Evolution

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Melvyn Bragg: Hello, our knowledge of evolution, this century has expanded in ways unimaginable in Darwin's time. The impact of that knowledge and speculation about our origins has been immense and continues to grow, but how do new ways of thinking affect our understanding of ourselves and our futures? Joining me is one of today's leading evolutionary theorists, Professor John Maynard-Smith, now Emeritus Professor of Biology at the University of Sussex, he's particularly renowned for his work on game theory, his best known book is "The Theory of Evolution", which was first published in 1958, since when he's written extensively on evolution. His most recent work is "The Origins of Life: From the Birth of Life to Origins of Language" which has just been published, and he'll be lecturing on the origins of life tomorrow at the Edinburgh Science Festival.

I'm also joined by the writer and journalist, Colin Tudge, who's currently a research fellow at the Centre for Philosophy. His books have included "The Day Before Yesterday", "5 Million Years of Human History", "Last Animals at the Zoo", and most recently "Neanderthals, Bandits and Farmers". Professor John Maynard-Smith, we have a greater knowledge of genetics and evolution than possibly could ever have been imagined in Darwin's time. Could you briefly describe what's radically different about the way we understand evolutionary theory now, and the way it was understood, as it were, by Darwin and his contemporaries.

John Maynard-Smith: Well, it is, as you imply, essentially our knowledge of genetics that has transformed things. Darwin knew that children resembled their parents, but he had no idea how, or why. He didn't know anything about the mechanism. Now we understand the mechanism, in really quite extraordinary detail, as to how it comes about that children get information from their parents about how to grow, if you like, and it's that that, that has really transformed our ideas about evolution. What my book, with my Hungarian friend (indistinct) does is to suggest that there have been... we were trying to explain really how things became so complex as they are, and we have suggested that there have been a number of changes in the way in which information is transmitted between generations.

Melvyn Bragg: Is evolution to do with complexity? Do things get more and more complicated? Do they ever get more simple?

John Maynard-Smith: Oh things can get more and more simple. if some lineage takes up life as a parasite in somebody's gut, then they tend to lose their eyes and their legs and become, at first sight very much simpler. It's only true that some things become more complicated. I mean it really is true that either an oak tree or an elephant is more more complicated than a bacterium.

Melvyn Bragg: What do you think er... you make a grimace there, Colin Tudge?

Colin Tudge: Well one thing strikes me is that people I think get complexity wrong, because itis the case that complex things always come from simpler things, and some simpler things sometimes come from complex things, and there is, I kind of I think, politically correct idea, which I'm sure John's not falling into the trap of, but thereis, that as it were, evolution doesn't necessarily lead to complexity, and on the whole it jolly well does, and only sometimes do things get more simple.

John Maynard-Smith: Well, I don't think there's any rule that any given evolutionary lineage gets more complicated. Indeed, most evolutionary lineages do absolutely nothing for millions of years or very little.

Colin Tudge: Yeah.

John Maynard-Smith: But I certainly agree with you that some things have become more complicated, and that is really what we want to explain.

Colin Tudge: Sure.

John Maynard-Smith: I mean people really are rightly, astonished at the complexity of a human being, or of a ... as I say, of an oak tree. I mean it's not just animals, but plants also, extraordinarily complicated.

Melvyn Bragg: Can I come back to the first question with you, again, Colin Tudge? What for you have been the main developments in evolutionary theory? Just, say, this century?

Colin Tudge: Well actually one of the main ones is the one that Darwin himself started off, which has really only caught on this century, and I think has really only been properly announciated in the last few years by Dan Dennet, which is that before Darwin, people thought that you could not have anything that was complex, and certainly anything that was "mindful", unless it had been made by something that was even more complex and even more mindful. I mean John Locke made the point in the 17th century "nothing will come of nothing". So he more or less approved to his own satisfaction, that you had to have a mindful, complex creator, and what Darwin showed, was a mechanism by which more complex things could emerge from more simple things, or mindful things from none mindful things, by a process that didn't involve a more mindful, you know, and intelligent creator. That was an extraordinary thing to do. Lots of Darwin's contemporaries didn't really realise that that's what he was saying. Darwin realised it himself, and as I say, I think it was only the late 20th century that people... that that's really cottoned on. People have really cottoned on to that.

Melvyn Bragg: And are there other developments that we ought to know about?

