On the Origin of Species
My preferred way of engaging with books is reconstruction. These notes were created during my reading process to aid my own understanding and not written for the purpose of instruction. With that said, I’ve decided to share these unedited notes on the off chance they are helpful to other readers.
The Process of Evolution
Evolution contains three parts:
Variability: organisms vary in their traits from generation to generation
Inheritance: organisms pass on some of their traits from generation to generation
Natural selection: organisms are selected for the “fittest” traits through survival or sexual selection. Darwin acknowledged that natural selection isn’t the only mode through which evolution occurs, for example he cites human selection as an alternative.
Darwin did not know the mechanism by which 1 and 2 occurred, namely through genes.
The Properties of Evolution
Ambivalence
We see beautiful adaptations everywhere and in every part of the organic world… All these results, as we shall more fully see in the next chapter, follow from the struggle for life.
Kant’s unsocial sociability, Rousseau’s amore propre, Smith’s discussion of private vice and public virtue all pale in comparison to the immense ambivalence to Darwin’s struggle for life. All the best things and most beautiful adaptations we see in life are rooted from existential struggle and death.
This might make us appreciate these adaptations more and maybe even gain a respect for death, but it leaves the road forward extremely bleak, it is as if we have to choose between extreme competition or annihilation when designing our systems.
The reason that death and destruction MUST ensue is because of the geometric increase of species: 2 begets 4, 4 begets 8… But resources are constant or at best linear.
All that we can do is to keep steadily in mind that each organic being is striving to increase in a geometrical ratio; that each, at some period of its life, during some season of the year, during each generation, or at intervals, has to struggle for life and to suffer great destruction. When we reflect on this struggle we may console ourselves with the full belief that the war of nature is not incessant, that no fear is felt, that death is generally prompt, and that the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply.
Competition between Similars
In addition to the Girardian answer to why similars fight, Darwin gives a more direct answer: they occupy the same niche, they compete after the same resources.
Divergence
Natural selection leads to divergence, because intra-species competition is the fiercest so the only way to have an abundance of life forms is to have a “division of labor”. Of course, this system level behavior is already observed in economic system with Marx, Smith, etc…
Natural selection, also, leads to divergence of character; for the more organic beings diverge in structure, habits and constitution, by so much the more can a large number be supported on the area, of which we see proof by looking to the inhabitants of any small spot, and to the productions naturalized in foreign lands. Therefore, during the modification of the descendants of any one species, and during the incessant struggle of all species to increase in numbers, the more diversified the descendants become, the better will be their chance of success in the battle for life. Thus the small differences distinguishing varieties of the same species, steadily tend to increase, till they equal the greater differences between species of the same genus, or even of distinct genera.
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Most of the animals and plants which live close round any small piece of ground, could live on it (supposing its nature not to be in any way peculiar), and may be said to be striving to the utmost to live there; but, it is seen, that where they come into the closest competition, the advantages of diversification of structure, with the accompanying differences of habit and constitution, determine that the inhabitants, which thus jostle each other most closely, shall, as a general rule, belong to what we call different genera and orders.
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The advantage of diversification of structure in the inhabitants of the same region is, in fact, the same as that of the physiological division of labour in the organs of the same individual body--a subject so well elucidated by Milne Edwards. No physiologist doubts that a stomach by being adapted to digest vegetable matter alone, or flesh alone, draws most nutriment from these substances. So in the general economy of any land, the more widely and perfectly the animals and plants are diversified for different habits of life, so will a greater number of individuals be capable of there supporting themselves. A set of animals, with their organization but little diversified, could hardly compete with a set more perfectly diversified in structure.
Production of New Species
An important part for the creation of new species, Darwin believes, is isolation. Isolation protects the species from “the immigration of better adapted organisms; and thus new places in the natural economy of the district will be left open to be filled up by the modification of the old inhabitants… isolation will give time for a new variety to be improved at a slow rate; and this may sometimes be of much importance”. Isolation can help organisms achieve new global maximums by first adapting in disadvantageous ways that would be impossible in a more competitive environment. Modern theorists have hypothesized that altruistic behaviors first developed in isolated environments.
