With Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday yesterday, The Diamondback spoke to Jeffrey Jensen, a senior lecturer studying fish ecology and evolution who is especially enthusiastic about the anniversary: He sent out “Happy Darwin Day” cards to friends and family, showed off a Darwin finger puppet and proudly displayed a Che Guevara-style “Viva la evolución!” sticker on his wall, complete with a black-and-white Darwin wearing a beret.

The Diamondback: How have the theories relating to evolution changed since Darwin’s time?

Jeffrey Jensen: Well, Darwin had a really good conceptual understanding of this notion of the tree of life. He presented that idea really nicely, this idea that organisms are related to each other. What I think is really impressive about Darwin is he kind of saw the implications of his idea very clearly. He talks about the descent of man in a way that it was really a hot-button issue even then, just taking the same kinds of evolutionary ideas and applying them, not just to plants or not just to animals, but thinking more deeply about what the philosophical implications were, as well. So in that sense, Darwin is still very important.

But what Darwin didn’t have is a very good understanding of inheritance. He knew that traits had an inherited component to them, but he didn’t really understand the mechanism of inheritance at all. And there’s been a lot learned about genetics, about development, and a lot more known about the fossil record that Darwin didn’t have at his disposal.

Darwin suggested this idea of natural selection of an agent that gave this appearance of design in nature, and that was really very challenging to people at the time. He was very successful at convincing people that evolution had occurred, but not nearly as successful at convincing people that natural selection was a sufficient mechanism to explain design. Darwin had a lot of conceptual ideas, but he didn’t have a lot of the details about how particular things like development or inheritance worked.

DBK: There is a lot of contentious debate about evolution versus intelligent design. Has the evolution argument been proven as far as it can go?

Jensen: Well, you can always accumulate more evidence. The problem that often arises with the intelligent design debate is that many people who doubt evolution place a very high emphasis on faith, and there’s no amount of evidence that will necessarily trump somebody’s faith. If you’re driven by faith to believe a certain thing, more evidence to the contrary isn’t necessarily going to make a difference. So I think people who are open to evaluating the evidence can conclude or be convinced, but most of them already are.

So the real divide is if you think faith trumps evidence or evidence trumps faith. There are many theistic evolutionists who have no problem reconciling their religious views with the concept of evolution. But some people want a very literal interpretation of their faith, and no matter what evidence you provide, they’re going to think that God did something crazy like send fossils and the fossil record to test the faith of the faithful. They’re just going to deny that evidence anyway.

DBK: How are humans evolving today? Where are we headed?

Jensen: It’s always hard to talk about where we’re headed. One of the problems that Darwin had when he introduced this idea of natural selection was that there’s no long-term goal, no direction, and people didn’t like that. People are comfortable with the notion that you’ve got a starting point and you’re going someplace in particular, but Darwin’s idea was that where you go depends on the circumstances you’re put in. So in terms of evolution, people like to say that evolution has ended for humans, but I think there’s always selection going on. I think we’re continuing to evolve, but it’s very hard to see a direction.

DBK: Why is Darwin relevant today?

Jensen: The fact that so many people are talking about him so much is certainly a strong indication of his relevance. At least partly, it’s because the philosophical questions raised by Darwin and by evolution are still there. Everybody wants to find their place in the universe and have some sense of meaning. Darwin was controversial in his day because he was saying you could explain human origins without necessarily invoking a creator. He also suggested that you could see major change over time without it being goal-directed. People don’t like the idea of not having a goal or a purpose or direction of all of these things, and that’s still a great philosophical challenge for people. So I think that a lot of the essential questions that Darwin poses for people are still relevant.

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