Darwinian thinking has been challenged many times, starting with co-discoverer of natural selection Alfred Russel Wallace, who disagreed with some aspects of Charles Darwin’s arguments, but was eventually proved wrong on most of them. The US botanist Liberty Hyde Bailey published a paper in 1894 pondering whether the formulation of neo-Darwinism, the mainstream version of evolutionary theory, needed extending (it didn’t); in the 1980s the palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould pursued a similar line.

Evolutionary biologist Kevin Lala also has doubts about what he calls traditional Darwinian thinking (see “The extraordinary ways species control their own evolutionary fate”). Some say this is a straw man argument, as it takes issue with old-fashioned ideas about evolutionary biology, whereas modern thinking is broad enough to encompass all the new aspects we are learning about, from developmental biology, cultural evolution and symbiosis, when two different species live together intimately.

Over the years, the theory of evolution by natural selection has itself evolved, absorbing new findings about genes, DNA, population genetics and epigenetics, all of which weren’t available in Darwin’s time. As we report on page 11, identifying evolutionary drivers is essential if, for example, we are to get ahead of a bird flu pandemic, as well as understanding how species will adapt to climate change. Whether we need to add to the rule book evolutionary biologists already have at their disposal is debatable. There is a danger of allowing a “god of the gaps” argument to creep in, where apparent shortcomings in evolutionary theory are exploited by those who point to non-scientific explanations.

Apparent shortcomings create a danger of a ‘god of the gaps’ argument creeping in

All theories need to be challenged, and assessing modern evolutionary biology brings to the fore many aspects of life that might not be well appreciated. Darwin’s explanation has survived for more than 160 years because it is broadly correct and robust enough to absorb new discoveries. The impact of Lala’s approach is therefore not yet clear – but its scrutiny of neglected aspects of life is to be welcomed.

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