Survival of the wisest
One hundred and fifty years ago tomorrow, a small group of scientists at a meeting on the north side of Piccadilly heard the first public account of the theory that the philosopher Daniel Dennett calls the single best idea that anyone has ever had.
The reading was precipitated by an event many thousands of miles away on the island of Ternate (now in Indonesia). The young explorer Alfred Russell Wallace had spent a decade travelling the globe amassing a collection of more than 100,000 specimens of plants and animals. He realised the astonishing variety that filled his collection boxes could all be accounted for by the simple fact that fitter individuals leave more descendants.… Seguir leyendo »