By Henry Gee & Rory Howlett
The articles in this Insight testify to the success of Charles Darwin’s theory of descent with modification by means of natural selection, carefully detailed in his book On the Origin of Species almost 150 years ago. The most striking aspect of the theory is its simplicity. Given heritable variation, a superabundance of offspring, and environmental change, natural selection must happen, and evolution will follow. The natural world can be explained without invoking pre-existing germs, essential life forces, the great chain of being, Ptolemaic epicycles or a prime mover.
This simplicity has meant that the theory has always accommodated new discoveries — the general theme of this Insight. In Darwin’s day, nothing was known about genetics or the mathematical basis of natural selection. But such discoveries have only made the theory stronger.
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