''What Darwin Didn't Know'' is a documentary show on

BBC Four BBC Four is a British free-to-air Public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom, public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It was launched on 2 March 2002

presented by

Armand Marie Leroi Armand Marie Leroi (born 16 July 1964) is a New Zealand-born Dutch author, broadcaster, and professor of evolutionary developmental biology at Imperial College London, Imperial College in London. He received the Guardian First Book Award in 200 ...

which charts the progress in the field of

evolutionary theory Evolution is the change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, resulting in certai ...

since the original publication of

Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English Natural history#Before 1900, naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all speci ...

's ''

On the Origin of Species ''On the Origin of Species'' (or, more completely, ''On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life'')The book's full original title was ''On the Origin of Species by M ...

'' in 1859. The theory of evolution by natural selection is now orthodoxy, but when it was unveiled it caused a storm of controversy, from fellow scientists as well as religious people. They criticised it for being short on evidence and long on assertion and Darwin, being the honest scientist that he was, agreed with them. He knew that his theory was riddled with "difficulties", but he entrusted future generations to complete his work and prove the essential truth of his vision, which is what scientists have been doing for the past 150 years. The evolutionary biologist Professor

charts the scientific endeavour that brought about the triumphant renaissance of Darwin's theory. He argues that, with the new science of

evolutionary developmental biology Evolutionary developmental biology, informally known as evo-devo, is a field of biological research that compares the developmental biology, developmental processes of different organisms to infer how developmental processes evolution, evolved. ...

(evo devo), it may be possible to take that theory to a new level – to do more than explain what has evolved in the past, and start to predict what might evolve in the future.
Official description from the BBC programme website

Notes

External links

{{BBC programme 2009 British television series debuts 2010 British television series endings BBC television documentaries about science British documentary television series about science 2000s British documentary television series 2010s British documentary television series British English-language television shows Documentary television shows about evolution Genetics in the United Kingdom Works about genetics