14 Mar 2005

Dangerous Darwin - Last Lecture Series

Did evolution end with Darwin's famous theory or is there more?

Most definitely, says Professor David Mc Connell of the Department of Genetics, Trinity College Dublin. Not only has the Cosmos continued to evolve since the "big bang" but the AIDS pandemic sweeping through the world is frightening proof that evolution is unfolding before our very eyes. The replication and mutation of viruses, Professor Mc Connell adds, is a powerful example of evolution in action.

Before Darwin, however, the "safe" view was that the world was created in seven days by a higher power and that with the exception of the cyclical movement of the natural world, nothing ever changed. Darwin's "dangerous theory" was to have a profound effect on how we looked at the world after that. His theory of evolution, leading inexorably to the conclusion that man was not special, that he was closely related to the higher apes and that he had appeared on Earth as a result of evolutionary chance, brought him into conflict with the Church in Europe and altered fundamentally the way in which Theology, Biology, Geology, Philosophy and even Cosmology, would be viewed in future.

On Wednesday next (March 16th) Professor Mc Connell will be the guest speaker in the continuing UCC Last Lecture Series organised by Professor William Reville of the Faculty of Science. The highly successful series, is being run this year as part of UCC's contribution to the Capital of Culture 2005 celebrations in Cork. Professor's Mc Connell's lecture, titled: Darwin's Dangerous Idea - Evolution From Cosmos to Culture, will range over Darwin's ground-breaking theory and its implications for science ever since. In the panoply of modern science, Professor Mc Connell says, Darwin stands alongside Gregor Mendel, whose "laws" were published in 1863, and James Watson and Francis Crick who found the double helix of DNA in 1953.

"Darwin showed that man was not special, if you like, that he was an accident. When the Dinosaurs disappeared 75 million years ago, mammals emerged to fill the gap. Things might have been very different if that meteor had not hit the planet," he says,
Even today, Professor Mc Connell says, the man-made extinction of plants and animals reminds us how fundamental change is to the process of evolution and that it is happening in the heavens just as it is in our corner of the Milky way. And on that subject, he adds, the statistical probability, given the billions of stars and galaxies out there, is that we are not alone.

The lecture will take at Boole Lecture Theatre 4 at 8pm on Wednesday March 16th, and as always, members of the public are invited to attend.  Admission is free.

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