Home » Search results for 'progressive evolution'
Search Results for: progressive evolution
Dinosaurs, Brains, and ‘Progressive Evolution’
1800 words
Would dinosaurs have reached human-like intellect had the K-T extinction (an asteroid impact near the Yucatan peninsula) not occurred? One researcher believes so, and he believes that a dinosaur called the troodon would have evolved into a bipedal, human-like being. This is, of course, the old progressive evolution shtick. This assumes that a man-like being is an inevitability, and that sentience is a forgone conclusion.
This belief largely comes from Rushton’s citation of one Dale Russel, the discoverer of the dinosaur the troodon:
Paleontologist Dale Russell (1983,1989) quantified increasing neurological complexity through 700 million years of Earth history in invertebrates and vertebrates alike. The trend was increasing encephalization among the dinosaurs that existed for 140 million years and vanished 65 million years ago. Russell (1989) proposed that if they had not gone extinct, dinosaurs would have progressed to a large-brained, bipedal descendent. For living mammals he set the mean encephalization, the ratio of brain size to body size, at 1.00, and calculated that 65 million years ago it was only about 0.30. Encephalization quotients for living molluscs vary between 0.043 and 0.31, and for living insects between 0.008 and 0.045 but in these groups the less encephalized living species resemble forms that appeared relatively early in the geologic record, and the more encephalized species resemble those that appeared later. (Rushton, 1997: 294)
This argument is simple to rebut. What is being described is complexity. The simplest possible organism are bacteria, which reside at the left wall of complexity. The left wall “induces right-skewed distributions”, whereas the right wall induces “left-skewed distributions” (Gould, 1996: 55). Knowing this, biological complexity is a forgone conclusion, which exists at the extreme end of the right tail curve. I’ve covered this in my article Complexity, Walls, 0.400 Hitting and Evolutionary “Progress”
Talking about what Troodons may have looked like (highly, highly, doubtful. The anthropometric bias was pretty strong) is a waste of time. I’ve stated this a few times and I’ll state it yet again: without our primate body plan, our brains are pretty much useless. Our body needs our brain; our brain needs our body. Troodons would have stayed quadrupedal; they wouldn’t have gone bipedal.
He claims that some dinosaurs would have eventually reached an EQ of humans—specifically the troodon. They had EQs about 6 times higher than the average dinosaur, had fingers to grasp, had small teeth, ate meat, and appeared to be social. Dale Russel claims that had the K-T extinction not occurred, the troodon would look similar to us with a brain size around 1100 cc (the size of erectus before he went extinct). This is what he believes the dinosauroid troodon would look like had they not died out 65 mya:
When interviewed about the dinosauroid he imagined, he stated:
The “dinosauroid” was a thought experiment, based on an observable, general trend toward larger relative brain size in terrestrial vertebrates through geologic time, and the energetic efficiency of an upright posture in slow-moving, bipedal animals. It seems to me that such speculation remains acceptable, particularly if directed toward non-anthropoid anatomical configurations. However, I very nearly decided not to publish the exercise because of the damaging effects it might have had on the credibility of my work in general. Most people remained polite, although there were hostile reactions from those with “ultra-quantitative” and “ultra-intuitive” world views.
Why does it look so human? Why does he assume that the ‘ideal body plan’ is what we have? It seems to be extremely biased towards a humanoid morphology, just as other reconstructions are biased towards what we think about certain areas today and how the people may have looked in our evolutionary past. Anthropocentric bias permeates deep in evolutionary thinking, this is one such example.
Thinking of this thought experiment of a possible ‘bipedal dinosauroid’ we need to be realistic in terms of thinking of its anatomy and morphology.
Let’s accept Russel’s contention as true; that troodontids or other ‘highly encephalized species’ reached a human EQ, as he notes, of 9.4, with troodontids at .34 (the highest), archaeopteryx at .32, triconodonts (early extinct mammal of the cretaceous) with a .29 EQ, and the diademodon with an EQ of .20 (Russel, 1983). Russel found that the troodontids had EQs 6 times higher than the average dinosaur, so from here, he extrapolated that the troodon would have had a brain our size. However, Stephen Jay Gould argued the opposite in Wonderful Life writing:
If mammals had arisen late and helped to drive dinosaurs to their doom, then we could legitimately propose a scenario of expected progress. But dinosaurs remained dominant and probably became extinct only as a quirky result of the most unpredictable of all events—a mass dying triggered by extraterrestrial impact. If dinosaurs had not died in this event, they would probably still dominate the large-bodied vertebrates, as they had for so long with such conspicuous success, and mammals would still be small creatures in the interstices of their world. This situation prevailed for one hundred million years, why not sixty million more? Since dinosaurs were not moving towards markedly larger brains, and since such a prospect may lay outside the capability of reptilian design (Jerison, 1973; Hopson, 1977), we must assume that consciousness would not have evolved on our planet if a cosmic catastrophe had not claimed the dinosaurs as victims. In an entirely literal sense, we owe our existence, as large reasoning mammals, to our lucky stars. (Gould, 1989: 318)
If a large brain was probably outside of reptilian design, then a dinosaur—or a descendant (troodon included)—would have never reached human-like intelligence. However, some people may say that dinosaur descendants may have evolved brains our size since birds have brains that lie outside of reptilian design (supposedly).
However, one of the most famous fossils ever found, archaeopteryx, was within reptilian design, having feathers and along with wings which would have been used for gliding (whether or not they flew is debated). Birds descend from therapods. Anchiornis, and other older species are thought to be the first birds. Most of birds’ traits, such as bipedal posture, hinged ankles, hollow bones and S-shaped neck in birds are derived features from their ancestors.
If we didn’t exist, then if any organism were to come close to our intelligence, I would bet that some corvids would, seeing as they have a higher packing density and interconnections compared to the “layered mammalian brain” (Olkowicz et al, 2016). Nick Lane, biochemist and author of the book The Vital Question: Evolution and the Origins of Complex Life believes a type of intelligent ocotopi may have evolved, writing:
Wind back the clock to Cambrian times, half a billion years ago, when mammals first exploded into the fossil record, and let it play forwards again. Would that parallel be similar to our own? Perhaps the hills would be crawling with giant terrestrial octopuses. (Lane, 2015: 21)
We exist because we are primates. Our brains are scaled-up primate brains (Herculano-Houzel, 2009). Our primate morphology—along with our diet, sociality, and culture—is also why we came to take over the world. Our body plan—which, as far as we know, only evolved once—is why we have the ability to manipulate our environment and use our superior intelligence—which is due to the number of neurons in our cerebral cortex, the highest in the animal kingdom, 16 billion in all (Herculano-Houzel, 2009). Why postulate that a dinosaur could have looked even anywhere close to us?
This is also ignoring the fact that decimation and diversification also ‘decide the fates’ so to speak, of the species on earth. Survival during an extinction event is strongly predicated by chance (and size). The smaller an organism is, the more likely it will survive an extinction event. Who’s to say that the troodon doesn’t go extinct due to an act of contingency, say, 50 mya if the K-T extinction never occurred?
In conclusion, the supposed ‘trend’ in brain size evolution is just random fluctuations—inevitabilities since life began at the left wall of complexity. Gould wrote about a drunkard’s walk in his book Full House (Gould, 1996) in which he illustrates an example of a drunkard walking away from a bar with the bar wall being the left wall of complexity and the gutter being the right wall. The gutter will always be reached; and if he hits the wall, he will lean against the wall “until a subsequent stagger propels him in the other direction. In other words, only one direction of movement remains open for continuous advance—toward the gutter” (Gould, 1996: 150).
I bring up this old example to illustrate but one salient point: In a system of linear motion structurally constrained by a wall at one end, random movement, with no preferred directionality whatever, will inevitably propel the average position away from a starting point at the wall. The drunkard falls into the gutter every time, but his motion includes no trend whatever toward this form of perdition. Similarly, some average or extreme measure of life might move in a particular direction even if no evolutionary advantage, and no inherent trend, favor that pathway (Gould, 1996: 151).
We humans are lucky we are here. Contingencies of ‘just history’ are why we are here, and if we were not here—if the K-T extinction never occurred—and the troodon or another dinosaur species survived to the present day, they would not have reached our ‘level’ of intelligence. To believe so is to believe in teleological evolution—which certainly is not true. Anthropometric bias runs deep in evolutionary biology and paleontology. People assume that since we are—according to some—the ‘pinnacle’ of evolution, that us, or something like us, would eventually have evolved.
Any ‘trends’ can be explained as life moving away from the left wall of complexity, with the left wall—the mode of life, the modal bacter-–being unchanged. We are at the extreme tail of the distribution of complexity while bacteria are at the left wall. Complex life was inevitable since bacteria, the most simple life, began at the left wall. And so, these ‘trends’ in brain size are just that, increasing complexity, not any type of ‘progressive evolution’. Evolution just happens, natural selection occurs based on the local environment, not any inherent or intrinsic ‘progress’.
References
Gould, S. J. (1989). Wonderful life: the burgess Shale and the nature of history. New York: Norton.
Gould, S. J. (1996). Full house: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin. New York: Harmony Books.
Herculano-Houzel, S. (2009). The human brain in numbers: a linearly scaled-up primate brain. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience,3. doi:10.3389/neuro.09.031.2009
Lane, N. (2015). The vital question: energy, evolution, and the origins of complex life. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Olkowicz, S., Kocourek, M., Lučan, R. K., Porteš, M., Fitch, W. T., Herculano-Houzel, S., & Němec, P. (2016). Birds have primate-like numbers of neurons in the forebrain. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,113(26), 7255-7260. doi:10.1073/pnas.1517131113
Rushton J P (1997). Race, Evolution, and Behavior. A Life History Perspective (Transaction, New Brunswick, London).
Russell, D. A. (1983). Exponential evolution: Implications for intelligent extraterrestrial life. Advances in Space Research,3(9), 95-103. doi:10.1016/0273-1177(83)90045-5
Progressive Evolution Makes No Evolutionary Sense
“It’s possible to believe some are “more evolved” without believing evolution is progressive. In fact that’s probably the position of most biologists.”
See, more evolved IMPLIES progress which I’ve said numerous times.
“I think it’s perfectly valid to describe some animals as “superior” to others though I concede it’s a difficult thing to prove.”
If it’s difficult to prove (re: impossible), how is it perfectly valid? You agree that organisms evolved bases on their environment, so what kind of unbiased metric would there be to denote “superior organisms”?
“No purpose means the progress happened because someone or something INTENDED it to happen. Progress in evolution is the ultimate example of UNINTENDED consequences.”
Progress implies that an organism or set of organisms are “progressing” somewhere or to some ultimate form. There is NO progress in evolution. I have three articles on that in the past week. Progress in evolution implies a “great chain of being”. You’re attempting to rehash this which has no basis in biology. You may not be saying “great chain of being” word for word, yet that’s what you are implying.
“I’m simply using species as a unit for measuring morphological change. Yes it’s arbitrary but so are all units of measurement. Why are there 12 inches in a foot instead of 20? An arbitrary decision, but once the decision is made, it’s a valid measurement as long as it’s applied consistently.”
Differing morphological traits come about due to differing environments. Your definition of species is kinda weak compared to Wright’s Fst. Degree of morphological difference is not an appropriate species definition.
“Frequently fails to produce unidirectional trends != never produces unidirectional trends.”
Showing all the variables on how you can’t show an evolutionary trend was the meaning.
“This is an implied concession that evolution DOES have large scale patterns (i.e. progressive trends), only the cause is disputed.”
There are local changes, such as changes in brain size and the like, but there are no large-scale patterns. Moreover, complexity can’t be defined scientifically. The ’cause’ is natural selection, mutation, genetic drift and migration. That’s what causes evolution, however it is NOT progressive.
“The non-African branch has many splits and the African branch has none. This suggests there was more morphological changes over the duration of separation in the non-African branch because splits are a good proxy for evolutionary activity. This is because some environmental pressure or environmental change is usually what CAUSED the splits in the first place, though not always.”
All of your misconceptions are addressed in this paper.
1) The placement of a taxon is not an indication of how specialized, advanced or extreme its traits are.
2) Evolutionary change may occur during any part in the line; the offshoot isn’t always phenotypic change.
3) Morphological change still occurred in Africa. If you say no you’re fooling yourself.
4) Environmental pressures always don’t mean changes in the visible phenotype; it may mean something like better oxygen absorption in the Tibetan, which is caused by the introgression of Denisova-like DNA.
5) Morphological changes occur in Africa due to long-term selection from the environment. For example, the Pygmy. Their short stature is due to the CISH gene, which is linked to resistance from malaria and tuberculosis. Mice that are engineered to produce more of the CISH protein are smaller in stature. CISH regulates height and since it helped them survive better they became shorter due to the malarial resistance.
You’re acting as if absolutely no changes occurred in Africans after the split.
“You ARE a layman. I’m reading the trees correctly, you simply don’t understand the inferences I’m making from them.”
I won’t be a layman soon. You’re reading them wrong and I’ve shown you how multiple times. I understand the inferences you’re making from them, and they’re common intuitive misconceptons reading phylogenetic trees.
“But why would so many environments so consistently select for increased encephalization unless intelligence was an unusually versatile trait? This proves my point that some traits are useful in many different kinds of environments than others, and the long-term selection of said traits creates progressive trends in evolution.”
One of the biggest reasons we have big brains is due to how many kcal we ingest. If that were to drop definitively, like say we go from eating 2300 kcal a day to 1100 kcal average per day, both brain size and stature would decrease. That’s a selection response due to the environment. Without the amount of kcal we consume, we wouldn’t be able to support our brains as they consume at least 25 percent of our daily energy.
Selection against eyesight has happened. This happened in the cave fish and other organisms I brought up. Eyesight is only needed where it’s an advantage; without that, like in pitch black environments, it’s not a useful trait so it gets selected against. One good reason is energy doesn’t have to be diverted to eyesight and it can use what energy it does consume for other pertinent functions.
“There’s no strong evidence that brain size decreased before 10,000 years ago. Indeed John Hawks’s chart showed brain size INCREASING from 15,000 to 10,000 years ago.”
Your buddy John Hawks says that human brain size started decreasing 20 kya going from 1500 cc to 1350 cc.
“You shouldn’t BELIEVE anyone. You should think about it logically and come to your own conclusion, independent of what others say.”
Believe people whose job it is to read them and teach them how to be read correctly. The people who draw them up. Or an intuitive interpretation of the trees. Hmm…
I am thinking logically. I know how to think logically. You’re reading trees wrong and I’m showing you how.
Natural selection is local adaptation; not progress.
I wish people would learn how to read trees correctly and not use their intuition on how to read it. He’s committing a very common mistake, so common that papers have been written on the exact matter. Yet he seems to think that he, a layman, knows how to read a tree better than biologists who make them and teach about them for a living. I’m sure that’s it. You must know all the answers and they must be trying to lead the public astray from the truth of “more evolved”, “more superior”, and “more progressed” organisms. I’ve documented more than enough evidence the last week and a half to disprove PP’s crazy belief that evolution is “progress” or that species can be “more evolved” or that organisms are “superior” to one another is not warranted by the data. He has flaws flimsy understanding of the word “species” (thinks morphology defines species when it doesn’t) and basic evolution as a whole (more evolved, superior and progressive evolution).
Maybe one day he can join us in the real world.
Dinosaurs, Brains, and ‘Progressive’ Evolution: Part II
1700 words
In part I, I showed how Dale Russel’s contention that the troodon would have evolved into a bipedal ‘dinosauroid’ with human locomotion and a human-sized brain was pure fantasy. I ordered the book of his that Rushton cited in his book Race, Evolution, and Behavior and I finally received it last week. When I read the relevant parts, I yawned because it’s the same old stuff that I’ve covered here on this blog numerous times. Since literally the only relevant part in the book about the troodon is the final 7 pages, that’s what I will cover today—along with a few more lines of evidence that large brains lie outside reptilian design (Gould, 1989).
