Evolutionary Leader

Newcastle Herald

Saturday January 17, 2009

Joanne McCarthy

THIS is a big year for Charles Darwin, despite being dead.

Experts in evolutionary theory from around the world will meet in Melbourne next month to mark the 200th anniversary of his birth on February 12 with a six-day conference.

There's still time to book for lectures like Biting, mechanical constraints and trade-offs in Darwin's finch beaks: a recipe for ecological speciation?; Evolution of aluminium resistance in wheat by cis-regulatory changes in the TaALMT1 gene; Are Australians more deceptive than Europeans? Lessons from crab spiders and my personal favourite, the explosively titled Why is a starfish like an atomic bomb? (Answer: because neither can cross the road.)

There's a lone Newcastle University representative.

Jennifer Debenham is a humanities doctoral candidate whose lecture, Celluloid narratives: the influence of Darwinian thinking in the construction of Aboriginality and whiteness in Australian ethnographic films, 1900-1950, discusses how Darwin's natural selection was used to justify filming of the "final days" of Australian Aborigines.

Her talk is up against an Australian National University lecturer's session on Dawn of the ray-fin: the known diversity of the devonian actinopterygii and a University of Western Australia presentation on Viviparity and embryonic development within ptyctodonts (placodermi).

My money's on our Jen.

This week, on January 12, we marked 173 years since Darwin entered Sydney harbour on HMS Beagle and collected material to support the book that changed the world, On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. (Publishers weren't into catchy book titles in 1859. If Darwin released it today we'd have Survival!, with a glossy cover photo showing two apes clubbing each other to death.)

The 2009 evolutionary razzle dazzle will culminate on November 22, the 150th anniversary of Origin of species, when evolutionary scientists around the world will gird their loins to do battle against creationists while the rest of us start work on our Christmas gift lists.

There have been plenty of skirmishes before. In 1968 the American state of Arkansas was taken to court for prohibiting the teaching of evolution in schools. It lost.

Arkansas was at it again in 1982, when its "balanced treatment" policy requiring schools to teach "creation science" and "evolution science" side by side was tossed out by a judge, who declared that "creation science" was not in fact a science.

Arkansas bowed out after that, and handed the reins to Louisiana which was up before the US Supreme Court in 1987 because of its Creationism Act prohibiting the teaching of evolution in public schools, except if accompanied by instruction in "creation science".

Illinois had its day in 1990, when a teacher took one of the state's school districts to court because the district prohibited him from teaching creationism to pupils. Final score: Illinois 1, teacher 0.

Louisiana celebrated the 10th anniversary of its Creationism Act loss by appearing before a court again in 1997, this time for requiring teachers to read aloud a disclaimer whenever they taught evolution. Louisiana lost again.

The states of Georgia and Pennsylvania did a tag team effort in 2005, with school districts in both states before judges because of their evolution/creationism policies.

A Georgia school district's policy requiring science textbooks to carry the sticker: "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered." Another creationism loss.

In Pennsylvania a judge ordered a school district to stop teaching what creationism had evolved into after years of court defeats intelligent design. It "wasn't science and cannot be adjudged a valid, accepted scientific theory", the judge ruled.

But with all the focus on Origin of Species, we're missing another Darwin anniversary next month. February marks the 138th anniversary of the publication of Darwin's other master work, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, in which he argues that sexual selection of our mates is as important as survival of the fittest in explaining the development of human beings.

I like sexual selection. It's the one that explains our large brains, love of beauty and penis size.

Beats "viviparity and embryonic development within ptyctodonts" any day.

If Darwin released it today we'd have Survival!, with a glossy cover photo showing two apes clubbing each other to death.