Different viewpoints on evolution

The discoveries and evidences in the 17^th and 18^th centuries gave rise to the idea of a changing world. By the end of the 18^th century the concept of a ‘changing world’

was applied to astronomy, geology, and to human affairs, and even challenged the Scala Naturae or Great Chain of Being: Mayr (2001) explains it as follows:

Eventually it was realized that the static Scala Naturae could be converted into a kind of biological escalator, leading from the lowest organisms to ever higher ones, and finally to man. Just as gradual change in the development of an individual organism leads from the fertilized egg to the fully adult individual – [ontogeny]⁶, so it was thought that the organic world as a whole moved from the simplest organisms to ever more complex ones, culminating in man.

While ‘ontogeny’ was associated with ‘phylogeny’ during the reinterpretation of the Scala Naturae, the ideas of progress and predictability of ‘ontogeny’ were transferred into ‘phylogeny’ as well. Today it is known that evolution is about

‘phylogeny’, and it should not be confused with ‘ontogeny’, which had concerned Darwin during his lifetime and caused him hesitation in using the word ‘evolution’ to explain ‘phylogeny’, which was previously used to explain ‘ontogeny’.

Different viewpoints on evolution that were supported by the ideologies of the 19^th century were produced within the emergence of evolutionary thinking –the idea that the ‘world is not static but rather evolving’. Evolutionary viewpoints of Lamarck, Spencer and Darwin are given below and at the further parts of this chapter in comparison to each other.

i) Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck

The conversion of Scala Naturae was first articulated in detail by the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck (1744-1829), who proposed the first genuine theory of evolution in the Philosophie Zoologique in 1809. Lamarck’s theory

6 ‘Ontogeny’ is “The development or course of development especially of an individual organism”, and

‘phylogeny’ is “The evolution of a genetically related group of organisms as distinguished from the development of the individual organism” (Url-6, Url-7).

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prevailed up to 1859 among laypeople, natural scientists and philosophers, which sustained the idea that God had created the world in a way that every organism was perfectly adapted to its place in nature –essentialism- and the creation was a gradual, slow process, directed by final causes, culminating in the production of man –finalism. Mayr (2001) explains Lamarck’s theory as “[he] adopted a weakened version of strict essentialism by allowing a gradual change (transformation) of the type over time”.

In Lamarckian evolution, the change occurs due to environment and willpower of the organism, which is then inherited by the following generations. His two ideas to explain the evolution are the change of characteristics by striving for improvement, known as the ‘Law of Use and Disuse’ and the inheritance of acquired characteristics is known as ‘Transmission of Acquired Characteristics’ (Wright, 2009). These ideas combine to form an evolutionary theory, which is guided by the environment.

Futuyma (1986) explains Lamarck’s theory as: “…a changing environment alters the needs of the organism to which the organism responds by changing its behaviour, and consequently uses some organs more than others. In other words, use and disuse alter morphology, which is transmitted to subsequent generations”. A common example is the elongation of the necks of giraffes through generations due to their behaviour of trying to reach higher leaves.

Lamarck’s theory highlights the improvement and the perfection in evolution, thus it is strictly one dimensional –invariable, directional and progressive (Dawkins, 2006;

Mayr, 1991).

Lamarck did not provide demonstrable evidence for his theory, in the way he suggested it did (Wright, 2009). His theory also had a very poor explanatory power that was incapable of explaining the evolution of serious adaptive complexity (Dawkins, 2006). However, although his theories are refuted today, Lamarck influenced Darwin and other evolutionists of his time, such as Herbert Spencer.

ii) Herbert Spencer

Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) was a follower of Lamarckian ideas so that he also viewed evolution as a mechanism for constant gradual improvement. Spencer defined evolution (Dennett quotes Spencer, 1995) as: “Evolution is an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion; during which the matter passes from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity; and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation”.

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Spencer’s evolutionary improvement was due to moving up in the evolutionary scale by the strong surviving and the weak necessarily perishing through a generally one-directional continuous trend towards a definite, coherent heterogeneity. This mechanism could only be achieved by an inherent progressive tendency of the nature, where all later versions of a subject would be ‘better’ or more ideal than all earlier versions. Being ‘better’ or more ideal was described as being ‘fit for purpose’

in Spencerian evolutionary thinking, rather than simply being ‘fit’, as in stronger, larger, healthier or more attractive. This purposive thinking of Spencerian evolution, which was found in the philosophy of finalism, indicated how things were predestined to become more complex and specialised as in the way that a caterpillar was predestined to become a butterfly (Wright, 2009).

