Introduction
The Origin of Species was published in 1859. The date is important: from that date commenced the rapid change which made the values and beliefs of the twentieth century so different from those of any earlier period. Now that the twentieth century also has passed into history, we can perhaps begin to see Darwin's revolution more objectively than has previously been possible.Darwinism, as it very soon came to be called, had three components: the theory of evolution, which claimed that all living things have developed from common origins; the theory of natural selection, which suggested an automatic mechanism to explain this development of life; and a new conception of man, as an animal related to other animals, and particularly to the apes, which followed from evolution but had a special significance of its own. From all these developments, and particularly from the theory of natural selection and the concept of man as an animal, emerged a new system of values. And from this change, came profound social and political changes in which science and medicine inherited much of the previous influence of the Church.
What is the situation now? With the exception of small minority of biblical fundamentalists, almost everybody now accepts that the earth is very ancient and that species have evolved over time. Some parts of the evolution story, notably the dinosaurs, have appealed strongly to our imagination. Darwin's victory here is almost complete. But the other two ingredients in the Darwinian mix - natural selection and the animal descent of man - have proved much more difficult to assimilate.
The principle of natural selection is now generally understood and accepted by educated people, but in a somewhat naive and simplified way, which does not attempt to keep up with more recent evolutionary thinking. It is probably generally believed that natural selection has caused a gradual development of lower forms of life into higher forms. I am not sure that even some professional biologists have entirely abandoned this perception of evolution. In reality, the fossil record shows that evolution has developed in an uneven and jerky way; in a pattern which has been described as "punctuated equilibrium." Its jerkiness is explained by the process of speciation. It is now realized that new species have typically appeared in isolated micropopulations under the influence not only of natural selection but of changes in the environment and genetic factors. Evolution is part of life; like the rest of life, it is unpredictable and it may be perfectly legitimate to describe it, as the great evolutionary biologist Mayr does, as a "creative" process.
The third component in Darwin's legacy - the animal origin of man - is more complex. The Darwinian tradition has always emphasised the continuity of evolution up to and including ourselves. In future, perhaps we shall become more aware that there is also an important discontinuity. How is it that people - and only people - have achieved such a total domination over nature? Why was it not achieved by the Neanderthals, who had brains as big as ours or even on average slightly bigger? If we are essentially the same as the other animals, how have we come to live lives so totally different from the lives of any other species? And why has it all happened so suddenly?
This website takes the basic model of evolution (or as it was called before Darwin "transmutation") for granted. It looks a little more closely at natural selection and speciation, in relation to modern evolutionary theory. A good part of the site is devoted to summarising our increasing knowledge of how (it now appears) the early bipeds survived in their dangerous environment; and how people came to dominate it. And finally, I look at the historical background of the Darwinian revolution.
This is a small site, covering a great deal of ground. A few of the conclusions are original, but almost all are generally accepted conclusions or conclusions reached already by others on the basis of their original research. Inevitably I have often over-simplified; but some kind of a synthesis is needed and this site is a first attempt to provide one.
Mike Munford