The Arguments: Professor Steven Rose
Professor Steven Rose is Professor of Biology and Director of the Brain and Behaviour Research Group at the Open University, Joint Professor of Physics at Gresham College in London and visiting Professor, Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology at University College London

On his area of interest:
"Well I'm a neuroscientist and interested therefore in behaviour, but as a biologist I'm interested in evolution. Evolution simply means change over time, changing species, changing populations, change in the characteristics of individuals in a species. In that sense it actually can't stop, and in that sense it's not a theory, it's a fact. The theoretical issues are the motors of evolution, if you like."

On the questions about evolution that divide biologists:
"I think we can remove the creationist argument from this discussion, and then we can get to the interesting questions, which do divide biologists. The debates within biology I think focus on a number of features. One is whether evolution is only to be understood as a genetic mechanism in that sense. I mean there's a formal definition which some evolutionary biologists use as the rate of change of genetic frequency in a population, which says that what happens to organisms - you and I and the others of us in the audience - doesn't matter, it's only our genes that matter. Others would argue as I would, and Stephen Jay Gould would, that you have to see evolution acting at various levels on the gene, on the genome, on the organism, on the population, and on the species as a whole, and also, whether natural selection is the only motor of evolutionary change, or there are others as well. Anne talked about sexual selection, but there are other reasons and constraints on evolutionary change, which I think become very exciting for biologists to try to uncover."

On whether genes should be referred to as building bodies:
"I think one's just got to see that genes are strands of DNA. In order to build a body, you need the cell in which the gene is located, you need the genome in which the gene is there, and to give the genes this sort of master molecule metaphor, I think is to give them too much power, almost magical power, and as someone who started as a biochemist and cares about cells and metabolism, I feel uneasy when we rather glibly use that metaphor. I'm saying that genes are absolutely essential for the construction of brains but what the missing link was, was not just social and cultural history but also the developmental history of the organism which we construct ourselves, if you like, out of the raw material given by our genes and our environment - and if we miss development out, we're in deep trouble."

Further Reading

Lifelines
Steven Rose (Penguin Books 1998), ISBN: 0140237003

Alas Poor Darwin
Hilary Rose and Steven Rose (Vintage 2001), ISBN: 0099283190

Almost Like A Whale: The Origin of Species Updated
Steve Jones - hardback: Doubleday 1999, ISBN: 0385409850; paperback: Black Swan 2001, ISBN: 055299958X

The Language of the Genes
Steve Jones (Flamingo 2000), ISBN: 0006552439

The Theory of Evolution
John Maynard Smith (Editor), Richard Dawkins (Cambridge University Press 1993), ISBN: 0521451280

Climbing Mount Improbable
Richard Dawkins, Lalla Ward (Illustrator) (Penguin Books 1997), ISBN: 0140179186

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Human Evolution
Steve Jones, Robert Martin, David Pilbeam, Sarah Bunney (Editor) and Richard Dawkins (Cambridge University Press 1994), ISBN: 0521467861

The Origin of Species
Charles Darwin (Prometheus Books UK 1994), ISBN: 0879756756

The Structure of Evolutionary Theory
Stephen Jay Gould (Belknap Press 2002), ISBN: 0674006135

Jargonbuster

Naturalist

Someone who researches and studies natural history, botany and zoology

Organism

An organised being; a living body, either vegetable or animal, composed of different organs or parts with functions which are separate, but mutually dependent, and essential to the life of the individual.

Physiology

The science which studies of the phenomena of living organisms; the study of the processes incidental to, and characteristic of, life. It is divided into animal and vegetable physiology, dealing with animal and vegetable life respectively. When applied especially to a study of the organs and tissues in man, it is called human physiology.

Population

The total number of people or organisms in a specific area.

Spontaneous generation

Or abiogenesis, is the idea that life, rather than evolving over many millions of years from the primordial soup, was started by an outside factor - some theories suggest it was seeded by extraterrestrial impact from an asteroid impact.

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