If Charles Darwin came back to life, he'd find at least one thing unchanged -- we're still debating his theories of natural selection. In fact, the story of the evolution of life on earth is one of the most exciting, changeable, and hotly debated subjects in science today. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, a look at the latest evolutionary theories and the men and women behind them.

SEGMENT 1

Husband and wife paleo-anthropologists Milford Wolpoff & Rachel Caspari champion the "Multi-regionalist" approach to human evolution. They tell Judith Strasser what their theory means and that it has been mis- interpreted to support racist arguments. Wolpoff and Caspari are the authors of "Race and Human Evolution: A Fatal Attraction." Also, Stephen Jay Gould tells Steve Paulson that the notion of progress in evolution is a fallacy. Humans are wrong to consider themselves at the top of the evolutionary heap. Gould's most recent book is "Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin."

SEGMENT 2:

Michael Behe teaches biochemistry at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and is the author of "Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution." He tells Judith Strasser that much of nature is just too complex to have evolved by chance and must be the result of an intelligent design.

SEGMENT 3:

Geerat Vermeij is a professor of geology at the University of California at Davis and one of the world's leading evolutionary biologists. He's an expert on ancient mollusks. He's also blind. He talks with Steve Paulson about his work and his autobiography "Privileged Hands: A Scientific Life."

Distribution dates:

• week of 01/19/97 - hour 2