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02:40Well, in one sense, there's nothing new about genetic engineering.
02:43In one sense, genetic engineering goes back centuries, even millennia,
02:47to when people first started selectively breeding.
02:50You can breed farm animals and plants.
02:52Darwin used that as his model for natural selection,
02:55where nature does the selecting instead of the human breeder.
02:59But that's old.
03:01What we've got now is a new kind of genetic modification
03:04where scientists go straight in and modify genes
03:08or import genes from other sources directly.
03:12Well, clearly, that could have great benefits,
03:15but equally clearly,
03:17if you wanted to make a really lethal biological weapon,
03:22then genetic modification would be the way to do it.
03:26♪♪
03:41This is Darwin's house in Kent.
03:44It was here that the great scientist and writer Charles Darwin
03:47came to spend over 40 years of his life
03:50researching and analysing his scientific findings.
03:54It was his haven, his family home, his laboratory and his library.
04:01His work, obsession and genius grew and grew
04:05during his years at Down House.
04:10When he came to Down, he had the theory of evolution in his head,
04:15but he needed to work out the details and also to work out the proof.
04:22And it was here that he managed to do that
04:27with patient experiments in the kitchen garden and in the hothouses,
04:34with very careful observations in the meadows
04:38and along the country paths around,
04:41and obviously reading in his study.
04:45Darwin lived and worked here for 40 years
04:48and probably hardly left the place for more than a week a year in all that time.
04:53If you think of a scientific career,
04:55you might expect the person to be working in a museum or in a university,
04:59but Darwin was working here at Down House
05:02and everything he worked on had to come into that one room,
05:05the old study, which was where he lived, worked and wrote.
05:09Darwin had seen Down's proximity to London as a major advantage.
05:14He initially intended to spend a few days each month in London,
05:18maintaining his contacts with the scientific community,
05:21but his health restricted these wishes.
05:24During the 17 years when he was working on The Origin of Species,
05:29Darwin was constantly researching and publishing material
05:33on an ever-widening area of natural history.
05:36A prodigious letter writer,
05:38Darwin corresponded regularly with scientists like Lyle and Hooker
05:42who visited him at Down.
05:44He established links with commercial breeders, naturalists and botanists,
05:48as well as any other source capable of illuminating the process of heredity.
05:53Down House became a centre of debate
05:57and a focus point for the scientific world.
06:00He was a man of many talents,
06:03He was receiving up to 14,000 letters a year from admirers of his work.
06:08Today, it is still a place of scientific pilgrimage.
06:33Darwin had not always lived in Kent.
06:35He was born on February 12, 1809 in Shrewsbury,
06:39the fifth of six children.
06:41As a member of an affluent upper-middle class family,
06:44he was to enjoy a life of privilege.
06:47Darwin's childhood, until the death of his mother,
06:50was spent at the heart of a happy and affectionate family.
06:54In common with many men destined for great things,
06:57Darwin's youth gave few clues to his gifted nature.
07:02On the contrary, at times his father, Robert, a successful physician,
07:06despaired of Charles making any contribution to society.
07:13Surprisingly, Darwin wasn't a very good pupil at school.
07:16In his last year at Shrewsbury, his father wrote him a letter
07:19saying that he was good for nothing but dogs shooting and rat catching
07:23and he was going to be an embarrassment to his family.
07:26But he probably wasn't very good
07:28because he was getting a classical education
07:30and what he was really interested in was science.
07:33And so at home with his brother,
07:35he was setting up chemical experiments in a lab
07:38and also the shooting, in fact, was quite good
07:40and served him in good stead for later life
07:42because on the Beagle voyage he could go out
07:44and kill as many specimens as he needed to.
07:47He showed clearly from an early age that he was going to be a naturalist.
07:52He was very keen. He collected beetles and shells and plants.
08:02After a false start at Edinburgh University,
08:05where he abandoned a course in medicine,
08:07Darwin was dispatched to Cambridge University,
08:10a powerhouse of the Anglican establishment,
08:13in 1827 to study to be a clergyman.
08:17He'd never been keen on medicine.
08:19He had followed his father on his rounds in Shrewsbury.
