As a teenager…
…I learned about Darwinism like everyone else and accepted it without difficulty. My policy at the time was simple, and hasn’t changed much: if I don’t have a better theory to offer, I adopt the official one. I have to start with a consensual image of reality before even thinking about deconstructing it. It’s the only way to reclaim the world after it escaped me upon leaving the womb. You have to merge with it, belong to it, and then give it little nudges and make it go where you want. At least, that’s how I interpreted my attitude much later. As a teenager, it was instinctive. I felt that I had to subjugate my mind to this world, so much vaster than myself, to understand its inner workings, before taming this elephant the size of a universe.
I am utterly astonished to see the new generation rejecting this subjugation and freely fishing on social media for interpretations so abundant, contradictory, and yet seemingly palatable, that it becomes impossible to judge whether one is truly enriching one’s knowledge. When the taste is pleasing, this alternative cuisine is quickly swallowed to avoid accusations of ignorance. It’s easy to slip into anti-Darwinism, the most basic form being creationism. The most widespread is orthogenesis, the idea that evolution is “directed”: there is an intelligent design behind it. This approach spontaneously appeals to the mind. Human intelligence would not be the product of cosmic chance but of a hidden genius. The creationist seeks their own magnified intelligence at the origin of the world. Reclaiming it is certainly easier that way.
A bit simplistic, indeed! Surfing social media, as we are slowly realizing, is the most deceptive way to feign knowledge. Aren’t we becoming AIs disguised as biological bodies? We parrot phrases statistically determined by those encountered during our latest internet wanderings. How are these phrases supported by evidence? Is this the emergence of profound reasoning or a carefully crafted facade designed to garner likes?
Even science sometimes cracks, revealing a different world beneath a thick veneer, maintained by generations of professors. This is the impression we get today regarding Darwinism. Here’s a likeable phrase: “Complex evolution eliminates only the truly worthless; it retains all the superfluous as long as it isn’t so bad.” We will try to understand together why this phrase represents genuine knowledge, why we must introduce complexity, and why Darwinism lacked this dimension to explain how we appeared on Earth incomparably faster than its principle predicted.
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The Evolution in Formula 1
Let’s go back to that rather docile teenager I was when I was learning about Darwin. I had an awkward question for the great man. But he wasn’t there anymore. And so, I only spoke up in class if I had a better answer to offer. Not to show off. Except with the poor priest who was trying to give us a bit of catechism. I argued with him about the mind-blowing passages in the Bible, especially the miracles. “But how did the loaves multiply? Did they just appear out of thin air, right before people’s eyes?” There was a little trickery involved somewhere. Jesus seemed less reliable than Darwin when it came to teaching us about the nature of the world. My classmates were delighted. They could catch up on their missed lessons at the last minute while I monopolized the conversation with the friendly man in the cassock. But what exactly was my question for Darwin?
How could the mutation/selection dynamic have created, from nothing, the astonishing sophistication of contemporary life? Like many others, it seemed impossible to me. And I understood why the priest saw it as proof of divine intervention. When your first biology courses reveal the complexity of metabolism, the incredible specialization of an eye, or the marvelous engineering of a wing, how can you attribute it to chance, however vaguely contingent on competition? I had the impression that Darwin, like Jesus, was also performing a magician’s trick, conjuring up a marvelous menagerie from an era far too short for such a thing. It’s easy, indeed, to hide the mutation/selection mechanism in a temporal abyss of 3.8 billion years, the accepted age of the first traces of life on Earth. Many exceptional coincidences may have occurred through simple statistical rules, that’s true. But to obtain the miraculous chain of current transformations in living organisms? The 13.8 billion years of the Universe’s age wouldn’t have been enough, I told myself.
This youthful enigma has merged with another, which emerged in maturity: the problem of consciousness and intentionality. For while proponents of intelligent design are on shaky ground imagining God cooking the primordial biological soup, it must be admitted that it is now a reality: creationism has appeared on Earth! We are now capable of influencing the evolution of species, and we are not holding back. Our undesirable mutations are corrected with genetic scissors. We manage to create new intelligences without having understood how our own works, and they prove superior in certain areas. We are now the owners of the divinity’s toolbox. Intentionality is indeed present. But then, if it did not exist at the beginning, when did it arise?
Mutations of Darwinism
Meanwhile, Darwinism itself has undergone an evolution. In On the Origin of Species in 1859, Darwin speaks only of the “laws of heredity,” the basis of which remains mysterious. The laws of genetics themselves were discovered by Mendel in 1865, but their integration wasn’t fully realized until the 1930s and 40s with the “synthetic theory of evolution,” after chromosomes were recognized as the carriers of genes. This was followed by a period of dogmatic Darwinism with the identification of DNA. The entire evolutionary process was refocused on the hereditary transformations of its sequence, in accordance with Mendel’s laws. Lamarckism, the idea that traits acquired from parents could be transmitted to children, was relegated to the past.