In Spencerian evolution, being ‘fit for purpose’ brings up the differentiation of form due to emergence and progressive specialization of organic function. As being a philosopher and a sociologist, Spencer applied this functionalism thinking to his sociology studies and he was the first to use ‘function’ as a technical term for the analysis of society. For him, evolution was a process manifested in man, society and culture. His thoughts also influenced the architect Louis Sullivan, who coined the famous phrase ‘form follows function’ in the late 19^th century. This was due to the 19^th century functionalism and the modern movement that provided the basis for a simple ‘ecological’ analogy of a kind that is found in both animals and artifacts. Form was related to function, and function was related to environment (Steadman, 1979).

Together with the idea of functionalism, Spencer applied his progressive evolutionary thinking to a number of subjects, including art, design and education (Wright, 2009).

Over time there was widespread acceptance of Darwin’s theories through the studies in evolutionary biology. This was partly aided by the discrediting of Lamarck’s theories, which in turn irrevocably damaged Spencer’s evolutionary thinking with its reliance on Lamarckian ideas (Wright, 2009).

iii) Misconception of the ideas of Charles Darwin with Herbert Spencer

Although Darwin’s evolutionary ideas are fundamentally different from Spencer’s, they are sometimes confused with one another outside the academy of biology.

Mayr (1991) identifies the differences between these two evolutionary viewpoints as follows:

Spencerian paradigm is in several respects in complete conflict with Darwin’s ideas. For instance, Spencer supported transformational rather than variational evolution; second his

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evolution was distinctly teleological; and finally it was based entirely on an inheritance of acquired characteristics, not involving natural selection in any manner.

Lamarck’s evolutionary ideas both influenced Spencer and Darwin; however Spencer’s evolution theory relied more on Lamarckian inheritance of acquired characteristics while Darwin proposed an original theory for evolution, namely the

‘natural selection’. Despite this situation, the ideas of these two scientists are confused leading to a misconception of Darwin’s evolutionary ideas worldwide.

The confusion of the ideas of Spencer and Darwin with one another might be reasoned to their both using the word ‘evolution’ and the phrase ‘survival of the fittest’ with different meanings; and also the naming of the movement ‘Social Darwinism’ after Darwin although it was based on Spencerian thinking. These reasons are briefly explained below.

As mentioned previously, Darwin preferred to use ‘descent with modification’ for his theory rather than ‘evolution’ since it carried the meaning of progress in the English vernacular. However, Spencer propelled the word into biology and it gained general currency so that it became inevitable for Darwin to use the word first time in “The Descent of Man” in 1871 (Gould, 1996).

The famous phrase ‘the survival of the fittest’ originates with Spencer. It was used by Darwin in the 5^th edition of “The Origin of the Species”, where he changed the title of Chapter 4 to “Natural Selection or Survival of the Fittest”, and used the phrase several times in the text (Pallen, 2009). Actually, Darwin meant it as a metaphor for ‘better adapted for immediate, local environment’, not the common inference of ‘in the best physical shape’ (Gould, 1996), which misled the meaning to a progression. In addition, Pallen (2009) states that “If the fittest are defined as those best equipped to survive; the phrase becomes an uninformative tautology that obscures the essential features of [Darwinian] natural selection”.

The phrase ‘survival of the fittest’ became the slogan for a form of social climbing, called ‘Social Darwinism’, in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries in England and especially in America, which was widely used after 1940s (Howard, 1982). Pallen (2009) explains it as “the view that competition between individuals and between nations could, and should, drive social and economic progress in human societies”.

Although this interpretation of Social Darwinism was influenced by Thomas Malthus and Herbert Spencer, it was named after Darwin in a manner of increasing the misconceptions about Darwinian thinking. Steadman (1979) clarifies this situation and explains the difference of Darwinian evolution from Spencerian evolution as follows:

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The strange thing to realize in retrospect, despite all the talk of ‘Social Darwinism’, is how little the Darwinian theory really justified any such analogy. In the first place there was no necessary suggestion of progress in the ‘survival of the fittest’ –because fitness was always relative, and because the only ultimate criterion of overall fitness (as distinct from those qualities conferring relative fitness on competitors) was the fact of survival. In the second place, Darwin did not propose –as Spencer did- any law of evolution as such, any goal or state towards which it was directed; he offered only a mechanism for the operation of selection, dependent on certain assumed laws of heredity and variation.