# Evolutionary Biology > **Machine-Evolution Nexus:** [[articles/Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution|Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution]] connects this node to the substrate-independent history of heredity, selection and computational populations. **Domain:** Biology / Descent / Adaptive Change **Doc Type:** Canonical Discipline Node **Maturity:** Foundational ## Definition **Evolutionary biology** studies changes in inherited populations and the processes producing diversity, adaptation and common descent, including selection, mutation, drift, gene flow, recombination and speciation. ## Machine-Intelligence Context [[articles/The Evolutionary Roots of Silicon Valley|The Evolutionary Roots of Silicon Valley]] argues that evolutionary biology and machine learning meet around the problem of adaptive structure. The connection is strongest in evolutionary algorithms and broader whenever variation is differentially retained under constraints. The disciplines remain distinct. Gradient descent is not reproduction; a loss function is not an ecosystem; trained models do not automatically form biological lineages. Precision about the unit of variation, inheritance channel and selection process keeps the synthesis rigorous. ## Continuity Context Evolution provides a theory of lineage continuity through change. It does not by itself solve personal identity. Descendants can preserve and transform patterns while remaining numerically distinct from their ancestors. ## Key Insight **Evolution explains how adaptive organization persists through transformation without requiring either fixed essence or conscious design.** ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts > "I read once that human brains began shrinking about 10 thousand years ago and are now as much as 15% smaller than they were then." > **— Brian Eno**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Human Brains Have Shrunk Since Civilization Began by Brian Eno|Human Brains Have Shrunk Since Civilization Began by Brian Eno]] > "Often genetic diversity can be restored by means as straightforward as connecting isolated populations with wildlife corridors or larger protected areas, but new technological capabilities are broadening the options for genetic rescue. Advanced reproductive technology offers an alternative to transporting whole genetically-distinct parents—artificial insemination has brought genetic refreshment to cheetahs, pandas, elephants, whooping cranes, and black-footed ferrets. With the cost of genome sequencing and analysis coming down, it is becoming possible to examine each stage of genetic rescue at the gene level instead of having to wait for external traits to show improvement. This has already been done with Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep." > **— Stewart Brand**, *2017, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Term or Concept Ought to Be More Widely Known?”* [[reminders/Preservation/Genetic Rescue Can Recover Lost Biological Futures by Stewart Brand|Genetic Rescue Can Recover Lost Biological Futures by Stewart Brand]] > “Unless we believe that we have now stabilized all planetary and galactic variables, these cycles of growth and extinction will continue time and again. 99% of species, including all other hominids, have gone extinct. Often this has happened over long periods of time. What is interesting today, 200 years after Darwin's birth, is that we are taking direct and deliberate control over the evolution of many, many species, including ourselves. So the single biggest game changer will likely be the beginning of human speciation. We will begin to get glimpses of it in our lifetime. Our grandchildren will likely live it.” > **— Juan Enriquez**, *2009, Edge Annual Question, “What Will Change Everything?”* [[reminders/Evolution/99% of Species, Including All Other Hominids, Have Gone Extinct by Juan Enriquez|99% of Species, Including All Other Hominids, Have Gone Extinct by Juan Enriquez]] > “The best evidence we have from anthropology is that our ancestors acquired this capacity some time between 75,000 and 200,000 years ago. (The evidence is in the form of manufactured artifacts that early humans left behind, which indicate such a level of abstract thinking and communication.) But how — and in terms of natural selection, why — did our ancestors acquire this capacity? All we know for sure is that it came at the end of a three-and-a-half-million year period in which the average brain size of our ancestors grew to roughly its present level, approximately nine times larger than is normal for a mammal of our body size and about twice that of a present-day ape.” > **— Keith Devlin**, *2002, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Question? ... Why?