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Remembering Darwin
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A copy made by John Collier in 1883 of his 1881 portrait of Charles Darwin.
The year 2009 is the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth and this month of November, the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. This year, Darwin and his original work have been celebrated through multimedia exhibitions in meeting places around the world. Why do we remember Darwin? Isn’t he the much reviled character who caused so much controversy by saying man descended from monkeys? Yes, and no; some people interpreted his writings that way, but he never said that.
Darwin was not the first to propose the idea of evolution; others, such as J.B. Lamarck and Robert Chambers had earlier presented the notion of orderly development progressing toward a directed end; thus, the term evolution derived from the Latin evolutio, meaning the unrolling of a scroll. It was the proposal of how the process of evolution worked that was new, as it was conceived independently, by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace in 1858- the hypothesis of “descent with modification” in the form of natural selection—the basic mechanism permitting the rise of extant variants and, ultimately, new species.
However, in 1859, Darwin surpassed Wallace by supporting his arguments with detailed direct observations and facts elicited from breeding experiments and the fossil record, the underpinnings of which could explain the diversity of all life on earth. The Darwinian mechanism of evolution is based on four tenets:
• Natural selection--random events or chance provides the “raw material” on which nonrandom events act.
• Multiplication of species, that is, isolated populations that are capable of exchanging genes only within the group reproduce.
• Theory of common descent-- all life evolved from one or few simple kinds of organisms.
• Gradualism- species evolved from pre-existing varieties by means of adaptive modifications within populations over time.
Darwin’s simple yet elegant contribution and the foundation of all modern science reside in the concept that the design of all living organisms is based on natural processes governed by natural laws. What is more, these premises, albeit speculative, are testable. Darwin provided the bedrock for all that has followed in the life sciences, including redefining the scientific method—reasons enough for him to be considered by some the most influential scientist of all time, and yes, that is why he is remembered.
References available at: www.pubmed.gov . 1) Sessions SK, Macgregor HC. The necessity of Darwin: this journal's tribute to the most influential scientist of all time. Chromosome Res. 2009;17(4):437-42.
2) Padian K. Darwin's enduring legacy. Nature. 2008 Feb 7;451(7179):632-4. 3) Kutschera U, Niklas KJ. The modern theory of biological evolution: an expanded synthesis. Naturwissenschaften. 2004 Jun;91(6):255-76.
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