Summary
Melvyn Bragg examines the future of gene therapy and advances in evolutionary biology. Are we continuing to evolve? If so, what are the signs and if not, why not? And those apes, so very very near us in genetic kinship, why are they so far away in so much else, and will they ever evolve? And is evolution necessarily progression? If so, does our apparent lack of evolution mean lack of progress? Also on the evolutionary front, could electronic devices discover the means of self-replication, and what will that mean for us? The march of the life sciences after the discovery of DNA accelerates by the year but what are the implications?With Professor John Maynard Smith evolutionary biological theorist and Emeritus Professor of Biology at the University of Sussex; Colin Tudge, writer, journalist and Research Fellow at the Centre for Philosophy.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thanks for downloading the in our time podcast for more details about in our time and for our terms of use |
| 0:05.4 | Please go to bbc.co.uk forward slash radio for I hope you enjoy the program |
| 0:11.6 | Hello, our knowledge of evolution this century is expanded in ways unimaginable in Darwin's time |
| 0:17.4 | The impact of that knowledge and speculation about our origins has been immense and continues to grow |
| 0:22.8 | But how do new ways of thinking affect our understanding of ourselves and our futures? |
| 0:27.8 | Joining me is one of today's leading evolutionary theorists professor John Maynard Smith |
| 0:32.8 | Now emeritus professor of biology at the University of Sussex |
| 0:36.2 | He's particularly renowned for his work on game theory |
| 0:38.8 | His best-known book is The Theory of Evolution, which was first published in 1958 |
| 0:43.2 | Since when he's written extensively on evolution his most recent work is the origins of life from the birth of life to the origins of language |
| 0:51.2 | Which has just been published and he'll be lecturing on the origins of life tomorrow at the Edinburgh Science Festival |
| 0:56.6 | I'm also joined by the writer and journalist Colin Todd choose currently research fellow at the Center for Philosophy |
| 1:02.2 | His books have included the day before yesterday five million years of human history |
| 1:06.7 | Last animals at the zoo and most recently Neanderthals bandits and farmers professor John Maynard Smith |
| 1:13.4 | We have a greater knowledge of genetics and evolution than possibly could have ever been imagined in Darwin's time |
| 1:18.9 | Could you briefly describe what's radically different but the way we understand evolutionary theory now and the way it was understood as |
| 1:26.5 | It were by Darwin and his contemporaries |
| 1:28.8 | Well, it is as you imply essentially our knowledge of genetics that has transformed things Darwin |
| 1:34.5 | knew that children resemble their parents, but he had no idea how or why didn't know anything about the mechanism |
| 1:40.4 | Now we understand the mechanism in really quite extraordinary detail as to how it comes about that children |
| 1:47.0 | Get information from their parents about how to grow if you like and it's that that has really transformed our ideas about evolution |
| 1:54.9 | What my book with my Hungarian friend her stuff Marie does is to |
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