Quote from the introduction of "On the Origins of New Forms of Life - A New Theory", by Eugene M. McCarthy
"How does evolution occur? — That is, what natural processes bring new types of organisms into being? Expressed more technically, one might ask, what are the genetic processes that have produced the various forms scientists recognize and assign scientific names? This is the question considered in this book. Certainly, there is a great mass of literature already available on this topic. But my own, more than 20-year investigation of that literature has convinced me that certain widely accepted claims about the nature of evolutionary processes represent little more than unsubstantiated dogma, as unsupported by replicable experiment as the events described in Genesis.
I readily admit that many of the claims made by my fellow evolutionary biologists are in fact correct and entirely reasonable. But some are inconsistent with fact and, in my opinion, the corresponding aspects of evolutionary theory need adjustment. The theory of evolution should conform to the facts of evolution. By collecting all the relevant facts together here, I hope to lead you to the same conclusion. It remains true, as R. S. Crane liked to say, that "there is no authority but evidence." In this book I have gathered evidence of all sorts that seemed to have any direct bearing on the question at hand. Moreover, I have tried to present that evidence in such a way that a non-biologist can understand it, so long as he or she reads this book in the order it is written. For the issues considered here are of vital concern, not only to the few people who call themselves evolutionary biologists, but also to all humanity.
For the last 150 years, we biologists have been defending a fortress built by Charles Darwin. We have spent our energies hurling back the assaults of the creationist infidels and shoring up a slowly crumbling foundation that once seemed based on the hard bedrock of direct observation. But an ocean of data, accumulating since 1859, has been slowly lapping away at the rotting stone beneath Darwin’s castle, undermining its moldering walls, making it an ever more dangerous place to reside. As Darwin's most eloquent proponent, T. H. Huxley, once said, "Every great truth begins as heresy and ends as superstition." In the case of evolutionary theory, Huxley appears to have been right. Facts presented in this book do indeed suggest that certain elements of Darwin's heresy can now best be interpreted as a kind of superstition. It was Huxley, too, who warned us not to "pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable." I will argue that certain important tenets of modern evolutionary theory actually do fall into this category.
I want to present the facts that compelled me to abandon my former ideas of how evolution occurs. As we shall see, a different account of the evolutionary process is far easier to defend on an evidentiary basis than is the one given by most biology texts. According to this alternative view, what we may term stabilization theory, certain genetic processes known to disrupt the normal reproductive cycle are the typical source of new types of organisms (a variety of these stabilization processes are described in Chapter Four). Although stabilization theory is a new explanation as a whole, its intellectual components have a long tradition in biological thought and all the phenomena it invokes are all well known and well documented.Presenting those components, providing examples of the phenomena involved, and discussing the relevant aspects of the history of biology, will require all the chapters of this book. But, I suspect many readers will have a very different idea of the nature of evolution by the time they've reached its end. " [....]
You can read the entire paper here. [pdf]
One question that comes to my mind is: This theory doesn't seek to explain how initially life came to be; it attempts to explain how new types of organisms come to existence, presumably always from a previous form of life. So how does he propose that life has begun?
Eden
