Evolution
Evolution
Everything, everywhere, all around us is caught in the current of evolution and the only constant is change.
“Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again;
The eternal years of God are hers;
But Error, wounded, writhes with pain,
And dies among his worshippers.”
-William Cullen Bryant
Ɑ
—Evolution happens anytime an entity experiences iteration, variation, and selection.
—The rules of nature predetermine the manifestation of certain patterns over others—we call this mechanism natural selection.
I. Playing the Game
We cannot correctly understand our existence without looking at the world through an evolutionary lens. Evolution provides the ‘why’ and ‘how’ to the way things are. It helps us grapple with the mysteries of being by explaining its origins and tendencies.
The universe has a current, a flow, a direction in which things move. Nothing escapes that current. Fixity or permanence is an illusion. Entities don’t just stay the way they are, unchanged, forever—they integrate, emerge into existence, and then they disintegrate and fade away.
Even the mountains—these pillars of our surroundings—didn’t always exist. They came into being and, even though they feel like the embodiment of permanence, they are vibrating to the frequency of nature, shifting and crumbling, though it’s far too slow for us to notice.
If nature is the rules of the game, evolution is the game playing out. Just like in a sport or board game: once the rules have been established, we press play, and everything begins to move. Evolution is that movement.
Rather than survival of the fittest organism in biology, evolution is more accurately framed as preservation of the fittest entities and applies to every single thing in existence: particles, atoms, molecules, the cosmos, life, culture—everything. Some of it is obvious to us, but most of it is too abstract, too slow, too big, or too small for us to notice.
Evolution is weird. The second law of thermodynamics states that things in the universe naturally move towards chaos—we call it entropy. This movement towards disorder is default: ice melts, valleys erode, houses decay and collapse, organisms die.
However, as most things move towards chaos, some things are moving towards order. As most things fall part, other things build up into greater and greater complexity, seemingly of their own accord. Science tells us that the universe has gone from a state of pure chaotic energy—where matter, as we know it, didn’t even exist—to a highly ordered state with many stable, complex phenomena.
In other words, we’ve gone from nothing but a soup of hot plasma to mountains, monkeys, and minds in 14 billion years.
How the hell can that be? If entropy is always breaking things down, why would anything ever move in the opposite direction?
It can be easy for us to shrug our shoulders, and carry on as if that isn’t strange. “Sure, we used to be blobs in the ocean and now we can land on the moon… but did you see Marvel: Endgame?”
Yes, it’s abstract, but we cannot ignore this miraculous flow towards order. Something mysterious is at work all around us. If we don’t feel the awe and wonder, it’s because we’re not paying attention. Perhaps the wonder is overshadowed by the terror of no control, that when we peek through the window of the cosmos we have absolutely no clue what we’re looking at.
A divine tendency whispers to us in the wind; it rattles in our bones; it pulsates through the atoms of everything we see and touch. The cogs of a great machine whirl behind the walls and underneath the floor boards, a vibration so deep that it doesn’t register. As the very fabric of reality revs into motion, it reaches up towards the heavens, inching closer and closer with each tick of the clock.
Evolution is the universe chasing a dream.
II. Iteration, Variation, Selection
Evolution isn’t confined to biology, though that’s where we normally use the term. It happens anytime we have iteration, variation, and selection. These three processes carve the cosmos into ever-changing shapes.
1) Iteration refers to multiple, repeated manifestations of an entity.
2) Variation refers to the deviation of traits or characteristics in each manifestation.
3) Selection refers to certain manifestations being chosen over other manifestations.
Evolution is basically trial-and-error: 1) multiple trials that 2) vary in their outcomes and we 3) choose the one that works and discarding the ones that don’t.
If an entity undergoes all three of these processes, it will evolve; if one is missing, it won’t. An entity could be any system, pattern, organization, or ‘thing,’ though it may be hard to identify what the ‘thing’ that evolves really is. A species, an artistic medium, a game of soccer, a galaxy, a food recipe, and a romantic relationship are all examples of entities that can undergo evolution.