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Abstract Thought Emerged After Millions of Years of Brain Expansion by Keith Devlin|Abstract Thought Emerged After Millions of Years of Brain Expansion by Keith Devlin]] > “Every adult mind has two histories. There is evolution. Few would doubt that some of the most elegant and persuasive explanations in psychology appeal to the constructive process of natural selection. And there is development—how our minds unfold over time, the processes of maturation and learning.” > **— Paul Bloom**, *2012, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, Or Beautiful Explanation?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Adult Minds Have Both Evolutionary and Personal Histories by Paul Bloom|Adult Minds Have Both Evolutionary and Personal Histories by Paul Bloom]] > “Natural selection often operates on “life history” characteristics, and life history plays an important role in evolution, in general. Biologists long distinguished between “K” species and “R” species. R species, most fish, for example, may produce thousands of offspring, but most of them die and the rest live only a short time. In contrast “K” species like primates and whales, have only a few babies, invest a great deal in their care, and live a long time. Generally speaking, a “K” life history strategy is correlated with a larger brain and higher intelligence. We are the ultimate “K” species.” > **— Alison Gopnik**, *2017, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Term Or Concept Ought To Be More Widely Known?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Biologists Long Distinguished Between K Species and R Species by Alison Gopnik|Biologists Long Distinguished Between K Species and R Species by Alison Gopnik]] > “From the time of the Enlightenment philosophers have speculated that the remarkable advances of science would one day spill over into the realm of moral philosophy, and that scientists would be able to discover answers to previously insoluble moral dilemmas and ethical conundrums. One of the reasons Ed Wilson's book Consilience was so successful was that he attempted to revive this Enlightenment dream. Alas, we seem no closer than we were when Voltaire, Diderot, and company first encouraged scientists to go after moral and ethical questions. Are such matters truly insoluble and thus out of the realm of science (since, as Peter Medewar noted, "science is the art of the soluble")? Should we abandon Ed Wilson's Enlightenment dream of applying evolutionary biology to the moral realm? Most scientists agree that moral questions are scientifically insoluble and they have abandoned the Enlightenment dream. But not all. We shall see.” > **— Michael Shermer**, *2001, Edge Annual Question, “What Questions Have Disappeared?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Can Science Answer Moral and Ethical Questions by Michael Shermer|Can Science Answer Moral and Ethical Questions by Michael Shermer]] > “In his Sketch on an infant Darwin described how readily children learn from their caregivers. The inheritance of traditions, customs, and language is relatively easy to observe with the tools of a 19th Century naturalist compared to intricacies of genetic inheritance, which is still yielding fundamental secrets to the high tech tools of molecular biology. Recent work on the mechanisms underlying imitation and teaching has begun to reveal the more deeply hidden cognitive components of these processes and the results underpin Darwin's phenomenological account of tradition acquisition and evolution.” > **— Peter Richerson**, *2014, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Idea Is Ready For Retirement?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Children Inherit Traditions as Readily as Genes by Peter Richerson|Children Inherit Traditions as Readily as Genes by Peter Richerson]] > “Cooked food has so many important biological effects that its adoption should be clearly marked in the fossil record by signals of a reduced digestive system and increased energy use. While such signs are clear at the origin of Homo erectus, they are not found later in human evolution. The match between the biological merits of cooked food and the evolutionary changes in Homo erectus is thus so obvious that except for a scientific obstacle, I believe it would have been noticed long ago. The obstacle is the insistence of archaeologists that the control of fire is not firmly evidenced before about a quarter of a million years ago. As a result of this archaeological caution, the idea that humans could have used fire before about 250,000 to 500,000 years ago has long been sidelined.” > **— Richard Wrangham**, *2008, Edge Annual Question, “What Have You Changed Your Mind About? Why?