08:23He was prepared to give it a try,
08:25but when he went to Edinburgh and studied and attended the anatomy lectures,
08:32he found that he couldn't stand watching other people in pain,
08:37sight of blood, and it was really his squeamishness
08:41that led him to decide that he couldn't make it his career.
08:45Well, after his father realised that he wasn't going to be able to be a doctor,
08:49he decided it might be a good idea for Charles
08:52to follow an alternative professional career,
08:54and so an obvious easy solution was to become a clergyman,
08:58and Darwin spent several years at Cambridge studying to be a clergyman,
09:02but in fact most of the time he spent attending scientific lectures
09:07and producing natural history studies,
09:10and so by the end of his university, his degree period,
09:13I think it was pretty obvious that Charles didn't want to be a member of the clergy,
09:17but actually was more interested in science.
09:22He formed a strong friendship with John Henslow
09:25and, with his encouragement, graduated successfully.
09:28It was Henslow who suggested Darwin for the position of ship's naturalist
09:32on board HMS Beagle's surveying voyage to South America.
09:37Darwin's father, Robert, who was required to finance his son's trip,
09:42was reluctant to agree.
09:44He saw this as yet more evidence of a need for diversion.
09:48It was Josiah Wedgwood, Darwin's uncle and future father-in-law,
09:52who persuaded Robert to change his mind.
09:57In 1831, Darwin set sail on the five-year expedition
10:01which not only was to change his life,
10:03but would have a dramatic impact on the future of science.
10:10Darwin's five-year voyage endowed him with a new self-confidence
10:14and brought him scientific acclaim.
10:16He was happy and able to indulge in his favourite pastimes without interruption.
10:24He spent long periods of time in the ocean,
10:28He spent long periods ashore, gathering data and specimens,
10:33many of which he sent back to England to various scientists and to London Zoo.
10:38These times ashore were a release from the almost continuous seasickness
10:43which afflicted him.
10:45On his expeditions, Darwin's shooting skills
10:48enabled him to collect a wide variety of bird species.
10:51These, together with his other specimens
10:55and detailed scientific observations,
10:57were part of the gradual process of discovery
11:00which laid the foundations of his theory.
11:08However, among those destined to become deeply significant
11:12were the studies he made on the Galapagos Islands.
11:15Darwin observed that the species of finches and tortoises
11:18varied distinctly from island to island.
11:21The true significance of these findings
11:24was to become clear after his return to England in 1836.
11:30Following his return from the voyage aboard HMS Beagle,
11:34Darwin had begun to catalogue and publish his scientific findings.
11:38However, the observations he made while on the voyage
11:42had aroused his doubts about the biblical version of creation.
11:47He could no longer accept that species were inalterably fixed.
11:52While making public the details of his journey,
11:55Darwin kept private a series of notebooks
11:58devoted to more controversial issues.
12:07This work was destined to produce his theory of natural selection.
12:13Although he was to spend 20 years in further research,
12:16by 1842 Darwin had completed an outline study
12:20which identified the basic elements of his theory.
12:23However, he made no attempt to publish his findings.
12:31During the first part of Darwin's scientific life
12:35back in England after the voyage,
12:38he was not widely known,
12:41but he had a number of very close friends
12:44among the great scientists of the time.
12:47I think the obvious ones to mention are Sir Charles Lyell, the geologist,
12:52and Sir Joseph Hooker, who was the director of Kew Gardens.
12:57They would often come here
13:00to talk through his ideas with him,
13:04their own ideas, argue and discuss.
13:08On his return, Darwin published several volumes of geological observations
13:13as well as his Journal of Researches, a detailed account of the voyage.
13:31Darwin valued his prestigious position
13:34and was reluctant to endanger it.
13:37He was convinced that publication of The Origin of Species
13:41would be greeted with public denunciation,
13:44even though evolutionary theories were not new.
13:47Darwin began writing the paper
13:50that would eventually become The Origin of Species
13:53fairly soon after he got back from the Beagle voyage,
13:56so in about 1837-38,
13:58but he delayed publishing for nearly 20 years
14:01because he was so terrified of what the public reaction might be.
14:06He'd seen, as a young man, admired fellow scientists
14:10being vilified and losing their positions in universities and museums
14:14because they had even voiced
14:17the merest mention of evolutionary theories.
