The De-Evolution of Man

The De-Evolution of Man

In the dawn of mankind, humans had to live like animals in comparison with modern society. The people had two simple goals: to stay alive and to procreate. If an individual could not meet these goals then he or she would die. In this fashion, the humans that lived on had traits and abilities that would reach the two goals and those characteristics would be passed on to the next generation. It is from these traits that the human race as strived and fought to survive over the millennia. Some of these characteristics that have passed through the generations can be seen today like how humans pick mates. Proof of this natural selection of mankind can be found in the human body in vestigial organs, such as the appendix and the tailbone. The appendix was used to digest plant matter in earlier humans and the tailbone is a remnant of previous ancestors that had tails. In general, traits and parts that were less beneficial to the survival of the individual were replaced and gradually decayed so that only valuable genes would survive. This is, however, until the dawn of the modern age of technology, when the strongest were not the only ones who would survive.

The drive of science has always been curiosity and with that motivation many discoveries have been made. The drive of technology is to take those discoveries and make them useful to society. From suits of armor for protection to automobiles and planes for faster travel to the internet for connecting with other people all around the world, technology would lead to innovations that would be used to expand the capabilities of people. However, like the less useful traits of the ancestors, the ability to complete tacks without the use of these innovations has been slowly decaying. Nicholas Carr has also noticed this trend in his article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid.” In the article, Carr writes about his realization that the over-usage of Google and skimming articles online was starting to hinder his ability to read for extended lengths of time. Carr then goes on to describe how other individuals had discovered this as well such as Bruce Friedman who was quoted saying “I can’t read War and Peace anymore,” “I’ve lost the ability to do that.” (Nicholas Carr). This trend that Carr found and brought into the light cannot even be considered something to pass through genes to the next generation. However, this is a great example of how the traits would decay as more useful ones would replace them. Carr might struggle with reading a long book, but he has access to Google and instant information on the internet.

As with Carr’s article, not all traits that decay are useless ones, just less advantageous than others that will be passed on. This is what many science fiction stories try to warn the public, because once a trait has decayed to a certain point, it would be very difficult to reacquire it. The perfect example for this is the Philip K. Dick story, “Pay for the Printer”. In this story the population has become reliant on an alien race known as Biltongs that can make perfect copies of anything that only last for a short while. When the Biltongs become extinct, the humans have to try and relearn all the skills of building and making that were lost with the ease of copying items (Dick 239). Even tasks that had been learned by the first humans to survive like finding food, making clothing and lighting a fire had been lost with the over use of the aliens. This is the fear society expects, to become so reliant on something that humans will lose their own abilities and if that tool would ever be taken away, humans would be helpless to survive.

Dick wrote another story called “Strange Eden” where adventurers find a strange planet full of plants and animals that seemed like paradise. One of the crew members decides to walk around and explore the surface and winds up meeting an alien that is so evolved she became an immortal. Brent the crew member is given the choice to stay with her and go through a rapid evolution or to leave. Brent goes with human instinct and stays with her. The captain of the ship encounters the alien who tells him to leave the planet without Brent, who has evolved into a lion like creature (Dick 111). In this story Dick wonders if the next evolution of man will actually be a step backwards. The progression of mankind has steadily been decreasing with the reliance on technology and if people keep losing their abilities to survive without reliance and the technology was ever taken away, that society will resort back to primitive ways.

In both of these ideas, the human race is not heading in a positive direction. To either become toddlers that can survive without support of someone or something or devolve back into the animal kingdom. It is not only science fiction that is portraying this fear. In the last few years, two movies have come out that really portray this warning to the audience. The first movie is Wall-E where the background is that the Earth became inhabitable and humans fled into space where they were pampered into obese sloths. The other movie is Idiocracy where in the year 2505 the entire population of Earth has become idiots due to their reliance on technology and a theory of lesser intelligent people having many more kids than more intelligent people. In Idiocracy the planet is filled with trash and simple problems like plants not growing because they are being watered with Gatorade are beyond the population. In both movies, the hero does their best to help the populace start a better life, either by returning to Earth or by having a competent leader.

Works Cited

Carr, Nicholas. "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" The Atlantic. 2007. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google

Dick, Philip K. "Pay for the Printer." pp 239-252 in The Philip K. Dick Reader, New York: Citadel Press. 1987

Dick, Philip K. "Strange Eden." pp 111-122 in The Philip K. Dick Reader, New York: Citadel Press. 1987

Idiocracy. Dir. Mike Judge. Perf. Luke Wilson and Dax Shepard. 20th Century Fox, 2006. YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. Garibaldi1967, 12 Dec. 2007. Web. 28 Nov. 2009. .

Wall-E. Dir. Andrew Stanton. Perf. Jeff Garlin and Sigourney Weaver. Pixar Animation Studios, 2008. YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. Johnpasma, 5 Nov. 2008. Web. 28 Nov. 2009. .

The Problem With Worshipping Darwin

Charles Darwin dramatically changed the face of biological science. In fact, he invented a completely new kind of science: the evolutionary kind. All of western civilization knows this. So what’s the problem? The problem is that because this man gave society his ideas, we worship him for it. He is to us as Aristotle was to the natural philosophers, or at least this is true within the average population. Despite advances in evolutionary science, much of society tends to look back to Darwin for knowledge about evolution instead of looking to modern science and this often leads to people not understanding how natural selection actually works.