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Cooking May Have Created Homo Erectus by Richard Wrangham|Cooking May Have Created Homo Erectus by Richard Wrangham]] > “Because evolution by selection is a relatively slow process, the acquisition of scientific knowledge about adaptations for exploitation may enable staying one step ahead of exploiters, and effectively short-circuit their strategies. Some classes of crime will be curtailed. Cultural evolution, however, being fleeter than organic evolution, may enable the rapid circumvention of anti-exploitation defenses. Defenses, in turn, favor novel strategies of exploitation. Dissemination of discoveries about adaptations for exploitation and co-evolved defenses may change permanently the nature of social interaction. Or perhaps, like some co-evolutionary arms races, these discoveries ultimately may change nothing at all.” > **— David M. Buss**, *2009, Edge Annual Question, “What Will Change Everything?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Cultural Evolution Can Outrun Organic Evolution by David M. Buss|Cultural Evolution Can Outrun Organic Evolution by David M. Buss]] > “Theodiversity once was the exclusive subject matter of the humanities. But it is now a focal point of a budding science-humanities collaboration. The religious diversification of humankind in historical time poses fascinating questions and challenges for the new science of cultural evolution. Also, these are times of renewed anxieties about real or imagined cultural conflict between religions, and between religions and secular modernity. This is why quantifiable, evidence-based, and nuanced understanding of the complexities of theodiversity are important now more than ever.” > **— Ara Norenzayan**, *2016, Edge Annual Question, “What Do You Consider The Most Interesting Recent [Scientific] News? What Makes It Important?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Cultural Evolution Must Explain Religious Diversification by Ara Norenzayan|Cultural Evolution Must Explain Religious Diversification by Ara Norenzayan]] > “Luckily, there are informative parallels between biological and cultural evolution. Cultural systems—like biological systems—change over time. Heritable units of culture (counterparts of genes in biology) are difficult to define, but we can observe information propagating and mutating e.g. as the packets Dawkins popularized as memes. Unlike genes, ideas or memes can be transmitted worldwide in an instant and potentially reach massive audiences, so the evolution of cultures can hurtle forth at a rate far exceeding our biological evolution. The mutation and differential survival of ideas, however, is analogous to the mutation and differential survival of genetic variants, and thus our understanding of cultural evolution can be informed by biological concepts.” > **— Kirsten Bomblies**, *2013, Edge Annual Question, “What *should* We Be Worried About?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Cultural Systems Evolve by Heritable Variation by Kirsten Bomblies|Cultural Systems Evolve by Heritable Variation by Kirsten Bomblies]] > “The appeal of Darwin's theory of evolution — and the horror of it, for some theists — is that it expunges from biology the concept of purpose, of teleology, thereby converting biology into a mechanistic, canonical science. In this respect, the author of The Origin of Species may be said to be the combined Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler of biology. Just as these astronomers gave us a view of the heavens in which no angels were required to propel the planets in their orbs and the earth was no longer the center of the celestial system, so Darwin showed that no God was needed to design the spider's intricate web and that man is in truth but another animal.” > **— Denis Dutton**, *2008, Edge Annual Question, “What Have You Changed Your Mind About? Why?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Darwin Removed Purpose from Biology by Denis Dutton|Darwin Removed Purpose from Biology by Denis Dutton]] > “I don't know which model of quantum gravity is right, but all the leading candidates, string theory, loop quantum gravity and others, teach us that it is possible that all properties of elementary particles are relational and environmental. In different possible universes there may be different combinations of elementary particles and forces. Indeed, all that used to be thought of as fundamental, space and the elementary particles themselves are increasingly seen, in models of quantum gravity, as themselves emergent from a more elementary network of relations.” > **— Lee Smolin**, *2006, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Dangerous Idea?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Darwin and Einstein May Illuminate Each Other by Lee Smolin|Darwin and Einstein May Illuminate Each Other by Lee Smolin]] > “Elegance is more than an aesthetic quality, or some ephemeral sort of uplifting feeling we experience in deeper forms of intuitive understanding. Elegance is formal beauty. And formal beauty as a philosophical principle is one of the most dangerous, subversive ideas humanity has discovered: it is the virtue of theoretical simplicity. Its destructive force is greater than Darwin's algorithm or that of any other single scientific explanation, because it shows us what the depth of an explanation is.” > **— Thomas Metzinger**, *2012, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, Or Beautiful Explanation?