The Giraffe's Long Neck

From Evolutionary Fable to Whole Organism Nature Institute Perspectives #4 This book provides a comprehensive picture of the giraffe's biology and ecology and also discusses the complex and controversial issue of its evolution. Since Craig Holdrege's intention is to break through the strictures of narrowly confined conceptions of the giraffe and of evolution, neither card-carrying Darwinists nor Creationists will be happy with this book. The debate concerning evolution, intelligent design, and creationism is framed largely by dogmatic points of view and highly polarized. The goethean-phenomenological approach applied in this book provides a fresh, open-ended perspective by acknowledging the facts that speak for evolution and evolutionary patterns, while avoiding pitfalls of the all-too-simple explanations of contemporary Darwinism. Holdrege's goal is not to explain the giraffe's characteristics or to speculate about how they might have evolved, but rather to show how the giraffe's fe