But before we get into the realm of people misunderstanding the ideas that led from Darwin, let us first look into the problems with misunderstanding the man himself. Our society likes our heroes to be flawless; the most minor of blemishes on their character and all of their previous work is called into question. Darwin has been elevated to Hero status, and the same expectations have been held to him.

A good portion of The Origin of the Species talks about Darwin’s theories and conclusions as they have to do with women. To those of us that know this part of his work, it is clear that Darwin stood in line with his, male, contemporaries at the time in thinking that women were inferior, and that one could prove this scientifically. Evelleen Richards in “Darwin and the Descent of Women” writes that everything that could be seen as supporting sexism or racism now “is either ignored or tortuously explained away and Darwin himself absolved of political and social intent and his theoretical constructs of ideological taint.” It is of my opinion that even if a man is the most corrupt person in all of history, if his theories are logically sound, his theories are logically sound. Darwin’s theories are logically sound in the terms of the time period from whence they came. And even if Darwin were to be quoted as saying “natural selection is a sham,” it wouldn’t affect the theory because the theory is logically sound. Racism or sexism perceived in Darwin’s writing now doesn’t affect the logic of his theories, and it is therefore unnecessary to defend him.

Now we will step back into the problems of understanding natural selection that arise from the worship of Charles Darwin. The chief reason that people don’t buy into evolution and natural selection is that they don’t understand it. Richard Dawkins says in “The Argument from Personal Incredulity” that in many cases people “misunderstand natural selection to be ‘random’ and ‘meaningless’” which it simply isn’t. In fact, natural selection is about as non-random as nature can get. The problem lies in that many people look to Darwin for how the theories work.

Darwin didn’t know about genes, genetics, or DNA. He didn’t know the mechanisms behind inheritance, he didn’t know what traits were being manifested from. We now know that the only random element of natural selection is when errors crop up when DNA is copied and spliced. These are occurrences on the quantum level, where random is the name of the game. Once the traits are manifested, the game changes and everything becomes non-random.

Another pitfall that comes with only looking to Darwin is that holes in Darwin’s theories may not exist anymore in science. Michael Behe is the father of what he calls “irreducible complexity,” the idea of a structure that would be useless if it hadn’t popped into being perfectly formed. Darwin himself says in the Origin that if an irreducibly complex object was found, natural selection would collapse. Behe uses this statement as proof that his examples refute natural selection; that nature requires a “maker.” Even if Behe’s examples didn’t have problems with them, however, his proof wouldn’t be substantial because the “irreducibly complex” problem can be easily solved.

Dawkins gave a wonderful example of how an apparently irreducibly complex system could evolve by evoking the metaphor of a stone arch. An arch, by itself, is irreducibly complex. Take any one stone out of place, and the whole thing comes crashing down. But the arch wasn’t built all at once; it was built supported by a wooden scaffolding, all evidence of which is completely gone. The scaffolding is the support structure that makes the incomplete arch semi-useful. Once the arch is done, the scaffold is broken down, and the arch stands on its own. Apply this to biology. A structure, such as Behe’s flagellum example may appear to be too complex to evolve. However, we do not see the remnants of supporting structures that allowed limited functionality until the flagellum or other structure was completed. Once a fully-functional device is in the gene pool, the supporting structure becomes superfluous and will eventually disappear; an organism without that supporting structure is metabolically superior. This concept of a biological “scaffold” was not surmised by Darwin, and by looking only to him, we miss the totality of evolutionary science today.

Finally, one last thing is missed when we don’t look beyond Darwin when it comes to natural selection. If one were to look at Darwin’s work, they would conclude that the only things that are able to evolve are living organisms. However, this is untrue. Modern science has learned that non-living molecules such as viruses do indeed evolve over time. In fact, theoretically any replicator (such as DNA, RNA, or something human-created) could undergo a form of natural selection and evolution simply through errors in the replicating process. This general knowledge is not only useful in the realms of inorganic life or AI projects, but is absolutely vital in the realms of public health. Knowing how and why viruses and other pathogens mutate is very important. Below is the first of six videos concerning the fight between humans and bacteria and viruses. The video says that such organisms are the only real threat to our species and talks about the downhill battle which humans will certainly lose.

Darwin had no idea about these implications of his theories. Now that we do, it makes little sense to continue looking to the past.

Darwin was an incredibly influential person. He changed the face of all science and rocked old religion to its core. However, the context in which Darwin’s theories and the theories themselves have changed to the point where the Aristotelian worship of the man is hardly necessary. It is time to move on from Darwin and look at the theories instead of the man.

Works Cited

Behe, Michael. “Darwin’s Black Box.” in Darwin. 3rd ed. Philip Appleman, ed. New York: W.W.Norton, 2001.

Dawkins, Richard. “The Argument from Personal Incredulity.” in Darwin. 3rd ed. Philip Appleman, ed. New York: W.W.Norton, 2001.

“Evolution Episode 4: The Evolutionary Arms Race.” Posted by Gravitationalist. .

Richards, Evelleen. “Darwin and the Descent of Women.” in Darwin. 3rd ed. Philip Appleman, ed. New York: W.W.Norton, 2001.

Charles Darwin And The Tree Of Life

I found this video on Digg.com it's an animation of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. It's quite good, enjoy!