Darwin television celebrations begin

Abstract

+Britain's Channel 4 has begun its three-part celebration of the Darwin anniversaries next year which started at the Linnaean Society in London last month. Nigel Williams reports. +Britain's Channel 4 has begun its three-part celebration of the Darwin anniversaries next year which started at the Linnaean Society in London last month. Nigel Williams reports. The double anniversary next year, which marks the 150th anniversary of the first publication of the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin and the bicentenary of his birth, has provided the media with a welcome peg to celebrate the naturalist's enormous contribution to modern biology. While the BBC is planning several programmes, beginning later this year, Channel 4, a commercial British television station, has got in early with a three-part series: The Genius of Darwin. But this year too marks a major anniversary in Darwin's life — it was 150 years ago this summer that Darwin's endless search for data in support of his theory of natural selection received a hefty jolt. A young naturalist travelling in south-east Asia sought Darwin's help to promote his views on how he saw evolution to be taking place in the natural world. Darwin was devastated to see something of his own ideas, on which he had been gathering data for so long, to be staring him in the face in a letter from the British naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace. While Darwin was unsure what to do, his friends quickly came up with a plan for Wallace's paper to be read alongside one by Darwin at a summer meeting of the Linnaean Society in 1858, the anniversary of which was celebrated at the society last month. The paper jolted Darwin into action to complete his major work — The Origin of Species — published the following year, so Channel 4’s celebration is timely. The programme is fronted by Richard Dawkins, one of Darwin's strongest contemporary champions. He begins sitting on a clifftop where he did not hesitate to state Darwin's significance: he told viewers he was going to tell them about perhaps the most powerful idea ever to occur to a human mind. Dawkins then went on to visit a class of school students in north London to investigate their views on evolution. “Do you know what our ancestors were like 200 million years ago? They would have been like shrews, little whiskery, twitchy things,” he told them. There seemed to be a reluctant consensus amongst the class that there might be something in the idea, but Dawkins was quick to highlight how “scandalous” it was how little our children are taught about evolution. Dawkins then focused on Darwin's life. Settled at Down House in Kent, Darwin no longer had any appetite for foreign travel after his years on the HMS Beagle. But his curiosity for things overseas was undiminished and an impressive mail service allowed him correspondence with people around the globe. Down House, now a museum with many artefacts from Darwin's time still in place, has a rare feeling of his daily life and was visited by Dawkins for the programme. He sat at Darwin's piano, more accurately Mrs Darwin's piano, as Darwin himself could not play and used the keyboard to demonstrate the development of life on earth. “We have nothing but bacteria all the way up here past middle C,” he said. “The dinosaurs do not come in until about here” and ping went a high note. The whole of human history would occupy less than half the width of a piano string right at the top of the keyboard, he said. But Dawkins was keen to highlight the core of Darwin's natural selection. “The amount of suffering in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to say this, millions of animals are running for their lives, whimpering with fear. Thousands are dying from starvation or disease or feeling a parasite rasping away from within. For most animals the reality is struggling, suffering and death.” Inheritance, he explained, can offer a helping hand. In Africa, Dawkins visited a middle-aged prostitute who remarkably had remained resistant to HIV, an immunity she may pass on to her children. But back with his class, Dawkins went down to the Dorset coast, famous internationally for its treasure trove of fossils. The class were clearly delighted to discover fossil ammonites within the pebbles and hear Dawkins explain their origins. But, in spite of Dawkins’ efforts, evolution still faces an extraordinarily uphill struggle, 150 years since Darwin's work. As one of Dawkins’ school students said on the beach: I'll still keep saying “my prayers”.