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If it works use it: the beauty and ugliness of natural selection

Lectures
Date
31 Mar 2009
Start time
7:30 PM
Venue
Tempest Anderson Hall
Speaker
Prof John Currey
If it works use it: the beauty and ugliness of natural selection

Event Information

If it works use it: the beauty and ugliness of natural selection
Prof John Currey, Department of Biology, The University of York

 

Report
Natural selection, the simple and obvious explanation of the evolutionary process, Darwin’s brilliant insight, is an impersonal force. It is a pitiless process based on logical responses to existing conditions – it has no foresight. It is not sentimental: it often wastes nearly all the results of reproduction; and it accrues not the best, but only the most expedient of solutions.  The living world contains billions of remarkable ways of surviving, but death is the chief by-product of natural selection. Millions more potential lives are destroyed than survive to reproduce.  It is not a question of being the best, just what is temporarily most able. The processes of evolution are demonstrated in mammals’ bodies which contain many historical features of their fish ancestors. For example: redundant nerve fibres useful in gills remain, absurdly, in the mammalian neck. The evolution of the eye (which tested Darwin’s self-belief) has taken several routes, mammals have a less efficient eye than the octopus which has no blind spot. Successful solutions to the mechanical and structural engineering demands of deer antlers or marine skeletons prove that the process of natural selection works.

 

Book

The following book by John Currey is related to the subject of this lecture. Follow the link to Amazon for further details.