27. Evolution

An ancient, fundamental and recurrent theme in thought about humanity and society is that of stability and change. Traditional conservatives are oriented towards the first, progressives to the second, but both are needed. Without stability one gets into a neurotic roundabout that leads to nothing. Without change life is dead. For change some stability is needed. By not surrendering too soon what exists and pursuing it to the hilt one finds out where precisely its limitations lie, and what the needs and opportunities for renewal are.

Evolutionary logic, with its basic processes of the generation of variety, selection and transmission of success in survival, was a brilliant invention for thinking about stability and change. There is stability in that what does not ‘fit’ in the existing selection environment, has no fitness, is selected out. But in biology novel combinations of existing genes from a ‘pool’ by sexual reproduction, and new genes from mutation, together with changes in the selection environment lead to new forms. This is a solution to the logical problem of how something can arise from what already existed and yet be genuinely new.

A second reason why evolutionary logic is a stroke of genius is that it shows how new forms of life can arise without prior intelligent design. Earlier, one could not but think that a mechanism (such as a watch) requires a designer (the watchmaker), and that therefore there must be a God. In biology one is now accustomed to evolutionary thought but in policy concerning society, the economy and management not by a far stretch. The old intuition still drives thought into the mode of intelligent design.

Evolutionary logic also lends depth to pragmatic thought, of how ideas can arise neither from pre-established essences that they realize nor as a development towards some perfect, fixed ideal that serves as an end station of perfection. Similarly, it helps to see personal identity not as the manifestation or realization of some fixed ‘real self’ nor as the movement towards a pre-established goal of perfection. In other words, evolution yields a logic of imperfection on the move.

Note that there is no genetic determinism. What comes out depends on how genes are expressed in interaction with the physical, cultural and social environment in which it takes place. That environment is diverse and hence this yields a diversity of outcomes that is crucial for evolution, and helps as an antidote to universalism, the idea that a form is the same everywhere.

Evolutionary logic may also apply elsewhere, probably with some adaptation or specialization of the logic, in the economy, for example, or in the development of ideas. Later in this blog I will along that line sketch a theory of invention. I will also consider evolution in society.