14:20So I think he was very justifiably frightened
14:23of what the public reaction would be
14:26and the effect it might have on his family.
14:29The history of evolutionary thought stretches back to the ancient world.
14:34Over the centuries, a variety of theories
14:37were advanced to explain life on Earth.
14:40However, by the 19th century,
14:43an increasing accumulation of scientific knowledge
14:46made it impossible to evade the challenge to religious belief.
14:50The early work of the geologist Charles Lyell
14:53revealed that the Earth had been subject
14:56to a process of slow, regular change.
15:05The idea of divine creation was challenged by research on fossils
15:10which showed some species to be extinct.
15:15Extinction was not easily explicable
15:18in terms of Orthodox Christianity.
15:22The religious establishment identified the biblical story of Noah's Ark
15:27as evidence that a series of cataclysmic events
15:30accounted for the scientific findings.
15:33In effect, they argued that God,
15:36having punished the world for its sins,
15:39then repopulated it.
15:42Given this debate,
15:44when Darwin's controversial book was finally published,
15:48evolution did not emerge into a society unprepared for evolutionary views.
15:53What society was much less prepared for
15:56was Darwin's theory of natural selection.
16:00Certainly the fact that in Darwin's theory of evolution
16:04millions of creatures seemed to serve no particular purpose
16:08except to advance evolution would be a worry.
16:11But I don't think one need say
16:13that the millions of creatures which existed on the paths of evolution
16:17existed merely in order to further evolution
16:20and had no joy, no pleasure in their own lives.
16:25I think they no doubt had a lower form of life
16:29but were still happy to exist.
16:31So I don't think they're a main problem of evil.
16:34There are other problems of evil and suffering
16:37but I don't see that it contributes largely to the matter of evolution.
16:43In the years immediately following his return to England,
16:46Darwin had not devoted all his energies to work.
16:49In 1839, Darwin married his cousin and friend, Emma Wedgwood.
16:55Both Emma and Charles came from wealthy families.
16:59Emma's Wedgwood dowry increased the considerable income
17:02which Darwin already enjoyed through his Darwin inheritance.
17:06His wealth freed Darwin from all the financial concerns
17:10which might have restricted his research.
17:12His choice of Emma as his wife was not based on romantic considerations.
17:17It rested more on her suitability.
17:20However, the couple were to demonstrate a deep affection for each other
17:24throughout their lives together.
17:26Darwin described Emma as his greatest blessing.
17:33Darwin was by nature sensitive, family-loving and reclusive.
17:39In September 1842, the Darwins, together with their two children,
17:43William and Anne, took up residence at Down House.
17:47For the next 40 years,
17:49Down House was to be Darwin's much-loved home and refuge
17:53as well as his place of work.
17:57The house and grounds were to become a major influence
18:00on his continuing research.
18:03Situated in 18 acres of land in the Kent countryside,
18:07the position of the house was ideal.
18:10The family could enjoy a country life while being only 16 miles from London.
18:16Initially, the appearance of the house had aroused some reservations.
18:20However, the Darwins recognised its potential.
18:25Over the next few years, Down House was transformed
18:28into the comfortable and extensive home of an ever-growing family.
18:38Charles and Emma were devastated when their third child, Mary Eleanor,
18:43born only days after their arrival at Down, died within a few weeks.
18:50Darwin was worried about having married his first cousin, Emma,
18:56because he feared that she would have to leave him.
19:01Darwin was worried about having married his first cousin, Emma,
19:05because he feared that it was possibly one reason
19:10why many of his children had such poor health.
19:15Two died in infancy, his daughter Mary and his last son, Charles.
19:21One died at the age of ten,
19:23and others were invalids for much of their childhood.
19:27He thought that inbreeding might have been a cause
19:32and worried about it really till the end of his life.
19:39Large families were quite usual during this period.
19:42What was much less common was Darwin's overt expression
19:45of the love and affection he felt for his children.
19:49His relationship with his children was exceptionally warm for that period.
19:53His children were allowed to run relatively free around the house
19:56to come into his study and talk to him,
19:58and their memories are very warm towards him.
20:02They remember being able to work with him,
20:05for him playing with them, and scientific experiments.
