Sir, - In all the recent letters on this subject and in Dr Reville's very enjoyable articles over the past year, I have not seen any distinction drawn between Darwin's Theory and the current Neo Darwinian or Synthetic Theory. Darwin's Theory of natural selection was described by Dr Reville (March 3rd) as "the mechanism by which individuals best suited to the environment survive and reproduce more efficiently than those less suited".
Eight years after the publication of The Origin of Species, a professor of engineering, Fleming Jenkin, at Edinburgh University refuted this theory by showing that, on the basis of knowledge at the time, chance variations could not survive long enough for natural selection to operate.
Around the beginning of this century, the theory received a shot in the arm with the rediscovery of Mendel's genetic experiments. Neo Darwinism, or the Synthetic Theory, postulated that natural selection operated on random mutations in the genes, like a monkey at a typewriter producing a Shakespeare play. The discovery of DNA in the 1950s, and the structure of the chromosomes moved the monkey, metaphorically, to a microprocessor; but the question of how the computer got to be programmed has still to be proved.
It seems that there has to be some other mechanism at work besides natural selection, which is little more than a tautology - survival of the fittest, but the fittest are those with the highest rate of reproduction. Natural Selection is based on alienation of the organism from the environment. Organisms are not simply the results, but also the causes, of their own environments.
It is ironic that while Neo Darwinists claim all evolutionary change is due to natural selection, Darwin did not. In the introduction to the Origin he said: "I am convinced that natural selection has been the main but not the exclusive means of modification."
Dr Reville stated, in relation to the origin of life: "I cannot see how the first living cell spontaneously arose . . . If a scientific mechanism is not forthcoming within a reasonable amount of time, then science will have to think again." This is an honest and objective stance (from which he seems to have retreated in subsequent articles), and one that could be applied to the whole theory. The claim, in his last letter, that the lack of a 500 million year old fossil is supportive of Darwin's Theory (rather than the concept of evolution) is little more than sophistry. Yours, etc.,
Ormeau Drive,
Dalkey,
Co. Dublin.