History

Charles Darwin, in his ‘Origin of Species’ (1859), told us that all forms of life are engaged in an endless struggle for existence with one another. This is the result of two facts: most organisms reproduce very rapidly, and there are far too few resources to support all of them. Given the tremendous variation among living organisms, only the individuals and, subsequently, populations that are best adapted to the environment in which they live will be able to survive and reproduce. This implies that when an organism is born with a variation that gives it some advantage in surviving, it will have a greater chance of reproducing, and so, by inheritance, pass on that advantageous trait to its offspring. Even if variations themselves occur at random, survival and reproduction do not come down to pure chance – on the contrary, the population most fit for the environment will survive. This is known as the process of natural selection whereby helpful variations are gradually accumulated. Over time, and in the presence of environmental barriers or niches, natural selection can greatly modify organisms to such a point that they no longer belong to the same species, and this is how the evolution of species is established.

   Darwin’s theory has been followed up by many additions, adjustments, and developments – in a way, the theory has undergone an evolution itself. There has been a general tendency from a much gene-centered orientation, confirmed by the modern synthesis in the 1930s, toward a more holistic approach in modern biology to fully embrace the complex dimensions of life.

   Darwin was in no way an atheist, and to the surprise of many, it may indeed be argued that apart from him the most influential names – those who founded, substantiated, and developed the theories of evolution – have been three outspoken Christian biologists: Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (Lamarckism), Theodosius Dobzhansky (neo-Darwinism), and Simon Conway Morris (evolutionary convergence).

   While Morris is primarily known for his work on convergent evolution – a process by which distantly related organisms arrive at similar functional solutions – he has highlighted the point that evolution is constrained and ordered rather than random and contingent. The pervasiveness of convergence has inevitably led to the evolution of something like human beings, so we are not an accidental fluke but probably determined from the very beginning of life.