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Darwin's Algorithm Has Extraordinary Destructive Force by Thomas Metzinger|Darwin's Algorithm Has Extraordinary Destructive Force by Thomas Metzinger]] > “By the 1830's, the geologist Charles Lyell had decided that atolls must be coral reefs growing on the crater rims of sunken extinct volcanoes. Darwin didn't agree, and it's wonderful to know that Lyell was thrilled when Darwin came back from the Beagle voyage and told him the real answer: the coral organisms thrive in shallow water but the ocean floor is slowly sinking; the polyps die but new ones are growing on top of them, and over an immense amount of time countless billions of tiny calcareous skeletons accumulate to make up a vast structure reaching from the darkness of the ocean bed to the sunlit surface so far above.” > **— Christopher Sykes**, *2012, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, Or Beautiful Explanation?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Darwin's Explanation of the Origin of Coral Reefs by Christopher Sykes|Darwin's Explanation of the Origin of Coral Reefs by Christopher Sykes]] > “Darwin's books and letters are full of careful descriptions. The amateur struggling with a field guide may take comfort reading how he frets over the difference between a stem with two leaves and a leaf with two leaflets. Darwin seems to have had a soft spot for fumitories, giving wonderfully detailed descriptions of the different varieties, whether and under what conditions they attracted insects, and how the geometry and flexibility of the different parts of the flower affected how pollen was carried off by visiting bees. He was looking for mechanisms that ensured evolutionary variability by making it likely that bees would occasionally transfer pollen from one flower to another, giving rise to occasional crosses—analysis later reflected in the Origin of Species.” > **— Ursula Martin**, *2013, Edge Annual Question, “What *should* We Be Worried About?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Darwin's Greatest Tool Was Close Observation by Ursula Martin|Darwin's Greatest Tool Was Close Observation by Ursula Martin]] > “I think that Darwin's invention of the theory of evolution by natural selection outshines them all. It is perhaps the only truly general theory in Biology, a field much more complex than physics. If we discover life elsewhere in the universe it is likely to be the only biological theory that will carry over from our terrestrial biology. Darwin's theory reduced tremendously the complication of zoological data. Critically, as with the telescope, it has put tremendous pressure on the previous world-view to accommodate man as "merely" a part of a much larger nature. This pressure is still largely being resisted, but the outcome is clear.” > **— Christopher G. Langton**, *1999, Edge Annual Question, “What Is The Most Important Invention In The Past Two Thousand Years?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Darwin's Theory Outshines Every Other Biological Invention by Christopher G. Langton|Darwin's Theory Outshines Every Other Biological Invention by Christopher G. Langton]] > “As a student, I was influenced by Claude Lévi-Strauss and even more by Noam Chomsky. Both of them dared talk about "human nature" when the received view was that there was no such thing. In my own work, I argued for a naturalistic approach in the social sciences. I took for granted that human cognitive dispositions were shaped by biological evolution and more specifically by Darwinian selection. While I did occasionally toy with evolutionary speculations, I failed to see at the time how they could play more than a quite marginal role in the study of human psychology and culture.” > **— Dan Sperber**, *2008, Edge Annual Question, “What Have You Changed Your Mind About? Why?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Darwinian Selection Shaped Human Cognitive Dispositions by Dan Sperber|Darwinian Selection Shaped Human Cognitive Dispositions by Dan Sperber]] > “I navigate through this storm of information using my favorite conceptual compass: Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. Application of evolutionary principles often draws attention to paradoxes and flaws in arguments. These problems, if recognized, are often swept under the rug, but they become unavoidably conspicuous when the correct alternative argument is formulated. One of my research strategies is to identify medical conventional wisdom that is inconsistent with evolutionary principles. I then formulate alternative explanations that are consistent and then evaluate all of them with evidence.” > **— Paul W. Ewald**, *2010, Edge Annual Question, “How Is The Internet Changing The Way You Think?