Genetic and Cultural Evolution: From Fossils to Proteins, and from Behaviour to Ethics

At the end of the Darwin bicentenary year it may be thought that there is little more left to say on the subject of evolution, but there are some aspects that still deserve further elaboration. There are several, largely non-overlapping, sets of evolutionary scientists – for example, the palaeontologists who are particularly interested in fossils and in the evolution of structure; the biochemists and molecular biologists who are interested in the molecular aspects of evolution; and the sociobiologists who include cultural evolution in their field of interest. The Darwin celebrations, reflecting his own scientific interests, have been dominated by the palaeontological approach and other approaches may have been somewhat neglected.