We’ll try some basic examples:
—Your wardrobe is an entity that evolves. Over time you have tried 1) multiple outfits; that 2) vary in their characteristics (color, fabric, style, etc.); and 3) selected outfits that work for you while discarding outfits that don’t.
As a result, your wardrobe has evolved over time into a state that is, theoretically, increasingly appropriate to your being. You’ve gone from experimentations of young adulthood, to a gradually more refined style that, for whatever reason, works for you. Maybe you tried wearing all black for a while, then decided loud and vibrant colors made you feel powerful, then eventually settled on subtle, elegant, and professional. This evolution only happens because you had access to lots and lots of clothing options and actively chose what to wear.
Without multiple iterations (if you only ever had access to one outfit), or variation (if you only had multiple copies of the same outfit), or selection (if you only wore outfits that were somehow generated randomly), then your wardrobe wouldn’t have evolved; there would be no direction of movement, no gravitation towards an improved, more suitable, or more appropriate state.
—Our ideas, beliefs, and philosophies are a collective entity that evolves. Over time we have posited 1) multiples ideas about world; that 2) vary in their hypothesis; and 3) selected a worldview by retaining ideas that seem to work and discarding ideas that don’t.
As a result, our philosophy has evolved over time into a form that is, theoretically, increasingly useful and accurate to reality. When we’re young, we experiment with our ideas and find out that a lot of them are pretty stupid. As we mature, we improve our beings—we evolve—by retaining good ideas (work hard, make sacrifices, don’t cheat) and discarding bad ideas (grown-ups suck, candy for breakfast, video games are the best use of my time).
—When we move into a new living space, there might be an evolution of its layout and aesthetic. If we have the time and resources we will, perhaps, try 1) multiple furnishings in multiple places too see how it feels; these furnishings and their arrangements will 2) vary in their design, color, location, etc.; we will 3) select a layout and aesthetic by retaining what we like and discarding what we don’t. As a result, the living space will evolve over time.
—Language might give birth to 1) multiple words or phrases that mean the same thing; 2) vary in their ease of pronunciation and memorability and sonic aesthetic; and are 3) selected by people and adopted into their vocabulary because they work, for whatever reason.
People might introduce ‘spiffy,’ ‘swell,’ ‘tight,’ ‘dope,’ ‘radical,’ ‘cool,’ or ’tubular’ into the lexicon to communicate that they find something impressive, fashionable, or remarkable. New words are almost like a mutating gene. ‘Spiffy’ and ‘swell’ might be discarded, while ‘cool’ is retained. Repeating this process over and over again will result in the evolution of language.
—In free market economies, goods and services that fulfill the same role are 1) plentiful; 2) varied; and are subject to 3) selection by consumers. People buy smart phones that function well and eat at restaurants that are clean and delicious. People don’t buy phones that catch on fire and don’t eat at restaurants that have a rat problem. As a result, goods (like mobile phones) and services (like restaurants) naturally improve over time—they evolve from flip phones to iPhones, from a burger stand to a global franchise.
—Phenomena are explained by 1) multiple scientific theories; which 2) vary in their hypothesis; and are 3) adopted by the scientific community based on their predictive power.
Multiple theories to explain the nature of infectious diseases were thrown around in the 19th century: contagionism, miasmatism, germ theory (and probably others). These theories varied in their explanations: “disease is spread through physical touch,” “disease is spread through ‘bad air’,” and “disease is spread through microorganisms,” respectively. Through vigorous testing and observation, germ theory has been demonstrated as having high predictive power and has, therefore, been selected by the scientific community as the accepted explanation of infectious disease, while the other theories have been discarded.
In this way, our scientific body of knowledge evolves over time to more accurately model physical reality.
