A belief in Evolution
Evolution is the process of change that allows life forms to adapt to their dynamic environments, often with increasing degrees of scale and complexity.
Quotations
“Apes and Humans”
Philosophers and scientists confidently offer up traits said to be uniquely human, and the apes casually knock them down – toppling the pretension that humans constitute some sort of biological aristocracy among the beings of Earth. Instead, we are more like the nouveau riche, incompletely accommodated to our recent exalted state, insecure about who we are, and trying to put as much distance as possible between us and our humble origins.
Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan, from the book Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: A Search for Who We Are, 1993, © Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan
“The chicken experiment”
But the chicken experiments suggest that this logic is flawed – even for farm animals where eugenics is a common practice. It seems Francis Galton was deeply mistaken about the relationship between individual abilities and societal welfare. The number of eggs laid by an individual hen is not an individual trait so much as it is a social trait, because it depends upon how members of the group behave towards each other. If the individuals who profit most from a social group do not contribute to the group’s welfare, and if their traits are heritable, then selecting for them results in the collapse of the society.
David Sloan Wilson, from the interview “This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution”, 2019, © David Sloan Wilson
“Competition is not separable from endless flavors of cooperation”
Her trees are far more social than even Patricia suspected. There are no individuals. There aren’t even separate species. Everything in the forest is the forest. Competition is not separable from endless flavors of cooperation. Trees fight no more than do the leaves on a single tree. It seems most of nature isn’t red in tooth and claw, after all. For one, those species at the base of the living pyramid have neither teeth nor talons. But if trees share their storehouses, then every drop of red must float on a sea of green.
Richard Powers, from the book The Overstory, 2018, © Richard Powers
“Evolutionary Drive Towards Complexity”
The evolutionary drive towards complexity comes, in those lineages where it comes at all, not from any inherent propensity for increased complexity, and not from biased mutation. It comes from natural selection: the process which, as far as we know, is the only process ultimately capable of generating complexity out of simplicity.
Richard Dawkins, from the book The God Delusion, 2006, © Richard Dawkins
“Living in small groups has been baked into our psyches”
Living in small groups has been baked into our psyches by thousands of generations of genetic evolution, and small groups need to remain “cells” in the cultural evolution of larger-scale societies.
David Sloan Wilson, from the interview “This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution”, 2019, © David Sloan Wilson
“The malleability of life”
It is sobering to contemplate the malleability of life. It only takes five generations to turn a population of mild-mannered chickens into a population of psychopaths. If we don’t manage evolutionary processes, they will very likely take us where we don’t want to go.
David Sloan Wilson, from the interview “This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution”, 2019, © David Sloan Wilson
“Our tribal instincts are not bugs”
Especially in a time of powerful and shifting politics, we shouldn’t ignore our quintessential human capacities to bond with our communities. Nor should we delude ourselves that the thin gruel of rationality and universalism will mobilize people to accomplish desired goals.
I write as a convert to the advocacy of tribalism. I used to consider group-related instincts as a detrimental force in human affairs. I was raised (as you may have been too) to see rationality, creativity, and morality as the hallmarks of humanity, and I viewed conformity, status-seeking, and traditionalism as fallibilities. But based on what I’ve learned from decades as a behavioral scientist, I’ve come to see my former humanities worldview as naive, or at least incomplete. Our tribal instincts are not bugs in the system that hinder an otherwise intelligent species. They are the distinguishing features of our kind that enabled its evolutionary ascent—and still drive many of its greatest achievements today. They are not human foibles that hold us back; they are human superpowers that create our distinctive cultures.
Michael Morris, from the book Tribal: How the Cultural Instincts That Divide Us Can Help Bring Us Together, 2024, © Michael Morris
“Small groups are a fundamental unit of human social organization”
Multilevel selection theory tells us that something similar to team-level selection took place in our species for thousands of generations, resulting in adaptations for teamwork that are baked into the genetic architecture of our minds. Absorbing this fact leads to the conclusion that small groups are a fundamental unit of human social organization. Individuals cannot be understood except in the context of small groups, and large-scale societies need to be seen as a kind of multicellular organism comprising small groups.
David Sloan Wilson, from the interview “This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution”, 2019, © David Sloan Wilson
“The Tribe Drive”
The “Tribe Drive” is an ancient adaptation that has been a prerequisite for survival for 99.9 percent of our species’ evolutionary history. It is a critical piece of cognitive machinery – honed by millions of years of evolution – that gave us the ability to navigate, both cooperatively and competitively, increasingly complex social landscapes.
David R. Samson, from the book Our Tribal Future: How to Channel our Foundational Human Instincts Into a Force for Good, 2023
“Which side will lose by winning”
Aspens are withering. Grazed on by everything with hooves, cut off from rejuvenating fire, whole groves are vanishing. Now she sees a forest, spreading across these mountains since before humans left Africa, giving way to second homes. She sees it in one great glimpse of flashing gold: trees and humans, at war over the land and water and atmosphere. And she can hear, louder than the quaking leaves, which side will lose by winning.
Richard Powers, from the book The Overstory, 2018, © Richard Powers
“A working simple system”
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. The inverse proposition also appears to be true. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work. You have to start over beginning with a working simple system.
John Gall, from the book Systemantics, 1975