DARWINISM VERSUS DARWINITIS

I cannot emphasize too strongly that I have no quarrel with Darwinism; and if I did, I would be wasting my time and yours. Nor does Charles Darwin require any endorsement from me. It is hardly necessary, so soon after the world-wide celebration of the 200th anniversary of his birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, to extol his greatness. He is the Newton and Einstein of biology rolled into one: one of those rare thinkers of whom what George Santayana wrote of Spinoza -that “like a mountain … he rises as he recedes” – is incontestably true. We have lived so long with his fundamental ideas that it is still difficult, despite the admirable efforts of writers such as Dawkins, to see how great they are.

What is perhaps most astonishing about Darwin's achievement is that he arrived at his theory on the basis of comparatively little evidence. Although he scrupulously gathered and synthesized data from many sources, they were still inadequate. The fossil record was very patchy and the science of genetics, which is central to our contemporary understanding of the mechanisms of evolution, did not exist. The theory therefore had a huge surface of exposure to potential falsification and yet every advance in biological knowledge since Darwin has confirmed it: it is supported by, or consistent with, facts he could not have imagined.