Evolutionary Vectors

I have been reading Bernd Rosslenbroich’s book again: On the Origins of Autonomy: A New Look at the Major Transitions in Evolution.  Rosslenbroich notes that Darwin himself confronted the paradox of progress in evolutionary history and attempted to solve it 

A paradox occurs when the same phenomenon appears to present two, logically irreconcilable faces.  On the one hand, common descent from an Ur organism seems to produce only an increasingly diverse number of branching lineages.  As we survey the tree from bottom (earliest) to the top (presently existing organisms), each fork (plants fork from animals, mammals branch from reptiles, etc.) each new branch represents only the extension of original lineage into available ecological niches.  The driving force is natural selection, which is altogether undirected.  Evolutionary history flows, as flood waters do, around obstacles and into the next available plain.  Okay, I am mixing metaphors; the point is, in this account, slime mold amoebas and certified public accountants are equal in ontological status in so far as they both made it to the present moment. 

On the other hand, it seems obvious that multi-cellular organisms represent an advance beyond their single-celled ancestors, animals an advance beyond plants, mammals an advance beyond reptiles.  If evolution is driven by an undirected, efficient causation, how can we understand these apparent advances?  Darwin attempted to account for this by appealing to the idea of increasing fitness.  More advanced organisms are better able to survive and reproduce; why else would they have emerged in the first place? 

This explanation is untenable.  Cockroaches are more fit in terms of natural selection than elephants, slime molds than slimy politicians.  Darwin’s explanation fails.  Many biologists have been tempted to try to give up the idea of progress altogether; however, they have been unable to do so.  Ignoring the distinction between higher level and lower level organisms means ignoring a conspicuous feature of biological reality. 

Rosslenbroich demonstrates that this is a persistent problem in the philosophy of biology.  Biologists can’t do with and can’t do without a theory of progress.  Among the attempts to model progress in evolutionary history are: increasing complexity, increasing division of labor among cells, increasing efficiency or energy intensive activity, increasing genetic information, and increasing body size.  All seem to come up short of a satisfactory account of what distinguishes the lower levels of biological activity from the activities of the higher levels.  Without that, how can we understand how sentient moles and heartbroken playwrights emerged from the primordial soup?

Rosslenbroich’s answer is increasing autonomy.  The most basic feature of living organisms is that they build a barrier between themselves and their environment.  The simplest living cell builds a wall around itself.  Within that wall it maintains itself and controls interactions with the environment in order to resist equilibrium with its environment.  If the external environment is too salty, the cell blocks the admission of salt and so maintains its less salty interior.  If the internal self is polluted with waste, paste is passed on to the external environment. 

The efficient cause of the movements of a fallen leaf are external to the leaf: the autumn wind.  The efficient cause of the movements of a mouse or of the cat stalking the mouse, are internal to the one and the other. 

Rosslenbroich argues that what distinguishes higher from lower organisms is increasing autonomy.  The simplest cell builds a wall between itself and its environment and maintains the one against the other.  More complex cells build internal walls, protecting the nucleus against the rest of the cell.  Animals build walls around their organs and walls protecting brains and sex cells against the flow of energy and materials within the body.  The walls don’t have to be material.  A hive of bees distinguishes its social self from other insects. 

I think that this is dead spot on.  It explains the difference between the primitive and advanced organisms without any need to suppose a directed force in evolution.  Just as tectonic plates collide to rise up into mountains, so the forces of evolutionary history pushed up in the direction of increased autonomy.

I also think that it holds the answer to a number of basic philosophical questions.  To mention only one: the problem of personal identity.  The psychological self is one more advance in the expansion of biological autonomy.  

Progress & Evolution

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.

Platonic Biology

Theodosius Dhobzhansky famously wrote that “nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution.”  I gather that Dhobzhansky, an Orthodox Christian, was arguing against creation scientists and other critics of Darwinian Theory.  I agree with him and will add one more step.  Nothing in Darwinian Theory makes sense except in light of Plato. 

Plato’s Socrates more famously advanced a theory of forms or ideas as a way of making sense of human perception and intelligence.  In a nutshell, the theory goes as follows.  When we perceive a physical object, say a tree, our perception only captures one possible perspective on that object.  Thus the tree looks small from a distance and large up close.  Likewise we see only one side of it at a time.  It is our intelligence, not our perceptions, that informs us that the tree is one object that has not changed as we approach it and circle around it.  That one tree is in fact invisible to the eye and visible only to the intelligence. 

We also notice that the tree itself does seem to change over time‑gray and leafless in November but green and flourishing in June.  Yet it is still this same tree: an object that is one thing and another as it extends across the dimension of time.  Likewise, we recognize this tree and another tree as one and the same kind of thing because our intelligence informs us of a pattern that is more persistent that any individual tree.  Plato (or his Socrates) supposed that the pattern was more real than the example because it was more persistent and more knowable. 

