Where Are We?

It would seem altogether fitting that this year's symposium be devoted to a consideration of the evolutionary theory. We are celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species and the occasion of such a centenary is the proper moment to review the past and consider the future. It is almost universally recognized that no other theory has had as vast an impact on biology as the theory of evolution, emphasizing as it does that no organic being can be fully understood except by considering its history. Whether we are dealing with structures, functions or habits, individually or in their interactions, their understanding is one-sided and partial without a consideration of the historic processes that brought them into being.