First off, all of Rushton’s contentions in the final pages of his book (Rushton, 1997) need to be rebutted. Rushton (1997: 294) writes that dinosaur brains were ‘progressing’ in size for 140 million years, but neither of Russel’s writings that I have (Russel 1983; 1989) have the statement in them.
In the book Up From Dragons: The Evolution of Human Intelligence neuroscientist, evolutionary psychologist John Skoyles and science writer Dorian Sagan—the son of Carl Sagan—speak briefly about reptilian intelligence and why they wouldn’t have reached our levels of intellect:
But cold-bloodedness is a dead-end for the great story of this book—the evolution of intelligence. Certainly reptiles could evolve huge sizes, as they did over vast sweeps of Earth as dinosaurs. But they never could have evolved our quick-witted and smart brains. Being tied to the sun restricts their behavior: Instead of being free and active, searching and understanding the world, they spend too much time avoiding getting too hot or too cold. (Skoyles and Sagan, 2002: 12)
Hopson (1977: 443) writes:
I would argue, as does Feduccia (44), that the mammalian/avian levels of activity claimed by Bakker for dinosaurs should be correlated with a great increase in motor and sensory control and this should be reflected in increased brain size. Such an increase is not indicated by most dinosaur endocasts.
Most importantly, if some dinosaurs DID have bird-sized brains, the above contention would still hold. Hopson concludes that, except for coelurosaurs “the range of behaviors that existed in dinosaurs, as inferred from trackways and skeletal morphology, may not have lain much outside the observed range in ectothermic crocodilians” (Hopson, 1977: 444).
Since the conjecture/’thought experiment’ of the troodon was rebutted last week, it’s pretty conclusive that large brains lie outside of reptilian design; they need to spend so much time avoiding getting too hot or cold—as well as hunt and eat—so exploring the world and learning was not possible for them—along with the fact that they didn’t have a primate morphology and thus didn’t have the ability to fully manipulate their environment as we do which would further select for larger brains. However, as Hopson (1977) notes, animals with higher metabolic rates had larger brains; coelurosaurs had high metabolic rates and the largest dinosaur brains (Russel, 1983; 1989)—but that doesn’t mean they would have eventually evolved human-like intelligence, bipedalism or brain size and to say otherwise is fantasy.
Furthermore, there is large variation in encephalization and encephalization is not universal in mammals (Shultz and Dunbar, 2010).
Here is the thing about brain size increases: it is a local level trend. A local level trend is a trend that occurs within one or a few related species. This is exactly what characterized brain evolution; there is large variation depending on what the environment calls for (Boddy et al, 2012; Montgomery et al, 2012; see also island gigantism; Bromham and Cardillo, 2007; Welch, 2009; and also see the deep sea rule; Mcclain, Boyer, and Rosenberg, 2006). So these local trends differ by species—even one population split by, say, 50 miles of water will speciate and become evolve a completely different phenotype due to the environment of time. That is evolution by natural selection; local change, not any inherent or intrinsic ‘progress’ (Gould, 1996).
The same local level trend occurs with parasites. Now think about parasites. The get selected for ‘complexity’ or a decrease in ‘complexity’ depending on what occurs in their host. Now, looking at it from this perspective, the body is the host’s environment while the earth is ours; so my example for an environmental change would be, as usual, the asteroid impact hitting the earth blocking out the sun and decreasing high-quality food all throughout the earth. Surely I don’t need to tell you what would occur…
Russel (1989) writes:
Examples of evolutionary changes that occured at ever-increasing speeds include the initial diversification of animals in the sea 650 and 550 million years ago, the attainment of tree stature in land plants between 410 and 360 million years ago, and the diversification of mammals between 200 million years ago and the present. Changes like this have resulted in increased organismal complexity, which, in combination with a general increase in number of species, has made the biosphere of the modern Earth so much richer than it was several hundred million years ago. It is reasonable to suppose that animals living in a complex environment might find it advantageous to possess complex nervous systems in order to have access to a greater variety of responses. Indeed, the largest proportion of brain weight in an animal has also increased at an ever-increasing rate across geological time. The brain has become evidently larger in animals as diverse as insects, mollusks, and backboned creatures. Relative brain size can be taken as an indication of biotic interactions.
He references time periods that correspond with decimations (mass extinctions). Decimations lead to diversification. Think back to the Cambrian Explosion. During the Cambrian Explosion, many more lifeforms existed than can be currently classified. Therefore, according to the decimation and diversification model, greater diversity of life existed in the past. When decimations (defined as a reduction in the anatomical forms of life from mass extinction) occur, the niches that become extinct quickly become filled.
The time periods that Russel references are when mass extinctions occurred. This is how diversification occurs. What allowed for this ‘organismal complexity’ and increase in the number of species (though body plans are limited due to the Burgess Decimation) is due to the decimations. Decimation and diversification proves that evolution is not progressive.
A ‘trend’ in biology is directional change in a group stat using the mean, median or mode. Any existence of a trend from the mean (‘progress’) tells us nothing about the underlying mechanisms behind it.
To wrap this all up, even if a trend in X were to be discovered, it still wouldn’t tell us a thing about the underlying mechanisms causing it, nor will it tell us about any increasing tendency.
The analogy of the drunkard’s walk (Gould, 1996) is why ‘progress’ doesn’t make sense. Further, niche construction matters as well. When organisms construct their own niches, change occurs based on those niche constructions. Milk-drinking 8kya in Europe and African farmers diverting water for their crops having mosquitoes come by and gaining a resistance to malaria are two examples of niche construction (Laland et al, 2009). That’s another barrier to progress!
In sum, Dale Russel says nothing I’ve not heard before in regards to ‘progressive’ evolution. He only describes ever-increasing ‘complexity’ which is due to decimations and further diversification by organisms to fill empty niches. Any type of ‘progress’ would have been stymied by mass extinctions.
Further, the fact that species can consciously—in a way—guide their own evolution through the manipulation of the environment once again shows how evolution doesn’t mean progress—it literally only means local change and any type of local change, no matter to what type of environment, will cause concurrent increases/decreases on whichever relevant traits that will give the organism the best chance for survival in that environment.
This is why evolution is not progressive; and even if scientists were to identify one thing, still, a causal mechanism won’t be able to be inferred. Ruseel (1989) describes right and left walls of complexity—nothing more. Dinosaurs didn’t have the body plans to have our brain size, bipedalism and intelligence, nor did they have the right type of blood, nor did they have the time to search and learn about the world due to being constrained to their cold-blooded system—being a slave to the sun, always attempting to avoid overheating or getting too cold (Skoyles and Sagan, 2002). The so-called ‘dinosauroid’ is an impossibility and implies a teleological lean to evolution—as if our morphology (or something similar from an unrelated organism) will always evolve if we replay the tape of life again (Gould, 1989; 1996). This is what Russel is pretty much arguing, and he is 100 percent wrong as noted above.
References
Bromham, L., & Cardillo, M. (2007). Primates follow the ‘island rule’: implications for interpreting Homo floresiensis. Biology Letters,3(4), 398-400. doi:10.1098/rsbl.2007.0113
Boddy, A. M., Mcgowen, M. R., Sherwood, C. C., Grossman, L. I., Goodman, M., & Wildman, D. E. (2012). Comparative analysis of encephalization in mammals reveals relaxed constraints on anthropoid primate and cetacean brain scaling. Journal of Evolutionary Biology,25(5), 981-994. doi:10.1111/j.1420-9101.2012.02491.x
Gould, S. J. (1989). Wonderful life: the Burgess Shale and the nature of history. New York: Norton.
Gould, S. J. (1996). Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin. New York: Harmony Books.
Hopson, J. A. (1977). Relative Brain Size and Behavior in Archosaurian Reptiles. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics,8(1), 429-448. doi:10.1146/annurev.es.08.110177.002241
Laland, K. N., Odling-Smee, J., Feldman, M. W., & Kendal, J. (2009). Conceptual Barriers to Progress Within Evolutionary Biology. Foundations of Science, 14(3), 195–216. http://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-008-9153-8
Mcclain, C. R., Boyer, A. G., & Rosenberg, G. (2006). The island rule and the evolution of body size in the deep sea. Journal of Biogeography,33(9), 1578-1584. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2699.2006.01545.x
Montgomery, S. H., Capellini, I., Barton, R. A., & Mundy, N. I. (2010). Reconstructing the ups and downs of primate brain evolution: implications for adaptive hypotheses and Homo floresiensis. BMC Biology,8(1), 9. doi:10.1186/1741-7007-8-9
Russell, D. A. (1983). Exponential evolution: Implications for intelligent extraterrestrial life. Advances in Space Research,3(9), 95-103. doi:10.1016/0273-1177(83)90045-5
Russell, D. A. (1989). An Odyssey in Time: The Dinosaurs of North America. Minocqua, WI: Published by NorthWord Press in association with National Museum of Natural Sciences.
Rushton J P (1997). Race, Evolution, and Behavior. A Life History Perspective (Transaction, New Brunswick, London).
Shultz, S., & Dunbar, R. (2010). Encephalization is not a universal macroevolutionary phenomenon in mammals but is associated with sociality. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,107(50), 21582-21586. doi:10.1073/pnas.1005246107
Skoyles, J. R., & Sagan, D. (2002). Up From Dragons: The Evolution of Human Intelligence. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Welch, J. J. (2009). Testing the island rule: primates as a case study. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences,276(1657), 675-682. doi:10.1098/rspb.2008.1180
“Progressive” Evolution: Part III
1950 words
PumpkinPerson seems to be making his blog “more politically correct“. So he seems to be removing his posts that he may deem “insensitive” to certain people. You run a (mostly) HBD blog. People who go to a HBD blog must know that they may come across certain truths that they may find uncomfortable–and even ‘offensive’. This seems like it’ll be my last reply to PP on this matter as he has removed the thread we were conversing about this matter in. Now that PP is becoming more ‘PC’, is he going to disavow his views on “progressive” evolution, “superiority and inferiority” when speaking about organisms and human races and “the concept of ‘more evolved'”?
RR: You’ve stated numerous times that evolution is progressive. Which is why I assume you’re equating “progress” with “more evolved”. Do you believe that more evolved implies progress or that progress implies more evolved?
PP: I PERSONALLY believe more evolved life is on average, superior to less evolved life, but there is nothing intrinsically progressive about being more evolved, and there’s no reasons for opponents of progress to avoid the term. In some cases, the more evolved form is clearly inferior such as when a dog evolved into a cancer.
That’s the point. The ‘more evolved’ organism is more often than not ‘inferior’ compared to its predecessor. This shows that there is no ‘progress’ to evolution. And the “more evolved” form became “inferior” to its predecessor due to changes in environment. If those environmental pressures were different, a whole slew of phenotypic changes would have occurred to have the “less evolved, inferior” organism be “superior” to its predecessor. This line of reasoning shows how idiotic of a concept “progress” in evolution is.
RR: Moreover, ancestral state reconstructions of absolute brain mass, body mass and EQ revealed patterns of increase and decrease in EQ within anthropoid primates and cetaceans.
PP: But the OVERALL pattern has been one of increase. The average brain size of ALL living mammals has TRIPPLED in 65 million years.
I just showed that there are increases AND decreases in the fossil record. No one denies that there has been an upward trend in brain size. However, as I’ve said to you previously, our brains have been shrinking for 20ky, with there being evidence that it’s been decreasing for 20ky. Sure, the trend over the past few million years shows an increase, but the trends for the past 30k years or so show a decrease and this is due to agriculture.
RR: Just showed this is wrong. (On morphology being an indicator of speciation)
PP: No you just cited a paper that agrees with your definition of species. That’s not an argument.
I cited this paper by Ernst May, What is a Species, and What is Not? where he says:
I analyze a number of widespread misconceptions concerning species. The species category, defined by a concept, denotes the rank of a species taxon in the Linnaean hierarchy. Biological species are reproducing isolated from each other, which protects the integrity of their genotypes. Degree of morphological difference is not an appropriate species definition. Unequal rates of evolution of different characters and lack of information on the mating potential of isolated populations are the major difficulties in the demarcation of species taxa.
Just because you believe that speciation is based on morphology doesn’t make it true, PP.
RR: Sure they are CORRELATED, but it doesn’t imply a cause. A relationship is not a cause. I just showed you a paper that shows you’re wrong but whatever.
PP: But a correlation is enough to show that evolution is progressive. Evolution correlates with progress = evolution is progressive.
Now he explicitly says that evolution is progressive. No matter how many times I point this out to him, he still wants to believe this idiotic notion that has no basis in evolutionary biology.
RR: How would this be gauged? Would you say to look at the LCA and gauge morphological changes?
PP: That’s one way.
Well, now the onus on you is to provide evidence for your claim that there was no–or ‘hardly’–any morphological changes in equatorial populations. You have to prove that they stayed similar to the LCA. Good luck!
PP: No I’m arguing that FEWER changes occurred in Africa because there were fewer splits in the African branch (at least as conceptualized by Cavalli-Sforza)”
This is MEANINGLESS. This is a HUGE intuitive misconception on how people read phylogenies. Just because Africans didn’t ‘split’ based on phylogenies DOESN’T MEAN that they had little to no morphological changes. The racial phenotypes we code are recent, so this throws a wrench into your intuitive misconceptions on phylogenies.
RR: Prove it!
PP: The proof is that those humans who scientists believe have preserved the phenotype of the earliest modern humans (i.e. Andaman islanders, Papua New Guineans) all look very Negroid, as do those forensic reconstructions of ancient skulls you reject.
This isn’t proof. Just because scientists (like who?) ‘believe’ that Andaman Islanders and Papuans (no, no and no!!) “preserved the phenotypes of ancient humans” doesn’t mean that they are in any way, shape, or form SIMILAR to the original populations who migrated out of Africa 70kya!!!
Ancient skull reconstructions are meaningless. You cannot infer what type of lips an ancient human had. There are numerous problems with facial reconstructions, most specifically for this conversation, you cannot gauge certain things JUST from a skull:
The finished product only approximates actual appearance because the cranium does not reflect soft-tissue details (eye, hair, and skin color; facial hair; the shape of the lips; or how much fat tissue covers the bone). Yet a facial reconstruction can put a name on an unidentified body in a modern forensic case—or, in an archaeological investigation, a face on history.
It can ‘put a face to history’, however this reconstruction of, for instance, Mitochondrial Eve DOES NOT show what she actually looked like, specifically her lips, as seen above.
RR: I fully understand what you’re saying. Except I’ve shown how it’s wrong! You can’t say one branch means morphological change AND EVEN THEN, morphological change does not equal speciation as shown in the Mayr paper.
PP: You can say that if one branch has lots of splits, it implies environmental changes and pressures (since generally speaking, that’s what causes splits) and environmental changes generally cause morphological changes, which is one definition of species.
But this definition of species is wrong as I’ve just shown. Ernst Mayr shows, in the paper of his linked above, that morphology is not enough to denote speciation.
RR:Do you know better than people who do this for a living? There are multiple papers on misconceptions of cladograms and the like. I get its original nd I respect that. You’re a smart mother fucker pp. But that doesn’t mean you’re right here.
PP: I understand why you think I’m reading the trees wrong. I used to think the exact same way as you, and the sources you cite. Laymen shouldn’t make the simplistic assumption that higher branches = more evolved and that’s why scientists try to dispel that notion. Because the tree is just there to show relatedness, and evolution can happen or not happen at any point in the tree, no matter how many splits or non-splits occur.
