Sir David Attenborough
...on the fundamental biological study that changed everything...
Naturalist, presenter and all-round national institution Sir David Attenborough, perhaps unsurprisingly, notes that the book he most wishes he had written is The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin.
“It is one of the world’s great books. It was published 150 years ago and it’s a prophetic book: it totally changed the way that humanity saw its’ place in the world. It caused huge offence amongst many people because it demonstrated that all life is related and that one form is derived from another and that went totally against their view that the Bible is literally true. What is extraordinarily about it, when you read it now, is that it’s all right. Darwin didn’t know anything about DNA or genetics, but everything that we’ve discovered since has gone to show that Darwin, on that point, was – almost mystically – right.”
