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Welcome
Ev
by Richard Dawkins
The phenomenon of life, of which we are a ancestor. That is the fact of evolution, and it is
part, is gloriously, extravagantly, shatteringly as solid and secure as any fact in science.
improbable. While never actually disobeying Once DNA information-technology was
the laws of physics and chemistry, life coaxes in place, the rest followed naturally, and is
and stretches those laws to evolve prodigious well understood thanks to Darwin and his
feats of complexity, diversity, beauty, and successors. Those genes that happened to
a powerful illusion of deliberate design. So be good at ensuring their survival were –
compelling is that illusion that it fooled our obviously – the ones that persisted. How did
greatest minds for centuries until Charles they ensure their survival? By programming
Darwin burst on the scene, with his theory of the embryological development of bodies
evolution by natural selection. skilled at surviving and passing on the coded
Natural selection is an improbability instructions for building them. And how does a
pump: a process that generates statistical body become ‘good at surviving’? By growing
improbability. It systematically seizes the green leaves to trap sunlight, driving chemical
minority of random changes that have what it reactions to make energy-rich molecules. By
takes to survive and accumulates them, step growing teeth to chew green leaves and steal
by tiny step over unimaginable timescales, the useful molecules they made. By growing
until evolution eventually scales mountains of fast leg muscles, sparking nerves and keen
improbability and diversity, whose height and senses, to catch the plant-eaters and eat them.
range seem to know no limit. And, in the case of the would-be victims, by
The key to the process is a system of growing equally high-tech equipment to escape
heredity blessed with the sort of high-ﬁ delity being eaten. By running, ﬂ ying, swimming,
accuracy that can be achieved only by digital jumping, digging, signalling, courting, ﬁ ghting
copying. Darwin didn’t know it, but that – and thinking.
copying ﬁ delity is provided by DNA-based Darwin’s great idea has moved on. Twenty-
information-technology, which is truly digital in ﬁ rst century evolutionary science, if Darwin
exactly the same sense as modern computers. could return to see it, would enthral, excite and
How that information technology got started amaze him. But he would recognise it as his
is a mystery. There must have been a simpler own. We are just colouring in the details. For my
E
S
M precursor, and several promising candidates money, the most important thinker the human
have been suggested. All living things today species has ever produced is Charles Darwin.
ORK TI
have the same detailed genetic code, which
proves beyond reasonable doubt that we are
all cousins of one another. Animals, plants,
Richard Dawkins is the author of
The God Delusion. His next book
fungi, bacteria and us are, without exception,
will be The Greatest Show on Earth
, EYEVINE/NEW Y descended from a single grand common
REX
36 February 2009 www.bbcfocusmagazine.com
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