WHAT EVOLUTION THEORY IS TELLING US

It is time epigeneticists and geneticists look over their collective shoulders. They have been rolling ahead so fast that they have not stopped to pick the daisies with the warning that when they do they might be shocked at what we find.  

We all learned about the big bang as the beginning of it all and learned about the slow evolution of the physical earth through cosmology as well. We learned about evolution theory and genetics in biology classes; some learned longer ago than others did. We learned the uneasy alliance between our physical anatomy and our mentality.  We learned about society and culture. Isn’t it about time we demand our scientists answer or at least make an attempt a response to E.O. Wilsons call for consilience—unity of knowledge—made in 1998? It would not be a well-received idea to award large research grants to scientists to study “everything”. There are some notable exceptions. Matt Ridley is one. There are others, such as Stephen Pinker, but because I have just finished reading Ridley’s book, his is the name that comes to mind. His 2003 book The Agile Gene is one such repository of conflated science. As a PhD zoologist and journalist, he stands in a unique position. He has made what would appear to some to be bold proposal when in truth, they are methodically thought out ideas of others woven together by him to yield some startling conclusion. He bases each of his proclamations on verifiable scientific facts, meaning they reflect careful evaluation of studies.  Of course, there is some speculation, but that is what curious minds expect.

What his work implies is that there is a continuous line of evolution from the big bang to walking talking man, without interruption and without gigantic leaps. It means it is all chemistry and without purpose. Mind and body are all empirical thus subject to scientific study. To a certain extent, Matt Ridley handily walks the tight rope between disciplines paying heed to such social traps as eugenics and social Darwinism while wandering through a minefield of bobby traps set by other scientist, self-serving politicians, and righteous religious leaders. If I were to add anything to what he wrote, it would be in the area of evolution of physiological chemical reactions. The reactions were not created for the sake of biology—notice the passive voice. They take place because they can and given the proper level of energy, they must. All that has happened in evolution is to modify countless numbers of them mindlessly as has happened from the plasma of the big bang to the littlest of ideas. The dictionary stiffly tells us that ‘determinism’ is the doctrine that every, event, act, and decision is the inevitable consequence of antecedents that are independent of the human will. ‘Deterministic’ is not a dirty word, it is the only word and said with the caveat that most of us are not yet scientifically mature enough to accept that as a fact.