Another example: their ability to fly enables birds to build their nests high up in the trees where their young ones are less accessible to some of their enemies. Primarily those who took to it had a selectional advantage. The second step is that this kind of abode was bound to select the proficient fliers among the young ones. Thus a certain ability to fly produces a change of environment, or behaviour towards the environment, which favours an accumulation of the same ability.
The most remarkable feature among living beings is that they are divided into species which are, many of them, so incredibly specialized on quite particular, often tricky performances, on which especially they rely for survival. A zoological garden is almost a curiosity show, and would be much more so, could it include an insight into the life-history of insects. Non-specialization is the exception. The rule is specialization in peculiar studied tricks which ‘nobody would think of if nature had not made them’. It is difficult to believe that they have all resulted from Darwinian ‘accumulation by chance’. Whether one wants it or not, one is taken by the impression of forces or tendencies away from ‘the plain and simple’ in certain directions towards the complicated. The ‘plain and simple’ seems to represent an unstable state of affairs. A departure from it provokes forces – so it seems – towards a further departure, and in the same direction. That would be difficult to understand if the development of a particular device, mechanism, organ, useful behaviour, were produced by a long pearlstring of chance events, independent of each other, such as one is used to thinking of in terms of Darwin’s original conception. Actually, I believe, only the first small start ‘in a certain direction’ has this structure. It produces itself circumstances which ‘hammer the plastic material’ – by selection – more and more systematically in the direction of the advantage gained at the outset. In metaphorical speech one might say: the species has found out in which direction its chance in life lies and pursues this path.
FEIGNED LAMARCKISM
We must try to understand in a general way, and to formulate in a non-animistic fashion, how a chance-mutation, which gives the individual a certain advantage and favours its survival in a given environment, should tend to do more than that, namely to increase the opportunities for its being profitably made use of, so as to concentrate on itself, as it were, the selective influence of the environment.
To reveal this mechanism let the environment be schematically described as an ensemble of favourable and unfavourable circumstances. Among the first are food, drink, shelter, sunlight and many others, among the latter are the dangers from other living beings (enemies), poisons and the roughness of the elements. For brevity we shall refer to the first kind as ‘needs’ and to the second as ‘foes’. Not every need can be obtained, not every foe avoided. But a living species must have acquired a behaviour that strikes a compromise in avoiding the deadliest foes and satisfying the most urgent needs from the sources of easiest access, so that it does survive. A favourable mutation makes certain sources more easily accessible, or reduces the danger from certain foes, or both. It thereby increases the chance of survival of the individuals endowed with it, but in addition it shifts the most favourable compromise, because it changes the relative weights of those needs or foes on which it bears. Individuals which – by chance or intelligence – change their behaviour accordingly will be more favoured, and thus selected. This change of behaviour is not transmitted to the next generation by the genom, not by direct inheritance, but this does not mean that it is not transmitted. The simplest, most primitive example is afforded by our species of flowers (with a habitat along an extended mountain slope) that develops a hairy mutant. The hairy mutants, favoured mainly in the top ranges, disperse their seeds in such areas so that the next generation of ‘hairies’, taken as a whole, has ‘climbed up the slope’, as it were, ‘to make better use of their favourable mutation’.
In all this one must bear in mind that as a rule the whole situation is extremely dynamic, the struggle is a very stiff one. In a fairly prolific population that, at the time, survives without appreciably increasing, the foes usually overpower the needs – individual survival is an exception. Moreover, foes and needs are frequently coupled, so that a pressing need can only be met by braving a certain foe. (For instance, the antelope has to come to the river for drink, but the lion knows the place just as well as he.) The total pattern of foes and needs is intricately interwoven. Thus a slight reduction of a certain danger by a given mutation may make a considerable difference for those mutants who brave that danger and thereby avoid others. This may result in a noticeable selection not only of the genetic feature in question but also with regard to the (intended or haphazard) skill in using it. That kind of behaviour is transmitted to the offspring by example, by learning, in a generalized sense of the word. The shift of behaviour, in turn, enhances the selective value of any further mutation in the same direction.
The effect of such a display may have great similarity with the mechanism as pictured by Lamarck. Though neither an acquired behaviour nor any physical changes that it entails are directly transmitted to the offspring, yet behaviour has an important say in the process. But the causal connection is not what Lamarck thought it to be, rather just the other way round. It is not that the behaviour changes the physique of the parents and, by physical inheritance, that of the offspring. It is the physical change in the parents that modifies – directly or indirectly, by selection – their behaviour; and this change of behaviour is, by example or teaching or even more primitively, transmitted to the progeny, along with the physical change carried by the genom. Nay, even if the physical change is not yet an inheritable one, the transmission of the induced behaviour ‘by teaching’ can be a highly efficient evolutionary factor, because it throws the door open to receive future inheritable mutations with a prepared readiness to make the best use of them and thus to subject them to intense selection.
