charles_darwin

CHAPTER 6
CONCLUSION: DARWIN,
DARWINISM, AND BEYOND
Evolution: The Popularizing of an Idea
In recent years evolution has been a popular theme among filmmakers.
At the end of the film X2: X-Men United, one of the characters,
Jean Grey, says, ‘‘Mutation, it is the key to our evolution. It is
how we have evolved from a single-celled organism into the dominant
species on the planet. This process is slow, normally taking
thousands and thousands of years. But every few hundred millennia
evolution leaps forward.’’ Evolution is the key to understanding the
world as it exists, according to Agent Smith, a computer program, in
the film The Matrix. Smith also tells Morpheus, a human, that he has
had difficulty classifying the humans because they do not act like
true mammals. Smith believes humans are more like viruses because
of their propensity to multiply and consume everything without
coming to an equilibrium with the environment. And in the film
Men in Black a giant cockroach tells Agent Jay, a human, ‘‘Compared
to you, I’m at the top of the evolutionary ladder!’’ 1
Apart from the fact that evolution may be the flavor of the
month for certain film-makers, the use of the theory in blockbuster
films suggests that evolution is now embedded in popular culture.
No matter the objections of opponents, religious or philosophical,
evolution is an essential component of the Western, and world, psyche.
To name a city after a person is an honor; to name a shopping
mall after a person suggests that the person is more than a symbol of
greatness. Naming a city in the Northern Territory of Australia
‘‘Darwin’’ recognizes the importance of Darwin’s work on coral reefs.
Placing a statue of Darwin in the Natural History Museum in London
acknowledges the importance of Darwin’s work for the biological sciences.
But what does The Darwin Shopping Centre in Shrewsbury,