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@ Scott
2024-05-31 14:26:24Ever since reading Darwin's Origin of Species a couple years ago, one part of the book has always stuck with me. In the seventh chapter, Instinct, Darwin says that certain species of ants appeared "fatal" to his entire theory. Here is a longer quote from the section:
I will ... here ... confine myself to one special difficulty, which at first appeared to me insuperable, and actually fatal to my whole theory. ...neuters or sterile females in insect-communities: for these neuters often differ widely in instinct and in structure from both the males and fertile females, and yet, from being sterile, they cannot propagate their kind. — Origin of Species, Chapter VII, Page 236
The idea that all of the genetic information of these sterile ants had to be passed along, but not expressed, by the breeding males and females was a difficult challenge. Darwin had been focusing on natural selection at the level of the individual organism, but a sterile ant has exactly zero fitness when analyzed at this level. As an individual organism, it can't pass on its genes!
This led Darwin to expand his concept of natural selection in the following way:
This difficulty, though appearing insuperable, is lessened, or, as I believe, disappears, when it is remembered that selection may be applied to the family, as well as to the individual, and may thus gain the desired end. — Origin of Species, Chapter VII, Page 237
I think this example really stuck with me because it represents one of the main biases of the conventional Darwinian approach. It seems like the more intuitive a form of natural selection is the more its power is overestimated. Darwin was overcommitted to natural selection at the level of the individual organism and didn’t really consider selection at the level of the family until forced by a real world example.
I said “intuitive” forms of natural selection are overestimated, but I think these could also be described as “low order”, “tangible”, “concrete”, or “basic”. It’s part and parcel with the dawning insight that the enlightenment project overcommitted to bottom-up explanations and neglected top-down ones.
I think this is important because we stand at a moment where the popularized mathematical explanations of how life develops are breaking down. It becoming clear that life has the ability to move through the combinatorial genetic space staggeringly fast in a way that simply must deny a blind search through random mutation.
Perhaps a top-down natural selection can cover some of the distance present by this obstacle that is coming into focus.