  Bred in the bone?  This summer The THES will be exploring the
intellectual impact of the new Darwinism. Here, Aisling Irwin
describes how these ideas are having an effect beyond biology,
while overleaf Brian Goodwin and Linda Partridge debate the
significant issues within the discipline itself. Later articles
will look at the influence of evolutionary ideas on other
subjects.  It was when Chris Knight clicked to his next slide,
an artist's impression of a hunter-gatherer family complete with
topless mother, that the heckling started. The audience shouted
"exploitative" and then shouted "sexual stereotyping" when he
suggested that such mothers needed their male companions as food
providers. But it was when he used the word "menstruation" (for
he studies its social function) that they stormed out. Well,
some stormed out: for every jeer there were at least two cheers,
says Knight, an anthropologist at the University of East London.
Cheers or jeers, his work is provocative because he is
harnessing the ideas of