The International Political
Science Association has picked Poznań,
Poland as the site for this year’s conference, after pulling out from Istanbul.
While I dearly wished to visit Turkey, I
think this will be a wonderful place to visit.
It is close, by rail, to Berlin.
Meanwhile,
I have been reading a very interesting book.
On the Origins of Autonomy: A New Look at the Major Transitions in
Evolution documents the thinking of Bernd Rosslenbroich, whose essays I relied
heavily on when I presented a paper on autonomy at the IPSA two years ago.
Rosslenbroich
addresses a problem at the center of my attention as a modern representative of
Plato: understanding the forms of organisms.
Here is his point of departure.
Modern evolutionary biology models the history of life on earth as a
steadily branching tree. At the root of
the tree are the simplest, UR organisms: the first living things successfully
replicating their forms by communicating information to successive generations
and adapting successfully to their environments. To present the model as a two dimensional
image, the vertical dimension represents time and the horizontal dimension
represents diversity. Thus the tree
branches out as more and more diverse organic forms emerge in evolutionary
history.
The
tree metaphor is misleading in one fundamental respect. The growth of a real tree is teleological in
the sense that the mature oak is already contained in the acorn and its growth
is constantly corrected according to that organic program. The sapling progresses toward the oak.
Evolution is rather a mechanical process. As the lineage of life extends through time, it
pushes into new environmental niches and thus produces increasingly diverse
forms.
Rosslenbroich’s
central idea is that evolutionary history cannot be understood without the idea
of progress. Just because the forces of
selection and adaptation are mechanical and hence not goal directed doesn’t
mean that there is no progression
from lower to higher forms. He argues
that evolutionary history cannot be understood without some notion of progress
and that all attempts to purge such notions from the language of biology
inevitably fail.
Consider that the tree of life
might, conceivably have produced an increasing diversity of prokaryotic cells,
differing only in the traits by which they adapt to diverse environments. Obviously that is not what happened. Eukaryotic cells, with a defined nucleus
emerge and then later multicellular creatures.
Eventually the plants, reptiles, and mammals appear. To articulate the difference between the
fanciful and the actual scenarios, we need some coherent account of progress from
lower to higher forms.
As usual, Aristotle was way ahead
of us. His account of organic progress
was based on the idea of the incorporation of simpler forms of organic
processes within more complex forms. Plants
have only nutritive soul. They feed and
produce waste; grow, flourish, and then wither and die. Animals have these same capacities, but also
the powers to perceive at a distance and move about. Human beings enjoy all the organic powers of
plants and animals, but add the power of logos.
We are aware of the difference between perception and reality, what
looks good and what is good.
Rosslenbroich looks to ground the
idea of evolutionary progress in increasing autonomy. The essence of the organic lies in the resistance
to the external environment. All
organisms are organized so as to maintain their internal states in shifting
environmental conditions by finding sources of materials and energy and,
always, by building walls against the environment within which these processes
can work. Over time, progressively more
effective means of resisting the environment emerge. Eukaryotic cells sequester their DNA within a
more protected nucleus. Warm blooded
mammals can maintain their body heat and so forage at night.
I think that this is dead spot
on. When I first read the work of the
great philosopher Hans Jonas, I have thought that increasing dimensions of
freedom was the key to understanding evolution.
I am gratified to find this same language in Rosslenbroich. As Aristotle argued, human beings are more
than just animals but we are at least animals.
Even if a group of chimpanzees could produce a copy of Richard the Third
by random typing, and they can, given impossibly vast resources and time, they
still couldn’t appreciate the play.
Those who are afraid of
evolutionary explanations of the human origins fear that such explanations
reduce us to mere animals or worse to mere matter in motion. Rosslenbroich shows us that such reduction is
unwarranted and in fact impossible. I am
going well beyond his purpose here, but I submit that the freedom of the human
soul, on which all the beautiful and noble things depend, is supported rather
than undermined by an evolutionary account of the human being.
ps. I would point out that I wrote this post sitting on my deck in my tent. It was a bit too chilly to sit out uncovered and I wanted to smoke a cigar while I wrote. I can't do so inside because I am married. That is how organisms seek autonomy. 
