Amitabh Joshi studies and teaches evolutionary genetics and population ecology at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore. His current research interests are in life-history, evolution, the evolutionary genetics of biological clocks, the evolution of ecological specialization dynamics. He also enjoys music (especially traditional qawali in Braj, Farsi, Punjabi and Urdu), history, philosophy, and reading and writing poetry in Urdu, Hindi and English.

“For a biologist”, wrote Sir Peter Medawar, “the alternative to thinking in evolutionary terms is not to think at all”. Yet, at the end of an education in biology in most Indian universities, this is not quite the view of evolutionary biology that one is left with. Evolution is presented summarily, almost as a footnote, rather than as a vital branch of biology provid-ing the conceptual foundation for our modern views about the living world. In this issue of Resonance, we remember Stephen Jay Gould, who wrote extensively and eloquently about evolution for a general audience. It seems fitting, then, to also briefly discuss why evolutionary biology is important, not only conceptually but also in terms of practi-cal applications. In this first part of a series of articles on modern evolutionary biology, we examine why the idea of evolution is so important in our intellectual history, and also take a look at the domain of evolutionary biology as a discipline.

Read full article (106 Kb)

Address for Correspondence

Amitabh Joshi
Evolutionary and Organismal Biology Unit
Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for
Advanced Scientific Research
P.Box 6436, Jakkur
Bangalore 560 065, India.
Email: ajoshi@jncasr.ac.in