How Darwin shook the world

Atlantic Books have begun to publish this year a series of texts titled ‘Books that shook the world’, which, rightly, includes a new biography of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species by Janet Browne. And some new shaking definitely seems to be in order. Darwinism appears under increasing challenge as ‘creationism’ and ‘intelligent design’ continue to creep into curricula, particularly in the US and the UK. A survey of students in Britain this summer found that more than 30 per cent reported a belief in creationism or intelligent design, rather than evolution by natural selection as the mechanism by which life-forms have come about. Carried out by Opinionpanel research amongst more than 1,000 students, more than 12 per cent questioned preferred creationism to any other explanation of how we got here. Another 19 per cent favoured the theory of intelligent design — that some living things and biological processes are due to a supernatural being such as God. Evolution scored as an explanation for only 56 per cent. The findings are shocking for biological scientists but came as little surprise to Roger Downie, professor of zoological education at Glasgow University. Two years ago he surveyed the views on evolution of biological and medical students there. “What was extremely worrying for students embarking on evidenceand science-based disciplines was that they were perfectly prepared to say they had rejected it not on the basis of evidence but on the basis of religious beliefs,” he says. “The impression people get is that science is about accumulating a lot of facts in your head rather than testing of evidence and fine-tuning what you find,” he said. The highlighting of just how much evidence Darwin garnered and how hard he worked to get it to illustrate his theory of natural selection is a sharp counter to some current thinking. Janet Browne’s biography of Charles Darwin’s most important work, the Origin of Species, is therefore an extremely timely and welcome work. As Darwin’s most comprehensive biographer, with two substantial volumes published to great critical acclaim, she is in the ideal position to boil down the key significance of Darwin’s intellectual contribution. As an argument, Origin of Species was divided into two