(Ω) Evolution is the process of generating trials, testing how well they perform, eliminating the failures, and retaining the successes. Everything is undergoing this process, all the time. It’s not so much whether or not a thing is evolving as much as howis it evolving, what the nature of the thing actually is, and what greater system is it a part of.
We see evolution in the physical realm, the biological realm, and the cultural realm. We see it in our daily activities, when we select one place to eat lunch out of twenty different options. This chapter evolved out of multiple rough drafts, multiple ideas, multiple titles, multiple images, and so on. I kept what I deemed fit for a final draft and discarded what I deemed unfit. You are, in some sense, experiencing an evolution of actions, right now, as your desire to slam your laptop shut, because of how abstract and boring this is, is selected over your desire to keep reading.
Evolution is the mechanism by which the universe, and everything in it, moves from one state to another.
III. Nature as Selector
As we dig deeper, things get more abstract.
In all the examples so far, humans are participating in the selection process, meaning these forms of evolution are partially driven by mind. However, evolution is predominantly driven by nature, i.e. natural selection. Although we may be more familiar with the term ‘evolution’ being used in this context, the mechanism of natural selection is far more difficult to grasp than selection by mind.
Why? Because we can’t really talk about natural selection without effectively personifying nature, without describing nature as making decisions, and that doesn’t sit so well with us. It sounds like we’re talking about God.
We have to keep in mind that words are a means of communication—I’m trying to simplify a very difficult concept. The best way to do that is to use language which, in this case, makes it sound like I’m giving nature consciousness. That is not what I’m implying.
Natural selection means that nature chooses things, the same way that the rules of soccer choose the strategies, positions, and plays that emerge in the game as a result; the same way that the rules of basketball choose tall players over short players; the same way that the ‘rules’ of the internet choose the emergence of social media; the same way that the age of exploration chose the emergence of piracy.
So try to resist the dismissal of my explanation due to, what might sound like, creationism or intelligent design—that’s not what I’m arguing.
Anyways, we readily understand the notion of a human selecting one thing over another. The idea that nature chooses one thing over another is difficult, partially because we do not wish to personify reality, but also because we don’t get to observe the things that nature doesn’t choose.
We understand that an individual chooses the clothes they wear because we know there are options, there are alternatives. We understand the red dress was chosen because we know an individual has virtually endless options of styles—it could just as easily have been blue.
However, when nature selects, we don’t perceive it that way because we don’t see the alternatives. Everything simply is. We think: matter exists, light exists, biological life exists, gravity is what it is, end of story.
But it could easily be the case—if the rules of nature were tweaked—that life wouldn’t exist. Turn a few dials on the fundamental forces of nature and the universe is no longer conducive to biology, planets, stars, or even matter itself.
In a universe with different rules, there are different outcomes, different potentials of manifestation. These outcomes are the choices the universe makes, the selections we’re referring to when we talk about ‘natural selection.’
If we understand this process of selection, then we understand that the universe isn’t random. It’s very, very specific. Things evolve in a certain direction, in a certain way. Entities take shape and flourish, others falter and fade away, and some simply never come into being. Nature decides all of this.
For example, evolution takes place at the most fundamental level of the physical universe. Elementary particles appear to be the smallest unit of matter or energy we can measure—we can’t get any more foundational (for now). Elementary particles include quarks, leptons, and bosons (possibly others). If they interact, they will form various stable configurations with each other. Protons and neutrons are examples of these configurations.
To illustrate: a certain configuration of three elementary particles—two ‘up’ quarks and one ‘down’ quark—will form a proton; while two ‘down’ quarks and one ‘up’ quark will form a neutron. These are two different examples of configurations of elementary particles that are selected by nature.
In what way are they selected?
Because they’re stable entities. For whatever reason, nature chooses these entities; it paves the way for their manifestation. Contrastingly, nature does not select a configuration of three ‘up’ quarks called the delta particle. The delta particle is highly unstable. It does not manifest readily, and if somehow it does—like in a lab experiment—it only does so for 10^-23 seconds before collapsing.