Colin Tudge: Oh yes! I mean John said that, you know, the great thing is the fusion of Darwin's idea of evolution by means of natural selection with Mendel's idea that there is this hereditary unit called the "gene".

I think one of the huge shifts has been since the 1960s, Darwin thought that natural selection operated at the level of the individual, in other words, you know, fast cats would prevail over slow cats.

And now it's becoming clear that if you really want to think clearly about evolution, then you have to think about evolution operating at the level of the gene. In other words, it's the gene for "fastness" that survives or doesn't survive, rather than the individual itself. This has enormous implications, one of which is that the gene doesn't give a toss about the animal which contains it. So that, paradoxically, although the gene is, apparently the unit, and you know, the expression is "the selfish gene", the individuals which contain the selfish gene can be very unselfish themselves. So it gives rise to altruism .

Melvyn Bragg: Just one second, and this is a terrible digression, but ever since you said John Locke said "nothing would come of nothing" my minds been throwing off, obviously from Lear, did Locke know who he was quoting from there?

Colin Tudge: I'm pretty sure he did, I mean he was... !

Melvyn Bragg: I'm sorry, it was just a kind of itch! Er... the selfish gene, John Maynard-Smith, has been much misunderstood?

John Maynard-Smith: Well, I slightly differ, I think, from Colin, in the way that I see this issue. Most of the time... well let me put it like this, I often think when I'm trying to solve a problem in evolutionary biology, if I was a gene what would I do, and I sort of put myself in the position of a gene (Mel laughs) and think like that! But then of course, Ido the sums properly ...

Melvyn Bragg: Think small! (laughs)

John Maynard-Smith: ... when I publish it, I don't say that!It's full of algebra when I publish it! But that's the way I start. but of course, if I was a gene on a chromosome, in a human being or in most animals, what I'd do, would be to try to do the best I could for the organism in which I found myself. Because I can only get transmitted by that organism. So if I can keep it alive, that's fine.

[That is imbuing the gene with the kind of capacities that only a human mind has. It is merely carrying out an autonomous process that may or may not benefit the individual. If it does then that is how we get the "survival of the fittest". It surely is the height of human arrogance to anthropomorphism genes, and presuming them what we would do in the same circumstances! If the gene survives to the next generation then it is "good" in it's own context. If it fails, by failing the host organism. Genes haven't got a grand plan that they are trying to achieve. They just make organisms that may or may not fulfil environmental criteria. If they do, they survive, if not they don't. Thus they are selected on the grounds of whether they suit the environment.

We know that it would be in the best interests of the gene to keep the host alive in order to breed, but the gene does not "know" anything. It merely survives if it is in a host that breeds, and in that way the "knowledge" of what makes a "good" gene is held within the surviving population by default -LB]

The complication comes, that there is another thing I might do. I might say "to hell with the organism I'm in, I'm just going to jump around the place. I'm going to jump onto other chromosomes. If there's any sex, I'll jump onto the chromosomes that came in from the other individual. I'll spread selfishly, even if it does damage the organism I'm in. " And we now know that there are genes that behave in that way. There are so-called "jumping genes" that are just entirely selfish and don't do the organism any good. But most genes, as I think, to use Richard Dawkins's analogy, are like the eight men in a boat, rowing. I mean each one of them can only get to the other end if he pulls his oar. I mean he's got to cooperate.

Colin Tudge: It's the other side of the coin isn't it, that for example, a gene which is contained in a parent can sacrifice the parent, in order, as it were, to spread itself through the offspring. In other words leading to altruistic behaviour?

John Maynard-Smith: Well, in this case, perhaps not very altruistic behaviour, but it's indeed true. I mean, some very interesting insights into the problems that can arise during pregnancy have arisen from taking the selfish gene point of view. What would I do if I was a gene in the foetus? What would I do if I was a gene in the mother? And the kind of conflicts that arise, can in fact lead to quite serious complications in pregnancy.

Melvyn Bragg: Colin Tudge, I know that you think that evolutionary psychology is very important. Can you explain why you think it is so important?