GENETIC FIXATION OF HABITS AND SKILLS
One might object that what we have here described may happen occasionally, but cannot continue indefinitely to form the essential mechanism of adaptive evolution. For the change of behaviour itself is not transmitted by physical inheritance, by the hereditary substance, the chromosomes. At first, therefore, it is certainly not fixed genetically and it is difficult to see how it should ever come to be incorporated in the hereditary treasure. This is an important problem in itself. For we do know that habits are inherited as, for instance, habits of nestbuilding in the birds, the various habits of cleanliness we observe in our dogs and cats, to mention a few obvious examples. If this could not be understood along orthodox Darwinian lines, Darwinism would have to be abandoned. The question becomes of singular significance in its application to man, since we wish to infer that the striving and labouring of a man during his lifetime constitute an integrating contribution to the development of the species, in the quite proper biological sense. I believe the situation to be, briefly, as follows.
According to our assumptions the behaviour changes parallel those of the physique, first as a consequence of a chance change in the latter, but very soon directing the further selectional mechanism into definite channels, because, according as behaviour has availed itself of the first rudimentary benefits, only further mutations in the same direction have any selective value. But as (let me say) the new organ develops, behaviour becomes more and more bound up with its mere possession. Behaviour and physique merge into one. You simply cannot possess clever hands without using them for obtaining your aims, they would be in your way (as they often are to an amateur on the stage, because he has only fictitious aims). You cannot have efficient wings without attempting to fly. You cannot have a modulated organ of speech without trying to imitate the noises you hear around you. To distinguish between the possession of an organ and the urge to use it and to increase its skill by practice, to regard them as two different characteristics of the organism in question, would be an artificial distinction, made possible by an abstract language but hav
ing no counterpart in nature. We must, of course, not think that ‘behaviour’ after all gradually intrudes into the chromosome structure (or what not) and acquires ‘loci’ there. It is the new organs themselves (and they do become genetically fixed) that carry along with them the habit and the way of using them. Selection would be powerless in ‘producing’ a new organ if selection were not aided all along by the organism’s making appropriate use of it. And this is very essential. For thus, the two things go quite parallel and are ultimately, or indeed at every stage, fixed genetically as one thing: a used organ – as if Lamarck were right.
It is illuminating to compare this natural process with the making of an instrument by man. At first sight there appears to be a marked contrast. If we manufacture a delicate mechanism, we should in most cases spoil it if we were impatient and tried to use it again and again long before it is finished. Nature, one is inclined to say, proceeds differently. She cannot produce a new organism and its organs otherwise than whilst they are continually used, probed, examined with regard to their efficiency. But actually this parallel is wrong. The making of a single instrument by man corresponds to ontogenesis, that is, to the growing up of a single individual from the seed to maturity. Here too interference is not welcome. The young ones must be protected, they must not be put to work before they have acquired the full strength and skill of their species. The true parallel of the evolutionary development of organisms could be illustrated, for example, by a historical exhibition of bicycles, showing how this machine gradually changed from year to year, from decade to decade, or, in the same way, of railway-engines, motor-cars, aeroplanes, typewriters, etc. Here, just as in the natural process, it is obviously essential that the machine in question should be continually used and thus improved; not literally improved by use, but by the experience gained and the alterations suggested. The bicycle, by the way, illustrates the case, mentioned before, of an old organism, which has reached the attainable perfection and has therefore pretty well ceased to undergo further changes. Still it is not about to become extinct!
DANGERS TO INTELLECTUAL EVOLUTION
Let us now return to the beginning of this chapter. We started from the question: is further biological development in man likely? Our discussion has, I believe, brought to the fore two relevant points.
The first is the biological importance of behaviour. By conforming to innate faculties as well as to the environment and by adapting itself to changes in either of these factors, behaviour, though not itself inherited, may yet speed up the process of evolution by orders of magnitude. While in plants and in the lower ranges of the animal kingdom adequate behaviour is brought about by the slow process of selection, in other words by trial and error, man’s high intelligence enables him to enact it by choice. This incalculable advantage may easily outweigh his handicap of slow and comparatively scarce propagation, which is further reduced by the biologically dangerous regard not to let our offspring exceed the volume for which livelihood can be secured.
The second point, concerning the question whether biological development is still to be expected in man, is intimately connected with the first. In a way we get the full answer, namely, this will depend on us and our doing. We must not wait for things to come, believing that they are decided by irrescindable destiny. If we want it, we must do something about it. If not, not. Just as the political and social development and the sequence of historical events in general are not thrust upon us by the spinning of the Fates, but largely depend on our own doing, so our biological future, being nothing else but history on a large scale, must not be taken to be an unalterable destiny that is decided in advance by any Law of Nature. To us at any rate, who are the acting subjects in the play, it is not, even though to a superior being, watching us as we watch the birds and the ants, it might appear to be. The reason why man tends to regard history, in the narrower and in the wider sense, as a predestined happening, controlled by rules and laws that he cannot change, is very obvious. It is because every single individual feels that he by himself has very little say in the matter, unless he can put his opinions over to many others and persuade them to regulate their behaviour accordingly.
