[3] The current state of the evolutionary sciences

It is important to remember that the contemporary field of evolutionary biology is a made up of several diverse sub-disciplines: palaeontology, molecular biology, population genetics, and developmental biology, to name just a few. Each of these sub-disciplines is constantly being revised and expanded. Together they attempt to provide a scientific account of how life first appeared, how the diversity of living creatures that we see around us today came to inhabit the Earth, and the detailed functioning of these living beings and the relations between them. If we include recent work in sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, then the explanatory reach of evolutionary biology extends to the day-to-day behaviour of human individuals and societies. This is a broad and developing family of disciplines. Nevertheless, Darwin’s theory of natural selection remains a unifying organising principle that is common to them all.

The scope of the explanations provided by the various sub-disciplines and the force with which they are held to be final and authoritative varies considerably. On the one hand, palaeontology provides an impressive but incomplete account of the evolutionary pathways along which many organisms have travelled in order to reach their present form. Due to the scarcity of fossils, much of palaeontology remains tentative. For the foreseeable future we can expect new data and new fossil finds will lead to revisions of classifications and the historical timeline. On the other hand, it is difficult to see how Darwin’s idea of natural selection could ever be supplanted in those sub-disciplines which are concerned with changes in populations.

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