One theoretical possibility is that evolution is progressive, and that some populations are more advanced than others. ___J.P. Rushton, 1989
My grade nine science teacher was an unpleasant woman, but she understood something that even leading biologists don’t have a clue about, and that’s the fact that evolution is progressive. At the age of 14, I asked if life forms that branch off the evolutionary tree early are more primitive than life forms that branch off the tree more recently. Her reply was characteristically condescending, but brilliant: “If you’re the first branch, and you don’t do any more branching, then you’re less evolved than higher branches. Got it?”
I got it, but quickly learned that many people do not. And ironically, people who have studied evolution have the most trouble grasping this simple, elegant concept. For example, Harvard biologist Stephen Jay Gould didn’t get it, writing “evolution forms a conspicuously branching bush, not a unilinear progressive sequence” and writes that “earth worms and crabs are not our ancestors; they are not even ‘lower’ or less complicated than humans in any meaningful sense.”
This web page also doesn’t get it, even displaying a helpful diagram of an evolutionary tree to debunk the idea:
As Rushton has documented, there were a few great minds who got it, beginning with Aristotle. Biologist E.O. Wilson got it, and brilliantly divided evolutionary history into four major stages:
(1) the emergence of life itself in the form of primitive prokaryotes with no nucleus
(2) the emergence of eukaryotes with nucleus and mitochondria
(3) the evolution of large multicellular organisms that have complex organs like eyes and brains
(4) the emergence of the human mind
Princeton biology professor John Bonner also got it, noting that there’s been an evolution from primitive bacteria billions of years ago to complex life forms today, and the newer animals have bigger brains than older animals and that it’s perfectly natural to say that older life forms are lower than newer life forms, because their fossils are literally found in lower strata. Even plants can be ranked; angiosperm > slime molds.
One guy who not only got it, but got creative with it, was paleontologist Dale Russel, who brilliantly speculated that had dinosaurs not gone extinct 65 million years ago, they would have eventually evolved into big-brained bipeds.
Humans probably really are at the pinnacle of evolution. We are the newest species of a new genus (homo) of a new order (primate) of a new class (mammals) that split off from the primitive reptiles so very long ago. Even though all humans are super evolved, we too have our own evolutionary tree, though genetic differences are tiny, since all humans are Africans under the skin. But I can’t help but notice that the most intelligent populations seem to be descendanded from more splits and forks in the evolutionary tree. There are lots of exceptions, but there does seem to be a pattern overall.
@Pp – Well it all depends what you mean by progressive!
You are meaning complexity (which is real, but not strictly definable) – in this sense life is progressive in the sense that the complex can only come after the simple, complexity can only be built stepwise and incrementally, and complexity is potentially more efficient and more specialized.
In another sense, progression/ complexity is not inevitable and can be and is reversed.
For instance, if I am right about the rapid decline in intelligence due to mutation accumulation, this is a loss of complexity/ efficiency/ specialization.
Leaving aside Gould (who was an evil liar – hence best ignored) it IS possible to deny that evolution is progressive, in the sense that it is merely an algorithmic process of differential gene replication and persistence – and its direction is contingent upon specific circumstances – in that complexity is ultimately defined by the human mind, hence has an intrinsically subjective aspect.
Leaving aside Bruce is both evil and stupid (he forms the possessive of “Williams” “William’s”), Bruce is correct, if simple outbreeds complex then simple wins as far as Darwinism is concerned. and why should complex always be better.
Instead what one finds according to Gould is that with time the extremes of complex are pushed farther and farther. But what terms are humans more complex. They don’t have to largest genome. They’ve just got the largest brain to body ratio iirc. Ginormous brain = human = smart.
so what about the extremes of simple. Forget prions and viruses. Mycoplasms are the simplest self-replicating organisms iirc. But they’re still pretty complex.
Leaving aside Bruce is both evil and stupid
Stop projecting your own flaws on to others. 🙂
They’ve just got the largest brain to body ratio
WRONG! Humans do NOT have the largest brain to body ratio, we have the largest ratio of actual brain size to predicted brain size for an animal of our size. Simply using brain size to body size ratio is flawed because body size is negatively correlated with brain/body ratio, independently of intelligence.
But I’m glad you refer to humans as “They” since you’re certainly not one. 🙂
Who’s got the largest brain to body size?
So Bruce gets to say Gould was an evil liar and he’s not projecting?
Anyone who forms the possessive of a singular noun ending in s by any mean other than an ‘s is subhuman.
