The Making of a Theory

Directed by

John Rubin

Written by

John Rubin, Sean B. Carroll, Dennis Liu et Laura Bonetta

Produced by

© Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Documentary, United States, 2013, 30 min

This film will be screened with French subtitles.

In the early 1800s, most people, scientists included, accepted as a fact that every species was specially created by God in a form that never changed. The epic voyages and revolutionary insights of two brave young British naturalists, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace, overturned this long-held idea. Prodigious collectors of animals and plants, each man developed a keen appreciation for the variation within species, the relatedness of species, and the patterns of geographic distribution—evidence that was difficult to reconcile with special creation.

This hard-earned knowledge led each to ask why and how creatures came to live in a given place. The pursuit of answers to those questions led Darwin and Wallace to independently discover the natural origin of species and to formulate the theory of evolution by natural selection.

Debate with :

• Cédric Grimoult, Historian of science

Know more

THE MAKING OF A THEORY is available here.