4.6 Lamarck’s Revenge
59
feeling Damasio’s “homeostatic imperative” urging them to move on to perfection,
whereas humans and humanity as a whole are bewildered by a whirlwind advance
on a time scale shorter than their own lifespans that leaves no gap for social and
technological homeostasis.
A species or even a larger taxonomic group may be eliminated just because of
bad luck, and the biosphere as we see it certainly would not be restored in all detail
if evolution was rewound and replayed. Evolution may be driven not just by strength
and shrewdness, by ability to kill and avoid being killed, but by sexual preferences,
from exquisite displays of paradise birds to an Indonesian monkey species whose
females go for mates with large drooping noses and beer bellies. There is also a
random genetic drift, emergence of features that neither increase nor decrease fitness, like color of eyes (before genes for blue eyes would be implanted in designer
babies). Creatures may drift to either higher or lower complexity if neither gives
a clear preference. Humankind also kept evolving and diversifying, sometimes by
adjusting to specific environments, like high altitude, and sometimes by acquiring
evolutionarily neutral features, which, however, sometimes gain significance due to
cultural habits and prejudices. We are idolizing progress, and political correctness
hinders discussion of long-time dysgenic consequences of some contemporary attitudes and mores – but perhaps this topic can be set aside for the time being, since
humanity faces more menacing and urgent threats. Lovelock believes that we are
the nervous system of Gaia, and she will not let us go down; others rely on God’s
good will, and I do wish they were in the right.
4.6 Lamarck’s Revenge
Darwin was not the first to contemplate the ways organisms evolve without divine
interference. Jean-Baptist Lamarck (1809) asserted in his first law that in every animal [. . . ] frequent and sustained use of any organ gradually strengthens, develops, and enlarges that organ [. . . ]; while the constant disuse of such an organ [. . . ]
weakens it [. . . ] until it finally disappears. These adaptive somatic changes acquired
by organisms were supposed to be passed to their offspring, thereby driving the
species to perfection. Lamarck’s teleological idea was noble: le pouvoir de la vie,
striving for organisation and perfection, far more beautiful than Darwin’s random
genetic wandering in the dark, with its cruel extinguishing of the unfit. To be an
Error and to be Cast out is a part of God’s design, and a part of Darwin’s design as
well, though William Blake hardly meant it in the quoted line.
Of course, Lamarck had no idea of any mechanism for the inheritance of acquired
characteristics. And Darwin himself knew nothing of genes, nor the mechanism of
mutations that would become clear during the hundred years following the publication of his theory of natural selection. But while new evidence backed Darwin,
Lamarck’s heirloom turned out to be toxic. In Russia under Stalin, the infamous
Trofim Lysenko advanced his home-grown kind of Lamarckism after cracking down
upon “Mendelists–Morganists”, proper geneticists basing their work on the laws of
59
feeling Damasio’s “homeostatic imperative” urging them to move on to perfection,
whereas humans and humanity as a whole are bewildered by a whirlwind advance
on a time scale shorter than their own lifespans that leaves no gap for social and
technological homeostasis.
A species or even a larger taxonomic group may be eliminated just because of
bad luck, and the biosphere as we see it certainly would not be restored in all detail
if evolution was rewound and replayed. Evolution may be driven not just by strength
and shrewdness, by ability to kill and avoid being killed, but by sexual preferences,
from exquisite displays of paradise birds to an Indonesian monkey species whose
females go for mates with large drooping noses and beer bellies. There is also a
random genetic drift, emergence of features that neither increase nor decrease fitness, like color of eyes (before genes for blue eyes would be implanted in designer
babies). Creatures may drift to either higher or lower complexity if neither gives
a clear preference. Humankind also kept evolving and diversifying, sometimes by
adjusting to specific environments, like high altitude, and sometimes by acquiring
evolutionarily neutral features, which, however, sometimes gain significance due to
cultural habits and prejudices. We are idolizing progress, and political correctness
hinders discussion of long-time dysgenic consequences of some contemporary attitudes and mores – but perhaps this topic can be set aside for the time being, since
humanity faces more menacing and urgent threats. Lovelock believes that we are
the nervous system of Gaia, and she will not let us go down; others rely on God’s
good will, and I do wish they were in the right.
4.6 Lamarck’s Revenge
Darwin was not the first to contemplate the ways organisms evolve without divine
interference. Jean-Baptist Lamarck (1809) asserted in his first law that in every animal [. . . ] frequent and sustained use of any organ gradually strengthens, develops, and enlarges that organ [. . . ]; while the constant disuse of such an organ [. . . ]
weakens it [. . . ] until it finally disappears. These adaptive somatic changes acquired
by organisms were supposed to be passed to their offspring, thereby driving the
species to perfection. Lamarck’s teleological idea was noble: le pouvoir de la vie,
striving for organisation and perfection, far more beautiful than Darwin’s random
genetic wandering in the dark, with its cruel extinguishing of the unfit. To be an
Error and to be Cast out is a part of God’s design, and a part of Darwin’s design as
well, though William Blake hardly meant it in the quoted line.
Of course, Lamarck had no idea of any mechanism for the inheritance of acquired
characteristics. And Darwin himself knew nothing of genes, nor the mechanism of
mutations that would become clear during the hundred years following the publication of his theory of natural selection. But while new evidence backed Darwin,
Lamarck’s heirloom turned out to be toxic. In Russia under Stalin, the infamous
Trofim Lysenko advanced his home-grown kind of Lamarckism after cracking down
upon “Mendelists–Morganists”, proper geneticists basing their work on the laws of