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Darwinian Thinking Is a Compass Through Complexity by Paul W. Ewald|Darwinian Thinking Is a Compass Through Complexity by Paul W. Ewald]] > “I believe that all life, all intelligence, all creativity and all 'design' anywhere in the universe, is the direct or indirect product of Darwinian natural selection. It follows that design comes late in the universe, after a period of Darwinian evolution. Design cannot precede evolution and therefore cannot underlie the universe.” > **— Richard Dawkins**, *2005, Edge Annual Question, “What Do You Believe Is True Even Though You Cannot Prove It?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Design Cannot Precede Evolution by Richard Dawkins|Design Cannot Precede Evolution by Richard Dawkins]] > “One resource is the (ever-growing) order of the evolutionary process itself. Each stage of evolution provides more powerful tools for the next. In biological evolution, the advent of DNA allowed more powerful and faster evolutionary "experiments." Later, setting the "designs" of animal body plans during the Cambrian explosion allowed rapid evolutionary development of other body organs, such as the brain. Or to take a more recent example, the advent of computer-assisted design tools allows rapid development of the next generation of computers.” > **— Ray Kurzweil**, *2004, Edge Annual Question, “What's Your Law?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Each Evolutionary Stage Builds Tools for the Next by Ray Kurzweil|Each Evolutionary Stage Builds Tools for the Next by Ray Kurzweil]] > “The ideas presented on Edge are speculative; they represent the frontiers of knowledge in the areas of evolutionary biology, genetics, computer science, neurophysiology, psychology, and physics. Some of the fundamental questions posed are: Where did the universe come from? Where did life come from? Where did the mind come from? Emerging out of the third culture is a new natural philosophy, founded on the realization of the import of complexity, of evolution. Very complex systems,, whether organisms, brains, the biosphere, or the universe itself, were not constructed by design; all have evolved.” > **— John Brockman**, *2014, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Idea Is Ready For Retirement?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Edge Explores the Frontiers of Biology Mind and Physics by John Brockman|Edge Explores the Frontiers of Biology Mind and Physics by John Brockman]] > “Having a good idea is far from rare in the evolution of non-human species. Indeed, many if not most species need to have an idea or trick that works well enough for them to continue to exist. Admittedly, they may not be able to extrapolate its principle from the context in which it emerged, and generalize it as (some) people can, courtesy of their prefrontal cortex.” > **— Marcel Kinsbourne**, *2012, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, Or Beautiful Explanation?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Every Species Needs an Idea That Works by Marcel Kinsbourne|Every Species Needs an Idea That Works by Marcel Kinsbourne]] > “We humans can, and do, make up our own purposes, but ultimately the universe has none. All the wonderfully complex, and beautifully designed things we see around us were built by the same purposeless process — evolution by natural selection. This includes everything from microbes and elephants to skyscrapers and computers, and even our own inner selves.” > **— Susan Blackmore**, *2006, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Dangerous Idea?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Evolution Builds Complex Design Without Purpose by Susan Blackmore|Evolution Builds Complex Design Without Purpose by Susan Blackmore]] > “Others may prefer to dispense with the idea of fields and explain the evolution of organization in some other way, perhaps using more general terms like "emergent systems properties". But whatever the details of the models, I believe that the natural selection of habits will play an essential part in any integrated theory of evolution, including not just biological evolution, but also physical, chemical, cosmic, social, mental and cultural evolution.” > **— Rupert Sheldrake**, *2005, Edge Annual Question, “What Do You Believe Is True Even Though You Cannot Prove It?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Evolution May Extend Beyond Biology by Rupert Sheldrake|Evolution May Extend Beyond Biology by Rupert Sheldrake]] > “His thinking about time created fertile ground for other grand theories. With huge spans of time available, then imperceptibly slow processes could shape the natural world. After Hutton came modern geology, then the theory of evolution to explain how new species slowly arose, and eventually a theory of the gradual movement of the continents themselves. All are grounded in deep time.” > **— Alun Anderson**, *2012, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, Or Beautiful Explanation?