The Darwinian dogma began to waver with the advent of molecular biology in the 1960s. The biological clock is the hypothesis that mutations accumulate at a constant rate over time. Most are neither advantageous nor lethal. The idea that this spontaneous genetic drift explains changes more than natural selection is the neutral theory of evolution. But the major challenge to Darwinism was the discovery of epigenetics: the genome is used differently depending on environmental conditions, and these particular expressions are transmissible to offspring. Lamarckism regained ground in DNA.
It wasn’t Darwin himself who was mistaken. He made a plausible synthesis of the data at his disposal in pangenesis, his theory of heredity that preceded Mendel’s genetics. Regarding the transmission of traits, he refrained from making a radical distinction between nature and nurture. It was 20th-century Darwinism that eliminated Lamarckism, before it was reintroduced in the 21st century with epigenetics.
Intention, a Spontaneous Generation
Why is this a revolution? Dogmatic Darwinism allows only one causal direction: from micro-mechanisms to macro-evolution. Genes mutate, species take on a new appearance, and then the axe of selection appears. This indicates nothing about how to improve the species. There is no intention in Darwinism, whose course is blind. The resurrection of Lamarckism signals the return of retroactive causality. The way an individual has behaved in relation to the environment influences their offspring. Our choices leave a trace for the next generation. Intentionality survives.
And an insoluble problem disappears. It is no longer necessary to date the birth of intention, or, in a way, to define when God began to concern himself with creation. Intention has existed from the beginning, in the form of this feedback. Of course, it is not refined from the outset. On the contrary, it starts out extremely rudimentary. A few self-replicating molecules. Then layers of complexity are added. What is intention, ultimately, if not the persistence of a stable, tenacious pattern on top of a perpetually mutating whole?
It is no longer necessary to wait for neurons to speak of intention. We can discern it in bacteria and plants. We recognize in the general tenacity of life the very relentlessness that compels us to strive for survival. Life constantly adds layers of complexity to incorporate more environmental constraints. This is what neurons do with breathtaking efficiency thanks to their graphic organization.
God… in the end
The enigma of my youth also disappears. By introducing a retroactive intention from the very beginning of evolution, it accelerates to fantastic proportions. It leaps from one layer of complexity to the next, fragmenting its progress into tiny, stable advances. Organisms are no longer fragile entities risking collapse at the slightest mutation, but structures with levels constantly readjusted to maintain overall stability. This mechanism is inexplicable by purely bottom-up causality such as mutation/selection. There is indeed an “intelligent design,” but it doesn’t fall from the sky. On the contrary, it rises from the bottom of complexity at the same pace as its constitution. The mechanism and its feedback climb together toward the heights of intelligence, step by step, and it’s not over yet. God is at the end, not the beginning.
What a welcome wake-up call for educators! Consider that with dogmatic Darwinism, parents’ efforts to educate their offspring are credited with no lasting effect on the lineage. Grandchildren start again from the same indifferent lottery of genes. The stubbornness of educators seems poorly rewarded in the face of this generational reset. How can humanity’s progress accumulate under these conditions? Even those skills codified enough to be found in books don’t become second nature. If the books burn, all is lost. But with a Darwinism tinged with Lamarckism through epigenetics, acquired knowledge can leave a trace, and enthusiasm returns. We could pass on something other than selfish genes. Something of care for our children will remain.
As evolution becomes less blind, so too does humanity’s march. Advances in psychology respond to the same principles as those in biology. Terrible setbacks occur, consequences of social as well as ecological catastrophes; but the march forward resumes, cooperation patiently striving to rebuild complexity. The human species is not a plaything of chance, which would entirely decide its destiny through the vagaries of genetic and political mutations. The relevance of our intentions is paramount. So, can we place them all on the same level, as a certain egalitarian silliness recommends, or should we return to intentional selection?
Transmission
The conclusion will have to wait a little longer. If your attention is not yet exhausted, there are still a few points to address. One is rather minor: what portion of our achievements can be passed on to future generations? Nothing substantial, certainly! How could social events be encoded in the genome, even with the help of epigenetics? The prophets who harangue us about the transmission of psychological trauma haven’t grasped the sheer volume of information represented by the memory of an event. All that can be passed on is a change in disposition —what we commonly call a temperament trait. The descendant might react more nervously to stressful situations, without any way to compare themselves to what they might have been like otherwise and without any way to trace the triggering event back to the source. In other words, this knowledge will be of little use to them. Nevertheless, the change would make them better adapted to an aggressive environment like the one their parent experienced.