Colin Tudge: Well, I like very much the idea that there is something called "human nature". I mean Hume wrote "Treaties on Human Nature", and I think that you know, this 18th century notion that we can really understand ourselves, and that we are really a certain kind of animal that can be understood. Evolutionary psychology continues that tradition. But the very nice thing about it, is that although people who have been on this programme I think, will say that nat... er what d'you call it? Evolutionary psychology deals only, for example in "just so" stories. In other words you can make up anything, any old tale will do about human psychology. This is precisely the thing which isn't true. What evolutionary psychology aspires to do, iswhat all good scientists do, whichis to deal in testable hypotheses, and the real point then, is that okay, evolutionary psychologists can dream up stories like anybody else, and like all scientists have to do, but then they come back to testability, and so what you're now getting is a view of human evolution, which isnot going to be the truth, and the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but is going to be as scientists say"robust", and you've got something you can build on, and go on building on . That makes it very significant indeed.

John Maynard-Smith: Yes, I'm not quite so convinced by evolutionary psychology (Colin laughs) as you are Colin. I'm fascinated by it, and I listen to it, and I read it, but the number of areas where testable hypotheses so far have been produced is rather few, it seems to me, and a lot of evolutionary psychology consists of... I mean this is unfair perhaps... of asking a first year student on some campus in California "how many women did you sleep with last night?" and believing the answer.

And I'm afraid I don't!

Melvyn Bragg: Can I ask you, I mean this is a big question, but if we can accept, my announcers in the trailer, why... do you think we're still evolving?

John Maynard-Smith: Oh yes!

Melvyn Bragg: I mean significantly. Humankind?

John Maynard-Smith: I think we're still evolving, but I don't imagine that we're becoming cleverer and cleverer, or better and better or any of those things. But I do think that during the last 5000 years, significant changes have occurred in human beings, primarily to do with our ability to resist infectious disease. That's been the main selective edge in killing some human beings and allowing other to live, and in the spread of Western man across the world, we've killed as many people by giving them measles, as we have by shooting them with rifles, and think that is... I mean it's not a very happy story... but the evolutionary consequences in becoming more resistant to disease are important for human beings.

Melvyn Bragg: You've said... you say in your new book... you talk about the... you say, "we are currently at a vital stage in our evolutionary development, because of the information we can store with the new technology", and you talk about, " a technological stage in evolutionary terms". an you develop that?

John Maynard-Smith: Well, the whole of our book is about the fact that, at intervals during evolution, new ways have evolved of transmitting information between generations. Sex is such an example, for example, that nowadays, ever since the origin of sex, the new individual gets genetic information from two parents and not from one, and that has enormous consequences for evolution. Then the origin of language was such an event, because now, information can be transmitted between... not by genes, but by talking, by ritual, by myth, by story, by speech, by example and so on, which is tremendously important. but now we are storing information and transmitting it in a new way - electronically, and I really do thinkwe're living through another major transition in the history of life, and I find it impossible to predict. I don't think scientists are good at predicting the future, you know, I think you need science-fiction writers to do that, and they can be very good at it sometimes. But I think it's going to completely transform the way we live. I don't know what will happen, whether we'll starts becoming a kind of... human beings with electronic prostheses, sort of, stuck into them all over the place, so that we think faster or whatever. I don't know what will happen, but something will.

Melvyn Bragg: It's very frustrating that you don't know, having sort of set it up. Colin Tudge have you got any projections, or prophecies or ideas?

Colin Tudge: Well, I've just been writing a book about Dolly the sheep, which... one of the things about cloning is that it is, actually, really a hand maiden to genetic engineering. It's a way of doing genetic engineering efficiently, which nobody ever says, they think it's a way of duplicating creatures. That's the less important thing. Now the thing is, if you put gen... er... cloning and genetic engineering together, and you had to that the whole idea of, you know, the Human Genome Project, where you actually work out what the genes really do, then you are getting to a point where you can really, effectively create any kind of creature you like more or less at will, and whereas there used to be species barriers, that made it impossible to breed animals beyond a certain point, now you really can just invent them. Almost anything that you chose to invent off the top of your head, you could create. I find that pretty damn terrifying, and I think it is an evolutionary shift. It's not actually the one that John was talking about quite, but it's enormous. We're entering something that one might call "The age of biological control", and it's, as it were, us in control of it.

Melvyn Bragg: How does this square with Richard Dawkins's notion of "memes" or doesn't it? Is that yet another thing that's coming?

John Maynard-Smith: No that's I think a different...

Melvyn Bragg: It's a different thing?

John Maynard-Smith: But I guess I came into evolutionary... into an interest in evolution when I was a boy of about 15 or something, when I read an extraordinary book called "Last and First Men" by a man called (indistinct) Stapleton, which his a history of the next thousand million years or so, in which he really argues that human beings will not be able live a sensible society, until they transform themselves genetically, and that made me interested in genetics, interested in evolution and so on, and it made me...

