I have a friend who is a conceptual artist. I’m sure he pities me spending my time trying to understand a single, objective reality. But when asked what he does through his art he says he is trying to create new, exciting and mind-expanding ways of looking at the world. Exactly what I’m trying to do through science, I tell him. Viewed in this way the distinction between art and science becomes blurred but there remains in science an implication that two people presented with the same set of evidence would be likely to come to similar conclusions.

The creative role of the individual scientist then becomes difficult to pin down. Are the major breakthroughs in scientific understanding an inevitable product of their time, simply waiting for almost anyone to join the various pieces together, or is there something special about those individuals who synthesise new, exciting and mind-expanding ways of looking at the world? As with any major change in science, the theory of evolution by natural selection did not emerge from nothing.

There is a long history of evolutionary thought of which Darwin would almost certainly have been aware. His own grandfather, one of the leading intellectuals of the 18^th Century, made some important contributions that are taken up and developed in his grandson’s work. Darwin was also strongly influenced by many of the other important scientific views of his day such as Charles Lyell’s argument for gradual change throughout geological history.

Would almost anyone exposed to these views have come to the same conclusions as Darwin or did it take a unique combination of experiences and thought processes to develop the theory of evolution by natural selection? And what of the fact that Patrick Matthew, Charles Wells and Alfred Russel Wallace all seem to have independently developed theories similar to Darwin’s, albeit less developed, at around the same time? Does this mean the discovery of evolution by natural selection was inevitable?

Content last updated: 06/01/2009

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