Bruce, Very well said.
http://phys.org/news/2012-09-evolution-meant-simpler-complex.html
You are meaning complexity (which is real, but not strictly definable) – in this sense life is progressive in the sense that the complex can only come after the simple, complexity can only be built stepwise and incrementally, and complexity is potentially more efficient and more specialized.
Or less specialized. I think the power of human intelligence is that it facilitates a general ability to adapt to many different kinds of environments, unlike say the primitive brain of a bird, which has specific instincts (flying South in the winter, building nests) well adapted to specific situations, but lacks behavioral flexibility.
But I think your point that complexity must follow simplicity nicely explains why there’s a correlation between complexity and evolutionary time.
In another sense, progression/ complexity is not inevitable and can be and is reversed.
Absolutely! And I think the fact that such exceptions are so obviously possible to anyone who understands evolution is what’s caused so much confusion.
As you say, simplicity CAN follow complexity, but complexity MUST follow simplicity. Since the latter MUST happen, while the former merely CAN happen; over billions of years we get a strong correlation between complexity and evolutionary time, but fixating on the exceptions combined with a rejection of the religious idea that humans are superior to other animals causes many biologists to reject the notion of “progress” prematurely.
For instance, if I am right about the rapid decline in intelligence due to mutation accumulation, this is a loss of complexity/ efficiency/ specialization.
Absolutely, but I would put dysgenics in a separate category because unlike biologists, I make a potentially flawed distinction between “natural selection” and “artificial selection”. The conditions that are causing dysgenics (i.e. social safety nets so that the least intelligent survive, medical advances so that infant mortality declines) are the products of modernity and consciously choosing to stop the process of survival of the “fittest”. One could make the case that humans are so culturally advanced that we’ve transcended natural selection in the conventional sense and created our own unique selection pressures shielded from nature. We even have the capacity to alter our own genes through genetic engineering so at a certain point, you have to say the rules that apply to other species simply don’t apply to people. We’re in a different category
Leaving aside Gould (who was an evil liar – hence best ignored) it IS possible to deny that evolution is progressive, in the sense that it is merely an algorithmic process of differential gene replication and persistence – and its direction is contingent upon specific circumstances – in that complexity is ultimately defined by the human mind, hence has an intrinsically subjective aspect.
Of course the word progress will always be controversial because it’s subjective, but I think that natural selection is all about trial and error, and I would think if trial and error is allowed to continue long enough, things should inevitably improve in some vaguely defined sense (with lots of exceptions along the way). I think subconsciously, even scientists who deny evolutionary progress sense this, which is why so many scientists believe there is intelligent life on other planets. It just seems inevitable.
@Pp – All good points.
“Or less specialized. I think the power of human intelligence is that it facilitates a general ability to adapt to many different kinds of environments, unlike say the primitive brain of a bird, which has specific instincts (flying South in the winter, building nests) well adapted to specific situations, but lacks behavioral flexibility.”
I conceptualize intelligence as complex, because I believe it requires a more complex brain to be more intelligent.
More complexity is needed in the sense of something like denser and more intricately connected connectivity (analogous to the fact that modern processors are more complex than they used to be, in order to be faster).
And this usually means larger brains as well (all else being equal) – i.e. complexity and efficiency usually means increased in size – due to the fixed size of the biological cellular components (unlike computer processors, the components of which can be miniaturized).
Do you know Matt Ridley’s Origins of Virtue book? It about this subject, and well worth reading.
Bruce, I conceptualize of intelligence as complex too, I just wasn’t equating complexity with specialization. Not familiar with that book, but sounds interesting.
I believe ”order of factors” are completelly inverse to explain complexity and simplicity. I see it by natural selection model or only by selection model. To be slightly deterministic, natural selection is based on selection OR reduction of diversity or complexity. (ok, i know complexity and diversity aren’t necessarily the same thing all the time).
Simplicity to complexity, nope, necessarily.
Complexity to simplicity to selective process, yes, many times.
Many mutations (diversity of group population) to better contextual mutations. More mutations, more problems (and more scape strategies).
You have many faces, many types of intelligence, many extremes behavioral phenotypes and culture (adaptation) select more one phenotypes than others.
It’s you who don’t get it.
Gould was right.
You’re a dumbfuck.
I agree with Gould, for once.
Here’s a primer on the problems with gcta and behavioral genetics more generally.
The comments are especially good.