20:09This was quite different from his relations with his father,
20:13who was a very stern, rather fierce and feared character in his childhood.
20:20Darwin became very close to his father,
20:23but only really after he returned from the voyage of the Beagle.
20:29Darwin was explicit about the personal consequences
20:32of publishing on the origin of species by means of natural selection
20:36or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life.
20:40I shall soon be viewed as the most despicable of men,
20:44the most arrogant, odious beast that ever lived.
20:48The conviction that public denunciation awaited him
20:51was a major factor in his decision to defer publication.
20:55He'd had this text sitting in a box for nearly 20 years,
20:59in fact, with a note attached to his wife saying that if he died
21:03and she found this, could she publish it?
21:06Darwin's reluctance to face possible abuse
21:09outweighed his conviction that his theory was valid.
21:13The Great Exhibition, which opened in 1851,
21:17eight years before Darwin published The Origin of Species,
21:20was a declaration of England's belief in its manufacturing supremacy.
21:25While manufacturers welcomed science as an industrial tool,
21:29the ruling elite did not want science to challenge
21:32those political and religious ideals
21:34which were used to reinforce the status quo.
21:39The year of the Great Exhibition was a watershed for Darwin.
21:43In that year, the death of his ten-year-old daughter, Anne,
21:46destroyed any vestige of belief Darwin had in a personal god.
21:52Certainly, the death of his daughter was a great blow
21:55and a great trial to his Christian faith.
21:58The loss of his child was very important to him
22:02and disorientated him, as it does with anyone who is a Christian.
22:08And it's very difficult in those circumstances to,
22:12even for a historian working with lots of papers,
22:16you know, it's very difficult for such a historian
22:19to plot a sequence of events where one thing leads to another.
22:25Fundamental to Christian religious belief was the Book of Genesis,
22:29the biblical story of creation which taught that the source of life was God.
22:35This was not a matter of science, but of faith.
22:38It was believed that the different species were arranged hierarchically,
22:42man being the highest species.
22:48The fact that evolutionary theories questioned
22:51this most basic tenet of religious belief
22:53was partly responsible for Darwin's reluctance
22:56to publish the origin of species.
22:59I don't think that either then or today
23:03there was anything in Darwin,
23:07either the origin of the species or the descent of man,
23:11that challenges the teaching of the Church.
23:15It's part of that continuing process
23:18whereby scientists discover more about the real world
23:23and theologians then have to work with that,
23:26work with those discoveries,
23:29and take those advances in knowledge about the real world
23:35and hold them beside the revelation in the New Testament
23:40and work with them together.
23:43Now, that's the task of the theologian.
23:46An influencing factor in Darwin's reluctance to publish
23:49may have been the savage treatment meted out of the book,
23:52the vestiges of the natural history of creation.
23:55The secretive writer was the Edinburgh publisher Robert Chambers.
23:59This work emerged in the hungry 40s
24:02when the country was under threat from widespread social unrest.
24:06In this climate, any challenge to the authority of the Church
24:10was seen as subversive.
24:14There were a variety of evolutionary theories
24:17but none of them were as cohesive
24:20as what Darwin actually managed to pull together.
24:23Various people, for example the scientist Lamarck,
24:26had come up with theories that led towards evolution
24:31but insofar as they were necessarily denying
24:35individual creation of species by God
24:38and that was what led to the reaction against those theories
24:42and it was that reaction that Darwin feared.
24:47One man, whose contribution to 19th century science
24:50was an important formative influence on Darwin,
24:53was Charles Lyell.
24:56In 1830, Lyell published Principles of Geology,
25:00the book which was to contribute to Darwin's theory of evolution.
25:06Darwin was convinced by Lyell's concept
25:09that the earth had undergone a process of gradual but persistent change.
25:15Darwin had already begun to believe
25:18in a natural and not divine origin of species.
25:22His own studies added other vital elements
25:25which were to shape his theory.
25:28Darwin argued that existence itself was a battle
25:31and that life forms which could not adapt to nature's changes
25:35faced extinction.
25:37He was convinced that the species which possessed
25:40the most advantageous characteristics
25:42would survive and evolve.
25:45His scientific observations had revealed the random variations
25:49which nature produces in every generation.