As regards the concrete behaviour necessary to secure our biological future, I will only mention one general point that I consider of primary importance. We are, I believe, at the moment in grave danger of missing the ‘path to perfection’. From all that has been said, selection is an indispensable requisite for biological development. If it is entirely ruled out, development stops, nay, it may be reversed. To put it in the words of Julian Huxley: ‘ … the preponderance of degenerative (loss) mutation will result in degeneration of an organ when it becomes useless and selection is accordingly no longer acting on it to keep it up to the mark.’
Now I believe that the increasing mechanization and ‘stupidization’ of most manufacturing processes involve the serious danger of a general degeneration of our organ of intelligence. The more the chances in life of the clever and of the unresponsive worker are equalled out by the repression of handicraft and the spreading of tedious and boring work on the assembly line, the more will a good brain, clever hands and a sharp eye become superfluous. Indeed the unintelligent man, who naturally finds it easier to submit to the boring toil, will be favoured; he is likely to find it easier to thrive, to settle down and to beget offspring. The result may easily amount even to a negative selection as regards talents and gifts.
The hardship of modern industrial life has led to certain institutions calculated to mitigate it, such as protection of the workers against exploitation and unemployment, and many other welfare and security measures. They are duly regarded as beneficial and they have become indispensable. Still we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that, by alleviating the responsibility of the individual to look after himself and by levelling the chances of every man, they also tend to rule out the competition of talents and thus to put an efficient brake on biological evolution. I realize that this particular point is highly controversial. One may make a strong case that the care for our present welfare must override the worry about our evolutionary future. But fortunately, so I believe, they go together according to my main argument. Next to want, boredom has become the worst scourge in our lives. Instead of letting the ingenious machinery we have invented produce an increasing amount of superfluous luxury, we must plan to develop it so that it takes off human beings all the unintelligent, mechanical, ‘machine-like’ handling. The machine must take over the toil for which man is too good, not man the work for which the machine is too expensive, as comes to pass quite often. This will not tend to make production cheaper, but those who are engaged in it happier. There is small hope of putting this through as long as the competition between big firms and concerns all over the world prevails. But this kind of competition is as uninteresting as it is biologically worthless. Our aim should be to reinstate in its place the interesting and intelligent competition of single human beings.
1The material in this chapter was first broadcast as a series of three talks in the European Service of the B.B.C. in September 1950, and subsequently included in What is Life? and other essays (Anchor Book A 88, Doubleday and Co., New York).
2Evolution: A Modern Synthesis (George Allen and Unwin, 1942).
CHAPTER 3
The Principle of Objectivation
Nine years ago I put forward two general principles that form the basis of the scientific method, the principle of the understandability of nature, and the principle of objectivation. Since then I have touched on this matter now and again, last time in my little book Nature and the Greeks.1 I wish to deal here in detail with the second one, the objectivation. Before I say what I mean by that, let me remove a possible misunderstanding which might arise, as I came to realize from several reviews of that book, though I thought I had prevented it from the outset. It is simply this: some people seemed to think that my intention was to lay down the fundamental principles which ought to be at the basis of scientific method or at
least which justly and rightly are at the basis of science and ought to be kept at all cost. Far from this, I only maintained and maintain that they are – and, by the way, as an inheritance from the ancient Greeks, from whom all our Western science and scientific thought has originated.
The misunderstanding is not very astonishing. If you hear a scientist pronounce basic principles of science, stressing two of them as particularly fundamental and of old standing, it is natural to think that he is at least strongly in favour of them and wishes to impose them. But on the other hand, you see, science never imposes anything, science states. Science aims at nothing but making true and adequate statements about its object. The scientist only imposes two things, namely truth and sincerity, imposes them upon himself and upon other scientists. In the present case the object is science itself, as it has developed and has become and at present is, not as it ought to be or ought to develop in future.
Now let us turn to these two principles themselves. As regards the first, ‘that nature can be understood’, I will say here only a few words. The most astonishing thing about it is that it had to be invented, that it was at all necessary to invent it. It stems from the Milesian School, the physiologoi. Since then it has remained untouched, though perhaps not always uncontaminated. The present line in physics is possibly a quite serious contamination. The uncertainty principle, the alleged lack of strict causal connection in nature, may represent a step away from it, a partial abandonment. It would be interesting to discuss this, but I set my heart here on discussing the other principle, that which I called objectivation.
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