As I said in the title of a blog post about a month ago, biologist Mark Vellend has a Provocative idea: there are only two branches of science, physics and evolution. His book, Everything Evolves: Why Evolution Explains More than We Think, from Proteins to Politics, is making good on that idea, now that I’ve been able to read about half of it.
While Vellend is writing for a general audience, as well as scientists interested in looking at evolution through a broader lens than just biological evolution, which was Darwin’s primary focus, his book still is fairly dense — which helps explain why I’m reading it slowly.
That bothered me at first. I kept thinking, why can’t Vellend explain evolution in a more informal, chatty, and personal manner? But today it struck me: Vellend is describing how evolution operates, whether it be the evolution of dogs or the evolution of ideas. He looks upon evolution as an overarching law of nature, just as physics is.
I don’t expect a book about quantum mechanics to be informal, chatty, and personal. I expect it to tell me how the quantum realm works, albeit in a non-mathematical way, because I can’t understand the equations of quantum physics.
Likewise, Vellend doesn’t have any equations in his book, even though he refers at times to how evolutionary models can be expressed mathematically. There are diagrams and illustrations that aid the reader in understanding important concepts. Just no equations.
It’s amazing that the basic laws of nature, which doesn’t show any sign of being a mathematician, are often (if not usually) capable of being expressed mathematically. It’s unclear whether this is because mathematics underpins reality, or whether the human mind is capable of describing a non-mathematical reality in quantitative terms.
Either way, it seems evident that nature operates by a form of sophisticated logic. Of course, if the multiverse theory is correct, there are countless illogical universes incapable of fostering life, because they’re just a mass of unorganized confusion. Since life is organized, it isn’t surprising that we find ourselves in a logical universe.
If our universe wasn’t the way it is, we wouldn’t be the way we are.
I find it fascinating that only three principles are necessary for evolution to create the living world we have now from what started off as a simple unicellular organism, the common ancestor of every living entity that has ever existed, including us, of course.
In a general sense, Vellend says these principles are:
(1) Generation of variation
(2) Differential success
(3) Inheritance
When applied to ideas, the principles are:
(1) Repeated cycles of idea generation
(2) Selection or rejection of those ideas
(3) Inheritance of the successful ones from one generation of thinkers to the next
Naturally there’s a lot of details to be learned about each of these principles. That’s what Vellend’s book is all about.
Since religions, spiritual approaches, mystical paths, and such are collections of ideas, they succeed or fail on the basis of the same three evolutionary principles. It is neither an accident, nor God’s will, that Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, and other major religions have become popular, while so many other religions have come into being, then died out or were limited to a small number of believers.
We tend to think that religions spring from the mind of a single human. Jesus. Muhammad. Buddha. But Vellend writes:
The subject of economics blends subtly into the subject of technology, broadly defined to include everything from a stone hand axe to a metal pin to warships and wireless communications. If one person can build a boat in a few months, in what sense is the boat a product of evolution rather than a product of that person’s intelligence?
The philosopher David Hume, writing in 1779, questioned the ingenuity of the individual ship builder, asking if instead they were “a stupid mechanic, who imitated others, and copied an art, which, through a long succession of ages, after multiplied trials, mistakes, corrections, deliberations, and controversies, had been gradually improving.”
In short, there’s no way the builder could build a workable ship if not for the countless trials and errors of their predecessors from which to learn. Just as no fish ever gave birth to a human, no human ever looked at a small raft of logs and proceeded to build a 70-m-long warship with four masts and one hundred guns.
In Hume’s words, we can once again see the three key components of an evolutionary process: variation, differential success, and inheritance. More than two centuries later, our intuition still often leads us to imagine that technological innovations spring forth fully formed from the minds of geniuses, when in fact they typically represent one incremental step on an evolutionary trajectory.
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Just spent a few days in Shrewsbury – the birthplace of Charles Darwin. On a wall in the Darwin Centre was one of his quotes: – “The most important factor in survival is neither intelligence nor strength but adaptability.” Velland would rightly add that ideas, thinking, also evolve. Fitting that he says: – “In short, there’s no way the builder could build a workable ship if not for the countless trials and errors of their predecessors from which to learn.”
True that whether it is the multitude of life forms or planets, suns, ideas and beliefs, everything proceeds from other things. Isaac Newton once famously said, ‘If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.’ Yes, the same goes for evolution.
Brian adds that: – “We tend to think that religions spring from the mind of a single human. Jesus. Muhammad. Buddha.” True that religions evolve naturally, though what brings forth the religion perhaps originally stems from one person’s realisation, and if that fits into the regime’s agenda, then it can propel the originator’s insight into becoming a religion.
