record and believed a number of natural catastrophes had impacted the earth and evolution. Hitching believed that evolution had been non-static, that it had been erratic, with abrupt changes often occurring in the environment, with the extermination and re-population of species. He endorsed Stephen Gould's punctuated equilibria.
Hitching discussed the extinction events of the paleontologist David M. Raup, in which calculations lead to the evidence that in six major extinction events up to 96% of all life forms were destroyed on earth. Hitching thus dismissed natural selection as a main mechanism for evolution and humorously wrote “Instead of the survival of the fittest, you get the survival of the luckiest”.
Summing up on some of the alternative theories of evolution, Hitching wrote:
So far in the list of alternatives to neo-darwinism we have had hopeful embryonic monsters; new species by the way of chromosomal change; aquired characteristics passed on from parents to offspring and catastrophes which cause mass exstinction leaving a small number of lucky survivors. If you combine all these ideas, and boil the result down to its essence, a new scenerio for the origin of species begins to emerge. In as few words as possible,
:A severe environmental crisis accelerates embryonic re-structuring, and isolated mutants survive.</blockquote/>
In discussing his own evolutionary theory, Hitching mixed together all alternative evolutionary theories which included the Lamarckism of Ted Steele, the punctuated equilibria of Niles Eldridge and Stephen Gould, hopeful monster theory of Richard Goldschmidt, mass extinction events of David M. Raup and the catastrophism of Georges Cuvier, into an evolutionary theory which Hitching later expanded on and labelled very “Un-Darwinian in almost every respect”.
According to Hitching's evolutionary theory:
In the wake of a disaster (probably global) a large number of amphibious creatures were thrown far up on shore and became stranded. Many died of starvation or injury; but many also survived, and among the mothers, the multiple effects of a changed diet, stress, prolonged exposure to a new climate, and immunity to virus diseases led to intense genetic pressure on their unborn young. Chromosomal changes led to hopeful monsters in their thousands emerging from new laid-eggs. The vast majority were stillborn, or impotent, or failed to make an impact because the chromosomal change was 'bred-out'. But just occasionally, through harem-type breeding in isolated populations, the chromosome change was perpetuated. After a few generations, several varieties of 'monsters' became viable - new species which then proliferated over a largely unpopulated globe.</blockquote/>
Because of Hitching's opposition to Darwinism, Hitching is usually quote mined by creationists. Hitching was however not a creationist and in a chapter of his book rejected biblical creationism. The book also received a mixed reaction in a review from the creationist ministry Answers in Genesis.
The intelligent design author Geoffrey Simmons has claimed that Hitching's book is an "Easy-to-understand, non-religious book that many flaws in Darwin's theories".
Books
* Earth Magic (1976) Later edition (1978) ISBN 0671818155
* Dowsing: the Psi Connection (1977) ISBN 0006344178
* The Mysterious World: An Atlas of the Unexplained (1979) ISBN 0030440319
* The World Atlas of Mysteries (1979) ISBN 0330256831
* The Neck of the Giraffe: Where Darwin Went Wrong (1982) ISBN 0330266438

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