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Evolution Needed Deep Time to Explain New Species by Alun Anderson|Evolution Needed Deep Time to Explain New Species by Alun Anderson]] > “Our species might well be renamed Homo Dilatus, the procrastinating ape. Somewhere in our evolution we acquired the brain circuitry to deal with sudden crises and respond with urgent action. Steady declines and slowly developing threats are quite different. "Why act now when the future is far off," is the maxim for a species designed to deal with near-term problems and not long term uncertainties. It's a handy view of humankind which everyone who uses science to change policy should keep in their mental took kit, and one that that is greatly reinforced by the endless procrastination in tacking climate change. Cancun follows Copenhagen follows Kyoto but the more we dither and no extraordinary disaster follows, the more dithering seems just fine.” > **— Alun Anderson**, *2011, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Concept Would Improve Everybody's Cognitive Toolkit?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Evolution Prepared Us for Sudden Crises Not Slow Decline by Alun Anderson|Evolution Prepared Us for Sudden Crises Not Slow Decline by Alun Anderson]] > “Scientists use a diagram of a mountainous landscape to illustrate this principle. The contours of the undulating landscape indicate adaptive success of a creature. The higher the elevation of an entity, the more successful it is. The lower, the less fit. The lowest elevation is zero adaptation, or in other words, extinction. The evolutionary history of an organism can thus be mapped over time as its population begins in the foothills of low adaptation and gradually ascends the higher mountains of increased environmental adaptation. This is known in biology and in computer science as “hill climbing.” If the species is lucky, it will climb until it reaches a peak of optimal adaptation. Tyrannosaurus Rex achieved peak fitness. The industrial-age Olivetti Corporation reached the peak of optimal typewriter. Sex Pistols reached the summit of punk rock.” > **— Kevin Kelly**, *2017, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Term Or Concept Ought To Be More Widely Known?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Evolution Warns Against Premature Optimization by Kevin Kelly|Evolution Warns Against Premature Optimization by Kevin Kelly]] > “My nominee is the concept of evolution by selection (which encompasses natural selection, sexual selection, and the selective processes that generate cultural evolution). It offers the best explanation for what we are, where we came from, and the nature of life in the rest of the universe. It also explains why we invent and why we believe the inventions described in this list are important. It is the invention that explains invention.” > **— Paul W. Ewald**, *1999, Edge Annual Question, “What Is The Most Important Invention In The Past Two Thousand Years?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Evolution by Selection Explains What We Are and Where We Are Going by Paul W. Ewald|Evolution by Selection Explains What We Are and Where We Are Going by Paul W. Ewald]] > “I work on the question of evolution, not as it exists in Nature, but as a formal system which enables open-ended learning. Can we understand the process in enough detail to simulate the progress of biological complexity in pure software or electronics? A phenomena has appeared in many of my laboratory's experiments in learning across many different domains like game playing and robots. We have dubbed it a "Mediocre Stable State." It is an unexpected systematic equilibrium, where a collection of sub-optimal agents act together to prevent further progress. In dynamical systems, the MSS hides within cycles of forgetting that which has been already been learned.” > **— Jordan Pollack**, *2002, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Question? ... Why?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Evolutionary Algorithms Can Become Trapped in Mediocre Stable States by Jordan Pollack|Evolutionary Algorithms Can Become Trapped in Mediocre Stable States by Jordan Pollack]] > “Natural selection favors the allocation of resources not just from parents to offspring but among genetic kin such as siblings and cousins. Just as a gene that encourages a parent to invest in offspring will be favoring a copy of itself that sits inside those offspring, so a gene that encourage an organism to invest in a brother or cousin will, some proportion of the time, be helping a copy of itself, and will be selected in proportion to the benefits conferred, the costs incurred, and the degree of genetic relatedness.” > **— Steven Pinker**, *2012, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, Or Beautiful Explanation?