25:52Darwin reasoned that where those variations enabled a species
25:56to adapt to circumstance,
25:58then eventually a new species could evolve.
26:01This was natural selection at work.
26:06Considering that Darwin was writing more than 100 years ago,
26:10he's really astonishingly up-to-date,
26:13almost miraculously prescient.
26:15The main thing that Darwin got wrong was his view of genetics.
26:19He had no idea about genetics,
26:21and obviously genetics, the phenomenon of heredity,
26:24is extremely important to the theory.
26:26All Darwin knew was that in some vague sense, like begets like,
26:29he knew that something went through from one generation to the next.
26:33At the time, it was thought that inheritance was blending.
26:36That's to say you got some sort of substance from the mother
26:39and a substance from the father, and you mix them together,
26:42rather like mixing two pots of paint,
26:45and the child was some kind of blend of the two parents.
26:49Mix red paint and blue paint and you get purple paint.
26:52And it was pointed out at the time
26:54in one of the hostile reviews of The Origin of Species
26:57that if that were really how heredity worked,
27:00and at that time everybody thought it was,
27:02then there would never be enough variation for natural selection
27:05to work upon.
27:07You mix your red and your blue paint and you get purple,
27:10and no matter how many times you mix purple paint with purple paint,
27:13you never reconstitute red and blue.
27:15The variation just goes.
27:17Actually, of course, it was a criticism of observed facts.
27:20Any fool could see that as the generations go by,
27:23as a matter of fact, variation does not get used up.
27:26We're not much less different from each other
27:29than our grandparents were.
27:32Having drawn up the outline of his theory,
27:35Darwin began the long process of meticulous research
27:38which eventually would form part of The Origin of Species.
27:43These critically important years
27:45were spent in the Kentish village of Down.
27:48It was here, at Down House,
27:50that Darwin found his ideal environment.
27:53The house and grounds enabled him to combine two aspects of life
27:57which were vitally important to him,
27:59his family and his work.
28:02When he published The Theory of Evolution,
28:07he became a famous figure
28:10and many scientists from abroad
28:14came to... on pilgrimage here
28:18and came to see him and he would show them the hothouse,
28:22where we are now,
28:24and take them also around the grounds.
28:27So it was a central pilgrimage for scientists.
28:31Darwin's identification of natural selection
28:34as a formative influence on the process of evolution
28:37did not emerge instantly as a coherent theory.
28:41He spent two years formulating an explanation for his findings.
28:45In 1838, Darwin became convinced
28:48that he was looking at a process of natural selection.
28:53One of the external factors which shaped his thinking
28:56was an essay on human population by the economist Thomas Malthus.
29:01It was the essay's identification of the human struggle for existence
29:05which made an impact on Darwin.
29:09He realised that in their struggle for existence,
29:12the birds and animals of the Galapagos Islands
29:15had evolved to survive the unique conditions of each island.
29:27For two decades, Darwin maintained a self-imposed dual role.
29:32As an acclaimed public figure,
29:34his work on natural history inspired respect.
29:37At the same time, he was writing evolutionary material
29:40which he thought was potentially seditious.
29:43Darwin was finally forced to act
29:45when faced with the threat that his work was about to be overshadowed.
29:50Darwin was unsure of his facts, unsure of his data.
29:54He was continually experimenting, continually working on his specimens
30:00and wanted to perfect things even more.
30:03He was only pushed into publication by Russell Wallace's publication
30:08which Wallace sent him from Malaysia
30:11and that moved Darwin to publish his own theory
30:15rather earlier than he was ready.
30:17And Darwin was persuaded by his colleagues
30:19that he couldn't really sit on it for much longer
30:22and in the end he agreed to publish a joint paper with Wallace
30:26and that was the following year Origin was published in itself.
30:32The Origin of the Species was published in 1859
30:38and the immediate reaction from the church was quite muted
30:43but after a bit, there were those who were passionately involved in the debate
30:50and who were against Darwin.
30:53There were those who wanted to enjoy what Darwin had offered
30:59and relate it to revelation
31:03and this for them was a challenge to theology.