Why? Why are protons and neutrons stable, but delta particles are not?
Because nature says so. Nature likes the proton and the neutron, and doesn’t like the delta particle, and that’s the way things are—we don’t know why.
We could reframe this metaphor of selection in terms of harmony. Some entities are harmonious within their system. Other entities are disharmonious within their system. The natural selection process is one of dictating what is harmonious and what is not.
Two ‘up’ quarks and one ‘down’ quark come together and they create harmony, they achieve balance—a proton is formed. Three ‘up’ quarks are forced together dissonantly before immediately disintegrating—the delta particle represents a total lack of harmony, a lack of balance.
An entity that achieves harmony (like a proton) is retained by nature and may become part of another entity (like an atom), which in turn may become part of another entity (like a water molecule), ascending upwards in the meta direction, creating a hierarchy of increasingly complex entities built out of less complex entities. This ascent upwards is a form of evolution.
IV. Entities Evolve Towards an Ideal
Things evolve in the direction of an ideal. If we recall last chapter, we can call these ideals the Forms. Entities approximate the Forms—they have a fidelity to the forms.
The proton is a Form. It is an entity predetermined by the rules of nature. There are numerous quarks in the universe—trillions of trillions of trillions of trillions of quarks. But whenever we get two ‘up’ quarks and one ‘down’ quark together, in normal conditions, we’ll get a proton.
We can imagine the Form of the proton as being the absolute, perfect proton—100% fidelity. Perfection never manifests—the form is only a potential. If, let’s say, the three quarks are a meter away from each other, they approximate the Form of the proton poorly—5%. If they approach within a millimeter—10%; they’re still not a proton. One trillionth of a meter apart—40%.
If the quarks get one quadrillionth of a meter apart, something clicks. The quarks fall into place, achieving some kind of harmony. The proton is formed and maintains that form over time without disintegrating. This individual union of three quarks might approximate the Form with 99% fidelity—it’s not absolute, but it’s close enough to achieve harmony, to take the Form of proton.
The Forms mirror the concept of truth. A 95% fidelity to the Form of a proton might be good enough for the individual union of quarks to achieve that shape, to maintain that structure—the individual union of quarks is true to Form. Perhaps an 80% fidelity is enough to achieve the harmonious state of proton, enough to be a true proton. But 40% is not stable, not harmonious enough to maintain its shape—three quarks in this state are false, they are not a proton.
Quarks evolve into protons, which evolve into atoms, which evolve into molecules, which evolve into single-celled organisms, which evolve into multi-celled organisms, which evolve into cephalized creatures, which evolve into conscious creatures, which evolve culture, which evolves into highly complex information systems, which will undoubtedly keep evolving—perhaps into something beyond our comprehension and control.
Each of these entities is a Form. Each is a product of evolution, and each is evolving. Each is part of a whole, and each is made up of parts. This hierarchy extends upward towards higher complexity and order and downward towards lower complexity and disorder.
The structure stands up only because each level is stable, each brick maintains its shape and integrity, and each brick is stable because it adheres, in some way, to the rules of nature.
V. Evolution Doesn’t Imply a ‘Goal’
Entities can manifest, survive, and thrive even if they’re not morally ‘good,’ even if they are not what’s desirable from a human perspective. Things that survive and flourish don’t necessarily do so because they’re the ‘best’ or the most ‘deserving.’
For instance, there’s a natural evolution of videos on YouTube. The ones that are the most ‘fit,’ in some sense, are the ones that have the most views. They are being selected, for whatever reason, by the collective YouTube audience. The viral videos that emerge, however, are unlikely to be considered the ‘best’ videos or the highest quality or the most deserving of attention—many people would describe them as the opposite. But they are the fittest videos, nonetheless. It isn’t for us to say what is and what is not fit. Nature decides these things for us.
