ABSTRACT
I first read Charles Darwin’s masterpiece, On the Origin of Species, some twenty years ago. At once I fell under its spell-an emotion which is as strong within me today as it was then. For all of Darwin’s problems and gaps and inconsistencies (and over the years I have played my part in bringing these to light) at base, I think he was right. With Darwin, I believe that the organic world came into being through a natural process of evolution, that by far the main mechanism was natural selection, something which speaks directly to the most pervasive feature of organisms namely their adaptedness, and that (although this is only hinted at in the Origin) for all of the obvious qualifications one must make, the ideas apply absolutely and completely to humans.
