Born on 12th February 1809, Charles Robert Darwin would have celebrated his 200th year this year. His lasting legacy continues to thrill and delight us and so it is only appropriate that we celebrate with gusto not only his ideas on evolution but also his enthusiasm for nature, his amazing powers of observation, his deep biological insights and his mental tenacity. A true naturalist!

However, even after all these years, with all the evidence that the scientific community has accumulated, Darwin’s theory of natural selection and the origin of species, firmly embedded in modern biological philosophy, continues to be misunderstood. Since the theory itself is simple, the reason can only be that some of us deliberately choose to believe in unverifiable ideas about our origins. But what is worse, people also resort to ‘throwing stones’ to make their own positions more tenable. It was exactly for these reasons, from fear of similar reactions, that Darwin took so long to publish his great masterpiece, The Origin of Species in 1859, nearly twenty years after the theory had formalised in his own mind. In the context of 19th century Victorian England, this fear could well be understood. But in this present day and age, when we know so much more about inheritance, when the human genome itself has been fully mapped, isn’t it quite incredible that Darwin may not be taken seriously? Isn’t the search for truth man’s worthiest endeavour? What has to be readily realised and acknowledged is that the scholarly Darwin, like a good scientist, endeavoured simply to draw conclusions and furnish explanations for his expansive understanding and study of living things, past and present.

The central arguments of his theory are quite straightforward - a couple of facts that cannot be denied and a conclusion any thinking person could not truly refute:

1     All living things vary, and these variations are passed on to their offspring.
2     Living things produce more offspring than can possibly survive.
3     Offspring that vary more strongly in ways favoured by the environment will survive and reproduce. This variation that favours the species will therefore accumulate in populations. This is what Darwin calls Natural Selection.

A good example of natural selection is the increase of the methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) often described as a ‘superbug’ in the media. What has happened is that when exposed to antibiotics those individuals that possessed mutations which made them slightly impervious, have survived. And over many generations, the selective endurance of well-adapted individuals has given rise to ‘super’ resistant bacteria.

The importance of Darwin’s theory is in his belief that natural selection is the creative force of evolution, that is, it creates the fit, not just eradicates the unfit. Therefore for natural selection to be creative, the variation has to be random. Selection could not play a creative role if variation came pre-packaged. Thus natural selection builds adaptation stage by stage by conserving, over many generations, the most favoured part of random variation. Modern understanding of genetics and genetic mutation clearly indicates that Darwin was right about this. Evolution is thus a blend of unexpected happenings at the point of variation and what is necessary in the operation of selection. Apart from being random, variation must also be diminutive in relation to the degree of evolutionary change requisite in the formation of a new species. Again modern day genetics supports the view that minute mutations are the embodiment of evolutionary change. Thus Darwin’s theory is not without its delicate intricacies.

However, it is probably not the theory itself that stops it from being accepted, but rather its radical philosophical message - that evolution has no purpose or direction and that ‘matter’ is the root of all existence, of body and of mind. Darwin was not prepared to assign to nature mankind’s deeply held conceited view that we, human beings, were the masters of the earth and all living things because we were the superior product of a preordained process. Modern palaeontologists tell us that evolution of living things that blossomed out in much profusion has occupied a period of around two billion years. If we orientate ourselves to this time scale, then we find that mammals appeared 150 million years ago and the footprints left by man and his Homo predecessors encompass two million years! And the origin of life itself predates the origin of species by at least another billion years. This too was an extremely gradual process during which a long stepwise chemical evolution took place as a necessary preamble to the emergence of Life. The body of evidence is simply too great to be discarded and in any event we must come to terms with not only Darwin and his revolutionary view of life but also the palaeontologists, the ecologists, the geneticists and the organic chemists.

More than anything, what Darwin has done is to free us to enjoy delving deeply into our origins and allowed us to construct a new demonstrable biological reality. Further, Darwinism actually created a ‘gap’ that we had to fill – to find and define man’s own purpose on this beautifuNovember 19, 2011 9:12of having to believe, it did not, by the same token, prohibit human beings from believing in God, especially when this belief centred on a deep love of life and all living things.

Since each individual has the freedom to define ‘man’s own purpose’, Darwinism cannot and does not forbid a belief in God. Darwin, himself preferred to describe himself as ‘an agnostic’! Natural selection does not preclude us from enjoying life, but better still it gives a deeper meaning to our interactions with nature. Herein lie the seeds of conservation. As responsible Homo sapiens we have to take care of our wonderful earth. The world has changed a lot since Darwin’s time, but it is definitely not any the less exhilarating, enlightening or inspirational. So even if there may not be an ultimate purpose in nature, we can be glad that we are free to define it ourselves. For this freedom and not forgetting the gift of his supreme insight into our view of life, I would like to raise a glass to dear Darwin! Long may the grandness of his view flourish.