31:13You must remember that still in the 1850s
31:16F.D. Morris, a very important theologian
31:19thought that the earth was merely 6,000 years old
31:22so this involved really quite a revolution in ideas for many theologians
31:28and it was very difficult for them to stomach it all at once.
31:33The idea was that somehow each individual person was created individually by God
31:40and if evolution were the case, then this falls to the ground.
31:50Much of Darwin's research was done in the grounds of Down House.
31:55His daily walks along here, the sandwalk,
31:58enabled Darwin not only to think through his scientific findings
32:02but also to observe the complexities of nature.
32:07The sandwalk was obviously a very important part of the garden for him
32:12and also for Emma.
32:15He would go out and walk around it a number of times every day
32:20and it's clear that he used his walks around the sandwalk
32:25to clear out his mind, to work out difficult problems
32:31and for that reason it was important for him.
32:36The nature of genius is such that it is often driven by obsession
32:41and Darwin's overwhelming obsession was his work.
32:47He worked every day at Down House.
32:50Neither his seclusion at Down nor his health
32:53was to limit Darwin's scientific investigations.
32:56Unable to work for more than a few hours at a time,
32:59he devised an unvarying daily routine
33:02in which he balanced periods of work and rest.
33:05Darwin was quite clearly a creature of habit.
33:09He liked a regular routine
33:11and he liked to follow it very carefully.
33:15Darwin had a fairly rigid daily programme
33:20which involved getting up early, having breakfast at 7.45 on his own,
33:25walking briefly around the sandwalk,
33:28returning to his study, being read to by his wife,
33:32at 10.30, another work period,
33:35then five laps around the sandwalk and lunch
33:39and so it continued through the day
33:41with periods of work, reading, walking.
33:45During the early years of his marriage,
33:48Darwin suffered a whole catalogue of illnesses
33:51including stomach cramps, headaches and palpitations
33:54which increased in frequency and potency throughout his life.
33:58It is not clear what these symptoms denote.
34:01Many theories have been advanced,
34:03ranging from allergic reactions to Chagas disease.
34:08What is undeniable is that the symptoms often appeared
34:11in their most serious form when Darwin was under stress.
34:16Now, those bouts of extreme illness
34:19were often brought on by something changing
34:22or something frightening in his life.
34:24So, you know, there could a case be made
34:26that, yes, it was partly psychosomatic,
34:28it certainly made his illness worse
34:30when something, you know, unexpected happened
34:33and it certainly limited his travel.
34:35It may be that he didn't want to actually travel
34:37and face people, particularly after The Origin was published.
34:41But I think anybody reading his health diary
34:43couldn't really conclude anything else
34:45that he was actually sick from the number of symptoms he wrote down.
34:50Throughout their life together,
34:52Darwin depended totally on Emma and her undoubted devotion to him.
34:57During his rest periods,
34:59she would read to him from his favourite literature.
35:02Emma proofread all his work, including The Origin of Species.
35:08I think most people who've read about Emma Darwin, his wife,
35:13really understand the importance of the book.
35:16People who've read about Emma Darwin, his wife,
35:19realise that without her support throughout their married life,
35:24he could not have achieved anything near what he managed to.
35:31She was a devout Christian while his own faith faded.
35:37She didn't argue with him about religion.
35:41She accepted his work as what was important to him.
35:46But she gave him, throughout his life, very close support.
35:52She would read to him for up to four or five hours a day,
35:56which is a great commitment from a partner.
35:59And she also had the advantage that she spoke several languages
36:03and she could read German, for example, which Charles couldn't.
36:06And many of the scientific works at that date
36:09were being produced in Germany,
36:11and so she was able to translate for him.
36:14So it was very much a partnership.
36:18In 1859, Darwin had shook the foundations of Victorian society
36:22with his publication of The Origin of Species.
36:25This groundbreaking book proposed a theory of evolution
36:29which was dependent on natural selection.
36:32In the course of the controversy which raged,
36:35Darwin was dubbed the most dangerous man in England.
36:38A more unlikely recipient of such a title cannot be imagined.
36:44What Darwin had not anticipated
36:46was The Origin of Species' commercial success.
36:50It was to run into many editions
36:52and be translated into several languages for publication abroad.
36:56It has remained in print ever since.
36:59One reason for the book's popularity was its style.