Now you’re getting it!
PP: However once we understand all that, we have to ask ourselves, even though IN THEORY, any branch on the tree can evolve in any direction, and there’s nothing about the tree that implies a hierarchy, IN REALITY, is there a correlation between tree position and brain size and other measures of “progress”? I’ve provided evidence that there is. You can either ignore the evidence because it doesn’t fit the theory that branch placement is irrelevant, or you can realize that evolution is a little more nuanced than some simplistic introductory Berkeley paper implied.
Now you’re not. First off, the Berkely paper is not ‘simplistic’, nor is one of the papers that the Berkely papers cites, Understanding Evolutionary Trees by Gregory (2008). He shows the most common misconceptions one has on reading phylogenies. And most–if not all–of your misconceptions on phylogenies are brought up in the paper with great detail into the misconceptions as well as how to correct the misconceptions that one has while reading phylogenies. I’ve said to you, time and time again, that brain size is PREDICATED on the amount of kcal that one consumes. If were to eat 1000 kcal a day for, say, 2000 years, what would happen to our brain size as well as our body size? Would they stay the same, grow bigger or get smaller? Adequate kcal–as well as adequate nutrients–are the driver of brain size. Without those two variables, brain size wouldn’t have been increasing. Moreover, as I’ve documented two weeks ago, H. floresiensis showed a decrease in brain size as well as body size, having evolved from either H. erectus or H. habilis. This directly shows that brain size is dependent on the surrounding environment as well as the quality and quantity of the food that the organism consumes. Branch placement IS irrelevant. You can rotate the branches all around and that would throw your theory out the window. This is what you don’t understand.
Evolution IS NOT PROGRESSIVE. However, this scala naturae belief is still with us today, as documented by Rigatto and Minelli (2013). They say:
Background
Professional papers in evolutionary biology continue to host expressions in agreement with the pre-evolutionary metaphor of the scala naturae (the great chain of being), when contrasting ‘lower’ to ‘higher’ representatives of a given branch of the tree of life. How pervasive is the persistence of progressionist, pre-evolutionary language in contemporary papers?
Results
We document here the prevalence of this unexpected linguistic survival in papers published between 2005 and 2010 by 16 top scientific journals, including generalist magazines and specialist journals in evolutionary biology. Out of a total of 67,413 papers, the unexpectedly high figure of 1,287 (1.91%) returned positive hits from our search for scala naturae language.
Conclusions
A quantitative appreciation of the survival of progressionist language in scientific papers is the first step towards its eradication. This will obtain by improving skills in tree thinking as well as by more careful editorial policy.
Wow! 1.91 percent, 1,287 papers returned positive hits for ‘great chain of being’ language. These terms need to be removed from evolutionary biology as they don’t allow the appreciation of the randomness in the evolutionary processes.
Evolution is a random process. It’s an unconscious, non-linear event as I have documented extensively over the past month.
I’ll end with a quote from Ernst May’s book What Evolution Is:
Another widespread erroneous view of natural selection must also be refuted: Selection is not teleological (goal-directed). Indeed, how could an elimination process be teleological? Selection does not have a long-term goal. It is a process repeated anew in every generation. The frequency of extinction of evolutionary lineages, as well as frequent changes in direction, is inconsistent with the mistaken claim that evolution is a teleological process. Also, there is no known genetic mechanism that could produce goal-directed evolutionary processes. Orthogenesis and other proposed teleological processes have been thoroughly refuted (see Chapter 4).
To say it in other words, evolution is not deterministic. The evolutionary process consists of a large number of interactions. Different genotypes within a single population may respond differently to the same change of the environment. These changes, in turn, are unpredictable, particularly when caused by the arrival at a locality of a new predator or competitor. Survival during a mass extinction may strongly be affected by chance. (Mayr, 1964: 121)
Evolution is *NOT* Progressive: Part Two
3800 words
Previous articles here, here, here, here, and here.
PP is moderating my comments again, posting response here.
When exploring such intuitive reasoning, it’s important to note first that the idea of evolutionary “advancement” is not a particularly scientific idea. It is tempting to view organisms that are more similar to humans as more “advanced”; however, this is a biased and invalid perspective. There is no universal scale for “advancement” that favors human-like traits over spider-like, whale-like, or fir-like traits.
“Postmodernist egalitarian propaganda has even spread to zoology.”
Strawman.
You damn well know my politics, so you can’t say that I hold this view because I’m a postmodernist egalitarian spreading this to zoology.
Good comeback.
You can use those words all you want, that doesn’t say anything to what is written. You’re just politicizing this conversation when I’ve brought no politics into it.
I guess Darwin was one of those too since he wrote a note to himself to never call species “higher” or “lower” than one another; but what does he know?
“When you’re comparing life forms of equivalent taxa, you can not arbitrary reorient the tree. You have a common ancestor A. A splits into branches B and C. If B does not split, but C splits into D and E, then D and E are typically more evolved than B, because each split typically (not always) represents an evolutionary development like speciation.”
Still repeating the same garbage.
This is so funny and so wrong. An organism may have “more advanced” (whatever arbitrary trait you want to use) than another and be “lower” on the tree.
A population splitting off from another and becoming a founder population for a new species don’t mean that the new species is “more evolved”; it just means a gross misunderstanding of reading evolutionary trees and thinking about evolution.
The tree doesn’t equal “A < B < C < D”. This is what you don’t understand.
“I thought you said there was no such thing as “more evolved”. So you now admit you were wrong.”
No no. I still used “quotes” for “more evolved”. Just showing what the article said. Of course popular science articles use shitty, attention-grabbing titles; that’s how they get clicks.
“Your Berkeley quotes are way too sophomoric for a blog as advanced as this one. You need to step your game big time if you wan to continue this discussion.”
I laughed. I love your blog and there’s great conversation and you have good ideas, but you’re wrong on somethings and progressive evolution is one of them. You can say I “need to step my game up if I want to continue discussion”, but I’m bringing up good points. I’m directly showing how you’re wrong in reading these trees. Read the papers they cite, surveys were taken on how people read these trees and many people, like you, read them the completely wrong way. The biologists corrected it. You calling it postmodernist egalitarian propaganda is meaningless because I’m not pushing an egalitarian argument, I don’t believe in egalitarianism at all. I believe each organism is “good enough” for its environment and when the environment changes for good, it will change and develop new phenotypic traits. That doesn’t mean that the new species is “more evolved”, it means that evolution occurred to better survive. That’s it. Any reading into trees like you do is wrong and has been pointed out. You’re just repeating the same tired things that have been rebutted. But I need to step my game up. OK.
“Chimps could be more evolved than humans but it’s pretty unlikely, given their inferiority. I would have to examine their taxonomical history to be sure though, to see which lineage has travelled through more equivalent level taxa.”
Chimps are suited to their environment. That’s not an ‘egalitarian statement”, that’s the truth. The term has no biological basis. It’s ‘good enough’ for its environment. You’re just rehashing the great chain of being which is garbage.
“We hate things we can’t understand.”
I completely understand it. I’ve shown there’s no unidirectional trends in evolution due to the frequency of environmental change, the multitude of factors underlying fitness, the possibility of frequency-dependant epistatic interactions amongst features, and selection occurring within population. But I don’t “understand” it.
“Actually it’s brilliant conjecture. I’m sorry if it’s just too subtle for you.”
Too subtle? I just showed you how to read it and you’re saying it’s “too subtle” for me? You’re the one with fantasies of evolution being progressive and “more evolved” organisms. This has no evolutionary basis. I’ve established that. Rushton=psychologist. Not evolutionary biologist. I love Rushton, but of course by going outside of his field he’d make wrong conjectures. Do you believe everything that Rushton ever wrote? Do you think he was wrong on anything?
“Duh! But the concept you can’t seem to grasp is equal time evolving != equal amount of evolving.”
No way to quantify this. Any traits chosen will be arbitrary. This is what you don’t seem to grasp. Which of Darwin’s Finches are ‘more evolved’? You read trees so horribly wrong. Please go tell Razib how you read these trees. I want to see what he says.
“It’s like saying, Usain Bolt and I both spent an hour running. We must have travelled the same amount of distance. Don’t be stupid, RaceRealist!”
Wow, you win. sarcasm
Read up on muscle fiber typing and get back to me.
“he runs faster than me for a short amount of time; this proves that there are ‘more evolved’ organisms than others”. How stupid does that sound? Don’t be stupid, PumpkinPerson!
“Good comeback.”
I showed how you’re wrong the evolutionary tree.
An organisms placement on the tree is arbitrary, the trees branches can be rotated, blah blah blah. There’s so much information for you to read about this out there. Here.
Let me Google that for you, PP.
“You continue to miss the point. See my Usain Bolt analogy above. Two people can run for the same amount of time but when can have traveled through more spatial distance. Similarly, two lineages can evolve for an equal amount of time, but one has evolved through more taxonomical distance.”
I do not miss the point. Your Usain Bolt analogy is garbage. Just because one “evolves through more taxonomical distance” doesn’t mean that it’s “more evolved”. Email any evolutionary biologist or stop by Razib and tell him what you think on this matter.
There is one species. One small subset of that one species diverges 500 miles away into a completely different environment. Selection only occurs on heritable alleles. Over time since this species isn’t adapted to that environment, those who can’t survive die. Those who survived incurred mutations to help them survive and through natural selection they passed on the heritable gene variants to help them survive. They turn into a new species. The same thing happens again. The third species is not “more evolved” than the two previous ones. It went through different selection pressures and thus different heritable phenotypic traits occurred in that organism so it could survive. Just because an organism goes through different selection pressures doesn’t mean it’s “more evolved” because of differing selection pressures.
Let’s say that whites and East Asians died out one day, only leaving the equatorial races. Are they still “more evolved”. Do you see how retarded that is now?
“More evolved only means superior or more complex if you believe evolution is progressive, the very assertion you deny.”
I do deny. I said that as “more evolved means superior or more complex” because they would logically follow. That’s the logical progression. As I’ve said, you’re rehashing the great chain of being.
“But without the assumption of progress, more evolved simply means having undergone more evolutionary change.”
Not quantifiable. I’ve written at least 20,000 words on this on why you’re wrong.
The ‘more evolutionary change’ occurred due to a different environment. ‘More change’ isn’t ‘more time’ evolving. This isn’t scientifically quantifiable.
“No you’ve misunderstood my argument. If H floresiens evolved from H erectus, then by definition it is more evolved because it has evolved into one extra taxa then its ancestor.”
This is baseless in biology. It’s ‘more evolved’ yet smaller in stature and with a smaller brain; the thing that “more evolved” organisms don’t have. You just said that brain size and intelligence correlate with the tree branches, which is implying brain size and intelligence to be the traits you’ve chosen. Well, I choose the ability to breath underwater naturally. Who’s ‘most evolved’ then? Ask any biologist about this, see what they say.
“My argument is (1) some extant organisms are more evolved than others”
This is a premise, not an argument.
“More evolved organisms are ON AVERAGE superior to less evolved organisms, but there are lots of exceptions to this general trend.”
This is a premise, not an argument.
“You keep conflating argument 1 with argument 2. Please read more carefully before belabouring this point.”
Those are premises, not arguments. Please learn the difference between premises and arguments. They are wrong.
“Yes, I’m well aware of that theory.”
This is one reason why it occurred, the ‘devolution’ of H. floresiensis, AKA evolving to adapt to its environment.
“My definition is having undergone more evolution, full stop. So a monkey that evolves into a human and then evolves back into a monkey is more evolved than a monkey that merely evolves into a human. But as far as I know, examples of backwards evolution are relatively rare (homo florensis is the only documented case among primates, and even it is extremely controversial) but Mugabe has implied it’s common in simpler organisms. But perhaps once you get beyond a basic threshold of complexity, it becomes very unlikely to go backwards.”
Monkeys don’t “evolve” into humans!!! You have a Pokemon-like understanding of evolution. It’s pretty concrete. They had to have come from somewhere and I documented great evidence that shows it’s true. It is ‘common’ in ‘simpler organisms’. And it’d be common for humans too, the ‘most evolved’ ‘most adaptable’ species. We will respond to our environment.
An asteroid crashes into earth and blocks out the sun. Then what? We’d evolve differently. We wouldn’t be ‘more evolved’ if we changed into a new species if that pressure was long enough. ‘Complexity’ is not definable!
“The latter. If an organism has to evolve into a new species to adapt to its environment, then obviously the original species was not very adaptable. Humans are arguably the most adaptable organism precisely because we’re one of the few organisms that doesn’t have to evolve in order to adapt. We don’t need to change our genes because we can change our behavior, and now we’ve even learned how to change our behavior to change our genes.”
What do you mean? The founding population of the new species was the same as the old species. But through natural selection (and even when NS is weak as I’ve shown), changes occur. But that doesn’t mean “more evolved” or “more adaptable”. It means an organism survived because it was “good enough”.
When humans die out for good and other organisms are still here, will we still be ‘more evolved’?
I’ve shown 6 million times that we aren’t as ‘complex’ as you think we are.
He approved it, replied, and I gave him this reply.
The people you are citing are brainwashed by postmodernist views and you accept their interpretations uncritically.
Not an argument. I can say that Rushton is brain washed. Where does that get us?
Of course. But generally speaking, the more splits on the evolutionary tree you’re descended from, the more evolved you are.
Not quantifiable. Any trait chosen is arbitrary.
Of course. But generally speaking, the more splits on the evolutionary tree you’re descended from, the more evolved you are.
No one looks, except laymen, look at a tree like that and see what you’re seeing. Email Cavalli about that.
Of course it does. More evolved means having undergone more evolution. How do you know when you’ve undergone more evolution? When you’ve evolved into something new.
RaceRealist is saying “just because we ran a mile, and you split off and ran another mile, doesn’t mean you’ve run more miles than me!”
Yes it does.
Evolving into something new, speciation, occurs due to pressures from the environment. You’re trying to throw a mask of evolutionary progress there, but it doesn’t work like that.
Splitting off means nothing.
But ‘progress to adapt’ doesn’t always mean ‘gets better’, in the grand, anthropomorphic scheme of things. Cave animals for example have evolved to lose their sense of sight (because mutations that negatively disrupted vision were not detrimental, and actually allowed them to save energy that otherwise would be spent towards maintaining vision systems). They’re better fit for living in caves, but I think one could easily argue that that adaptation significantly reduced their ability to survive elsewhere. Similarly, a polar bear putting on extra padding and thicker fur makes it better suited for the arctic, but strikingly less suited for further south ranges, and not surprisingly, you don’t see polar bears in the US.
Evolution pressures organisms to become better fit to the environment they’re currently in, because those organisms that are better suited than their competitors are the one’s that produce yet more competitive progeny to continue the process. Evolution doesn’t care about more evolved Zorn progress, or your masked great chain of being. It’s an ongoing process, whether there is speciation or not. That’s what you don’t understand.
No, RaceRealist, I’m not merely reading from left to right. What I’m saying is A < B = C < D = E
Splits on a tree typically indicate speciation. So whatever species is descended from the greatest number of splits, typically has the most species in its ancestry. Since evolving into a new species reflects evolutionary change, whoever is the descendent of the most species (within a given taxa) has experienced the most evolutionary change. Most evolutionary changed = most evolved.
Trees are read in terms of most recent common ancestors. The ancestor before is not more or less evolved. And when you bring this argument to human races you’re most definitely applying superiority here which I’ve shown doesn’t exist in biology. You’ve basically just read left to right. You’re saying a is better than b who’s better than c who’s better than d who’s better than e. Each one is set for their environment. Saying one is more evolved is a stealth way to say “superior” and “progressive” evolution.
