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Perspectives

Peter Ungar, Professor of Anthropology
September, 2009

Darwin's Legacy

"How stupid of me not to have thought of it",Thomas Henry Huxley is reported to have said upon learning of Charles Darwin's and Alfred Wallace's theory of natural selection. The idea was so simple, so obvious, and so elegant. Individuals within a species vary, and that variation can be passed between generations. Those with favorable traits will survive longer and produce more offspring than those with less favorable ones. Over time, species will evolve traits to improve their "fit" in a given environment. This is the foundation of the most profound law in all of biology, and it explains all of the diversity of life on this planet and its likely descent from a single common ancestor.

But if natural selection seems intuitive to us today, why didn't Huxley or any of the legions of naturalists that came before him think of it? Aristotle believed that biological species were real and unchanging entities with fundamental essences, and that variation between individuals was simply imperfection in translation to the world around us. The brilliance of Darwin and Wallace was not the idea of natural selection per se, but rather, the rejection of long-held notions of essentialism, and the recognition that variation was not imperfection, but rather, the key to unlocking the fundamental organizing principle of all living things on Earth.

Darwin's influence on the natural sciences has been profound, and his ideas remain fundamental guiding principles for research in many disciplines. Natural selection today underlies studies in the life sciences ranging from medicine to nutritional ecology, biodiversity, and conservation issues. This issue of Research Frontiers contains examples of research from the University of Arkansas, and similar work is being done today on campuses the world over.

Even the arts and humanities have been touched by Darwin's legacy. Natural selection theory was soon applied to the question "why do we have minds," and used as a radical critique of the notions of progress. These ideas quickly filtered into literature, and authors such as H.G. Wells explored the implications of human evolution in their fictional narratives. Of course, Darwinism has also been misused, with considerable but tragic effects, such as the Nazi eugenics movement and associated social Darwinism.

And from a historic anthropological perspective, natural selection has been largely about the human struggle to come to terms with our place in Nature. Darwin and his followers moved us from "apart from nature" to "a part of nature." The struggle culminated in the Scopes Trial of 1925, and continues today in school board meetings and courtrooms across the country.

Still, Darwin actually barely mentioned humans 150 years ago in his Origin of Species. He in fact left the first comprehensive treatment of natural selection in our species to his friend and "bulldog" Thomas Henry Huxley, who took the honor of placing humanity on the tree of life in Man's Place in Nature.