Gresham College Lectures
Gresham College has been providing free public lectures since 1597, making us London's oldest higher education institution. This podcast offers our recorded lectures that are free to access from the Gresham College website, or our YouTube channel.
Gresham College Lectures
The Evolution of Vision
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Gresham College
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Did the eye evolve and, if so, how? Creationists and evolutionary biologists have argued over this controversy since Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859. About 830 million years ago, in the Cambrian period, an explosion of the number of species occurred, and the possession of vision was a major survival advantage. Did these diverse eyes evolve separately many different times? Recent genetic research on eyes in insects and mammals reveals that they are more closely related than suspected.