But be warned, the anti side has much much higher IQs than than the pro side.
http://www.independentsciencenews.org/health/still-chasing-ghosts-a-new-genetic-methodology-will-not-find-the-missing-heritability/
But be warned, the anti side has much much higher IQs than than the pro side.
That doesn’t necessarily prove the anti side is right. Some facts are just so obvious that any idiot can see they’re true, but it takes a much higher IQ to rationalize them away.
Read it and the comments and the scales will fall from your eyes.
But my guess is you want to stay stupid.
Basically the vast majority of real geneticists regard behavioral genetics as astrology…a pseudoscience for stupid people.
I’m not done reading all the comments, but the article itself is surprisingly good. It is a paradox that twin and adoption studies imply such sky high heritability in adulthood, but genetic studies fail to reliably explain much of the IQ variation. And I don’t buy your argument that heritability is overrated by identical twins not being raised sufficiently apart because there have been (non-twin) adoption studies (Minnesota trans-cultural adoption study) which also implied extremely high heritability despite the huge differences in the environment the disadvantaged kids would have grown up in, from the white upper-middle class homes they were adppted into. In fact I’ve never heard of a single adoption study that didn’t imply huge heritability in adulthood, so why the genetic studies aren’t replicating this, I know not.
Could the prenatal environment be more important than thought? Don’t think so because in the Minnesota study, children of genetically mixed culture had white prenatal environments, yet scored exactly as predicted based on their genetically mixed culture background (exactly in between both cultures)
Could the adolescent peer environment be having a bigger effect than thought? Possibly, but that seems like a huge stretch.
It’s too bad Jensen’s no longer alive to give his interpretation.
I should clarify that when I state that Gould was an ‘evil liar’ this is not vague name calling. It is based on reading his work and knowledge of his activities over many years – confirmed by first hand accounts given me by honest and reliable witnesses. When I say he was a liar I don’t mean merely that he uttered falsehoods but that this was deliberate, systematic and designed to mislead. And evil because he was destructive of the good – truth is one of the transcendental goods, and Gould was calculatedly untruthful – down to the level of refusing to correct gross falsehoods and slanders he had spread about science and about people. He was also a ‘nasty piece of work’ (as we say in England) in his personal life – but that is not relevant because that applies to many good people as well – and certainly a large proportion of geniuses are impossible people. As a scientist, Gould was a reasonable participant in early years and an adverse influence for most of his career – his fame was based on his political stance, and his ability as a writer – which forced even his silliest ideas onto the agenda. My attitude is that we should just stop talking about SJ Gould and what he wrote – but unfortunately he is still used all the time to attack worthwhile science – so it is important that his wicked and dishonest character is made clear.
…honest and reliable witnesses…???
In the following sketch behavioral genetics people are Luther Campell and Billy Idol.
Gould is Sinatra.
https://screen.yahoo.com/sinatra-group-000000236.html
It says the video doesn’t show in my area; probably limited to the U.S.
I couldn’t find that Celine Dion vid I’ve been looking for either, hee, hee, …
Basically Gould had chunks of guys like Jensen in his stool.
Psychology is to science like tiddly winks is to sports.
Bruce,
Yes, I think Gould’s enormous influence comes from the fact that he was a very gifted writer telling liberals exactly what they wanted to hear, and the fact that he had the credibility of being a Harvard biologist didn’t hurt either. I know liberals were desperate to find someone who could counter Jensen (Time magazine even once contacted Jensen to ask him if he could recommend anyone who could refute his own arguments because they were having so much trouble finding someone who could do so strongly enough to satisfy their readers) and then one day, along came Gould with an entire book that could even talk about technical issues like factor analysis.
As for Gould’s honesty and character…it’s a very interesting question because for years HBD people have suspected that a lot of these anti-HBD elites don’t actually believe what they say. Of course even if Gould were dishonest in arguing his views, then wouldn’t necessarily mean he was insincere in his HBD rejection.