Melvyn Bragg: So we are just the first draft, and we're not much good at it, and we should actually change ourselves in order to tick along, which is what people... a lot of people dread most, don't they?

John Maynard-Smith: I thinkthey're probably right to dread it at the moment. I mean at the moment we don't know how to do it. I mean we can see how it mightin principle be done, but that's very different from saying "we know how to do it".

Melvyn Bragg: Well Colin Tudge was implying that we not only know how to do it, but we could do anything we want.

Colin Tudge: No, no, John's right. I mean we know how to do it in principle. One of the things that impresses me is that when people think about technology, they are impressed by the fact that it moves very fast and thereforethey expect things to happen in the next 5 or 10 years, and if you can't see it in the next 5 or 10 years, they say "Oh well it's not very interesting".

The fact of the matter is that science and technology move extremely fast, butthere's a huge amount to get through, so that in reality, it might take a century for a technology to unfold. Now we're at the beginning of the whole, sort of, cloning, genetic engineering age. Think 500 years and then you'll begin to see what it can really do.

Melvyn Bragg: John, do you think it's possible to make a distinction between human development and human evolution?

John Maynard-Smith: Oh yes, I mean if by development one means the changes that go on between an egg and an adult organism, an adult human being. The whole rules are different, I mean the mechanisms are different. The most exciting thing that's happening in biology right now, actually, I think is that we are beginning to understand how development works. I mean even 20 years ago we had really no notion, now I think we have a very good notion.

Colin Tudge: Yes, can I ask John a theoretical question from what you were saying earlier about the notion of how we transmit information? I mean one of the big splits in the history of evolution has been between Lamarck who thought that you inherited the characteristics that were acquired by your parents. So if your father was a blacksmith you had big muscles because he had big muscles, and Darwin who said "no that's not... " I know he was a Lamarckian really, but who said "No that's not how it works. You get variants and you inherit the the one", you know, "some variants passed on".

Melvyn Bragg: That acquired characteristics are not transmittable.

Colin Tudge: That acquired characteristics are not transmitted, exactly so. Now from what you're saying, this whole idea that one passes on information from one generation to the next by language, and indeed now by electronic storage, implies that we are reinventing Lamarckian inheritance, in a different mode of evolution, would you agree with that, is that right?

John Maynard-Smith: Yes I do, I think that is right. If today someone learns how to do something new, which helps and is adaptive they can teach their children, and that is passing on an adaptation acquired during an individual lifetime. So I think that cultural inheritance is indeed Lamarckian, in a way that genetic inheritance isn't.

Colin Tudge: And in principle much more efficient, one would say or not?

John Maynard-Smith: Well no, I mean you have to be careful about this. If Lamarckian inheritance worked at a biological level, then what are most of the acquired characters that you've had? I mean my teeth have fallen out, my skin is wrinkled, I'm going bald, I'm grey, I'm decrepit, half my neurones have gone.

Melvyn Bragg: I think you look great! (laughter)

John Maynard-Smith: But if I passedthose kind of characteristics on to my children, you know, there'd be total deterioration. Most acquired characteristics are bad. only a small number of them are good.

Melvyn Bragg: D'you think that er... taking... moving to another tack, John Maynard-Smith, d'you think that the idea of a belief in God and evolution are still possible to yolk together, or has God dropped out of your picture completely?

John Maynard-Smith: Erm... I think God dropped out of my picture when I realised... I really felt I had to choose between Darwin and the bible, if you like. I could believe in evolution as the explanation of why I am like I am, or I could believe in God creating it, as the explanation of why I am like I am.

And there's no contest, you have to accept Darwin's view, and regard the creation view as nonsense.

Melvyn Bragg: On the other hand you don't regard creation itself obviously nonsense, so is the idea of something behind the creation still of a remotest interest to you?

John Maynard-Smith: Erm... no it isn't. What is of interest to me, is that I do think people, human beings, I, you, all of us, have to have beliefs. We have to have feelings. We have to think that it is better to be kind to people than to kill them. We have, if you like to believe that it is better to be faithful to people than disloyal, and so on, and these beliefs we acquire, not because they are scientifically true, but because we read poetry, we know about myths, we're influenced by things other than pure science , and I think we have to be, and I think myths and poems and stories are incredibly important in forming our belief systems, and I think we need them.

Melvyn Bragg: But they're not to do with science. What's your view on that Colin Tudge?