When the biologist say it doesn’t matter which species is on the left or right of the tree, they are correct. However my point is that whichever species is descended from the most SPLITS on the tree is TYPCALLY the most evolved. If you don’t like the term most evolved, then can we at least agree they’ve generally undergone the most evolutionary change?
And other times you’d be wrong. Because trees aren’t just not typically read like that, they are never read kkk that. It’s in terms of common ancestors.
Yes actually that’s exactly what it means. Undergoing more evolutionary change makes you more evolved. It doesn’t matter WHY you’re more evolved.
This is such a 5th grade understanding of an ultra complex concept. Evolution is an ongoing process. So one species isn’t more evolved than its predecessor. This is where your misconceptions are huge.
If they’ve been rebutted, explain the high correlation between number of splits each of these populations is descended from, and brain size/IQ. If number of splits is completely meaningless, no such correlation should exist:
This is an utterly ridiculous claim, because ‘number of splits’ has literally nothing to do with ‘duration of separation’, and everything to do with A ) resolution used to depict the tree, and B ) number of offshoots. For example, monotremes are one of the three original mammal offshoots, and there have been very few offshoots from that lineage relative to marsupials or eutherians. Explain the high correlation? Because those groups went to colder climates. Simple.
More evolved is quantified by the number of taxa you’re descended from within a given taxa. The traits favoured are not arbitrary, they’re decided by examining the most evolved specimens.
But they would be arbitrary. Because organisms survive with the traits they have. Natural selection selects from the current heritable variations already in that species. Therefore any traits you choose will be arbitrary. You can’t say E is more evolved than A because it comes from more splits. Please ask Razib Khan if that’s correct. Or email a biologist. I’d love to see the response.
Yes they are, until the equatorial races catch up to where the Eurasians left off.
Evolution is not a linear line. It won’t happen the same for others. What do t you get about that? Evolution isn’t linear.
Correlation != PERFECT correlation
If it happened once it’ll happen again. The fact that it happened to H. erectus, one with a bigger brain, it throws a wrench in your theory. Island dwarfism is also another reason why they changed that abruptly. That doesn’t mean more evolved. It mean different selection pressure.
But according to you evolution is not progressive so why would more evolved imply superior? If evolution is completely directionless as you imply, then more evolved organisms would be just as likely to be inferior as inferior.
RaceRealist logic: “people don’t walk in any direction, but the people who’ve walked most have walked most North”
“More evolved” implies “superior”. If the “more evolved” organism is “more evolved” than the “less evolved” organism, that means its “higher” than the other organism. That’s “superiority”. It doesn’t exist in biology. Yes more “evolved organisms” are just as likely to be “inferior” than “less evolved” organisms. Because evolution has no direction. No organism is worse or better than another. No organism is “more or less evolved” than another.
Whoever has gone through the most evolutionary change since the shared common ancestor.
Whoever goes through evolutionary change has to to to survive. Evolutionary trees are read in terms of most common ancestors. That’s it.
You have a concrete definition of a monkey. Broadly speaking, a monkey is any sub-human higher primate, including the anthropoid apes
They still don’t evolve into humans.
Under extreme cases we’d evolve drastically, but unlike other animals, we went from sub-Saharan Africa to the arctic without evolving into a new species. That’s an incredible accomplishment.
Sewall Wright believed the Fst value to be great enough between the races to call them separate species. He would know because he kinda invented the concept. Of course we’d evolve drastically, because we’d have a new change to the environment. That’s what happens. It doesn’t mean more evolved. That more evolved organism will die in an environment where its no suited. It’s that simple.
Yes we would because in order to evolve into something new, you have to do MORE EVOLVING!
In order to evolve into a new species, new selection pressures are needed. Why you’re using these terms, I don’t know why.
Sure it is. Most people would agree that angiosperms are more complex than slime molds and that multicellular organisms are more complex that prokaryotes with no nucleus, and that the human mind is more complex than a snake’s brain.
Who is “most people”? Average Joe and Jane? Why should I care what a layperson thinks? Read the paper I linked and get back to me.
If the founding population were able to adapt as it was, changes would not have needed to occur.
Where do you get these ideas about evolution?
The founding population adapted genotypically which obviously after that occurs the phenotype is affected. Then speciation occurs after long enough. Remember Punctuated Equilibria. Long time in stasis, quick jump to a new species. Most fossils have been in stasis. When an organism moves into an area, it either adapts or dies. Those traits are already in the population, natural selection selects for alleles that are beneficial to that organism. If the founding population can’t adapt, it wouldn’t have turned into the new species anyway. This is where you’re confused.
Yes, but maybe in another few million years, something else will have experienced even more evolution than we have.
Why should I care about “maybe”? I care about what’s quantifiable. From what I’m seeing, you’re attempting to revive the great chain of being. It’s a junk argument. Time matters, not amount of splits, for evolution. You looking at a tree, seeing more splits and saying aha!! More evolved! Shows a rudimentary understanding of evolution.
The human mind is the most complex known object in the universe.
The universe is the most complex known object in the universe
Why PP doesn’t grasp this yet is beyond me. Maybe it’s Rushton hero worship. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t want to be wrong on something he’s so invested in. Whatever the case may be, he’s persistence in repeating the same things that have been shown to be false is pretty damn annoying. It shows he doesn’t care about the actual data and how trees are read, for one, and call it Marxist propaganda that I’m pushing on zoology. As if I’m a Marxist. I’m the direct antithesis of Marxist. His strawmen don’t mean anything, I’ve more than made a good enough case that what he’s saying has no basis in evolutionary biology but he continues to push it. Hopefully one day he understands how wrong he is here.
Most people become blind and have tunnel vision with their beliefs. No matter how many times they’re shown that they’re wrong and here is why they still hold on to their beliefs. People don’t like to hear that they are wrong. When people are presented with contrary information, they gather support for their beliefs with “paradoxical enthusiasm”.This is because people have become so invested in their worldview that when provided contradictory evidence they lack the self-esteem to admit they were wrong and change their view. There is also something called “the backfire effect“, in which correcting of a wrong perception actually increases misperceptions. The tunnel vision that people with huge misconceptions have, in this case progressive evolution and “more evolved” organisms, leads to them attempting to find anything they can to substantiate their claims, even if they’re objectively false. This is the perfect example of that in effect in action. People don’t want know that their worldview is wrong. They don’t want to alter it, even when shown factual information that directly refutes what they say.
The Final Nail in the Coffin for “More Evolved” and “Progressive” Evolution
900 words
I’ve been on a recent tangent against this ridiculous notion of “more evolved” and “progressive” evolution. The two statements go hand-in-hand; mainly that if one organism is “more evolved” than another that they must have “progressed” further than a previous ancestor. But “progressing” where? A lion is adapted to African woodlands and grasslands, a penguin is adapted to life in the polar regions. Now imagine comparing two other organisms and what they need to do to pass their genes in that habitat, can you really infer if one organism is “more evolved” than another? The ultimate cause of these adaptations between these two species are migration, natural selection, mutation and genetic drift. Over time, an organism evolves traits (both phenotypic and genotypic) to better survive in that habitat. Knowing that evolution is a random process and that changes happen based on environment, can we really say that one organism is “more evolved” or “progressed” more than the organism in question? Tonight, I’ll put the final nail in the coffin for this hypothesis using Homo floresiensis as an example.
Homo floresiensis is an extinct hominid that lived on the island of Flores in Indonesia. He stood around 3 feet 6 inches tall and weight about 75 pounds, on average. Just this year, researchers from the journal Nature went to look for the oldest hominin occupation in Indonesia on an island between the Asian mainland and the island Flores, where H. floresiensis lived. Van den bergh et al found that the oldest evidence for stone tools on the island was between 118 and 194 kya, showing that there was a hominid on the island which predated H. floresiensis.
One possibility is that the older hominid was Homo erectus got to Flores around 800 kya and, over time, evolved into H. floresiensis. Though many researchers argue against this, saying that if H. floresiensis were a dwarfed erectus, then the expected brain size would have been between 500 to 600 cc (Lieberman, 2013: 124). Nevertheless, with careful examination between H. sapiens (African pygmies and Andaman islanders), Australopithecus and Paranthropus, Argue et al (2006) showed that diseases such as microcephaly are not the cause for their smaller brain, it is attributed to being a new species, Homo floresiensis. In 2009, Falk et al showed that the LB1 specimen did not have Laron syndrome, which is a rare form of dwarfism that occurs due to the body’s inability to use growth hormones (GH). The GH is secreted by the brain’s pituitary gland that promotes growth. So it was hypothesized that these diseases were the cause for their smaller stature, and in turn, smaller brains. But it seems that the cause for their smaller brains (around 400 cc) is due to the environment they evolved in, specifically a hot climate with low amounts of food.
There is amazing evidence for dwarfism and gigantism on islands. This is also shown to be effect hunter-gatherers. What is known is that H. floriensis’s skull and brain most closely resemble H. erectus, even after correcting for size (Falk et al, 2005; Baab and McNulty 2009; and Gordon, Neville and Wood 2008). (Lieberman, 2013: 123) Knowing that H. floresiensis didn’t suffer from any diseases that shrank both its body and brain, the only other explanation is that he evolved from either H. erectus, or as posited by primitive hand bones discovered on Flores, that Homo habilis, (literally handy man) somehow made it to Indonesia and swam to Flores. Either way, what we’re worried about here is how the selection for smaller body size occurred from whatever species of hominid predated floriensis, whether it be habilis or erectus.
As shown in the previous paragraph, there is evidence for island gigantism and dwarfism. So a plausible hypothesis is that either habilis or erectus swam or somehow rafted to Flores and over time due to less kcal on the island combined with the hotter climate and the dwarfism effect from the island, over time floresiensis evolved. Weston and Lister (2009) showed that island dwarfism could more than account for the depressed brain size in floresiensis. They showed that it was mechanistically possible for mammals to evolve smaller brains when compared to a mainland ancestor. This is huge. This makes the hypothesis that floresiensis is either habilis or erectus that evolved isolated on Flores.
Floresiensis shows how important energy was in human evolution. It’s thought that they survived on around 1200 kcal a day and 1400 when nursing, in comparison to erectus who survived on 1800 kcal per day and 2500 when nursing (Lieberman, 2013: 125). This is definitive proof that adequate calories are needed to drive brain growth as well as other bodily systems. Based on the energy requirements of floresiensis and erectus, it is 100 percent likely that fewer kcal was part of the reason why floresiensis evolved a smaller stature, along with island dwarfism and the climate as a whole.
The study of floresiensis and its possible precursors shows how and why the terms of “more evolved“, “progressive” evolution and “superiority” should be discontinued from evolutionary biology. Evolution acts to have an organism to be fit enough for its environment. Gauging any so-called “progressive” evolution and who’s “more evolved” than who has no basis in evolutionary biology. People who use these terms should stop saying it, as it’s been debunked. The final nail in the coffin has been put into this hypothesis. The evolution of H. florensiensis proves that selection occurs based on environment (which doesn’t even need any more proving). The final nails in the coffin have been put into the hypotheses of “more evolved“, superiority, and “progressive” evolution.
Evolution is *NOT* Progressive
4200 words
PumpkinPerson still believes that evolution is progressive. What exactly is evolution through natural selection ‘progressing towards’? Some, like PP, may say it’s progressing towards a better organism for that specific environment. However, there is no end game. That organism will still continue to change based on whatever changes in its environment. One of the most common misconceptions about evolution is that it’s progressive. One assumes that by looking at the progression from the earliest forms of life to today, that humans must be at the top of this ‘evolutionary ladder’ so to speak. However, evolution has no end game, nor is it conscious to be able to have humans be at the top of this ‘evolutionary ladder’. I’ll take the last thing that PP said to me on his blog and reply to it here as well.
Evolution can happen in four ways: migration, mutation, genetic drift, and natural selection (NS). Evolution is a non-conscious, non-linear event that occurs to make an organism more fit for its environment. Progressive evolution assumes that it’s linear and so evolution is a straight line from ‘more evolved to less evolved’. Would that make sense? For evolution to be in a straight line? Or would a branching tree make more sense? PP knows this fact, yet still attempts to say that the ‘newest species are the “most evolved”‘. We can take 2 genetically similar organisms and put them into one cold environment and the other a hotter environment. Will one of them be “more evolved” than the other in a few generations? Or does evolution dictate what changes occur and there is no “more evolved” because each organism is suited to its environment?
PP says:
No that’s not the point. If two populations are both descended from a common ancestor, and population A remains more similar to that common ancestor than population B, then population A is less evolved, because it’s done less evolving from the common ancestor. Why can’t you grasp this concept, RR?
I do grasp it, it just makes no sense. Because even that organism that “stayed close to the common ancestor” is still markedly different than the common ancestor.
Actually that’s not true. Humans are close to reaching the point where we no longer evolving in the conventional sense. Any further genetic change will be self-directed, via genetic engineering, and not the product of natural selection and genetic drift. And progress needn’t imply an end point, it only implies more recent forms will on average be more adaptable than life from millions of years ago.
This was in response to me saying that evolution would continue until all organisms die out or the Sun explodes. Even the with the genetic change we bring about ourself with CRISPR, we would still be evolving genetically. Umm progress DOES imply an end point. Progress means progression, what is an organism progressing towards? Being more efficient? No. Progression denotes an end game. There IS NO endgame with evolution. Evolution just happens to increase fitness for an organism and population.
I don’t have any misconceptions when it comes to evolution RR. It’s you who is confused. And I’ve seen Dawkins talk about evolutionary progress. He shows some understanding of the concept, but it’s not complete.
Yes you do have misconceptions when it comes to evolution, PP. There is no way to quantify progress in regards to evolution. You can choose some arbitrary traits, but that’s just our perception of it. You cannot objectively say that one organism is “more evolved” than another based on those traits.
I forgot that Dawkins believes in evolutionary progress. That doesn’t change my mind on this matter. I’m sure that Dawkins of all people knows that each organism is suited for its environment, not perfectly, but good enough. Evolution makes organisms good enough in order to transmit its genes to the next generation. How can you say that there is progress when each organism is fit for its environment? How can you believe in this notion when evolution through NS, migration, mutation and genetic drift make each organism unique in order to survive in its own specialized niche? As I will say below, Darwin’s Finches are the perfect example of how evolution is not progressive. They are fit for each environment. The tree finch has a blunt beak for tearing vegetation, the ground finch has a broad beak for crushing seeds, and Warbler finch’s small beak makes it good for eating insects. Each bird evolved from the same ancestor, each evolved in different ecosystems on the same island, but they evolved to do different things based on what they had to do to survive in that ecosystem. This very simple example shows that evolution is not progressive, and that these mutations occur to better help an organism in that niche in the ecosystem.
Next PP quotes Rushton from Race, Evolution, and Behavior where he says:
In their reviews, Lynn (1996a) and Peters (1995) both referred to my ranking of species on evolutionary scales. For Peters, this was a highly contentious idea but in Lynn’s positive review, he described me as proposing that the K-strategy was “evolutionarily more advanced” and that the Oriental race was “the most evolved.” In fact, I did not use either of these phrases in the book, although I had alluded to similar ideas in previous writing. Regardless, the topic of evolutionary progress provides an intellectual challenge of the first order and needs to be addressed. Figure 10.2 (p. 202) does imply a move from simple r-type animals producing thousands of eggs but providing no parental care to more complex K-type animals producing very few offspring.
In his book Sociobiology (1975), E. O. Wilson also promoted the idea of biological progression, outlining four pinnacles in the history of life on Earth: first, the beginning of life itself in the form of primitive prokaryotes, with no nucleus; then the origin of eukaryotes, with nucleus and mitochondria; next the evolution of large, multicellular organisms, which could evolve complex organs such as eyes and brains; and finally the beginnings of the human mind. (Rushton, 1997: 292-3)
I still don’t see how it’s “progressive and more evolved”. Each organism is suited for its environment to make sure that it breeds and continues its genetic lineage. I see how one could say that newer organisms are “more evolved”, however, each organism is suited for its environment.