37:03Darwin presented his findings and theories
37:05in a form which was both interesting and accessible.
37:08The Origin of Species was not the province of a scientific elite.
37:12It appealed to an increasingly literate public.
37:17The book became the focus of attention
37:19for the scientific world, the Church, and society as a whole.
37:23One of the most public manifestations of the dispute
37:26between the supporters of the book and its opponents
37:29took place in June 1860.
37:33There was a meeting of the British Association
37:36for the Advancement of Science in Oxford
37:38and there was an enormous row there.
37:41Huxley was really quite seriously abused by Bishop Wilberforce.
37:49The reason was that theologians, a number of theologians,
37:53thought that this was against the doctrine of creation.
37:57Although the argument had raged
37:59between representatives of science and religion,
38:02opinion was not clearly divided along those lines.
38:05Antagonism to Darwin came from scientists as well as clergymen.
38:13Many scientists, while accepting the idea of evolution,
38:16were unwilling to set aside God
38:18and attempted to combine evolutionary principles
38:21with a creationist stance.
38:24For the Church,
38:25the emergence of Darwin's theory of natural selection
38:28was a threat to the biblical story of creation
38:31on which its teachings were based.
38:34The accumulation of scientific evidence
38:36presented the Church with a dilemma.
38:40In 1996, more than a hundred years
38:43after the publication of The Origin of Species,
38:45the Roman Catholic Church confirmed its belief
38:48in the validity of evolution.
38:50It was stressed, however,
38:52that this validation did not extend to any aspect
38:55which undermined the belief that the human soul
38:58was a gift from God.
39:01The great difficulty perceived in Darwin's theories
39:05for the doctrines of the Church
39:07was how to reconcile evolution
39:11with the idea that God implants a soul
39:14directly in each human being.
39:17Now, if you think of God implanting a soul
39:21in the way that one sees on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel,
39:25God pointing with his finger into Adam
39:29and implanting a soul individually into Adam,
39:33then it doesn't work at all.
39:35Then evolution and theology come into a clash
39:40which cannot be resolved.
39:42But in fact, the individual soul
39:46means that God has a care of each individual life.
39:50But that doesn't need to be implanted by the very hand of God.
39:55If evolution is the case,
39:57then God sees the body is ready for the soul
40:02and has that individual care of the individual life.
40:07And that, I think, is what is meant
40:10by the doctrine of individual creation.
40:14In the 19th century,
40:16Darwin came as a great shock to the Church.
40:18Most Church people then still believe literally
40:21in the Book of Genesis.
40:23Nowadays, of course, no respectable theologian does anymore.
40:27So it's not a problem.
40:29Darwinism is no longer a problem
40:31for churches such as the Church of England
40:34or the Church of Rome.
40:36In the United States of America,
40:38there's a rather different story.
40:40Today, there are very influential religious influences
40:44which take the Book of Genesis literally.
40:47And that's an entirely different story.
40:49But in Britain, there's really no problem.
40:51As far as the science is concerned, evolution is one.
40:56Creationists have raised the issue
40:58of how Darwinism impacted on society.
41:01They point to the distortion of moral values
41:04which has resulted from an ideology
41:06based on the survival of the fittest.
41:09This phrase, first coined by the Victorian social philosopher
41:12Herbert Spencer to describe natural selection,
41:15has become inextricably linked with social Darwinism.
41:21The original Darwinian idea of natural selection
41:24was strictly within biology
41:26and it turned into selection of genes in gene pools.
41:30But it's obviously a very seductive idea
41:33and the temptation has always been
41:35to apply Darwinian ideas more widely than that
41:38and toward the end of the last century,
41:40there was a move called social Darwinism
41:43where particularly successful industrialists
41:46used to invoke the survival of the fittest
41:49to justify their own ruthless behaviour in the marketplace.
41:56At the other end of the political spectrum,
41:58Karl Marx linked evolutionary struggles for existence
42:02with the class struggle.
42:05The signed copy of Das Kapital, which Marx sent to Darwin,
42:09remains unread.
42:17The ideology of the survival of the fittest
42:20was eventually perverted to justify mass murder in Nazi Germany.
42:26Darwin, who was a liberal-minded and kind man,
42:29would have been appalled.