Colin Tudge: Well, I like the idea of religion without God. I mean I think it's a mistake to think that if you have a religion you have to have God. I mean God is sort of different... I'll leave God to the theologians, But it seems to me that the kind of things that John was just saying are in fact religious statements. I mean the thing I really like about religion... well let's start with David Hume, we've already done John Locke, let's start with David Hume, who said that the basis of all ethics is an emotional response, feelings come first, and after that you know, you invent an argument which justifies you feeling.

It's an interesting fact, it seem to me, that when we discuss moral philosophy these days, ethics, we don't actually talk about the feelings. I mean we have... you see crude things entering into debates, like, people talk about the "yuk factor", you know, if you really think something's nasty, then it's probably wrong, that kind of idea..

But the idea that you should actually focus on the emotion and feeling has sort of dropped out, and that's exactly though, what religion does. I mean it focuses on emotional response .

And the kind of thing... well the notion of the creation, I mean let's not necessarily talk about a literal creation, but if you actually think of yourselves as a heuristic device, as being part of a creation, it immediately gives you a sense that you're responsible for the universe and fellow creatures and so on.

Melvyn Bragg: Would I be right in saying that the way you talked about that just a few minutes ago, John, suggested that by reading poetry... this was and "add-on", that the essential human being was not like that, ignored that, that was nothing to do with essential... essentiality. This was in some way and add-on?

John Maynard-Smith: No I don't think it... that was a false impression, that I gave that impression.

Melvyn Bragg: Right.

John Maynard-Smith: I do think that feelings, emotions, beliefs and so on, are as important a part of a human being, what kind of human being they are and how they behave and so on, as any scientific theory or rationality or anything of that kind. I think it's enormously important that we have stories and myths which inculcate good rather than evil behaviour . The trouble is that in the old days one used to justify this story rather than that by saying "It's God's Law". \b If you don't believe in God how do you justify them? Well perhaps you don't have to, perhaps you just have to feel them.

Colin Tudge: Can I just say one other thing? Actually feeling is very much a part of thinking, I mean this is just becoming accepted. If you actually want to make a robot, that is truly intelligent, you actually have to give it emotions. It actually has to care, you know it has to care what's true and what's not, and what's good and what's bad. It's an extraordinary fact but it, is a fact.

Melvyn Bragg: Well you see God, obviously God as an endangered species, this is a terrible seguet (sp?) Colin, you'll have to forgive that (Colin laughs), because you talk about the extinction of endangered species. But is there one way of looking at it is a natural evolutionary development?

Colin Tudge: Well, it would be if it occurred naturally. But for example...

Melvyn Bragg: But is there... meteors aren't natural are they? They destroyed ... might have destroyed dinosaurs. Anything natural about meteors? More natural than measles?

Colin Tudge: Ah, well, yeah, I mean I... I think we have to answer what you might call, "operational definitions", and to me the idea of natural is what happens when human beings aren't around isn't around, and what's artificial is what happens when human beings are around. I mean it's the sort of working definition.

And meteors aren't. But the thing about let's say, let us take the black rhinoceros, this is the one people bring. Black rhinoceroses have gone very, very endangered, very, very quickly, and people say "Well you know, this is natural, they've been around 30 million years, they've had their day", I mean have they hell you know. I mean they used to be as common as mice about 60 years ago, and the reason that they are going extinct is because they're being shot. Now you cannot say that shooting something is part of a natural process, it's rather ridiculous.

And if you look at the rate of extinction now and compare it with what happens when human beings are not shooting bullets and building farms and so on, it's been calculated that it's at least 100 times greater now than it is at other times. And I don't understand... this is a slight variation of what you're saying, but people will very often say that if you try to conserve a species, that you're somehow being high-handed, whereas they never make the same point about knocking species on the head, I mean that's just one of those things, you see.

Melvyn Bragg: Well, I'm on your side, but what's you view of this though, that the preservation of species for the sake of preserving the species, is something wecan do, but we are taking our own view of what should be held on to aren't we?

John Maynard-Smith: Yes, but who others view can we take? I think it is enormously important that we should preserve the diversity of life. I think the world would be a poorer place to live in, if there were just human beings and their domesticated animals and plants. I mean it really would. I mean I wouldn't want to live in it almost. I love the diversity of the world around us.