How could evolution bring forward these feelings of, longing, devotion ..and … not to speak of the word that should not be spoken>!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPGHpBOt5sE
To be clear, evolution does not account for the existence of life, the existence of the universe, or the precise laws of the universe. We have no evidence that evolution created life, created the universe, or created the universe’s precise physical laws.
Evolution debunks certain creationist arguments. But as yet, evolution is very far from answering the most pertinent questions about the nature of the universe and our place in it.
If you understand evolution as one thing after another, nothing can be attributed to it. Whatever has emerged did so from what came before, and what came before emerged from that which preceded it. How far back do we go? Chicken or the egg? No authorship of anything can be attributed to evolution because it is an observation of cause and effect, and neither design nor actual product nor even the process by which cause transforms into effect.
Typical mind making something of nothing.
Hi Um
“All I saw before my eyes saw you
Was wasted.
How can it (that lost time) be counted against me?
It’s a lifetime wasted.
How can it be counted against me?!”
Good question.
Nothing can be counted. Even time meant nothing. Nothing existed before.
There was no karma, and I wasn’t even born until I saw your eyes. That was my birth. Who was that character before? They were a figment of imagination. They never existed. They count for nothing.
All that matters is the eyes of our beloved. Now we live there. Not here. This is the wasted past regurgitated. You may call that evolution, but it counts for nothing without the beloved.
Haha Spencer …. I can not listen to that song and some others without shedding tears … hahaha ..sopping sentimental
It reminds me of many many bygone years … standing in a post office buying some stamps and being overwhelmed by that emotion …hahaha .. can you imagine … young lady embaressed not knowing what to say or do and i telling her … please go on, there is nothing wrong …. hahahaha … just some tears.
Hi Um
Yes, yes, that is how it is. We were meant for that kind of love.
The rest is wasted. Time itself is a waste of time without the beloved.
Umm Kulthum’s performance is shattering.
@ Spence
But these days it is all [sweet] memory and the spell is broken, otherwise I would never have written these reactions on internet.
By accident, the idea of listening to one of her songs passed by and this was the one I chose …and … felt myself again in a roller coaster of emotions, with goosebumps on the arms.
In those past days I had to learn to control these emotions as they could be so strong losing myself and that “training” helped me today to sail these emotions enjoying its power and than bring it to an end.
How strange that such emotions can arise in an otherwise empty drum … hahahaha … an unbeliever and having no experience whatsoever … hahahaha
Since Darwin’s time, much more has been uncovered in genetics, further validating the theory of evolution. Some may view a theory as ‘well, it’s only an idea’, but a scientific theory and a hypothesis differ primarily in that a theory is a well-established framework built upon extensive evidence. Velland’s ‘principles’ may well advance evolution to take into account of our mental lives – although I thought ideas etc. were obviously a part of our mental evolution.
Anyway, I’ve always liked the cautious approach of science. As Darwin once said: “It is mere rubbish thinking at present of the origin of life; one might as well think of the origin of matter.”
Science has yet to come up with how life started – although there have been interesting findings toward this end. However, evolution affords us yet another view of the grandiose aspects of life, which together should humbly show us our part in all of this and that we need to curtail some of our more ‘Earth-damaging’ activities. But sadly, we still see ourselves as being separate from the whole, from nature, so we take small notice of our destructive habits.
@ Ron E.
For a long time by now, I have been thinking about what the role is of suffering, by killing, in an universe that is build on the principal of survival.
Almost every creature alive has, in order to survive, to “feed” itself with , what I came to name, the “allowed energy of another” living creature .. kind of [car] battery so to say
It starts with the energy of the sun that is later transformed from species to species into plants => animals => humans
Some times i also think that this proces is not limited to the visable universe, to the material world, but also expands into what is called the astral and causal … reminding me of a saying of our grandma … Little one do not sell your soul to the devil
Any way … think of the lion. How could he survive if he would have consederations with his prey that does everything to survive ..is MADE to survive. … or a cow feeding itself on grass?!
Humans are not excluded from that ..how to call it … “inborn mechanism”…. how could an civilized, well trained, educated and moral person, acting as a pilot, push the button above Gaza knowing that his act will kill humans randomly and thinking of them as “his own”
So all survival entities have to think of themselves as separate from their “survival FOOD”
The question remains why is it functioning that way …. it must be strangely enough be part of survival and it must fit in the concept of “god loving his creation”
This news just in. Babaji is possibly running for president of India and he needs every vote. Supposedly he’s got them and maybe that was the plan all along. Just step into this big black car and see.