But overall he believes that organisms that change the “history of the organic world” come from large and populous locations because 1. There are more species to begin with 2. Competition is fiercer so the species are better adapted 3. New forms can quickly spread over a large area.
This speaks a lot about the advantageous of university. In university, you are protected from selection forces: mating/money/prestiege… which enables you to reach global maximums that you can’t achieve outside e.g. philosophy/math etc. The value of universities, it thus seems, is mostly negative: from what it does not have.
Implications of Evolution
Against Design
Evolution in the long run, gives the illusion of intentionality and sentient design. Both of these are misunderstood. The latter makes us more suspicious of human genius and encourages us to use system forces instead. The former makes us suspicious of systems and ideas rather than individual people, it lessens our drive to scapegoat.
Examine Selection forces
Sexual selection has dramatically affected the process of pure asexual natural selection. “The result is not death to the unsuccessful competitor, but few or no offspring. Sexual selection is, therefore, less rigorous than natural selection.”
In like manner, we need to examine the selection forces in any system as a mode of inquiring about their genealogy, to better understand the system. e.g. you would want to know the selection forces in ivy leagues to best understand the system.
Relativism and The Descent of Man
Darwin points out that biologists have not been able to define in a satisfying manner “what is meant by an advance in organisation”. There are an extensive amount of standards: judging vertebra on their intelligence or their proximity to man, judging fish on their proximity to amphibians or how bony they are. The most obscure are the botanists who contradict each other: “here some botanists rank those plants as highest which have every organ, as sepals, petals, stamens and pistils, fully developed in each flower; whereas other botanists, probably with more truth, look at the plants which have their several organs much modified and reduced in number as the highest.”
Darwin says that even the standard of “the amount of differentiation and specialisation of the several organs in each being when adult” which natural selection generally tracks is not constant for “it is quite possible for natural selection gradually to fit a being to a situation in which several organs would be superfluous or useless”.
Darwin says that his theory, is not broken by the existence of these “lowly” less advanced life forms, and in the process, he challenges the very idea of this ranking. The perfectly adapted, humble earthworm shows how there is no objective measure we can judge beings, but only how well adapted they are relative to their environment: “On our theory the continued existence of lowly organisms offers no difficulty; for natural selection, or the survival of the fittest, does not necessarily include progressive development--it only takes advantage of such variations as arise and are beneficial to each creature under its complex relations of life. And it may be asked what advantage, as far as we can see, would it be to an infusorian animalcule--to an intestinal worm--or even to an earth-worm, to be highly organised. If it were no advantage, these forms would be left, by natural selection, unimproved or but little improved, and might remain for indefinite ages in their present lowly condition…. the main cause lies in the fact that under very simple conditions of life a high organization would be of no service--possibly would be of actual disservice, as being of a more delicate nature, and more liable to be put out of order and injured.”
Natural selection is a relativistic theory, it does not to seek to falsely categorize the world into an objective standard but only judges a being within it’s own measures: “Natural selection acts exclusively by the preservation and accumulation of variations, which are beneficial under the organic and inorganic conditions to which each creature is exposed at all periods of life. The ultimate result is that each creature tends to become more and more improved in relation to its conditions.”
Having published in an era when so many academics were proposing teleologies of history, it is precisely this relativism and randomness that shocked and angered the crowd. We are forced to conclude that man is not objectively better than the humble earth worm:
Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hopes for a still higher destiny in the distant future. But we are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with the truth as far as our reason allows us to discover it. I have given the evidence to the best of m y ability; and we must acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system—with all these exalted powers—Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.
Philosophical Implications
Darwin’s purely descriptive view challenges many theories scientific and philosophical by forcing them to give an evolutionary explanation of their objects. e.g. when and why did the “soul” evolve? OR how did we evolve to track moral truth? It is questions like these that make Darwin’s theory the ultimate genealogical critique. Because the mechanism that Darwin highlights is quite random and nihilistic.
Evolution also challenges Aristotle’s functionalism, traits evolved because they were adapted, they were built for a certain thing or the other. And it also challenges any teleology, at least forcing the opponent to explain why such evolution would track such a teleology.