589 Selection environment

Bruno Latour rejects notions from evolutionary theory such as selection environment, system, as a whole with collaborating parts, and homeostasis as equilibration of a system, where the parts collaborate to maintain the whole. His argument is that agents interact with their environment and thus shape their environment as much as they are affected by it. I think this a mistake. Shaping the environment does not exclude being selected by it.

If organisms A, B and C affect each other, this can favour their survival, in symbiosis, but can also go against it, in parasitism. Latour objects, among other things, to the idea of Gaya (ancient Greek for ‘earth’) as a whole of interacting nature and culture that is in homeostasis. I agree: I  see little evidence of such equilibration. Culture, defined as being man-made, in contrast with nature, is destroying nature rather than being in harmony with it. If mankind becomes extinct, there will still be an earth, probably heavily damaged, but still carrying life in some form or other. Can you call that equilibration? We are trying to achieve equilibration, in circularity of agriculture, industry and consumption, but that is likely to remain imperfect.

I agree with Latour that the outcome of interaction of all agents with each other is unpredictable. In the long run some forms of life will become extinct, while others flourish , and new ones emerge. They become extinct precisely because selection takes place. No matter how complicated the evolution of the environment is, it will cause some forms of life to suffer and others to flourish. The selection environment is the unpredictable sum total of all the interactions that take place. It is not static but in ongoing development.

Latour narrated the famous case of oxygen, which did not exist in the atmosphere of early earth, and was a poison, until production took off after the emergence of photosynthesis, converting  CO2, water and sunlight into glucose, energy and oxygen, which generated plants, which served as food for animals, who learned to develop lungs to absorb oxygen. It was a turnaround in evolution, a turnaround of oxygen from poison to a source of life.

Latour seems to think that everything is interaction, and the idea of something having an identity that endures for a time, kept functioning within the constraints of homeostasis, disappears. How does the organism with homeostasis arise, then, in evolution? Keeping something in equilibrium seems deliberate and planned, and of course in evolution it is not. Interaction between agents is random and of the many forms that this yields, those remain that contribute to survival. This process can yield an organism with improved survival, while many do not endure. Interaction works in the same way as gene mutation. The bounds within which collaboration between parts of the system, occurs, in homeostasis, also arise by trial and error, like gene mutation. If this misfires we call it an illness, and some illnesses are lethal.

 

Bruno Latour, 2015, Face à Gaia, Paris: Editions La Decouverte,