Conversations with Michael Denton: You Can Move the Statue if You Wish...

But you can't thereby dissolve the threat posed by the structuralism of the great 19th-century biologist Richard Owen to Darwinian adaptationalism. In a short video conversation, biologist Michael Denton recalls the poignant attempt by London's Natural History Museum to give pride of place to Charles Darwin by carting away Owen's statue in favor of Darwin's.

Rearranging statuary doesn't change the fact that biology increasingly recognizes the power of laws of form, woven into the design of...