You have no idea what you’re talking about. Humans who left Africa 60,000 years ago looked like Andaman islanders who clearly look like modern Africans today. Further, facial reconstructions of the African Eve from 125,000 years ago also looks like modern Africans. The notion that modern looking Africans are only 10,000 years old is INSANE. Did they look EXACTLY like Africans today? No. Were they close enough that no one would think twice if they walked down the street in modern clothing? Yes.
I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT, yet PP thinks that damn reconstructions mean ANYTHING!! Forensic facial reconstruction is one of the most subjective techniques in forensic anthropology. The skin thickness is subjective to the forensic artist, but I’m sure that that means that the facial reconstruction of Mitochondrial Eve is even a close representation of what she actually looked like. The fact of the matter is, facial reconstructions are highly subjective to the individual forensics artist. There is a great example in the link about how facial reconstruction isn’t anywhere near perfect:
A second problem is the lack of a methodological standardization in approximating facial features. A single, official method for reconstructing the face has yet to be recognized. This also presents major setback in facial approximation because facial features like the eyes and nose and individuating characteristics like hairstyle – the features most likely to be recalled by witnesses – lack a standard way of being reconstructed. Recent research on computer-assisted methods, which take advantage of digital image processing, pattern recognition, promises to overcome current limitations in facial reconstruction and linkage.
Keep in mind that PP believes that Australasians are Negroid, despite the fact that I’ve shown him wrong on that time and time again. Phenotype does not always equal genotype. Just because one group is phenotypically similar to another DOES NOT MEAN that they are genetically similar. It’s PP that doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
How is the notion that modern-looking Africans are 10k years old insane? I see PP doesn’t keep up with the latest studies. Is the notion that modern-day Europeans are 6500 years old insane as well?
It shows that there are lineages that become very adaptable despite not being very evolved, and some that don’t need to be adaptable because they lucked into a fixed ecological niche. But generally speaking, across all lineages, more recent forms of life are more adaptable than more ancient forms of life.
This was in response to what I said to him about there being mosses and fungi who’ve stayed pretty similar. This SHOWS that evolution is not progressive. More recent forms of life are more adaptable? You mean that more recent forms of life incurred more mutations to be more adaptable.** Evolution through NS is about being good enough to pass on your genes, that’s it. Whether or not one species is “more evolved” (whatever that means) over another is meaningless as all that’s occurring is genes passing to the next generation. Break down all of these processes to the simplest possible level and this is what we are left with.
Then I cited two links which said:
“There is no ‘progress’ in evolution. No living thing is trying to get anywhere,” Zuk said. “And humans are not at the pinnacle of the evolutionary ladder.”
…
Evolution, she said, is no engineer, building the perfect organism from scratch every time the environment changes. Rather, evolution is the ultimate tinkerer, always having to make do with the parts on hand. Its creations tend to be imperfect, just fit enough to survive.
To which PP replied:
WRONG! Humans are the highest branch within the homo evolutionary tree which is the highest branch within the primate evolutionary tree which is perhaps the highest branch of the mammal evolutionary tree, which is perhaps the highest branch within the animal evolutionary tree etc. This can be seen in phylogenetic diagrams.
PP, it specifically said evolutionary ladder. Phylogenetic diagrams prove that evolution is non-linear and does NOT go in a straight line. Phylogenetic diagrams prove that evolution is a tree and not just a straight line of ‘progress’.
And yet evolution has created the human brain, the most complex known object in the universe.
That doesn’t say anything to the fact that evolution is not an engineer making perfect organisms for their environment. All an organism needs is to be “good enough”. It’s not survival of the fittest as much as survival of the good enough. Sure evolution ‘created’ the human brain. But that doesn’t make evolution, a non-conscious event, an engineer. Why do so many atheists have so much faith in evolution, putting human qualities into it when evolution through natural selection is just a process of making sure that an organism passes its genes on? It is one hundred percent correct that evolution is the “ultimate tinkerer”, making organisms “just fit enough to survive”.
And the other link I cited, which uses Darwin’s finches as an example of the non-linearity of evolution says:
A study of the DNA of Darwin’s finches on the Galapagos Islands (Petren et al. 1999) provides a good example of why the idea of progress makes no sense in evolution. The study’s findings suggest that the first finches to arrive on the islands were the Warbler finches (Certhidea olivacea), whose pointy beaks made them good insect eaters. A number of other finches evolved later from the Warbler finches. One of these is the Geospiza ground finch, whose broad beak is good for crushing seeds, and another is the Camarhynchus tree finch with its blunt beak which is well adapted for tearing vegetation.
..
Even though biologists reject the Great Chain of Being or any similar ladder-of-progress explanation of evolution, the idea still persists in popular culture. A more accurate analogy would be that of a bush that branches in many directions. If we think of evolution over time in this way, we’re less likely to be confused by notions of progress because the branches of a bush can grow in various directions in three dimensions, and new branches can sprout off of older branches without implying that those farther from the trunk are better or more advanced than those closer to the trunk. A more recent branch that has split off from an earlier branch-like a species that has evolved from an ancestral species-does not indicate greater progress or advancement. Rather, it is simply a new and different growth on the bush, or more specifically, a new species that is sufficiently adapted to its environment to survive.
To which PP replied:
The idea of progress makes sense when you look at the grand sweep of evolution across BILLIONS OF YEARS. We’ve gone from simple, restricted life forms that could only survive in the ocean, to complex adaptable GOd-like life-forms like humans, that can live in virtually any environment, and travel to space.
This doesn’t say anything to what was quoted, PP. The fact that Darwin’s Finches each evolved on the same island, yet have completely different phenotypes depending on what they have to do to survive shows that evolution is not progressive and that there is no “more evolved” life form, just life forms surviving. Love how you sidestepped that quote.
This is the same tired nonsense. In evolution, almost every time one branch splits into two, it means evolutionary growth has occurred. So if you’re the first branch, and you don’t do anymore branching, you’re less evolved, and typically less complex and versatile than branches that split off after much branching occurred.
Yes PP. Keep repeating the “if you’re the first branch and you don’t do any more branching than you’re less evolved” canard. PP is confusing “more evolved” for more complex.
Let me repeat this quote again because it’s perfect for this discussion:
If we think of evolution over time in this way, we’re less likely to be confused by notions of progress because the branches of a bush can grow in various directions in three dimensions, and new branches can sprout off of older branches without implying that those farther from the trunk are better or more advanced than those closer to the trunk.
But I’M the one who doesn’t get it. Just because changes occur to make new species does not mean that the common ancestor is “less evolved”, it just means that there were different selection pressures that forced these changes to happen!! That’s it!
Just because your teacher told you something years ago doesn’t make it true, PP. It doesn’t mean that your teacher “got it” while everyone else is blinded to the fact of “organisms being more evolved than others”.
Level 1: People who don’t believe in evolution
Level 2: People who think evolution is progressive because they don’t understand the random nature of natural selection (most secular non-scientists fit in this category)
Level 3: People who think evolution is NOT progressive because they understand natural selection is random and geared to specific environments(most scientists and science writers and bloggers fit in this category)
Level 4: People who realize that even random processes will eventually show progress through billions of years of trial and error, and no environment is 100% specific (many of the greatest minds in history reached this stage: E.O. Wilson, Darwin, Rushton)
You’re stuck on Level 3, RR, and so are all the people you quote. I hope your mind can one day make the leap to Level 4.
This is hilarious. The fact that NS is random SHOWS that evolution is not progressive. PP may say “over billions of years through trial and error it made ‘more evolved’ organisms”. I love how PP’s speculations are the final word and what I say and who I quote are conveniently a level below his little hierarchy.
On PP’s “Level 4”:
NS, migration, mutation and genetic drift are how organisms evolve. Changing the mix of the 4 will lead to different outcomes each time. What PP is trying to say here is that I’m conveniently below the level that he’s at because he recognizes evolution as being “progressive” “progressing to be the ultimate organism in that environment”.
On the non-linearity of evolution:
“The idea of sharing a common ancestor leads to the second major misunderstanding inherent in the question,” says Dr Willis, “that evolution is a linear process where one species evolves into another.”
Evolution is really a branching process where one species can give rise to two or more species.
“The fallacy of linear evolution is most clearly illustrated by the analogy of asking; how can I share common grandparents with my cousins if my cousins and my grandparents are still alive?,” says Dr Willis.
“The answer is of course that your grandparents had more than one child and they each went off and started their own families creating new branches of your own family tree.”
The same thing happens in evolutionary families. A species can split into two or more descendant species and they can split again and again across the generations.
But PP would say that the organism who branched into the new one that stayed the same is “less evolved” than the other, when the only difference is that the newer organism faced different pressures which led to different changes!
Let me repeat: evolution is not progressive. Each organism is suited for its environment so that it can pass its genetic code to the next generation. Even an earlier organism is not “less evolved” than one that came after it, because it still has to survive in that ecosystem. The process of evolution leads to a branching pattern of relationships amongst similar organisms.
Ever since Aristotle, people have had an inclination to rank living things in a single dimension of “lower to higher” or “primitive to advanced”. Such rankings have a name, “the Great Chain of Being” or “the Ladder of Life”. But such rankings have no basis in evolutionary biology. All living organisms occupy equivalent positions on the tips of the latest twigs in phylogeny. The “lowliest” worm or microbe is just as “advanced” (i.e., has been just as successful at adaptation and reproduction throughout its lineage) as is the ‘highest” primate or social insect. “Progress” was an essential feature of some pre-Darwinian evolutionary theories, notably Lamarck’s believe in evolution driven by inward striving toward improvement. But modern evolutionary theory supports no clear expectation of progress, at least not in any dimension that has yet been explored.
Isn’t there an obvious sense in which evolution MUST be progressive? Doesn’t natural selection assure that species are always becoming better adapted, so that degree of adaptedness must be increasing over time? Doesn’t the fossil record document continuing advancement toward improved design and complexity? Doesn’t the process of adaptative radiation (continuing speciation with adaptation) guarantee that the ecological world will be ever more precisely subdivided into niches occupied by ever-increasing numbers of species?
In short, no. No one has yet demonstrated any measureable parameter that shows a consistent, reliable increase over time as evolution proceeds. This is an important point. Belief that evolution is always necessarily “improving” something can interfere with clear appreciation of the actual mechanism of evolution, which is simply the replacement of one heritable variant by another because, in specific conditions which include the presence of both variants, one does better than the other.
Concepts and Questions in Evolutionary Biology. Is evolution progressive?
As I keep saying to PP, each organism is fit for its environment. You can use some arbitrary things to say “this more evolved than that”, but evolutionarily speaking it doesn’t make sense, as I keep saying, because each organism is perfectly suited to its environment.
Yes, bacteria is simpler than a hawk, but that doesn’t mean that it’s any less adapted to its environment than a hawk is.
Evolution arises from mutation, genetic drift, migration and finally natural selection. This leads to large random variations amongst individual organisms. Natural selection then acts upon those random variations and over time this leads to differences between organisms which lead to them eventually becoming different species. How one can then make the leap in logic to say that evolution is progressive due to that is beyond me.
We only ASSUME that evolution is progressive because we look at traits that have been selected for and we don’t look at the traits that have been made negative due to the positive selection. Another point that PP likes to bring up is that the increasing complexity and increase in brain size shows how it’s progressive. However, our brains are shrinking. So if evolution was ONLY PROGRESS, why is the “most complex thing in the known universe” getting smaller? And with a decrease in brain size comes a decrease in intelligence. Such progress PP!!! Evolutions has no direction so it CANNOT be progressive. Most people want to assume that evolution is linear and thusly we were here BECAUSE we’d have been here regardless of what happened. This is not true. The fact of the matter is, evolution is a random process. The only reason there is a belief that evolution is progressive is because we strive to make meaning in everything in our lives even when there is nothing there.
Now with the thought that evolution is progressive, comes the thought of more evolved and less evolved races. As I have shown early in this article, Rushton believed that Mongoloids were “more evolved” because they came last. This then assumes that Africans are “less evolved” because they came first. This, however, makes no evolutionary sense. I love Rushton and all he did to bring racial differences to the mainstream, but evolutionary biologist he was not. The assumption here is that East Asians and Caucasians are the newest races, and thusly would have to be more advanced than the Africans. However, these notions are baseless. They are extremely subjective and one cannot say that one race is “more evolved” or “more superior” than another.
As the story is untangled, it will also become obvious how inappropriate it is to talk in terms of the “inferiority” or “superiority” of groups. Consider, for example, the Big Five personality traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. What are the ideal points on these continua? They will differ depending on whether you’re looking for the paragon of, say, a parent or an entrepreneur.
Nicholas Wade says:
From an evolutionary perspective, African populations were just as well adapted to their environment as were those of Europe and Asia to theirs. Small. loosely organized populations were the appropriate response to the difficult conditions of the African continent. But they were not necessarily well suited to high efficiency economies to which European and East Asian populations had become adapted. From this perspective, if valid, it would be unsurprising that African countries should take longer to make the transition into modern economies. (Wade, 2015: 181-2)
And finally I asked Razib Khan what he thought about this back in August. He said:
people who talk in those terms about population genetics are inferior and less evolved. sabine’s statement in my other posts applies: you’re not a serious thinker and label yourself as stupid or ignorant.
This notion of “superiority” when discussing human races, or even organisms as a whole is baseless. When looking at subjective traits then we can say that. BUT objectively, there is no way to quantify this.
Some people in the HBD-sphere, as well as the Alt-right, may say that Eurasians are ‘superior’ to Africans. On what traits? Because looking at a completely different set of traits would have you come to the opposite conclusion. Like with r/K Selection Theory (now known as the CLASH model). People assume that Africans and others who live nearer to the equator are inferior due to how many children they conceive. However, from an evolutionary perspective, the ultimate measure of human success is not production, but reproduction (van den Berghe, 1981). When that single variable is looked at, they are “more evolved” and if PP were to be believed, evolution is going backward for Eurasians since they have fewer children than Africans.
In sum, evolution is NOT progressive. Mutation, migration, and genetic drift set the stage for differences between organisms, then natural selection selects for those advantageous alleles which then get passed on to the next generation. This notion of progressive evolution is ridiculous. Evolution is a branching tree, not a straight line as is commonly thought. Progressive evolution assumes that we are progressing towards something. This is not the case. Evolution just happens, it’s not attempting to “progress” anywhere as these differences between organisms just happen and thusly you cannot say that one organism is “more evolved” than another nor can you say that this organism showed more “evolutionary progress” over another as changes are random.
Cope’s (Deperet’s) Rule, Evolutionary Passiveness, and Alternative Explanations
4450 words
Introduction
Cope’s rule is an evolutionary hypothesis which suggests that, over geological time, species have a tendency to increase in body size. (Although it has been proposed for Cope’s rule to be named Deperet’s rule, since Cope didn’t explicitly state the hypothesis while Deperet did, Bokma et al, 2015.) Named after Edward Drinker Cope, it proposes that on average through the process of “natural selection” species have a tendency to get larger, and so it implies a directionality to evolution (Hone and Benton, 2005; Liow and Taylor, 2019). So there are a few explanations for the so-called rule: Either it’s due to passive or driven evolution (McShea, 1994; Gould, 1996; Raia et al, 2012) or due to methodological artifacts (Sowe and Wang, 2008; Monroe and Bokma, 2010).