Gould’s views on hereditarianism aside, he was 100 percent right on progressive evolution. He is great on evolutionary theory. This is why Gould thought that no evolution to the human mind occurred in 50 ky:
“The most impressive contrast between natural evolution and cultural evolution lies embedded in the major fact of our history. We have no evidence that the modal form of human bodies or brains has changed at all in the past 100,000 years—a standard phenomenon of stasis for successful and widespread species, and not (as popularly misconceived) an odd exception to an expectation of continuous and progressive change. The Cro-Magnon people who painted the caves of the Lascaux and Altamira some fifteen thousand years ago are us—and one look at the incredible richness and beauty of this work convinces us, in the most immediate and visceral way, that Picasso held no edge in mental sophistication over these ancestors with identical brains. And yet, fifteen thousand years ago no human social grouping had produced anything that would conform with our standard definition of civilization. No society had yet invented agriculture; none had built permanent cities. Everything that we have accomplished in the unmeasurable geological moment of the last ten thousand years—from the origin of agriculture to the Sears building in Chicago, the entire panoply of human civilization for better or for worse—has been built upon the capacities of an unaltered brain. Clearly, cultural change can vastly outstrip the maximal rate of natural Darwinian evolution.” (Gould, 1996: 220)
You should read some of Gould’s work sometime, he was a great scientist. If you understood the PE theory, you’d understand why he argued against the thought of human brain evolution. Gould was a smart guy, with great theories and an outstanding writer.
And on his argument in Full House he said:
“I hate to think that an intellectual position, hopefully well worked out in the pages of this book, might end up as a shill for one of the great fuzzinesses of our age—so-called “political correctness” as a doctrine that celebrates all indigenous practice, and therefore permits no distinctions, judgements or analyses.”
And check out this neat conversation between Huxley and Darwin (their descendants) in 1959 commemorating Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species:
https://notpoliticallycorrect.me/2016/11/12/complexity-walls-0-400-hitting-and-evolutionary-progress/
There is a minimal wall of complexity, no organism can get any less complex than that, so the only way to go is to towards the right wall of complexity. This is inevitable, but the process is passive, not driven. “Progress” does not dictate evolution. Natural selection is local adaptation, not “progress”.
What are you talking about? Punctuated equilibrium has NOTHING to do with whether evolution is progressive or not, it has only to do with whether evolution is GRADUAL or not.
There is a minimal wall of complexity, no organism can get any less complex than that, so the only way to go is to towards the right wall of complexity. This is inevitable, but the process is passive, not driven.
Whether the progress is passive or driven is a separate debate. The point is the progress IS, not WHY it is.
“What are you talking about? Punctuated equilibrium has NOTHING to do with whether evolution is progressive or not, it has only to do with whether evolution is GRADUAL or not.”
I know that. My point is, that organisms remain in stasis once they become accustomed to their environment. He obviously saw that and that’s why he thought that human evolution came to a halt once behavioral modernity was achieved.
“Whether the progress is passive or driven is a separate debate. The point is the progress IS, not WHY it is.”
No it goes perfectly along with it. Read McShea 1994 (https://sites.duke.edu/mcshearesearch/files/2014/03/Mechanisms-HQ.pdf). There is NO INHERENT DRIVE to ‘complexity’, and even then, there is only one way to go from the left wall (the most simple organisms possible, bacteria): UP! From the least complex being possible, ONLY movement towards that right wall is possible. Evolution is passive, not driven. The ‘progress’ is not, as I’ve outlined in my most recent article.
The Modal Bacter rules the earth. Such less ‘complex’ organisms rule the earth. We only focus on the very right side of the curve, but it was a forgone conclusion that there would be SOME TYPE of right wall of complexity, whether it was human or not.
There is no inherent drive to complexity, as most organisms get LESS COMPLEX than more complex.
I know that. My point is, that organisms remain in stasis once they become accustomed to their environment. He obviously saw that and that’s why he thought that human evolution came to a halt once behavioral modernity was achieved.
Fair enough. But PE could apply at the racial level, as well as the species level. That is becoming a new race could be a sudden evolutionary jump, but once the new race is formed, long-term stasis. Gould is apply his own model is a politically selective way.
“Whether the progress is passive or driven is a separate debate. The point is the progress IS, not WHY it is.”
No it goes perfectly along with it. Read McShea 1994 (https://sites.duke.edu/mcshearesearch/files/2014/03/Mechanisms-HQ.pdf). There is NO INHERENT DRIVE to ‘complexity’, and even then, there is only one way to go from the left wall (the most simple organisms possible, bacteria): UP! From the least complex being possible, ONLY movement towards that right wall is possible.
So you admit, that generally speaking, evolution moves toward the right wall. That’s progress. Doesn’t matter whether it’s passive or driven. That’s a SEPARATE debate.
“Fair enough. But PE could apply at the racial level, as well as the species level. That is becoming a new race could be a sudden evolutionary jump, but once the new race is formed, long-term stasis. Gould is apply his own model is a politically selective way.”