This demonstrates that even though the universe makes selections, that doesn’t mean the universe has a ‘goal’ conceivable by the human mind, or in line with our desires or morality. As humans, we want things to have a reason. If there are Forms, if things evolve to become something that is predetermined, it’s easy for us to assume that there must be some sort of ‘cosmic plan’ for those things. That’s a huge leap. That’s giving the universe a human-like consciousness, seeing God in things that don’t warrant it.
Sure, I’m using teleological language, but only to imply that there are rules, that there’s an objective reality with a structure. That doesn’t imply a human-like creator. Who knows why the rules are what they are? Who knows why the Forms are what they are? There might not be a reason; they might just simply be.
Nature guides evolution in a certain direction not because of a “goal”, but as a product of rules. Evolution only has a “goal” in the sense that a river has a “goal” to run downstream. When we personify water with this statement, we’re simply using figurative language to communicate the concept as clearly as possible. We know that water is not conscious—nature dictates the chemical structure of water, resulting in the phenomenon of liquid, and nature dictates gravity which forces the water to flow downstream. That’s it.
If we create the internet, people will mostly use it for pornography, escapism, and venting their frustrations. Surely, that was the plan all along, right? No. The internet has rules, just like nature, which effectively predetermine the entities that will appear on the web. It turns out those rules mostly predetermine pornography. To say that was the intention of the ‘creator’ of the internet is to misunderstand the flow of reality and how it moves on its own accord, completely uncoupled from our moral sense of ‘the way things ought to be.’
We cannot fathom where evolution is going. An ‘independent observer’ (whatever that means) watching the physical evolution of the universe would never have predicted the evolution of life; an observer watching the biological evolution of life would never have predicted the evolution of culture. What’s beyond is impossible to predict and, for our purposes, probably doesn’t matter. We must settle for understanding the rules of the game, observing how the game tends to play out, without ever knowing the final outcome—there might not be a final outcome.
Ω
Evolution offers a why and how to the nature of all things, even if it’s not an absolute why and how.
Why do boys like videogames and sports so much? Why are people falling away from religion? Why do we have a capitalist economy? Why did book stores and video rental stores disappear? Why are politics in their current state?
Without the evolutionary lens, our answers to these questions are feeble, convenient, overly simplistic, and ultimately wrong; nothing falls into place; the way things are seems arbitrary and we trick ourselves into adopting pernicious ideas like:
1) boys like video games and sports because they’re socialized that way; 2) people are leaving religion because religion is a tool of oppression and people aren’t falling for the trick anymore; 3) our economy is capitalist because the people at that top use it to oppress everyone else; 4) book and video rental stores disappeared because people are brainwashed into supporting corporations over small businesses 5) politics are in their current state because some people are hateful and genocidal and some people are good and care about the planet.
These are all terrible explanations that rapidly fall apart under rational scrutiny. This is because they’re not looking at the world as if it has a nature, as if it has an objective reality. Instead these explanations rely heavily on the idea that everything is culture, power, and greed and that, somehow, humans have total control over the way the universe works. While there’s truth to these notions of culture and power, we can explain things more effectively through the evolutionary lens:
1) Boys like video games and sports because they evolved to hunt game, forage for treasure, fight other tribes, and compete for authority and women; 2) religion is fading because its organizations have failed to adapt their practices and teachings to an ever-changing world—it is no longer fit in this environment and must adapt to survive, just any other entity; 3) capitalism is an extension of the natural world—it works because it provides an environment where the economy can evolve, where goods and services can adapt and become increasingly fit, just like biological organisms, and virtually everyone benefits from this; 4) politics are in their current state because they adapt to their environment and the internet (among other things) creates new rules, which leads to new ways to game the system, attack your opponent, and spread propaganda—no one chose this political situation, as much as it evolved naturally to adapt to a changing landscape.
Without an evolutionary lens, we cannot understand why things play out the way they do; we cannot make sense of where we came from or where we’re going. The evolutionary lens reveals the nature of things. If we cannot grapple with the nature of the problems we face as a species, we have no hope of solving them.