IETE Technical Review

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/titr20

Origin of Species: Darwin and Beyond

Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar

To cite this article: Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar (2023) Origin of Species: Darwin and Beyond,
IETE Technical Review, 40:3, 285-286, DOI: 10.1080/02564602.2023.2215597
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02564602.2023.2215597

Published online: 29 May 2023.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 920

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=titr20
IETE TECHNICAL REVIEW
2023, VOL. 40, NO. 3, 285–286
https://doi.org/10.1080/02564602.2023.2215597

EDITORIAL

Origin of Species: Darwin and Beyond

Charles Darwin published his book Origin of Species in New evidence is turning our standard ideas about evo-
November 1859 and is nearly 160 years old. Darwin’s the- lution and heredity upside down. For example, Darwin
ory is a grand scientific theory. No one can dispute it. The believed that evolution happened at a very slow pace. But
idea of competitive struggle is central to Darwin’s the- modern science contradicts this idea since evolution can
ory of evolution by natural selection. He accepted that also occur rapidly.
the earth’s biodiversity evolved through natural selection
and, in his words, "endless forms most beautiful and most Modern science informs us of different mechanisms of
wonderful." evolution - other than the competitive struggle - such as
cooperative partnerships. A recent study from the Uni-
In Darwin’s theory, individuals have to struggle for sur- versity of Pennsylvania reveals how symbiotic relation-
vival in competition with other species. After Darwin’s ships between species evolve to become cooperative or
death, it took nearly a century for his theory of evolution antagonistic. In a coral reef with different types of coral
by natural selection to recast into a potent scientific dis- and algae, symbiosis, i.e., "two or more distinct organisms
cipline. To be fair to Darwin, he did not mean "struggle" living together for the benefit of one or both," is observed
or "fittest" to indicate power and strength to overpower to be common.
others. He made it clear in his book that he used the term
metaphorically. Penn’s study indicates that in a coral reef, "if a host is
a cooperative specialist, and the symbiont it specializes
Darwin’s theory emanated first from his observations on on gets fixed, the host does better, and therefore those
his journey around the world in his book-The Voyage of hosts may expand." This cooperative behavioural pattern
the Beagle. Secondly, his experiments were minimal and might have been hardwired into the genes over a while.
rudimentary. By observing living organisms and compar- These behavioural interactions between entirely different
ing different species, he tried to reconstruct how evo- species, either cooperative or antagonistic, lead to evo-
lution took place in the past without the advantage of lution. Such discoveries may not fit reasonably well with
the modern techniques we have today—a commendable Darwin’s competitive struggle theory.
effort.
To be precise, we must also look at alternate approaches
Nevertheless, modern science has found significant gaps to evolution, such as Jan Sapp’s Evolution by Associa-
in Darwin’s approach. For illustration, Darwin was tion, a landmark study of symbiosis. In his monumental
unaware of a beautiful concept called the gene in his time, book The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins refers to cultural
rightly so, because science was less advanced than today transmission as a mechanism of evolution. Here "culture"
in those times. Darwin’s theory of evolution becomes is akin to "gene" in genetic transmission responsible for
weak without a proper unit of heredity, the gene. evolution.

The foremost foundation for genes and heredity is a If you glance at the electrical engineering textbooks of the
chemical called deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). DNA is 1960s, you will see circuits consisting of vacuum tubes.
core to the contemporary knowledge of reproduction and But today, these textbooks have circuit descriptions with
evolution and unifies all of biology. transistors. Some design principles of vacuum tube cir-
cuits apply even to modern electronic circuits, just as
Scientists extended our understanding of evolution using some facets of Darwin’s theory are still accurate in mod-
the incredible advances in genetics with the 21st -century ern biology. But you can no longer find the study of
arrival of next-generation sequencing. Comparing the vacuum tubes in our textbooks. So should be with biology
entire genomes of many individuals led us to discover by adding new findings from contemporary evolutionary
that genetic mutations are behind natural selection. biological theory.

© 2023 IETE
286 M. J. KUMAR: EDITORIAL

We have moved on, even if the fire was everything to Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar
our lives at one time in history. Darwin’s theory was the Editor-in-Chief, IETE Technical Review
best scientific theory we knew about evolution one and https://web.iitd.ac.in/∼mamidala/
a half centuries ago. But, we must carry on in what we
instruct our students, considering the creativity of sci- ORCID
entific research, which makes sense in the contemporary
world. It is no surprise then that the only pragmatic way Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar http://orcid.org/0000-0001-
is to encourage our students study the emerging ideas 6657-1277
in biology as concisely as practicable without getting
overburdened.

Editor-in-Chief (NAAC). He is also on the Board of Indian National Space

Promotion and Authorization Center (IN-SPACe) established
Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar is a Profes- by Government of India. He was an Editor of IEEE Transac-
sor of Electrical Engineering at the Indian tions on Electron Devices from 2006 to 2015. He is an Editor
Institute of Technology, New Delhi, India. of IEEE Journal of the Electron Devices Society. He has widely
He is the Chairman of University Grants published in the area of Micro/Nanoelectronics and is known
Commission (UGC), New Delhi. He is for his excellence in teaching.
the 12th Vice-Chancellor of Jawaharlal
Nehru University, New Delhi (Jan 2016 Email: [email protected]
– Feb 2022). He is the President of Gen-
eral Council, National Assessment and Accreditation Council