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The Nature of Biology: Investigation, Evidence and Reliable Information

Evolution and Darwin
“Descent with modification” was an incomplete theory based on decades of meticulous
observation and endless questioning ... and it changed the world, explains Tim Radford
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Tim Radford - The Observer, Sunday 27 April 2008http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/apr/27/genetics.darwinbicentenary

Charles Darwin hardly ever used the word "evolution". He chose the phrase " descent with
modification". He did not coin the term "survival of the fittest". He did not suggest that
evolution was a form of progress. For him, an amoeba in a puddle of water was j ust as suited to
its environment as a duck on a lake or a preacher in a pulpit.
He had, at the time, no idea of how living thingspassed their characteristics from one
generation to the next, or how any modifications could happen. He was not the only prop het of
evolutionary theory, but he is the one whose name will be forever linked with it, and that was
because Darwin backed up a great, but incomplete idea, with a huge body of highly detailed
evidence. Some of it was gathered on his voyage around the world on HMSBeagle, but most of
it was assembled painstakingly through decades of observation, note-taking and inquiry, quietly
at home in his study and garden at Down House in Kent. There were no "eureka moments",
dramatic pronouncements or a search for the limelight.
He probably first began to wonder about descent with modification
in about 1838. He spent the next two decades simply thinking about
creaturesand how they varied. He wrote thousands of letters, to
gardeners, foresters, naturalists, geologists, explorers, curators and
keepers, asking questions, and then asking supplementary
questions. He wondered about why coral atolls formed and what
strange specimens pigeon fanciers could breed, the enormous
variation in the domestic dog, the effect of earthworms on the
ground in which theylived, and the life cycle of the barnacle.
In 1859, he received the Geological Society's highest honour, not for
“On the Origin of Species”, but for his work on barnacles and his
study of the geology of the Andes. He only consented to publication
because a letter from Alfred Russell Wallace, exploring in the Malay archipelago, proposed an
almost identical idea. Darwin, a man with a conscience,insisted on a joint paper, to be
presented to the Linnaean Society, so that two people could share the honour of one of the
most important scientific discoveries ever made. However, only one is remembered.

Taken from http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/apr/27/genetics.darwinbicentenary

The Nature of Biology: Investigation, Evidence and Reliable Information

Misunderstood theoryDarwin's achievement changed human
history, and human attitudes to the
natural world, but his achievement was
incomplete. He convinced the thinking
world, according to the 20th-century
scientist Stephen Jay Gould, that
evolution occurred, but he didn't
convince many people that it had
happened because of natural selection
"and even today, though it forms the core
of our evolutionary theory, itis widely
misunderstood,
misquoted
and
misapplied," Gould says.
Darwin knew that descent with
modification had something to do with
inheritance but he knew nothing about
the arithmetic of inheritance or the genetic substance that transmitted it. Gregor Mendel's
1866 study of garden peas, which was to become the foundation of modern genetics, was
published in German, in a Moravianjournal, and was not widely known until the beginning of
the 20th century. DNA was identified during the second world war, but its role in the replication
of life and the transmission of traits was not known until 1953. Both pieces of research
confirmed the Darwinian argument that all life had descended, with modifications, from a
common ancestry, and that natural conditions tend to favour useful...