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Evolutionary Genetics Explains the Conflicts of Human Social Life by Steven Pinker|Evolutionary Genetics Explains the Conflicts of Human Social Life by Steven Pinker]] > “Lessons from evolutionary psychology indicate that developing specialized intelligences — artificial idiot savants — and networking them would achieve a mosaic AI, just as evolution gradually built natural intelligences. The essential activity is discovering sets of principles that solve a particular family of problem. Indeed, successful scientific theories are examples of specialized intelligences, whether implemented culturally among communities of researchers or implemented computationally in computer models. Similarly, adding duplicates of the specialized programs we discover in the human mind to the emerging AI network would constitute a tremendous leap toward AI. Essentially, for this aggregating intelligence to communicate with humans — for it to understand what we mean by a question or want by a request, it will have to become equipped with accurate models of the native intelligences that inhabit human minds.” > **— John Tooby**, *2009, Edge Annual Question, “What Will Change Everything?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Evolutionary Psychology Points Toward Mosaic AI by John Tooby|Evolutionary Psychology Points Toward Mosaic AI by John Tooby]] > “My example of a deep, elegant, beautiful explanation in science is John Maynard Smith's concept of an evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS). Not only does this wonderfully straightforward idea explain a whole host of biological phenomena, but it also provides a useful heuristic tool to test the plausibility of various types of claims in evolutionary biology—allowing us, for example, to quickly dismiss group-selectionist misconceptions, such as the idea that altruistic acts by individuals can be explained by the benefits that accrue to the species as a whole. Indeed, the idea is so powerful that it explains things I didn't even realize needed explaining until I was given the explanation.” > **— S. Abbas Raza**, *2012, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, Or Beautiful Explanation?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Evolutionary Stable Strategies by S. Abbas Raza|Evolutionary Stable Strategies by S. Abbas Raza]] > “I believe exaptation to be a concept of central importance not only for bodily organs, but also for the evolution of mind and brain (e.g. for the evolution of language). Much of what we use our brains for in modern times represents a change in function (e.g. piloting airplanes from basic visually-guided motor control, or mathematical thinking from some basic precursor concepts of number and geometry). These very new cognitive abilities (and many others, like reading) are clearly exaptations, with no further shaping by natural selection (yet). But debate rages about whether older but still-recent human capacities like linguistic syntax have yet been tailored by natural selection to their current role (proposed cognitive precursors for linguistic syntax include hierarchical social cognition as seen in primates, or hierarchical motor control as seen in many vertebrates).” > **— W. Tecumseh Fitch**, *2017, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Term Or Concept Ought To Be More Widely Known?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Exaptation Is Central to the Evolution of Mind and Brain by W. Tecumseh Fitch|Exaptation Is Central to the Evolution of Mind and Brain by W. Tecumseh Fitch]] > “Fitness landscapes (sometimes called "adaptive landscapes") keep turning up when people try to figure out how evolution or innovation works in a complex world. An important critique by Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert of early optimism about artificial intelligence warned that seemingly intelligent agents would dumbly "hill climb" to local peaks of illusory optimality and get stuck there. Complexity theorist Stuart Kauffman used fitness landscapes to visualize his ideas about the "adjacent possible" in 1993 and 2000, and that led in turn to Steven Johnson's celebration of how the "adjacent possible" works for innovation in Where Good Ideas Come From.” > **— Stewart Brand**, *2012, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, Or Beautiful Explanation?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Fitness Landscapes Explain Evolution and Innovation by Stewart Brand|Fitness Landscapes Explain Evolution and Innovation by Stewart Brand]] > “The Neanderthals disappeared when Homo sapiens, who by then had learned the art of sewing, took over Europe and Asia. This new species, descended from a southern branch of Homo erectus, was unique among primates in being hairless. In their view, anything with fur on it could be classified as "animal"—or, to put it more bluntly, game. Neanderthal disappeared in Europe for the same reason the woolly mammoth disappeared there: the ancestors of the modern Europeans ate them. In Africa today, hungry humans eat the meat of chimpanzees and gorillas.” > **— Judith Rich Harris**, *2005, Edge Annual Question, “What Do You Believe Is True Even Though You Cannot Prove It?