42:35When, as a 22-year-old, he embarked on HMS Beagle,
42:38he knew that this was the journey of a lifetime,
42:41he could not have anticipated the wide-ranging impact of his findings.
42:50After the publication of The Origin of Species,
42:53Darwin spent the rest of his life in varied scientific research.
42:57In 1871, he expanded on his evolutionary theories,
43:02openly addressing the issue of man's origins in his book
43:06The Descent of Man.
43:08By now, evolutionary theories were accepted,
43:11and despite the link made between man and higher primates,
43:15the book did not arouse a major storm.
43:22An indication of Darwin's continuing diversity
43:25was the publication in 1881, the year before his death,
43:29of a study on earthworms.
43:38At the time of his death, Darwin's theory of natural selection
43:42was undergoing a period of decline.
43:44Other scientists attacked Darwin's failure
43:47to exactly identify the mechanism which powered natural selection.
43:52The revival of his theory in modern times
43:55owes much to the rediscovery of the genetic work done in the 19th century
43:59by Gregor Mendel.
44:02Modern theory has unlocked many of the secrets Darwin could only guess at.
44:09Neo-Darwinism is the name that's now given
44:12to the marriage between Darwinism and Mendelism,
44:15the importing of particulate,
44:18the idea of particulate inheritance into Darwinism.
44:23Particulate inheritance means that heredity comes in discrete particles.
44:30You either get a particular unit, nowadays we call them genes,
44:33you either get a particular gene from, say, your father, or you don't.
44:37You don't get half a gene or a quarter of a gene,
44:39it's either there or not.
44:41And it goes through to the next generation,
44:43the grandchild generation, or it doesn't.
44:45It goes through to the great grandchild generation, or it doesn't.
44:48So there's no blending, there's no tendency for genes
44:51to dissolve into each other or dilute each other's effect.
44:54They're either there or they aren't there.
44:57That's Mendelism, and when you add Mendelism to Darwinism,
45:00you get Neo-Darwinism, and Neo-Darwinism really works.
45:11Recent advances in genetic engineering have brought mankind
45:15to the brink of what is arguably its most controversial experiment,
45:19the cloning of human beings.
45:22The act of creation, of bestowing life itself,
45:25has become a product of genetic science.
45:28It is now possible to bypass the long process of evolution
45:32in order to create new species, without reference to nature.
45:41There are many areas in which this sort of consequence
45:46of Darwin's early work can be used for the alleviation of suffering.
45:53And anything that can be used for the alleviation of suffering
45:58is to be welcomed in any Christian ethic.
46:04The other side of this is when one can use this knowledge
46:10for what is known as cloning.
46:13Once we're into that area,
46:16then we're into something very dangerous and to be avoided.
46:21Cloning of mammals is something radically new.
46:24If humans are cloned, then it will be something new.
46:28As to whether it's a bad thing or not, I take a rather liberal line.
46:34It seems to me that if something is going to be forbidden,
46:38there's got to be a good reason for forbidding it if people want to do it.
46:42People who want to forbid it have got to demonstrate
46:45that it will do harm to some individuals, some identifiable individuals.
46:50We must be able to say who is going to be harmed and in what way.
46:54I think cloning brings with it many very difficult moral problems.
46:58I think if a child is produced by cloning,
47:02the emotional and physical problems would be enormous.
47:07And I see that as the major difficulty about cloning human beings.
47:12We're playing with things which we don't understand yet.
47:18Charles Darwin died on the 19th of April, 1882.
47:23Ironically, this most private of men,
47:26who had described himself as an agnostic, was buried at Westminster Abbey.
47:31What happened was that a group of his scientific friends
47:36suddenly saw an opportunity to have science honoured by the nation
47:42and grouped together and approached the dean and chapter of Westminster Abbey
47:51and persuaded them that he should be buried in the Abbey.
47:57But Mrs Darwin stayed away and was eventually buried in the churchyard of Darwin.
48:07The press coverage of his death is indicative of his status as an international figure.
48:13The Times eulogised him, acknowledging his contribution to science.
48:19The German newspaper Allgemeine Zeitung went further,
48:23describing the 19th century as Darwin's century.
49:06.