Good thinking. And even up to this point, racial differences are noticed in the fossil record. That’s a FAST change with the PE model, but it’s easily explainable as an anomaly due to culture, agriculture etc. When I read Gould, I try to forget his politics and some of his political motivations and strictly read it as someone who’s interested in the science behind evolution and read it objectively. I understand his denial of human evolution now because of it.
“So you admit, that generally speaking, evolution moves toward the right wall. That’s progress. Doesn’t matter whether it’s passive or driven. That’s a SEPARATE debate.”
I admit, generally speaking, that from the least simple possible organism (the left wall, bacteria), there is nowhere to go but towards the right wall of complexity. I don’t deny that organisms have gotten more “complex”, I deny that there is any TREND to that complexity (there isn’t, bacteria rule the earth). It is NOT progress since there is no DRIVE towards that right wall, it is passive in nature as seen in McShea 1994.
Bacteria rule the Earth, the modal bacter.
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_bacteria.html
Evolution is not “driven” towards complexity. Bacteria are the most numerous thing on the earth. McShea shows 13 species becoming less complex with only 9 becoming more complex. Not statistically significant, but pretty damn telling, wouldn’t you say?
That shows that it’s local adaptation and not progress. Looking at the extreme right tail, the right wall, we can fool ourselves into seeing “progress” as most people have an anthropocentric view of evolution, but looking at the fossil record and life as a whole, the simple things dominate the earth.
Evolution is not “driven” towards complexity. Bacteria are the most numerous thing on the earth. McShea shows 13 species becoming less complex with only 9 becoming more complex. Not statistically significant, but pretty damn telling, wouldn’t you say?
Not necessarily because the ones that became significantly more complex, are no longer bacteria, and so perhaps excluded from the sample. Virtually all life has evolved from bacteria and so much of it has since become so much more complex. The ones that remained bacteria are the ones that underwent the least amount of evolutionary change!
That shows that it’s local adaptation and not progress. Looking at the extreme right tail, the right wall, we can fool ourselves into seeing “progress” as most people have an anthropocentric view of evolution, but looking at the fossil record and life as a whole, the simple things dominate the earth.
Humans dominate the earth and we’re anything but simple. We can exterminate any species on the planet.
“Not necessarily because the ones that became significantly more complex, are no longer bacteria, and so perhaps excluded from the sample. Virtually all life has evolved from bacteria and so much of it has since become so much more complex. The ones that remained bacteria are the ones that underwent the least amount of evolutionary change!”
The point is, as I’ve shown, life is not driven towards complexity. The bacterial mode has remained constant. Bacteria dominate the earth. Without bacteria still existing, human life as we know it wouldn’t be possible. Remember back to the gut microbiota. You keep talking about bacteria being “less evolved” and “more evolutionary change” when natural selection is local adaptation, not general progress. Parasites and other bacteria evolve depending on what occurs in their environment. These organisms dominate the earth. Smaller, less complex organisms dominate.
“Humans dominate the earth and we’re anything but simple. We can exterminate any species on the planet.”
Would it be smart to do so? Like if we just exterminated a main food source for other animals or disputed a main ecosystem, how would a certain choice like that work out for humans and the ecological niche as a whole?
Bacteria dominate the earth. This is the age of bacteria, not the age if mammals. No trend in complexity is noticed in the fossil record. Any organism can become less complex even more so than they can become more complex. Let’s exterminate all of our gut microbiota and see how that works our for us.
What would you consider a recent mutation/new specie of bacteria? Bacteria have far more and frequent mutations/species formation than complicated creatures. ie far more branching and evolutional process.
Next, genes number increase in complicated organism. However, human are not creature with more genes. Actually corn has far more genes than human beijing.
Next, mental ability. Undoubtally, human certainly at highest end of such ability among all living creatures.
So the rule is not very simple.
What would you consider a recent mutation/new specie of bacteria? Bacteria have far more and frequent mutations/species formation than complicated creatures. ie far more branching and evolutional process.
Excellent question. My theory is that the most highly branched within the same taxonomic level are more evolved. So even though many species of bacteria are more recent than humans, humans belong to the animal kingdom, and bacteria belong to the monera kingdom, and since the animal kingdom is higher on the kingdom evolutionary treee than the monera kindom, even the oldest animal is more evolved than the newest bacteria.
Tapeworms and other parasites are extremely simple organisms, continually evolving alongside the vertebrates they live on and in. The perception that organisms are becoming more large or complex is simply skewed perception. We pay more attention to cheetahs than lampreys and nematodes.
But tapeworms are not highly evolved, which proves my point about evolution being progressive.
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