Prof Campbell: Some, like Julian Huxley, have argued that evolution has stopped in humans. For example, modern medicine no longer allows the survival only of the 'fittest'. But I don't agree with Huxley. Look for example at the enormous migrations of different ethnic human groups that is now occurring, resulting in cross-breeding. Certainly the human race will not be the same even in a hundred years, let alone a million.
Question 6
How did the first living 'cell' form?
Prof Campbell: This is still one of the great mysteries. Some believe the first cells formed somewhere in space – the panspermia hypothesis. Others argue that there was a primeval soup that lead to the production of biological molecules. A key issue is how the handedness of key biological molecules arose. We have right-handed sugars in DNA and RNA, and left-handed amino acids in proteins. Also the key to the first cell was the formation of a semi-permeable membrane with proteins embedded in it. Unfortunately the fossil record does not contain soft structures such as these.
Question 7
Isn't it the case that the Theory of Evolution (and in turn life as we know it today) in fact rests upon an imperfection in the reproductive process? Namely the mutations that occur during the duplication of DNA? Without this imperfection where would the variation and, in turn, the development of species be generated from? Indeed if exact and perfect copies of DNA were produced and passed on during the reproductive process would life have developed at all?
Prof Campbell: This is correct. Evolution only works if there is variation within a population. And this in turn depends on the production of random mutations when DNA divides. Remember there are thousands of sperm in a single ejaculation, and hundreds of acorns dropped by a single oak tree every autumn. The DNA in each sperm and in each acorn will be slightly different.
Question 8
Do you accept the possibility of design in evolution?
Prof Campbell: No. There is no place for so-called intelligent design in evolutionary theory. As I write in Campbell, AK (1994); Rubicon: the fifth dimension of biology, Duckworth: 'If God turns out to be embedded in DNA all the better for DNA and not the lesser for God'. Those of us who hold religious beliefs and believe in science simply argue that God set the Universe up with natural laws and principles, one of which is natural selection, and let it run. The simplicity of these laws, and the beauty of the great constants in physics, is a wonder to behold. Change the Planck constant, h, by just 10% and the Universe would collapse!
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