Evolution

Last night I watched a repeat of Evolution on SBS. I missed it the first time it was shown. This episode was a pretty comprehensive discussion of Darwin (for a television program) and until I looked at the website this morning I hadn't realised that this was only the first of seven episodes. I thought it was just a comprehensive discussion on the origin of Darwin's theory but now can look forward to another six weeks of stimulating viewing. It is also nice to see Stephen Jay Gould instead of just reading him.

Looking around the show's website I found a link to another PBS production called Faith and Reason which I have also not seen. There is also a library of reference material including items like this discussing how to approach the "conflict" between Evolution and religious beliefs in a teaching context.

The episode finishes with the last line from Darwin's 1859 thesis:

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.