Does biology need the theory that all life shares a common ancestor?

From my experience, scientists don’t really care what it is called. For the vast, vast majority of scientists it is simply the theory of evolution. In the 1940’s and 50’s it was also called the Modern Synthesis, describing the combination of Darwin’s earlier theory with modern understandings of genetics.

If you are interested in the history of how the theory of evolution was developed then I would suggest a really cool and well written essay by Ernst Mayr called “80 Years of Watching the Evolutionary Scenery”.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/305/5680/46.full

Mayr wrote that essay when he turned 100 years old, and he recounts his own experiences during the era when modern genetics came to the forefront. He describes the different camps within biology, and how it all shook out when genetics was melded together with Darwin’s theory. Just a snippet from the essay:

“By the end of the 1940s the work of the evolutionists was considered to be largely completed, as indicated by the robustness of the Evolutionary Synthesis. But in the ensuing decades, all sorts of things happened that might have had a major impact on the Darwinian paradigm. First came Avery’s demonstration that nucleic acids and not proteins are the genetic material. Then in 1953, the discovery of the double helix by Watson and Crick increased the analytical capacity of the geneticists by at least an order of magnitude. Unexpectedly, however, none of these molecular findings necessitated a revision of the Darwinian paradigm—nor did the even more drastic genomic revolution that has permitted the analysis of genes down to the last base pair.”

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