There are a few people out there who don't accept or understand Darwin's theory of natural selection. That's too bad, because it is extremely powerful, elegant and simple. It is also something that we see every day and in all facets of the world- not just biology but in human interaction and economics and your own learning.
At the common sense level, the theory is this: In any given population of like things (cows or people or ideas or political movements or...) there are differences between the members. In any given environment, some of those differences are advantages. Though the population will maintain differences, the next generation will look more like the successful members than the unsuccessful ones.
It's statistical- if the temperature drops over a period of years, the hairier racoon has a slight advantage, produces more kits ...and in a hundred generations you get predominately shaggy racoons. For all the crap that free-market capitalism gets in certain circles, it's consistantly produced the higest standard of living and all other systems have drifted toward it or collapsed.
The principle goes even to personal behavior: you have many possible responses in any given situation, but over time this variation will drift towards what has worked best in the past.
This system can be manipulated- we have so many varieties of dog because of selective breeding, which can do in a few generations what would take nature eons to accomplish, provided it drifted in the right direction at all.
There's also culling, or "eugenics". If someone had the power and decided to kill all the blue-eyed children within a few generations humans would be brown-eyed.
Rapid change in environment increases mortality and speeds up this process. Some people are lactose intolerant- if there was a disaster such that protein became very hard to come by and the only reliable source was a milk cow, lactose intolerant children would die of malnutrition in much greater numbers, fewer would grow up to have children...poof. Fast change in the gene pool.
We are used to thinking of this variation in terms of genetics, but it applies to much, much more than that. Even adopted children learn much of how to treat people from their parents. My students will teach more like I did than a stranger will. A good idea can grow and spread to the ends of the world.
Last point, for now- the teleological fallacy. Certain processes, like natural selection, are resource and environment based. In other words, things arise from what is there. This means that they can drift or grow in any way that works. Teleology is the belief that there is a reason or an endpoint to the process. That humans were the entire point of evolution, for example. People are very uncomfortable with powerful processes that don't have plans. They want someone to be in charge. The idea that we are just a stage in something that will go on forever makes some people profoundly uncomfortable. Get over it.
This process is not for or about you. The environment decides what is selected for after the fact. Who had the most babies who grew up to have babies? They are the winners. The next generation will be more like them. Someone who has no children has lost this game... except no one is keeping score.
Well said. Just a couple of moody comments to throw into the pile:
ReplyDeleteThere are a few people out there who don't accept or understand Darwin's theory of natural selection.
Actually, the number of such people is large and growing, and our current administration is openly in favor of keeping it that way. We live in an era when private schools, at the urging of "megachurches" take kids on tours of science museums so they can ridicule "secular humanist science". School boards are debating whether to teach science or religion in science class or whether science textbooks should carry warning labels. There are debates about the topic going on in classrooms and meeting halls, in courtrooms, and on the internet, and so much of it is based on such laughably simplistic logic it really makes one wonder what happened to the intelligence of mankind.
For all the crap that free-market capitalism gets in certain circles, it's consistantly produced the higest standard of living and all other systems have drifted toward it or collapsed.
Historically, the best living standards have been produced in societies that have free market capitalist economies with certain safeguards attached (but not excessively). Have too few or no safeguards, and you end up with either a heavily cartelised economy such as happened in the U.S. before Teddy Roosevelt implemented antitrust legislation or you wind up with a more or less feudal society such as exist in much if not most of Central and South America (and the left-wing revolutions we're now seeing down there are a very predictable result of that). On the other hand, have too many safeguards, and you have a stifled economy and/or one that is in the grip of a corrupt bureaucracy (arguably the situation in Japan now...except that corporations also control the bureaucrats).
I generally think we need a few more safeguards than most conservatives think and fewer than most liberals think. I keep putting myself in positions like this...
I very much understand the feeling of being between two accepted points of view- you manage to get labeled by both sides. My concern with safeguards is that there is sometimes a fine line between helping and enabling. Is it a coincidence that there was a sharp increase in illegitimate children and broken families when social welfare programs ensured that the children could be fed without a father?
ReplyDeleteThe theory of Natural Selection is a "no brainer". I still have never met anyone who has actually read "The Origin of Species" who denied it. I wonder sometimes if the percieved increase in fundamentalism is real, or is a media-fueled attempt to sway the country politically.
Thanks for reading, Kevin.
Uh, oh...here I am again instead of being in bed like I should be!
ReplyDeleteMy concern with safeguards is that there is sometimes a fine line between helping and enabling.
I hear you. The best way to help someone who is wounded is to rehabilitate them, not coddle them. I've never been a big believer in handouts since, as you say, they encourage mooching. I prefer the idea of giving people the tools necessary to help themselves.
I wonder sometimes if the percieved increase in fundamentalism is real, or is a media-fueled attempt to sway the country politically.
These days it's getting harder to trust anything in the media. However, I do know (rather the hard way) that a couple of my fundamentalist friends are getting much more rabid, much more vocal, and have been digging up much more mutual support than they have in the past, mainly because they feel encouraged by the current social/politican environment. I'm sure the cycle will come around again, but I'm hearing (and being accused of) some scary things.
Natural selection isn't the same thing as evolution. It's one small component, necessary but not sufficient -- and it's accepted by many who don't buy the whole evolution package.
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