However, Cope’s rule has been subject to debate and scrutiny in paleontology and evolutionary biology. The interpretation of Cope’s rule hinges on how “body size” is interpreted (mass or length), along with alternative explanations. I will trace the history of Cope’s rule, discuss studies in which it was proposed that this directionality from the rule was empirically shown, discuss methodological issues. I propose alternative explanations that don’t rely on the claim that evolution is “progressive” or “driven.” I will also show that developmental plasticity throws a wrench in this claim, too. I will then end with a constructive dilemma argument showing that either Cope’s rule is a methodological artifact, or it’s due to passive evolution, since it’s not a driven trend as progressionists claim.
How developmental plasticity refutes the concept of “more evolved”
In my last article on this issue, I showed the logical fallacies inherent in the argument PumpkinPerson uses—it affirms the consequent, assuming it’s true leads to a logical contradiction, and of course reading phylogenies in the way he does just isn’t valid.
If the claim “more speciation events within a given taxon = more evolution” were valid, then we would consistently observe a direct correlation between the number of speciation events and the extent evolutionary change in all cases, but we don’t since evolutionary rates vary and other factors influence evolution, so the claim isn’t universally valid.
Take these specific examples: The horseshoe crab has a lineage going back hundreds of millions of years with few speciation events but it has undergone evolutionary changes. Consequently, microorganisms could undergo many speciation events and have relatively minor genetic change. Genetic and phenotypic diversity of the cichlid fishes (fishes that have undergone rapid evolutionary change and speciation), but the diversity between them doesn’t solely depend on speciation events, since factors like ecological niche partitioning and sexual selection also play a role in why they are different even though they are relatively young species (a specific claim that Herculano-Houzel made in her 2016 book The Human Advantage). Lastly, human evolution has relatively few speciation events but the extent of evolutionary change in our species is vast. Speciation events are of course crucial to evolution. But if one reads too much into the abstractness of the evolutionary tree then they will not read it correctly. The position of the terminal nodes is meaningless.
It’s important to realize that evolution just isn’t morphological change which then leads to the creation of a new species (this is macro-evolution), but there is also micro-evolution. Species that underwent evolutionary change without speciation include peppered moths, antibody resistance in bacteria, lactase persistence in humans, Darwin’s finches, and industrial melanism in moths. These are quite clearly evolutionary changes, and they’re due to microevolutionary changes.
Developmental plasticity directly refutes the contention of more evolved since individuals within a species can exhibit significant trait variation without speciation events. This isn’t captured by phylogenies. They’re typically modeled on genetic data and they don’t capture developmental differences that arise due to environmental factors during development. (See West-Eberhard’outstanding Developmental Plasticity and Evolution for more on how in many cases development precedes genetic change, meaning that the inference can be drawn that genes aren’t leaders in evolution, they’re mere followers.)
If “more evolved” is solely determined by the number of speciation events (branches) in a phylogeny, then species that exhibit greater developmental plasticity should be considered “more evolved.” But it is empirically observed that some species exhibit significant developmental plasticity which allows them to rapidly change their traits during development in response to environmental variation without undergoing speciation. So since the species with more developmental plasticity aren’t considered “more evolved” based on the “more evolved” criteria, then the assumption that “more evolved” is determined by speciation events is invalid. So the concept of “more evolved” as determined by speciation events or branches isn’t valid since it isn’t supported when considering the significant role of developmental plasticity in adaptation.
There is anagenesis and cladogenesis. Anagenesis is the creation of a species without a branching of the ancestral species. Cladogenesis is the formation of a new species by evolutionary divergence from an ancestral form. So due to evolutionary changes within a lineage, the organism that underwent evolutionary changes replaces the older one. So anagenesis shows that a species can slowly change and become a new species without there being a branching event. Horse, human, elephant, and bird evolution are examples of this.
Nonetheless, developmental plasticity can lead to anagenesis. Developmental, or phenotypic, plasticity is the ability of an organism to produce different phenotypes with the same genotype based on environmental cues that occur during development. Developmental plasticity can facilitate anagenesis, and since developmental plasticity is ubiquitous in development of not only an individual in a species but a species as a whole, then it is a rule and not an exception.
Directed mutation and evolution
Back in March, I wrote on the existence of directed mutations. Directed mutation directly speaks against the concept of “more evolved.” Here’s the argument:
(1) If directed mutations play a crucial role in helping organisms adapt to changing environments, then the notion of “more evolved” as a linear hierarchy is invalid.
(2) Directed mutations are known to occur and contribute to a species survivability in an environment undergoing change during development (the concept of evolvability is apt here).
(C) So the concept of “more evolved” as a linear hierarchy is invalid.
A directed mutation is a mutation that occurs due to environmental instability which helps an organism survive in the environment that changed while the individual was developing. Two mechanisms of DM are transcriptional activation (TA) and supercoiling. TAs can cause changes to single-stranded DNA, and can also cause supercoiling (the addition of more strands on DNA). TA can be caused by depression (a mechanism that occurs due to the absence of some molecule) or induction (the activation of an inactive gene which then gets transcribed). So these are examples of how nonrandom (directed) mutation and evolution can occur (Wright, 2000). Such changes are possibly through the plasticity of phenotypes during development and ultimately are due to developmental plasticity. These stress-directed mutations can be seen as quasi-Lamarckian (Koonin and Wolf, 2009). It’s quite clear that directed mutations are a thing and have been proven true.
DMs, along with developmental plasticity and evo-devo as a whole refute the simplistic thinking of “more evolved.”
Now here is the argument that PP is using, and why it’s false:
(1) More branches on a phylogeny indicate more speciation events.
(2) More speciation events imply a higher level of evolutionary advancement.
(C) Thus, more branches on a phylogeny indicate a higher level of evolutionary advancement.
The false premise is (2) since it suggests that more speciation events imply a higher level of evolutionary advancement. It implies a goal-directed aspect to evolution, where the generation of more species is equated with evolutionary progress. It’s just reducing evolution to linear advancement and progress; it’s a teleological bent on evolution (which isn’t inherently bad if argued for correctly, see Noble and Noble, 2022). But using mere branching events on a phylogeny to assume that more branches = more speciation = more evolved is simplistic thinking that doesn’t make sense.
If evolution encompasses changes in an organism’s phenotype, then changes in an organism’s phenotype, even without changing its genes, are considered examples of evolution. Evolution encompasses changes in an organism’s phenotype, so changes in an organism’s phenotype even without changes in genes are considered examples of evolution. There is nongenetic “soft inheritance” (see Bonduriansky and Day, 2018).
Organisms can exhibit similar traits due to convergent evolution. So it’s not valid to assume a direct and strong correlation between and organism’s position on a phylogeny and it’s degree of resemblance to a common ancestor.
Dolphins and ichthyosaurs share similar traits but dolphins are mammals while ichthyosaurs are reptiles that lived millions of years ago. Their convergent morphology demonstrates that common ancestry doesn’t determine resemblance. The Tasmanian and Grey wolf have independently evolved similar body plans and roles in their ecologies and despite different genetics and evolutionary history, they share a physical resemblance due to similar ecological niches. The LCA of bats and birds didn’t have wings but they have wings and they occurred independently showing that the trait emerged independently while the LCA didn’t have wings so it emerged twice independently. These examples show that the degree of resemblance to a common ancestor is not determined by an organism’s position on a phylogeny.
Now, there is a correlation between body size and branches (splits) on a phylogeny (Cope’s rule) and I will explain that later. That there is a correlation doesn’t mean that there is a linear progression and they don’t imply a linear progression. Years ago back in 2017 I used the example of floresiensis and that holds here too. And Terrance Deacon’s (1990) work suggests that pseudoprogressive trends in brain size can be explained by bigger whole organisms being selected—this is important because the whole animal is selected, not any one of its individual parts. The correlation isn’t indicative of a linear progression up some evolutionary ladder, either: It’s merely a byproduct of selecting larger animals (the only things that are selected).
I will argue that it is this remarkable parallelism, and not some progressive selection for increasing intelligence, that is responsible for many pseudoprogressive trends in mammalian brain evolution. Larger whole animals were being selected—not just larger brains—but along with the correlated brain enlargement in each lineage a multitude of parallel secondary internal adaptations followed. (Deacon, 1990)
Nonetheless, the claim here is one from DST—the whole organism is selected, so obviously so is it’s body plan (bauplan). Nevertheless, the last two havens for the progressionist is in the realm of brain size and body size. Deacon refuted the selection-for brain size claim, so we’re now left with body size.
Does the evolution of body size lend credence to claims of driven, progressive evolution?
The tendency for bodies to grow larger and larger over evolutionary time is something of a trusim. Since smaller bacterium have eventually evolved into larger (see Gould’s modal bacter argument), more complex multicellular organisms, then this must mean that evolution is progressive and driven, at least for body size, right? Wrong. I will argue here using a constructive dilemma that either evolution is passive and that’s what explains the evolution of body size increases, or is it due to methodological flaws in how body size is measured (length or mass)?
In Full House, Gould (1996) argued that the evolution of body size isn’t driven, but that it is passive, namely that it is evolution away from smaller size. Nonetheless, it seems that Cope’s (Deperet’s) rule is due to cladogenesis (the emergence of new species), not selection for body size per se (Bokma et al, 2015).
Given these three conditions, we note an increase in size of the largest species only because founding species start at the left wall, and the range of size can therefore expand in only one direction. Size of the most common species (the modal decade) never changes, and descendants show no bias for arising at larger sizes than ancestors. But, during each act, the range of size expands in the only open direction by increase in the total number of species, a few of which (and only a few) become larger (while none can penetrate the left wall and get smaller). We can say only this for Cope’s Rule: in cases with boundary conditions like the three listed above, extreme achievements in body size will move away from initial values near walls. Size increase, in other words, is really random evolution away from small size, not directed evolution toward large size. (Gould, 1996)
Dinosaurs were some of the largest animals to ever live. So we might say that there is a drivenness in their bodies to become larger and larger, right? Wrong. The evolution of body size in dinosaurs is passive, not driven (progressive) (Sookias, Butler, and Benson, 2012). Gould (1996) also showed passive trends in body size in plankton and forams. He also cited Stanley (1973) who argued that groups starting at the left wall of minimum complexity will increase in mean size as a consequence of randomness, not any driven tendency for larger body size.
In other, more legitimate cases, increases in means or extremes occur, as in our story of planktonic forams, because lineages started near the left wall of a potential range in size and then filled available space as the number of species increased—in other words, a drift of means or extremes away from a small size, rather than directed evolution of lineages toward large size (and remember that such a drift can occur within a regime of random change in size for each individual lineage—the “drunkard’s walk” model).
In 1973, my colleague Steven Stanley of Johns Hopkins University published a marvelous, and now celebrated, paper to advance this important argument. He showed (see Figure 27, taken from his work) that groups beginning at small size, and constrained by a left wall near this starting point, will increase in mean or extreme size under a regime of random evolution within each species. He also advocated that we test his idea by looking for right-skewed distributions of size within entire systems, rather than by tracking mean or extreme values that falsely abstract such systems as single numbers. In a 1985 paper I suggested that we speak of “Stanley’s Rule” when such an increase of means or extremes can best be explained by undirected evolution away from a starting point near a left wall. I would venture to guess (in fact I would wager substantial money on the proposition) that a large majority of lineages showing increase of body size for mean or extreme values (Cope’s Rule in the broad sense) will properly be explained by Stanley’s Rule of random evolution away from small size rather than by the conventional account of directed evolution toward selectively advantageous large size. (Gould, 1996)
Gould (1996) also discusses the results of McShea’s study, writing:
Passive trends (see Figure 33) conform to the unfamiliar model, championed for complexity in this book, of overall results arising as incidental consequences, with no favored direction for individual species, (McShea calls such a trend passive because no driver conducts any species along a preferred pathway. The general trend will arise even when the evolution of each individual species confirms to a “drunkard’s walk” of random motion.) For passive trends in complexity, McShea proposes the same set of constraints that I have advocated throughout this book: ancestral beginnings at a left wall of minimal complexity, with only one direction open to novelty in subsequent evolution.
But Baker et al (2015) claim that body size is an example of driven evolution. However, that they did not model cladogenetic factors calls their conclusion into question. But I think Baker et al’s claim doesn’t follow. If a taxon possesses a potential size range and the ancestral size approaches the lower limit of this range, it will result in a passive inclination for descendants to exceed the size of their ancestors. The taxon in question possesses a potential size range, and the ancestral size range is on the lower end of the range. So there will be a passive tendency for descendants of this taxon to be larger than their predecessors.
Here’s an argument that concludes that evolution is passive and not driven. I will then give examples of P2.
(1) Extant animals that are descended from more nodes on an evolutionary tree tend to be bigger than animals descended from fewer nodes (your initial premise).
(2) There exist cases where extant animals descended from fewer nodes are larger or more complex than those descended from more nodes (counterexamples of bats and whales, whales are descended from fewer nodes while having some of the largest body sizes in the world while bats are descended from more nodes while having a way comparatively smaller body size).
(C1) Thus, either P1 doesn’t consistently hold (not all extant animals descended from more nodes are larger), or it is not a reliable rule (given the counters).
(3) If P1 does not consistently hold true (not all extant animals descended from more nodes are larger), then it is not a reliable rule.
(4) P1 does not consistently hold true.
(C2) P1 is not a reliable rule.
(5) If P1 is not a reliable rule (given the existence of counterexamples), then it is not a valid generalization.
(6) P1 is not a reliable rule.
(C3) So P1 is not a valid generalization.
(6) If P1 isn’t a valid generalization in the context of evolutionary biology, then there must be exceptions to this observed trend.
(7) The existence of passive evolution, as suggested by the inconsistenties in P1, implies that the trends aren’t driven by progressive forces.
(C4) Thus, the presence of passive evolution and exceptions to P1’s trend challenge the notion of a universally progressive model of evolution.
(8) If the presence of passive evolution and exceptions to P1’s trend challenges the notion of a universally progressive model of evolution, then the notion of a universally progressive model of evolution isn’t supported by the evidence, as indicated by passive evolution and exceptions to P1’s trend.
(9) The presence of passive evolution and exceptions to P1’s trend challenge the notion. of a universally progressive model of evolution.
(1) Bluefin tuna are known to have a potential range of size, with some being small and others being massive (think of that TV show Deadliest Catch and the massive size ranges of tuna these fisherman catch, both in length and mass). So imagine a population of bluefin tuna where the ancestral size is found to be close to the lower end of their size range. So P2 is satisfied because bluefin tuna have a potential size range. So the ancestral size of the ancestors of the tuna were relatively small in comparison to the maximum size of the tuna.
(2) African elephants in some parts of Africa are small, due to ecological constraints and hunting pressures and these smaller-sized ancestors are close to the lower limit of the potential size range of African elephants. Thus, according to P1, there will be a passive tendency for descendants of these elephants to be larger than their smaller-sizes ancestors over time.
(3) Consider galapagos tortoises whom are also known for their large variation in size among the different species and populations on the galapagos islands. So consider a case of galapagos tortoises who have smaller body sizes due to either resource conditions or the conditions of their ecologies. So in this case, the potential size for the ancestors of these tortoises is close to the theoretical limit of their potential size range. Therefore, we can expect a passive tendency for descendants of these tortoises to evolve large body sizes.
Further, in Stanley’s (1973) study of Cope’s rule from fossil rodents, he observed that body size distributions in these rodents, over time, became bigger while the modal size stayed small. This doesn’t even touch the fact that because there are more small than large mammals, that there would be a passive tendency in large body sizes for mammals. This also doesn’t even touch the methodological issues in determining body size for the rule—mass, length? Nonetheless, Monroe and Bokma’s (2010) study showed that while there is a tendency for species to be larger than their ancestors, it was a mere 0.5 percent difference. So the increase in body size is explained by an increase in variance in body size (passiveness) not drivenness.