Plato’s many critics as well as his misguided disciples (Neoplatonists, for example) neglected to notice that Socrates usually qualified his speculations by saying that it is only “something like this”.  I think that it is indeed something like this and that a qualified but genuinely Platonic approach is necessary to make sense of Darwinian biology. 

I am working on revising a paper I presented last year in Montreal.  You can see critical comments on the paper by Scott James here and my reply to those excellent comments here.  Some sections of the paper and my argument can be found here, here, and here. 

In this post, I will present some examples of Darwinian ideas that are in fact Platonic ideas.  To begin with, consider this argument: if it’s a mammal, then it’s an animal; it’s a mammal, therefore it’s an animal.  That simple, biological modus ponens recognizes this here organism as an expression of a larger object that extends across time and space.  Individual mice and men come to be in dependence on larger forms that are more persistent across evolutionary time and more pervasive across evolutionary niches at any one time.  That is “something like” what Socrates had in mind. 

Evolutionary theory works exactly the same way that Plato’s theory worked: by recognizing that the caterpillar and the butterfly as well as the butterfly and the moth are, in a very real sense, the same things.  What is real is mostly invisible to the eye but visible indeed to the properly educated intelligence. 

To take another example, natural selection is a robust, Platonic idea.  Although we have no Platonic writings about mathematics, he clearly thought that training in math was essential for philosophy and regarded mathematical concepts as among the most important ideas.  Natural selection is a logical rather than strictly mathematical principle, but it works the same way as such explicit Platonic ideas as justice and the good.  Natural selection is the same thing whether it is shaping pathogens or pacifists, liver cells or lush barflies. 

I will close here with one final example: the pied flycatcher.  The male of this avian species attracts females with the implicit promise he will help provide for her and her young once they are hatched.  He often makes the same promise to a second female, but there is only some much time he can invest and the second female will find that she is cheated.  The female that he supports will spend more time warming eggs and chicks with a payoff of four or five healthy progeny.  The cheated female will be lucky if one or two survive.  The logic of fidelity and adultery are the same whether we are talking about avians or apes.  I am not sure whether Plato would be pleased to admit adultery among the ideas, but this Platonist has no problem. 

In my paper, I argue that political autonomy is another expression of biological autonomy.  All living organisms build walls between inside and outside, self and not-self, and maintain what is inside in resistance against what is outside.  Life is a Russian doll of coalitions, cells in organs, organs in bodies, individuals in tribes.  At every level, the Platonic idea of autonomy is expressed. 

Living Organisms, Autonomy, & Lineages

Miranda: you are better than any student I have ever known at seeing what the next question is.  That is the single most important element in philosophy. 

Aristotle considered metabolism (the ability of a living organism to nourish itself and consequently produce waste) as a sufficient condition for life.  He referred to this as "nutritive soul."  Plants have this alone, whereas animals have additional layers (mobility, perception at a distance) and human beings have still others.  These are the elements that define various levels of autonomy.  I don't think that this makes autonomy just another word for life.  The word life points to what we are trying to understand whereas the word autonomy helps us to understand what life is. 

However, I smuggled in an element that does not seem to belong to autonomy so much: the production of babies.  Some philosophers of biology argue that, in addition to autonomy, living organisms have to be part of a lineage.  Every living organism is the offspring of a line of successful replicators. 

I am not certain, but I think that the addition of the lineage as an essential element of life is an attempt to head off the kind of objection that Scott James raises against me.  A political community, for example, seems to display autonomy or something very close to it.  It seems to struggle to maintain itself and it has to feed and produce waste.  Aristotle himself argued that the political community is precisely that human association that works enough dynamic cycles that it is "self-sufficient".  Well, if political communities are self-sufficient are they not autonomous?  And if they are autonomous, are they not alive? 

I think that the self-sufficient human community is a much stronger challenge to my view of autonomy than are refrigerators or thermostats.  It is tempting to talk about the evolution of political institutions and to see, for example, the United States as, perhaps, an example of political speciation.  The American regime broke off from the British regime in much the same way as homosapiens broke off from the common ancestor with pan troglodyte. 

This is misleading.  Political communities do not form lineages.  The Second Continental Congress formed spontaneously, as relations between the continent and the mother country worsened; it had no mommy or daddy.  Regimes form spontaneously all the time.  By contrast, living organisms do not form spontaneously.  They always have at least one biological parent. 

It is a very interesting question (and one that did not occur to me until your latest comment) whether the biological lineage is an element of life distinct from autonomy or whether it is another element of autonomy.  The cells and organs of my body (with the exception of my reproductive organs) have sacrificed any opportunity to reproduce.  Like sterile castes among the ants, they can have offspring only through the reproductive activity of something else (my gonads in the one case, the queen in the other).  Does this compromise their autonomy?  Every cell in my body is robustly alive as is the sister forager feeding on my picnic lunch.  I will have to ponder this one.