Introduction
Of all the sciences, biology is the most important to an understanding of man. It was slightly more than a century ago, in 1859, that Darwin set forth the revolutionary idea that man, together with every other living thing, is a product of a process of evolutionary development. But human evolution is not all in the past; it is going on now and will concern us deeply in the future. The problem of possible genetic damage from radiation exposures, including those resulting from the fallout from the testing of atomic weapons, has quite properly claimed much popular attention in recent years.
And yet this is only a part, and probably a relatively minor part, of a vastly greater problem: how to maintain the genetic health of the human species. It is becoming more and more evident that man can no longer rely solely on Darwinian natural selection and other "natural" processes to insure his fitness for the environments in which he lives. Here mankind faces possibly the greatest challenge of its whole history as a biological species. The time is not far off when man will have to regulate his numbers, and control the genes he passes on to his descendants so that mankind can remain healthy and vigorous. We must have knowledge and understanding in order to respond successfully to this challenge to survival. To help people gain such knowledge and understanding is the aim of this book.
THEODOSIUS DOBZHANSKY, Professor
The Rockefeller University
New York City
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