This lecture is part of the Darwin Bicentennial Lecture Series co-sponsored by the Oregon Humanities Center, Center for Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Institute of Molecular Biology, Institute of Neuroscience, Museum of Natural and Cultural History, department of biology, and the College of Arts and Sciences. It is authored by the 2008-9 Kritikos Professor in the Humanities, Kenneth Miller, a molecular biology, cell biology and biochemistry, researcher at Brown University.