Melvyn Bragg: I was flailing around to try to play Devil's advocate in the endangered species argument, and I was obviously, absolutely getting nowhere at all. You think actually that rich men could save a species almost at will don't you?

Colin Tudge: Well, I've certainly written pieces about this, that I mean I genuinely think that one of the creative uses you could make of cloning technology, is take little biopsies of all the creatures that are now around in zoos, stick them in the deep freeze, and in 100 years time you could recapture the genetic diversity that now exists.

And probably for about a million quid or great deal less you could do that for an entire species like the Asian elephant and I'm inclined to say why not?

Melvyn Bragg: Look I've only got 4 minutes left, and I've got a pile of questions, but I'm just going to go for this one though. Can, John, can you give us a simple explanation of why some some species of ape failed to evolve into humans while others did? And why those who didn't, why aren't they catching up?

John Maynard-Smith: I wish I knew. I think the crucial thing that humans did was to evolve symbolic communication, language, I mean what we're doing right now, and no other animal has done it. It's very strange to me that no dinosaur evolved intelligence and symbolic communication, why not? Who knows? There's nothing wrong with them, that one can see. At the moment our puzzle is to explain why one species did it, rather than that lots didn't. It's really hard to explain the origin of language.

Melvyn Bragg: Colin Tudge?

Colin Tudge: Well, actually I'd also like to know what else evolution might do. I mean not necessarily on this planet, but in the universe at large, it'd be an interesting thing to plumb. But the other thing, is of course, is that being a human being isn't all roses is it? I mean there are lots of evolutionary reasons for not going down our path, which would have preempted quite a few others.

John Maynard-Smith: Yes, yes.

Melvyn Bragg: Well can we just play around with this? You see the... obviously the origin of language is the key moment, how do you think that could have originated, you must have views on it?

John Maynard-Smith: Oh well I do have views on it, but I'm not sure there... I mean there are lots of views around... let me say not what I think the answer is, but how I think we'll get the answer, I think we have to study the genetic differences between people, and in particular, people who have problems with language, to find out what the genes are and what they were doing before they did language. ,and then I think we'll know the answer.

Melvyn Bragg: Colin Tudge?

Colin Tudge: I just want to say that whatever language is, it's probably not a very big trick. But it's a trick that just makes a huge, huge difference, and the reason for saying that is that one tends to think that everything about us is different from everything about animals, and it isn't, it's just that we've got this little trick, and when we look more at animals we are going to discover a great deal more in them which is much more like us than we thought .

Melvyn Bragg: And you think we can maybe give them the trick? Trigger the trick in them?

Colin Tudge: No. No, no, no. Their brains are wired up differently.

They probably wouldn't want to know. I mean their brains are not wired up the same way.

Melvyn Bragg: Is the Human Genome Project going to help us on this John?

John Maynard-Smith: I'm a bit bored by the Human Genome Project. I mean I work in the area. Data is being collected mindlessly, and nobody is thinking about it. I mean roughly except me. And I cannot see the point. It's nice to have all this data, but God!

Colin Tudge: The other thing is, of course, when they've done the genome project, people say you know "when you've got all the genes, you're going to read the genome". I mean nonsense, it's just a sort of dictionary isn't it?

John Maynard-Smith: That's right.

Colin Tudge: There's no syntax in there, no literature.

John Maynard-Smith: It's a dictionary in two foreign languages, it's very difficult.

Melvyn Bragg: They can be useful though, can't they?

John Maynard-Smith: Oh, yes, no of course, there are uses, practical uses of the genome project. I think really it is the mindlessness of the enterprise that I find rather depressing. I think science should involve thought .

Melvyn Bragg: Well, Watson one of the co-inventors of DNA, James Watson, he would very strongly disagree with you on this one, wouldn't he?

John Maynard-Smith: And Watson is certainly not mindless! (laughter)

Melvyn Bragg: So where does that leave the Human Genome Project in your view then, Colin Tudge? If it's backed by, driven by someone like Watson?

Colin Tudge: Well, okay... Watson's not... fine. Watson's not a stupid person as you said. But we are just making a dictionary, that's the point, and it's another 200 years before you begin to see what's really going on in the genome. I mean this is sort of the mindless beginning of something much bigger is the point.

John Maynard-Smith: It's a little like climbing Mount Everest, you do it because it's possible, and it's there. Now we have the techniques to sequence the genome, we have to do it, but quite why?

Melvyn Bragg: Thank you very much John Maynard-Smith and Colin Tudge and thank you for listening.