In my paper, Natural reward drives the advancement of life, I begin with a brief discussion of a self-contradiction in Darwin’s theory. The self-contradiction is that: (i) natural selection yields comparative progress only, and (ii) natural selection also yields absolute progress, where comparative progress is the adaptive advance of one line of organisms over others, and absolute progress involves improvement on a scale of fixed value. In my paper, I discuss the self-contradiction as it relates to the current state of evolutionary theory.
But the question arises: why did I start my paper by going back to Darwin? A better way to communicate to working evolutionists would be to address their perspective up front, perhaps by beginning with the modern concept of fitness and definition of natural selection. Although I am aware of how to do this (see my reply to Jake), I chose to start with Darwin for several reasons.
The first reason I started with Darwin is that it allowed me to provide a unified response to all macroevolutionary perspectives. Today, there are many alternative views on macroevolution. It is impossible to directly compare the theory of natural reward to all these views in a short space. Therefore, instead of directly compare one theory to many perspectives, I isolated the single assumption that all these theories have in common: that natural selection is the only deterministic force of evolution. As it turns out, this is also the same assumption that Darwin made.
A second reason that I went back to Darwin is that it helps preempt a rhetorical response to my paper. Evolutionists respond by making two contradictory arguments. The first argument is that existing theories of species selection, clade selection, gene selection, and long-term fitness maximization accomplish the same explanatory goals of the theory of natural reward. The second argument is that there is nothing new in the assumptions of the theory of natural reward, because we already knew that natural selection works through small and gradual changes. With regard to Darwin’s self-contradictory arguments however, the theory of natural reward requires only (i) to be true (that natural selection yields comparative progress only), while existing macroevolutionary theories require (ii) to be true also (that natural selection yields both comparative and absolute progress). In other words, the theory of natural reward does not contradict itself in the same way that Darwin’s theory first did, nor in the same way that all macroevolutionary theories since Darwin have.
A third reason that I went back to Darwin is that it helps explain why evolutionists created macroevolutionary theories that are based on selection acting on long-preserved units or long-term effects, which contradict the core Darwinian logic of selection on ephemeral units and for immediate effects. I argue that evolutionists have been caught in a double bind, a psychologically distressing situation in which two conflicting messages are imposed on a receiver, and the receiver cannot opt out of the dilemma. In this case, prominent evolutionists were afraid to reveal a weak point of evolutionary theory to political and ideological opponents, and over time this led to a situation in which it was not fashionable to criticize the theory of evolution.
A final reason that I felt it necessary to go back to Darwin is that highlights a shortcoming of Darwin’s theory that was obvious at the outset. Reviewing how Darwin’s contemporaries recognized the self-contradiction in his theory will show that the problem was acute, and that nothing in the century and a half since Darwin resolved it.
The first person to recognize the self-contradiction in Darwin’s theory was Charles Lyell, author of Principles of Geology, and one of the first readers of Darwin’s Origin. Prior to writing the Origin, Lyell had long been one of Darwin’s trusted confidants. In 1856, Darwin told Lyell about a macroevolutionary theory based on the principle of divergence, and eagerly awaited Lyell’s reaction to his work. Right after Lyell read the final proofs of The Origin of Species, he sent a letter to Darwin and argued that natural selection explained only context-dependent adaptation (Lyell–Darwin 4 Oct 1859). Lyell encouraged Darwin to qualify his arguments that natural selection explains the evolution of superior forms of life, and to “modestly limit the pretensions of selection.” In the same letter, Lyell discussed the possibility of an alternative “creative” power.
Alfred Wallace, the co-developer of the theory of natural selection, stated, “…natural selection has no power to produce absolute perfection but only relative perfection, no power to advance any being beyond his fellow beings, but only just so much beyond them as to enable it to survive them in the struggle for existence…” (Wallace 1871, pp. 333-334). After looking at humans and all the traits that have fortuitously combined to allow ecological success, Wallace (1871), p. 360 commented that, “…the difficulties I have put forward remain, and I think prove, that some more general and more fundamental law underlies that of ‘natural selection’….”
The comments of Lyell and Wallace suggested that Darwin had overlooked an alternative force of evolution. Insight on the nature of this force later came from Fredrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), an expert in linguistics. In Twilight of the Idols (1888), Nietzsche wrote, “As for the famous ‘struggle for existence,’ so far it seems to me to be asserted rather than proved. It occurs, but as an exception; the total appearance of life is not the extremity, not starvation, but rather riches, profusion… and where there is struggle, it is a struggle for power” (Ridley and Norman 2005, p. 199).
When combined together, Darwin’s contemporaries’ arguments foreshadow my own. To extend Darwin’s theory, I suggest that it is important to first include an alternative struggle of life, which I call the struggle for supremacy, and an alternative force, which I call natural reward. My arguments follow the precedent of Lyell, Wallace, and Nietzsche because they invoke an alternative force and struggle in evolution.
Darwin himself, in contrast, invoked the principle of divergence to explain macroevolution. In the only figure in The Origin of Species, Darwin showed a long-term advantage to species with a propensity to vary. My paper suggests that the shortcoming of Darwin’s principle of divergence was that it did not delineate the struggle for supremacy from the struggle for existence, and it did not identify natural reward as a force separate to natural selection. This lack of clarity is why Lyell ultimately concluded, “I care not for Creation, but I want something higher than Selection” (Lyell-Darwin 22 Oct 1859).
I believe that if Darwin were alive today, he would be pleasantly surprised to see that somebody, other than Lyell, finally understood his “principle of divergence” argument. In contemplating a coherent macroevolutionary theory, based on the idea of natural reward, Darwin would have exclaimed, as a Huxley did, “how extremely stupid was I not to have thought of that!”
References
Lyell C to Darwin C (1859) 4 Oct. Darwin Correspondence Project, Letter No. 3132
––– (1859) 22 Oct. Darwin Correspondence Project, Letter No. 2508F
Ridley M, Norman J (Ed. and Trans.) (2005) Fredrich Nietzsche: The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 296 pp.
Williams B, Nauckhoff J, Del Caro A (Ed. and Trans.) (2001) Friedrich Nietzsche: The Gay Science. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 277 pp.
Wallace AR (1871) Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection. MacMillan and Co., London, 384 pp.