Does having suffered trauma leave a “bad” mark? It’s not the trauma itself that is transmitted, but rather the way to escape it in a “next” life, at a level of organization rudimentary enough for epigenetics to encode it. And this biochemical simplification is quite astute. What would be the use of such a carefully constructed memory a generation later? In the meantime, the environmental and social context has changed. Our judgments may have shifted. Stress has gone from being seen as beneficial to being seen as reprehensible, effectively rendering the epigenetic imprint ineffective. Physical evolution thus lags considerably behind societal evolution. It is the repeated education of each generation that concentrates the essential transmission of societal knowledge.
Reverse Evolution
Education, however, runs up against the limitations of the brain. Its memory capacity is constrained by the need to forget in order to re-learn. Its ability to self-program, “general intelligence,” varies greatly from one individual to another. The organ was not designed to cope with the mass of contemporary information. We can see as “natural” our top-down intentions that come to its aid by surrounding it with digital assistants and seek to manipulate genetics to enhance its intelligence. Evolution continues, physics once again linked to intellect thanks to genetic engineering. We are even able, in the near future, to program an artificial intelligence closely associated with our own personality, capable of speaking as we would. The transmission of acquired knowledge in this “digital genome” then takes complete precedence over the siliceous heredity of the machine. Darwin would be astonished by this form of reverse evolution, where the species reshapes nature to its own end.
Another interesting point for understanding everything: the reasons for our attitudes toward different theories about life. This will be the subject of our final section.
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Cognitive Asymmetry
Why does the evolution of life seem miraculous to anti-Darwinists? It’s a cognitive asymmetry of which I myself was a victim as a teenager. Let’s avoid the term “cognitive bias,” which you hear constantly. There’s no irrationality, no flaw in these “biases.” Natural evolution has rightfully established them, because our psychology is also the site of cognitive competition. The asymmetry I’m talking about is already familiar to you if you regularly read this blog. It manifests here between the downward look, that of our mind which represents the world, and the upward look, that of the world which constitutes us.
When we are young or have little formal education, a downward look dominates. It forms spontaneously, without assistance. The world presents itself to our eyes. Our brain organizes all the data. Consciousness is the stage where the images it has created, with increasing sophistication, are presented. It is a stable stage, much more so than the world itself. The environment changes subtly while our consciousness remains continuous. Its established representations search within the sensory field. These are what make the world exist with this permanence in our minds, even though its constitution is so fragmented.
Faced with the somewhat blind permanence of the downward look, a more realistic upward look develops through education. When this is complete, we learn that a second spent staring at a stationary object corresponds to 1043 different quantum states of its constitution. The stability is only apparent. What is the role of consciousness, in fact? It focuses our attention on what is important at each moment. Natural selection favors active representations, while the others remain dormant. The downward look acts as a spotlight, illuminating what stirs around us. A landscape frozen elsewhere, for it is not the real world but simply the assembled puzzle of our representations.
A Need for Preservation
Let’s return to the living. Despite being far more active than the non-living, it is incredibly slowed down by our downward look. I look at my motionless neighbor. His biochemical makeup is undergoing profound changes every fraction of a second. If I meet him again in three weeks, his skin will have completely changed. But I won’t see him as a different being. My downward look gives him the same name, because it’s a permanent mental construct that represents him. Whereas my upward look, if it’s well-educated, tells me that he is a molecular assembly in complete disarray.
Rather unsettling, isn’t it? This is why the downward look asymmetrically dominates the upward look. By a considerable margin. The stable sensory image of the world prevails over the intangible theory of its foundation, even among physicists and biologists. They want to find their usual companions when they return home, not the alternative biochemical structures they simultaneously are. Natural psychological selection. This preeminence of the downward look extends to all domains, including what is the privileged direction of the upward look: the origin of things. Here, things are less fortunate.
Humble Nature
Indeed, it is the very essence of life that fascinates us. In our brains, evolved representations are astonished by their own existence. Without an upward look to complete them, they seek their origin in something even more sophisticated than themselves. The divine image appears spontaneously. My imagination is occupied by God who gazes upon me, me and my permanent, inalienable soul. My downward look creates me, and everything around me. Nothing provides a better explanation until an upward look, owned by the world itself, offers a different perspective.
God was born from the asymmetry of our look, which naturally places our origin above our current consciousness, within the complex order, rather than at its base. It is a great act of humility on the part of Nature, in a way, since she effaces herself as the origin of her creation, and it took us hundreds of thousands of years to identify our true mother. Thanks to Darwin. Let us not diminish his genius. He is the one who awakened our upward look upon ourselves.
Metastable intentions…
This upward look presents a very different discourse from the downward one. Stability vanishes. Life appears unbearably fragile. Its complex pyramid can collapse at any moment. But simultaneously, it constantly strives to rise. It shifts from one metastable equilibrium to another. New equilibria are established on top of some, reinforcing the previous ones. Without this feedback of complexity upon itself, the universe would undoubtedly still be in a state of quantum soup with a few ghosts of precarious organization.
