Darwin debate rages on 150 years after

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Evolution beyond Darwin
In Paris on Monday, a conference at UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) heard several scientists who accept evolution argue Darwin could not explain underlying order and patterns found in nature.

"We have to differentiate between evolution and Darwinism," said French philosopher of science Jean Staune, author of the new book "Au-dela de Darwin" (Beyond Darwin). "Of course there is adaptation. But like physics and chemistry, biology is also subject to its own laws."

Michael Denton, a geneticist with New Zealand's University of Otago, said Darwinian "functionalists" believed life forms adapted to the outside world while his "structuralist" view also saw an internal logic driving this evolution down certain paths.

His view, which he called "extraordinarily foreign to modern biology," explained why many animals developed eyes like human ones and why proteins, one of the building blocks of life, fold into structures unchanged for three billion years.

Denton said he was a religious agnostic seeking answers to unresolved scientific questions.

"Our knowledge of biology is actually very limited," he said. "I have no axe to grind -- I'll leave it to science to find this out.