How is Darwin and his theory seen by science today?
D.C.: Science advances thanks to leaps – forwards as well as backwards. If one rereads Darwin word for word, some bits are clearly dated bearing in mind what we know now – everything to do with inheritance for example, even if his basic intuition was right. Not knowing about the existence of genes and the work of Mendel [the Austrian “father of genetics”, born in 1822, who studied the inheritance of certain traits in pea plants], Darwin reasoned from his observations of the animal and plant world. He noticed that in a population no two individuals are identical. The small differences vary depending on the environment and can be crucial for survival. He deduced that such evolution could result in new species. With our modern scientific instruments we’ve been able to confirm that everything involving mutations, recombination [the process by which genetic material is broken and joined to other genetic material during reproduction], variations and the adaption of species to their environme
