ABSTRACT

Richard Darwin's idea of natural selection and the ensuing formulation of the synthetic theory of neo-Darwinism has probably been the one idea arising out of modern science that has most profoundly shaped modern mankind's view of itself. The challenges to neo-Darwinism have come from a variety of directions which reflect a growing interest in the subject from outside the discipline of biology itself. At the most superficial level the 'numbers game' underlying evolutionary theory has been vigorously challenged. Modern molecular biology has been enormously successful in showing how at least part of the information carried in the genes is used by the cell to assemble a vast array of complex protein molecules. Neo-Darwinism faces a fundamental problem in its attempt to address the question of how biological systems actually develop. The British biologist Brian Goodwin has written extensively about the conceptual problems surrounding neo-Darwinism.