Should we see an intention at work behind this stubborn complexity in its effort to rise? No and yes. No, because the upward look doesn’t need it. Processes inevitably pass through these metastable equilibria, and their very nature allows them to persist. Stability doesn’t need to be intentionally stable. Yes, intention does exist, if we call by that name the rules decided jointly by related elements. This leads to the second nature of complex elaboration, which is not at all mystical; it is the totality surimposed on the assembled elements, the whole they form through their integration, a level of existence relatively independent of its parts.
Our conscious intentions are such totalities. Superimposed on the sophisticated concepts generated by our brain, at the end of a very long chain of complexity. They are alternative images of the world, seeking to replace existing ones because they better conform to our desires. One stability seeks to replace another, without always understanding the great fragility of the world itself. Ill-informed by a nonexistent upward perspective, intention often destroys the world more than it transforms it, and dramatically misses its mark. It is in sociology that the disaster is most apparent. Having never managed to understand its social functioning, humanity progresses through revolutions and collapses, creating the worst moments of inhumanity before stability returns, without necessarily bringing much happiness.
…but they must be good
Without a theory about itself, society mutates haphazardly, when an idea has gathered enough minds around it, without ever being self-evident to everyone. Society is organized enough to transform the world, but without feedback about it, which has extended its fragility to the entire ecosystem. Ecology is a sociological problem. What is the point of ecological hysteria when the real obstacle is a flawed system for organizing ideas, where each proponent has the same importance? If we truly had the most brilliant minds at the helm of humanity, no climate disaster would have gone beyond the stage of hypothesis.
Hello, Darwin!
Here’s what a social Darwinism might have said about the world today: a great many mutations have occurred, none lethal to society. They have transformed it. But evolution can ultimately discard a major failure. We won’t have seen it coming. Because our downward perspective sees a society that appears immutable. It dominates the upward perspective, which, more rarely, sees the disturbing fragility of the structure.
There is only one way to circumvent major failures: coordinate the two perspectives. But then, even the failures disappear. Because the upward look doesn’t see them. Only a disappointed downward look expresses itself in this way. And if I want to “ensure the success of a species,” it is my downward look, with its idealisms, that must meet the upward look to succeed.
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What is natural evolution, ultimately?
The evolution of the animate world has no identifiable beginning because it emerges from the changes of the inanimate world, changes that are far more frenetic in truth, without our being aware of them. This same consciousness, endowed with sophisticated intentions, does not recognize itself in the intentions of the inanimate, yet they are there nonetheless, subtle, imperceptible, and far more tenacious than our own. There is no break in the complex evolution of things from the tiniest origin of their constitution.
Our evident awareness of complex evolution concerns its most stable levels. Biomolecules take center stage here, particularly DNA, the primary carrier of information specific to living organisms. However, DNA is itself a molecule with multiple levels of complexity, capable of reconfiguring itself, instead of simply replicating identically. It interacts with the “genetic ecosystem,” which includes numerous wandering RNAs, including viral ones.
No level of this complexity is subject to purely bottom-up laws stemming from its micro-mechanisms. All are global organizations participating in new systems and which, in turn, influence their constitution. No level is entirely isolated.
Where is the selector?
This is primarily a process of diversification. Micro-mechanisms explore all their possible solutions. There is no selection in the sense of elimination. The process seems to freeze when it reaches a metastable equilibrium. Our downward look then announces a “selected species.” It simply has greater persistence. By what would it be selected? A deified Nature? Or is it precisely this downward human look that, lying in wait, has bestowed upon itself the role of celestial judge?
The “selector,” if we look for it, is the system with imprecise boundaries on which the species depends. But it selects nothing. It results. As a whole, it is the fusion of the probabilities that each species in the system finds a certain place within it. This is a very difficult concept to grasp. You won’t succeed on the first reading. The whole of the system is its fixed aspect: a species has either been selected or it hasn’t. While the constitution of the system is its dynamic aspect: all species configurations are present, some with a very low probability of existence, others with a very high one.
Natural Exploration
It is then necessary to redefine the species “selected by evolution.” It only makes sense within a circle of the ecosystem. At this complex level, the probability configuration assigns a dominant position to the species in question. If this dominance is lasting, the species can raise its own level of complexity, either organic or social for those that have reached the stage of representing the world through a nervous system.
Complex evolution does not eliminate much. On the contrary, it keeps all possible evolutionary configurations in its information pool. When one of them proves unstable, it moves down the complexity scale and selects an alternative from its repertoire. This process, linking diversification, advance, and retreat, could simply be called: natural exploration. If you come across a helmeted figure in the forest, taking steps in all directions, falling into pits, climbing out, and moving on somewhere else, that’s her! That’s Nature.
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