Explaining the rule
I think there are two explanations: Either a methodological artifact or passive evolution. I will discuss both, and I will then give a constructive dilemma argument that articulates this position.
Monroe and Bokma (2010) showed that even when Cope’s rule is assumed, the ancestor-descendant increase in body size showed a mere .4 percent increase. They further discussed methodological issues with the so-called rule, citing Solow and Wang (2008) who showed that Cope’s rule “appears” based on what assumptions of body size are used. For example, Monroe and Bokma (2010) write:
If Cope’s rule is interpreted as an increase in the mean size of lineages, it is for example possible that body mass suggests Cope’s rule whereas body length does not. If Cope’s rule is instead interpreted as an increase in the median body size of a lineage, its validity may depend on the number of speciation events separating an ancestor-descendant pair.
…
If size increase were a general property of evolutionary lineages – as Cope’s rule suggests – then even if its effect were only moderate, 120 years of research would probably have yielded more convincing and widespread evidence than we have seen so far.
Gould (1997) suggested that Cope’s rule is a mere psychological artifact. But I think it’s deeper than that. Now I will provide my constructive dilemma argument, now that I have ruled out body size being due to progressive, driven evolution.
The form of constructive dilemma goes: (1) A V B. (2) If A, then C. (3) If B, then D. (C) C V D. P1 represents a disjunction: There are two possible choices, A and B. P2 and P3 are conditional statements, that provide implications for both of the options. And C states that at least one or both of the implications have to be true (C or D).
Now, Gould’s Full House argument can be formulated either using modus tollens or constructive dillema:
(1) If evolution were a deterministic, teleological process, there would be a clear overall progression and a predetermined endpoint. (2) There is no predetermined endpoint or progression to evolution. (C) So evolution isn’t a deterministic or teleological process.
(1) Either evolution is a deterministic, teleological process (A) or it’s not (B). (2) If A, then there would be a clear direction and predetermined endpoint. (3) If B, then there is no overall direction or predetermined endpoint. (4) So either there is a clear overall progression (A), or there isn’t (B). (5) Not A. (6) Therefore, B.
Or (1) Life began at a relatively simple state (the left wall of complexity). (2) Evolution is influenced by a combination of chance events,, environmental factors and genetic variation. (3) Organisms may stumble I’m various directions along the path of evolution. (4) Evolution lacks a clear path or predetermined endpoint.
Now here is the overall argument combining the methodological issues pointed out by Sowe and Wang and the implications of passive evolution, combined with Gould’s Full House argument:
(1) Either Cope’s rule is a methodological artifact (A), or it’s due to passive, not driven evolution (B). (2) If Cope’s rule is a methodological artifact (A), then different ways to measure body size (length or mass) can come to different conclusions. (3) If Cope’s rule is due to passive, not driven evolution (B), then it implies that larger body sizes simply accumulate over time without being actively driven by selective pressures. (4) Either evolution is a deterministic, teleological process (C), or it is not (D). (5) If C, then there would be a clear overall direction and predetermined endpoint in evolution (Gould’s argument). (6) If D, then there is no clear overall direction or predetermined endpoint in evolution (Gould’s argument). (7) Therefore, either there is a clear overall direction (C) or there isn’t (D) (Constructive Dilemma). (8) If there is a clear overall direction (C) in evolution, then it contradicts passive, not driven evolution (B). (9) If there isn’t a clear overall direction (D) in evolution, then it supports passive, not driven evolution (B). (10) Therefore, either Cope’s rule is due to passive evolution or it’s a methodological artifact.
Conclusion
Evolution is quite clearly passive and non-driven (Bonner, 2013). The fact of the matter is, as I’ve shown, evolution isn’t driven (progressive), it is passive due to the drunken, random walk that organisms take from the minimum left wall of complexity. The discussions of developmental plasticity and directed mutation further show that evolution can’t be progressive or driven. Organism body plans had nowhere to go but up from the left wall of minimal complexity, and that means increase the variance in, say, body size is due to passive trends. Given the discussion here, we can draw one main inference: since evolution isn’t directed or progressive, then the so-called Cope’s (Deperet’s) rule is either due to passive trends or they are mere methodological artifacts. The argument I have mounted for that claim is sound and so, it obviously must be accepted that evolution is a random, drunken walk, not one of overall drivenness and progress and so, we must therefore look at the evolution of body size in this way.
Rushton tried to use the concept of evolutionary progress to argue that some races may be “more evolved” than other races, like “Mongoloids” being “more evolved” than “Caucasoids” who are “more evolved” than “Negroids.” But Rushton’s “theory” was merely a racist one, and it obviously fails upon close inspection. Moreover, even the claims Rushton made at the end of his book Race, Evolution, and Behavior don’t even work. (See here.) Evolution isn’t progressive so we can’t logically state that one population group is more “advanced” or “evolved” than another. This is of course merely Rushton being racist with shoddy “explanations” used to justify it. (Like in Rushton’s long-refuted r/K selection theory or Differential-K theory, where more “K-evolved” races are “more advanced” than others.)
Lastly, this argument I constructed based on the principles of Gould’s argument shows that there is no progress to evolution.
P1 The claim that evolutionary “progress” is real and not illusory can only be justified iff organisms deemed more “advanced” outnumber “lesser” organisms.
P2 There are more “lesser” organisms (bacteria/insects) on earth than “advanced” organisms (mammals/species of mammals).
C Therefore evolutionary “progress” is illusory.
Examining Misguided Notions of Evolutionary “Progress”
2650 words
Introduction
For years, PumpkinPerson (PP) has been pushing an argument which states that “if you’re the first branch, and you don’t do anymore branching, then you’re less evolved than higher branches.” This is the concept of “more evolved” or the concept of evolutionary progress. Over the years I have written a few articles on the confused nature of this thinking. PP seems to like the argument since Rushton deployed a version of it for his r/K selection (Differential K) theory, which stated that “Mongoloids” are more “K evolved” than “Caucasians” who are more “K evolved” than “Negroids”, to use Rushton’s (1992) language. Rushton posited that this ordering occurred due to the cold winters that the ancestors of “Mongoloids” and “Caucasoids” underwent, and he theorized that this led to evolutionary progress, which would mean that certain populations are more advanced than others (Rushton, 1992; see here for response). It is in this context that PP’s statement above needs to be carefully considered and analyzed to determine its implications and relevance to Rushton’s argument. It commits the affirming the consequent fallacy, and assuming the statement is true leads to many logical inconsistenties like there being a “most evolved” species,
Why this evolutionary progress argument is fallacious
if you’re the first branch, and you don’t do anymore branching, then you’re less evolved than higher branches.
This is one of the most confused statements I have ever read on the subject of phylogenies. This misconception, though, is so widespread that there have been quite a few papers that talk about this and talk about how to steer students away from this kind of thinking about evolutionary trees (Crisp and Cook, 2004; Baum, Smith, and Donovan, 2005; Gregory, 2008; Omland, Cook, and Crisp, 2008). This argument is invalid since the concept of “evolved” in evolutionary trees doesn’t refer to a hierarchical scale, where higher branches are “more evolved” than lower branches (which are “less evolved”). What evolutionary trees do is show historical relationships between different species, which shows common ancestry and divergence over time. So each branch represents a lineage and all living organisms have been evolving foe the same amount of time since the last common ancestor (LCA). Thus, the position of a branch on the tree doesn’t determine a species’ level of evolution.
The argument is invalid since it incorrectly assumes that the position of the branch on a phylogeny determines the evolution or the “evolutionary advancement” of a species. Here’s how I formulate this argument:
(P1) If you’re the first branch on the evolutionary tree and you don’t do any more branching, then you’re less evolved than higher branches.
(P2) (Assumption) Evolutionary advancement is solely determined by the position on the tree and the number of branches.
(C) So species represented by higher branches on the evolutionary tree are more evolved than species represented by lower branches.
There is a contradiction in P2, since as I explained above, each branch represents a new lineage and every species on the tree is equally evolved. PP’s assumption seems to be that newer branches have different traits than the species that preceded it, implying that there is an advancement occurring. Nevertheless, I can use a reductio to refute the argument.
Let’s consider a hypothetical scenario in which this statement is true: “If you’re the first branch and you don’t do any more branching, then you’re less evolved than higher branches.” This suggests that the position of a species on a phylogeny determines its level of evolution. So according to this concept, if a species occupies a higher branch, it should be “more evolved” than a species on a lower branch. So following this line of reasoning, a species that has undergone extensive branching and diversification should be classified as “more evolved” compared to a species that has fewer branching points.
Now imagine that in this hypothetical scenario, we have species A and species B in a phylogeny. Suppose that species A is the first branch and that it hasn’t undergone any branching. Conversely, species B, which is represented on a higher branch, has experienced extensive branching and diversification, which adheres to the criteria for a species to be considered “more evolved.” But there are logical implications for the concept concerning the positions of species A and species B on the phylogeny.
So according to the concept of linear progression which is implied in the original statement, if species B is “more evolved” than species A due to its higher branch position, it logically follows that species B should continue to further evolve and diversify. This progression should lead to new branching points, as each subsequent stage would be considered “more evolved” than the last. Thus, applying the line of reasoning in the original statement, it suggests that there should always be a species represented on an even higher branch than species B, and this should continue ad infinitim, with no endpoint.
The logical consequence of the statement is that an infinite progression of increasingly evolved species, each species being represented by a higher branch than the one before, without any final of ultimate endpoint for a “most evolved” species. This result leads to an absurdity, since it contradicts our understanding of evolution as an ongoing and continuous process. The idea of a linear and hierarchical progression of a species in an evolutionary tree culminating in a “most evolved” species isn’t supported by our scientific understanding and it leads to an absurd outcome.
Thus, the logical implications of the statement “If you’re the first branch and you don’t do any more branching, then you’re less evolved than higher branches” leads to an absurd and contradictory result and so it must be false. The concept of the position of a species on an evolutionary tree isn’t supported by scientific evidence and understanding. Phylogenies represent historical relationships and divergence events over time.
(1) Assume the original claim is true: If you’re the first branch and you don’t do any more branching, then you’re less evolved than higher branches.
(2) Suppose species A is the first branch and undergoes no further branching.
(3) Now take species B which is in a higher branch which has undergone extensive diversification and branching, making it “more evolved”, according to the statement in (1).
(4) But based on the concept of linear progression implied in (1), species B should continue to evolved and diversity even further, leading to new branches and increased evolution.
(5) Following the logic in (1), there should always be a species represented on an even higher branch than species B, which is even more evolved.
(6) This process should continue ad infinitim with species continually branching and becoming “more evolved” without an endpoint.
(7) This leads to an absurd result, since it suggests that there is no species that could be considered “more evolved” or reach a final stage of evolution, contradicting our understanding of evolution as a continuous, ongoing process, with no ultimate endpoint.
(8) So since the assumption in (1) leads to an absurd result, then it must be false.
So the original statement is false, and a species’ position on a phylogeny doesn’t determine the level of evolution and the superiority of a species. The concept of a linear and hierarchical progression of advancement in a phylogeny is not supported by scientific evidence and assuming the statement in (1) is true leads to a logically absurd outcome. Each species evolves in its unique ecological context, without reaching a final state of evolution or hierarchical scale of superiority. This reductio ad absurdum argument therefore reveals the fallacy in the original statement.
Also, think about the claim that there are species that are “more evolved” than other species. This implies that there are “less evolved” species. Thus, a logical consequence of the claim is that there could be a “most evolved” species.
So if a species is “most evolved”, it would mean that that species has surpassed all others in evolutionary advancement and there are no other species more advanced than it. Following this line of reasoning, there should be no further branching or diversification of this species since it has already achieved the highest level of evolution. But evolution is an ongoing process. Organisms continously adapt to and change their surroundings (the organism-environment system), and change in response to this. But if the “most evolved” species is static, this contradicts what we know about evolution, mainly that it is continuous, ongoing change—it is dynamic. Further, as the environment changes, the “most evolved” species could become less suited to the environment’s conditions over time, leading to a decline in its numbers or even it’s extinction. This would then imply that there would have been other species that are “more evolved.” (It merely shows the response of the organism to its environment and how it develops differently.) Finally, the idea of a “most evolved” species implies an endpoint of evolution, which contradicts our knowledge of evolution and the diversification of life one earth. Therefore, the assumption that there is a “most evolved” species leads to a logical contradiction and an absurdity based on what we know about evolution and life on earth.
The statement possesses scala naturae thinking, which is also known as the great chain of being. This is something Rushton (2004) sought to bring back to evolutionary biology. However, the assumptions that need to hold for this to be true—that is, the assumptions that need to hold for this kind of tree reading to even be within the realm of possibility is false. This is wonderfully noted by Gregory (2008) who states that “The order of terminal noses is meaningless.” Crisp and Cook (2004) also state how such tree-reading is intuitive and this intuition of course is false:
Intuitive interpretation of ancestry from trees is likely to lead to errors, especially the common fallacy that a species-poor lineage is more ‘ancestral’ or ‘diverges earlier’ than does its species-rich sister group. Errors occur when trees are read in a one-sided way, which is more commonly done when trees branch asymmetrically.
There are several logical implications of that statement. I’ve already covered the claim that there is a kind of progression and advancement in evolution—a linear and hierarchical ranking—and the fixed endpoint (“most evolved”). Further, in my view, this leads to value judgments, that some species are “better” or “superior” to others. It also seems to ignore that the branching signifies not which species has undergone more evolution, but the evolutionary relationships between species. Finally, evolution occurs independently in each lineage and is based on their specific histories and interactions between developmental resources, it’s not valid to compare species as “more evolved” than others based on the relationships between species on evolutionary trees, so it’s based on an arbitrary comparison between species.
Finally, I can refute this using Gould’s full house argument.
P1: If evolution is a ladder of progress, with “more evolved” species on higher rungs, then the fossil record should demonstrate a steady increase in complexity over time.
P2: The fossils record does not shit a steady increase in complexity over time.
C: Therefore, evolution is not a ladder of progress and species cannot be ranked as “more evolved” based on complexity.
P1: If the concept of “more evolved” is valid, then there would be a linear and hierarchical progression in the advancement of evolution, wjtcertsin species considered superior to others based on their perceived level of evolutionary change.
P2: If there a linear and hierarchical progression of advancement in evolution, then the fossil record should demonstrate a steady increase in complexity over time, with species progressively becoming more complex and “better” in a hierarchical sense.
P3: The fossils record does not show a steady increase in complexity over time; it instead shows a diverse and branching pattern of evolution.
C1: So the concept of “more evolved” isn’t valid, since there is an absence of a steady increase in complexity in the fossil record and this refutes the notion of a linear and hierarchical progression of advancement in evolution.
P4: If the concept of “more evolved” is not valid, then there is no objective hierarchy of superiority among species based in their positions on an evolutionary tree.
C2: Thus, there is no objective hierarchy of superiority among species based on their positions on an evolutionary tree.
There is one final fallacy contained in that statement: it affirms the consequent. This logical fallacy takes the form of: If P then Q, P is true so Q is true.” Even if the concept of “more evolved” were valid, just because a species doesn’t do any more branching doesn’t mean it’s less evolved. So this reasoning is as follows: If you’re the first branch and you don’t do anymore branching, then you’re less evolved than higher branches (If P and Q, then R). It affirms the consequent like this: You didn’t do anymore branching (Q), so this branch has to be less evolved than the higher branches (R). It incorrectly infers the consequent Q (not doing anymore branching) as a sufficient condition for the antecedent P (being the first branch), which leads to the flawed conclusion (R) that the species is less evolved than higher branches. Just because a species doesn’t do anymore branching doesn’t mean it’s less evolved than another species. There could be numerous reasons why branching didn’t occur and it doesn’t directly determine evolutionary status. The argument infers being less evolved from doing less branching, which affirms the consequent. If a species doesn’t do anymore branching then that branch is less evolved than a higher branch. So since the argument affirms the consequent, it is therefore invalid.
