Evolution: Beautifully Not Progressive

Evolution categorically is not progressive. While Darwin may have been ambiguous in this regard in the “Origin of Species,” one has to consider the time period the “Origin” was published in. Furthermore, one has to hope that those truly in appreciation of Darwin’s ideas and thinking agree in this regard. There are no goals or destinies for life. Evolution by natural selection is beautifully not progressive in that species can stay the same or even devolve due to natural selection. Take this quote from Steven Jay Gould in “Full House,”

"Life therefore began with a bacterial mode. Life still maintains a bacterial mode in the same position. So it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be-at least until the sun explodes and dooms the planet. How, then, using the proper criterion of variation in life's full house, can we possibly argue that progress provides a central defining thrust to evolution if complexity's mode has never changed?"

This understanding has to be central when describing life. After all, it’s only in understanding that evolution is not progressive that we are able to honestly marvel at life itself. In his latest book titled, “Our Cosmic Origins: from the Big Bang to the Emergence of Life on Earth”, Armende Delsemme misses the point several times when referring to evolution. At one point, he describes evolution as a process untiringly trying to find the path toward progress. Simply stated, those words ake the fun out of evolution; They absolutely deflate the excitement that surrounds Darwin and natural selection and speciation. Evolution in no way is untiringly searching for a path towards progress. Later, Delsemme mentions goals. He refers evolution as a journey towards complexity whose goal is not yet apparent. Here, he replaces “path toward progress”, with “journey toward complexity.” Next, evolution has no goals, much less are they ever apparent. Gould held the idea we’re here because we’re here, not because we had to be here.

Pikaea is the oldest known chordate. It was preyed upon heavily by predators such as trilobites and was on the decline as the Cambrian came to a close. But for whatever reason, Pikaea survived the Cambrian while its predators faced extinction. Only by happenstance was Pikaea then there for natural selection and speciation to eventually give rise to fish, and earlier ancestors of mammals. The point being, there is no clear, apparent journey or path to complexity. Rewind the evolutionary tape, play it again, and you might not get the same result.

“Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.”

That said, get it right next time, Delsemme, when referring to it in your book.

John




Comments:

Yes, thinking a chordate was around by chance to lead to our other ancestors and ultimately us is pretty unbelievable. Pikaea by the way was discovered in the Burgess Shale and it's pretty unbelievable that site was ever discovered.... and then it's pretty unbelievable, again, that the event that caused the fossilization in the way it did to preserve those soft bodies, is also unbelievable. Unbelievable.


Mike, Ken Miller gave an awesome presentation last year on just that question. Although, im not sure he addressed which is better. Thats a question I don't think anybody can answer. However, creationists always use irreducible complexity in nature as evidence for creationism. Evolution has proven things once considered to be irreducibly complex, well, not irreducibly complex... just complex i guess. So whats that say? I don't know, but the dynamics of all that (evolution capable of producing something that was thought to be irreducibly complex) really is one of my passions in biology... i love that stuff. Evolution produced the bacterial flagellum... wow.