Douglas Dewar
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Douglas Dewar (1875–1957) was a barrister, British civil servant in India and an ornithologist. He wrote widely in newspapers such as the The Madras Mail, Pioneer, Times of India and periodicals such as the Civil and Military Gazette and Bird Notes.[1]
He particularly advanced field studies of birds and he wrote in his Birds of the Plains:
- "The ornithological world is peopled by two classes of human beings. There are those who study nature inside the museum with the microscope and scalpel and there are those who live to observe birds In the open and study their habits." He accuses the museum ornithologists of needlessly multiplying new species and altering names, too much attention being paid to local variations.[2]
He was an evolutionist when he wrote his ornithology books, but later bcame a creationist and published a number of books and debates attacking evolution, and was the founding secretary-treasurer in the Evolution Protest Movement. He tended to old earth creationism but questioned radiometric dating. In 1957 he (posthumously) published The Transformist Illusion (Dehoff Publications, Tennessee; 1957; 306 pp.) in which he attempted to show the failure of evolution using examples such as the probability of proteins arising out of random mixing, the fossil record, bird anatomy, and blood group incompatibilities, while trying to answer evolutionary claims in embryology and vestigial organs. Many of the objections that were claimed as incorrect by reviewers.[3]
[edit] Writings
He wrote several books; in his earlier career on the birds of India, and later, critical of evolution:
- Dewar, Douglas (1916) A bird calendar for northern India. Scanned book
- Dewar, Douglas (1913) Glimpses of Indian birds. Scanned book
- Dewar, Douglas (1908) Birds of the plains. Scanned book
- Dewar, Douglas (1906) Bombay ducks; an account of some of the every-day birds and beasts found in a naturalist's Eldorado. Scanned book
- Dewar, Douglas (1923) Himalayan and Kashmiri birds, being a key to the birds commonly seen in summer in the Himalayas & Kashmir
- Dewar, Douglas (1931) Difficulties of the evolution theory. London : E. Arnold & co.
- Dewar, Douglas (1936) Man: a special creation. London: Thynne.
- Dewar, Douglas (1938) More Difficulties of the Evolution Theory. London: Thynne.
- Dewar, Douglas, H.S. Shelton and Arnold Lunn (1947) Is evolution proved? / a debate between Douglas Dewar and H.S. Shelton. With an introd. by the editor, Arnold Lunn. London: Hollis and Carter
- Dewar, Douglas (1949) Is evolution a myth? : a debate between Douglas Dewar, L. Merson Davies and J.B.S. Haldane, London: C.A. Watts/Paternoster Press.