Conclusion
Reading phylogenies in such a manner—in a way that would make one infer the conclusion that evolution is progressive and that there are “more evolved” species—although intuitive is false. Misconceptions like this along with many others while reading evolutionary trees are so persistent that much thought has been put into educating the public on right and wrong ways to read evolutionary trees.
As I showed in my argument ad absurdums where I accepted the claim as true, it leads to logical inconsistenties and goes against everything we know about evolution. Evolution is not progressive, it’s merely local change. That a species changes over time from another species doesn’t imply anything about “how evolved” (“more or less”) it is in comparison to the other. Excising this thinking is tough, but it is doable by understanding how evolutionary trees are constructed and how to read them correctly. It further affirms the consequent, leading to a false conclusion.
All living species have spent the same amount of time evolving. Branching merely signifies a divergence, not a linear scale of advancement. Of course one would think that if evolution is happening and one species evolves into another and that this relationship is shown on a tree that this would indicate that the newer species is “better” in some way in comparison to the species it derived from. But it merely suggests that the species faced different challenges which influenced its evolution; each species adapted and survived in its own unique evolutionary ecology, leading to diversification and the formation of newer branches on the tree. Evolution does not follow a linear path of progress, and there is no inherent hierarchy of superiority among species based on their position on the evolutionary tree. While the tree visually represents relationships between species, it doesn’t imply judgments like “better” or “worse”, “more evolved” or “less evolved.” It merely highlights the complexity and diversity of all life on earth.
Evolution is quite obviously not progressive, and even if it were, we wouldn’t see evolutionary progression from reading evolutionary trees, since such evolutionary relationships between species can be ladderized or not, with many kinds of different branches that may not be intuitive to those who read evolutionary trees as showing “more evolved” species, they nevertheless show a valid evolutionary relationship.
Evolutionary Progress
2750 words
Phylogeny-reading is hard for some. So hard that there are numerous papers in the literature that correct many students’ misunderstandings that come along with reading these trees (eg Crisp and Cook, 2004 Baum, Smith, and Donovan, 2005; Gregory, 2008; Omland, Cook, and Crisp, 2008). Some may read certain trees as showing a type of “evolutionary progress” in the history of live, from “primitive” to more “advanced” life forms. Notions of “progress”—both in society and evolution—still continue even to this day (see Bowler, 2021 for a great discussion). That if one hasn’t “branched” on the tree, they are then “less evolved” than organisms that “branched more.” This is illustrated wonderfully by PumpkinPerson’s misunderstanding where he claims:
If you’re the first branch, and you don’t do anymore branching, then you are less evolved than higher branches
This conceptual confusion comes from his idea that more branching = more evolution, therefore more branching equals “more evolved” organisms. But, unless an organisms is extinct, all organisms have evolved for the same amount of time, so this defeats his claim here.
Such fantastical claims of “evolutionary progress”, in humans, come from JP Rushton who, although he didn’t explicitly state it (Lynn did), Rushton (1997: 293) said he “had alluded to similar ideas in previous writings.” But Rushton (1992) was more explicit—he said that “One theoretical possibility is that evolution is progressive and that some populations are more “advanced” than others.” This is in reference to his long-debunked theory that Asians are more K-selected than whites who are more K-selected than blacks, dubbed “r/K selection theory” or “Differential K theory.” But I’m not aware of Rushton wrongly inferring this from tree-reading, that’s a PP thing.
So Rushton, like PP, assumed that those groups that emerged after older groups are more “evolutionarily advanced” than others. But, although Rushton has a few editions of his book after the publication of Gould’s (1996) Full House where he refutes the claim that evolution is “progressive”, Rushton is strangely silent on the matter. In any case, any form of “progress” to evolution—if it did exist—would be upended by decimations leading toward species extinction.
Progressionists think that evolution is both directional and, obviously, progressive. That is, there seems to be a goal to get more and more complex, or at least a bigger body size, and that this is “good.” But there seems to be a kind of inherent, unspoken of “value” one has to attach to views about “evolutionary progress.” For instance, Bonner (2015: 1187) states that “If we look at evolution from a great distance, we see a progression.” For example, see Bonner’s (2019) Figure 1 where he shows an apparent increase in body size which can be said to be “progression.” This can, though, be explained passively, that is, explained by a non-directedness for body size in evolution as Gould (2011: 162), using his drunkard’s walk analogy writes (Gould’s emphasis):
Given these three conditions, we note an increase in size of the largest species only because founding species start at the left wall, and the range of size can therefore expand in only one direction. Size of the most common species (the modal decade) never changes, and descendants show no bias for arising at larger sizes than ancestors. But, during each act, the range of size expands in the only open direction by increase in the total number of species, a few of which (and only a few) become larger (while none can penetrate the left wall and get smaller). We can say only this for Cope’s Rule: in cases with boundary conditions like the three listed above, extreme achievements in body size will move away from initial values near walls. Size increase, in other words, is really random evolution away from small size, not directed evolution toward large size.
Such notions of “evolutionary progress” do date back to Aristotle, as Rushton rightly notes, who classified “lower” and “higher” organisms. The modern view of the scala naturae is that there is a steady line from less complex to more complex organisms, with humans at or near the end. Bonner, in his 1988 book, does argue for “higher or lower” species, but in his newer 2013 Randomness in Evolution he argues that evolutionary change is mostly passive or non-driven. Rushton (1997: 294) cites Bonner (1988: 6) saying that it is acceptable to use the terms “higher” and “lower” organisms. But Diogo et al (2013: 16) write:
There are two main problems with this latter statement. Firstly, there are many examples of how older animals (from
‘lower’ strata) are often considered, in various aspects of their biology and physiology, more complex than more recent ‘higher’ animals (from ‘higher’ strata). … Secondly, and perhaps more important in the context of the present review, in the original idea of scala naturae the term ‘higher’ taxa referred to humans and to the animals that are anatomically more similar to humans, and this is still the way in which this term is used by many authors nowadays (reviewed by Diogo & Wood, 2012a, 2013)
Although humans went through more transitions than other primates, this did not result in more muscles than in other primates and that “there is effectively no general trend to increase the number of muscles at the nodes leading to hominoids and to modern humans” (Diogo et al, 2013: 18). Thus, using the tortured logic of progressionists, humans are less evolved than other primates.
Using PP’s tortured logic on tree-reading, I asked him “Who is more evolved?” in the following tree from Strassert et al (2021):
PP then says that “new research inspires fresh look at evolutionary progress.” But some confusions from PP must first be noted. He “predicted” Amorphea to be “less evolved” than Diaphoretickes; but humans are in Amorphea, therefore humans—to PP—are less evolved than plants. PP then said that Wiki says that Amorphea is “unranked”—but all “unranked” means here is that the classification is not a part of the traditional Linnean taxonomy. PP likes his simpler trees where he can get the “conclusion” that he hopes for—that there are more and less evolved organisms which conform to his a priori biases on the nature of evolution. He then said that Amorphea does not appear to be a widely recognized taxon… but it has been noted that “Amorphea is robustly supported in most phylogenomic analyses” (Burki et al, 2019: 7) while Amorphea and Diaphoretickes form two Domains in Eukaryotes (Adl et al, 2019). So, it seems, Amorphea IS a widely-accepted accepted supergroup.
The philosopher of biology and mind Jianhui Li (2019) argues against many of Gould’s arguments he forwarded in Full House and Wonderful Life (Gould, 1989, 1996). Attempting to refute one of Gould’s arguments—that evolutionary progress is due to human arrogance—Li (2019) tries to argue that Gould objects to the idea of evolutionary progress on the basis that such “a belief in evolutionary progress may cause human arrogance and racism and even inequality among different species, and arrogance, racism, and inequality are morally wrong; thus, the idea of evolutionary progress is wrong. Such an argument is obviously untenable” (Li, 2019: 301). The thing is, Gould is not incorrect in his argument that a view of evolutionary “progress” (social Darwinisim) would lead to racism and the thought that we hold dominion over other animals. Social Darwinistic thought was indeed used to enact racist policies (Pressman, 2017), and this thought was based on a view of progress in evolution. (Rushton’s attempted revival of the scala naturae in humans can, of course, be seen in Gould’s eyes as using evolution to justify certain types of attitudes—in this kind, racist attitudes—which are due to certain kinds of thought in society.)
In attempting to refute Gould’s next argument—that value terms have no use in evolution—Li tries to show that, going off the previous argument, Gould used value judgments in trying to show that belief in evolutionary progress would lead to racist and speciesist views. In a nutshell, Li says that evolutionary progress is, quoting Ayala, “directional change toward the better.” But, as Gould has always argued, these kinds of value-judgements do not make any sense. What is “better” in one environment may mean that, in comparison to another environment, we may say that it is “worse” than another so-called adaptation. I have even said in the past that the terms “superior” (higher) and “inferior” (lower) only make sense in light of anatomy, where the head is superior to the foot and the foot is superior to the head.
Li then discusses the possibility that “natural selection” can serve as the basis for evolutionary progress, contra Gould. Gould did say that, if progress in evolution was real, any kind of progress would be wiped out during mass extinction events. Invoking Gould’s punctuated equilibrium theory, Li says that the theory states that there are mass extinctions as well as mass explosions (rapid speciation) and that those organisms that do not go extinct continue on to show forms of progress. Li then says that certain traits are not only local adaptations but non-local adaptations since they can be seen to be useful in all environments. That certain traits are useful in all environments does not mean that evolutionary progress is real; it only means that, at that time and space for that organism, the trait is useful and will persist and, if it becomes non-useful, the trait will desist in the lineage. It is only, like most everything, based on context. Li says next that although a replaying of life’s tape will lead to unpredictability as regards what kinds of animals evolve, we do know that there will be complex organisms. The emergence of a similar organism like humans would be an inevitability, says Li, which means that evolution is both directional and driven towards complexity. But, as argues Gould, McShea, and Bonner, evolution is a series of random, non-driven, processes that, through our biased lens looks like “progress.”
Li then tries to show that Gould’s drunkard’s walk argument is false. The argument goes: Imagine a drunk person leaving a bar. Now imagine a wall and a gutter. After being kicked out of the bar, the drunk has the bar’s wall behind him on one side, and the street gutter at the other. Although the drunkard has no intention of doing anything since he is extremely drunk, by statistical chance, he will eventually end up in the gutter after bouncing around the wall, near the gutter and everywhere in between. Using this argument by analogy, Gould likens the evolutionary process the same way. Li then tries to argue that Gould’s rejection of adaptationism and natural selection is the wrong way to go—but Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini (2009; 2013) argue that “natural selection” is not and cannot be a mechanism since there are no laws of selection for trait fixation and no mind behind the process of selection. So this argument from Li, too, fails.
Lastly, Li attempts to take down what Gould terms his “modal bacter” argument in Full House. Bacteria are some of the simplest organisms on earth, while humans are some of the most complex, says Li. He also says that Gould does not deny that complexity has increased since the dawn of bacteria—another fact. Upon a close reading of Full House, it can be appreciated that the evolution of complexity is not driven; it is passive and non-driven. But Li (2019: 307-308) says that “although bacteria rule the earth, human beings are higher than them, not only because human beings have more complex organic structures but also because human beings have abilities that are higher than those of bacteria. The evolutionary history of life from bacteria to humans is a history of constant progress.” But what Li fails to realize is that Gould’s modal bacter wonderfully illustrates his case: Life began at the left wall of minimal complexity, while the bacteria are right next to this left wall of minimal complexity with random “walks” dictating the evolution of complexity. The mode of life—bacteria—as Gould (2011: 170) rightly asks, “can we possibly argue that progress provides a central defining thrust to evolution if complexity’s mode has never changed?” The bacterial mode never alters but the distribution of complexity becomes increasingly skewed toward the right away from the modal bacter during evolutionary time. But Gould (2011: 171) swiftly takes care of this claim:
A claim for general progress based on the right tail alone is absurd for two primary reasons: First, the tail is small and occupied by only a tiny percentage of species (more than 80 percent of multicellular animal species are arthropods, and we generally regard almost all members of this phylum as primitive and non progressive). Second, the occupants of the extreme right edge through time do not form an evolutionary sequence, but rather a motley series of disparate forms that have tumbled into this position, one after the other. Such a sequence through time might read: bacterium, eukaryotic cell, marine alga, jellyfish, trilobite, nautiloid, placoderm fish, dinosaur, saber-toothed cat, and Homo sapiens. Beyond the first two transitions, not a single form in this sequence can possibly be a direct ancestor of the next in line.
Li, it seems, is confused on the modal bacter argument—it is an inevitability that more complex organisms (the right wall) would arise after the less complex left wall, but this does not denote progress in the Darwinian sense; it only denotes that change and evolution is random. What this does show is, as Gould argued, our anthropocentric biases lead us to the conclusion that we are “higher” than other animals, on the basis of our accomplishments.
Using Gould’s arguments in Full House, I constructed this syllogism with the knowledge that “progress” can be justified if and only if “more advanced” organisms outnumber “less advanced” organisms:
P1 The claim that evolutionary “progress” is real and not illusory can only be justified iff organisms deemed more “advanced” outnumber “lesser” organisms.
P2 There are more “lesser” organisms (bacteria/insects) on earth than “advanced” organisms (mammals/species of mammals).
C Therefore evolutionary “progress” is illusory.
York and Clark, in their article Stephen Jay Gould’s Critique of Progress (2011) put Gould’s opposition to evolutionary and social progress well:
However, Gould also focused on contingency and the critique of progress to make a larger point about science and society. The belief in progress is a prime example of how social biases can distort science. Gould aimed to show that the natural world does not conform to human aspirations. Nature does not have human meaning embedded in it, and it does not provide direction to how humans should live. We live, instead, in a world that only has meaning of our own making. Rather than viewing this situation as disheartening, Gould saw it as liberating because it empowers us to make our own purpose. Gould stressed, similar to Karl Marx and other radical thinkers, that we make our own history and that the future is open.
Conclusion
Hold-outs for the claim that evolution is progressive are rare in today’s contemporary biology. Rushton was one of the last big names to try to argue that evolution is progressive. (These arguments are discussed here, here, and here.) Although Bonner used to be a progressionist, he changed his view in 2013, agreeing with Gould and McShea that evolution is random and non-driven—that it is passive. Dogo et al (2013) showed that there is no increase in muscles in the nodes leading towards Homo sapiens, so “humans are relatively simplified primates” (Diogo et al, 2013: 18). Li (2019) has some of the best attempts at taking down Gould’s anti-progress arguments but he comes up really short. Evolution just is not progressive, no matter who wants it to be (Ruse, 1996).
All in all, the concept of progress in evolution seems to be trending away from being touted as reality. As we learn more and more about the passive and non-driven evolutionary process, we will put to rest such simplistic notions of “more or less evolved”, “superior and inferior” organisms to rest. Because all organisms that are not extinct have undergone the same amount of evolutionary time and therefore have been evolving for that amount of time. This does not, of course, speak to the fact that MORE evolution could happen in certain species in certain timespans, but this DOES NOT mean that the species that undergoes more evolution is “more evolved” or “superior.” Gould, contrary to some, has definitively and convincingly put these kinds of anthropocentric arguments to bed. By conflating value judgments with evolution, we lose the beauty of what evolution really is—random, non-driven change that has caused all of the biological wonder we see around us today.
NotPoliticallyCorrect 