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Hairlessness Helped Make Humans a New Kind of Primate by Judith Rich Harris|Hairlessness Helped Make Humans a New Kind of Primate by Judith Rich Harris]] > “To be sure, the idea has appeared before. Empedocles discusses the idea that the apparent finality in the living kingdom could be the result of selected randomness, and Aristotle himself in his "Physics" mentions a version of this idea for species ("seeds"). But the times where not yet ripe, and the suggestion was lost in the following religious ages. I think that the resistance against Darwin is not just the difficulty of seeing the power of a spectacularly beautiful explanation: it is the fear of realizing the extraordinary power that such an explanation has in shattering rests of old world views.” > **— Carlo Rovelli**, *2012, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, Or Beautiful Explanation?”* [[reminders/Evolution/How Apparent Finality Can Emerge by Carlo Rovelli|How Apparent Finality Can Emerge by Carlo Rovelli]] > “Human evolution is now commonly depicted as the consequence of species replacements, where there are a series of species emanating from different, but usually African homelands, each sooner or later replacing the earlier ones. It is not the selection process that provides the source of human superiority in each successive replacement, but the random accidents that take place when new species are formed from small populations of old ones. The process is seen as being driven by random extinctions, opening up unexpected opportunities for those fortunate new species lucky to be at the right time and place.” > **— Milford H. Wolpoff**, *2001, Edge Annual Question, “What Questions Have Disappeared?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Human Evolution May Be Driven by Replacement and Random Extinction by Milford H. Wolpoff|Human Evolution May Be Driven by Replacement and Random Extinction by Milford H. Wolpoff]] > “The most difficult ideas to change are those which seem so obviously true that we can scarcely imagine otherwise until confronted with unambiguous disconfirmation. For example, even behavior geneticists had long presumed that non-genetic influences on intelligence and other human traits grow with age while genetic ones weaken. Evidence reveals the opposite for intelligence and perhaps other human traits as well: heritabilities actually increase with age. My attempt to explain the evolution of high human intelligence has also led me to question another such "obvious truth," namely, that human evolution ceased when man took control of his environment. I now suspect that precisely the opposite occurred. Here is why.” > **— Linda S. Gottfredson**, *2008, Edge Annual Question, “What Have You Changed Your Mind About? Why?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Human Evolution May Have Accelerated When We Took Control of the Environment by Linda S. Gottfredson|Human Evolution May Have Accelerated When We Took Control of the Environment by Linda S. Gottfredson]] > “Material culture is the thing that makes us human, driving human evolution from the outset with its continually modifying power. Our species' particular dilemma is that in order to safeguard what we have, we have continually to change. The culture of things—invention and technology—is ever changing under the tide of words and routines whose role is to image fixity and agreement when, in reality, none exists. This form of change is no trivial thing because it is essential to our longer term survival. At least, the longer term survival of anything we may be proud to call universally human.” > **— Timothy Taylor**, *2009, Edge Annual Question, “What Will Change Everything?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Humanity Must Keep Changing to Preserve What It Has by Timothy Taylor|Humanity Must Keep Changing to Preserve What It Has by Timothy Taylor]] > “Humans are biologically exceptional. We're exceptionally long-lived and exceptionally cooperative with non-kin. We have exceptionally small guts and exceptionally large brains. We have an exceptional communication system and an exceptional ability to learn from other members of our species. Scientists love to study biologically exceptional human traits such as these, and that's a perfectly reasonable research strategy. Human evolutionary exceptionalism, however—the tendency to assume that biologically exceptional human traits come into the world through exceptional processes of biological evolution—is a bad habit we need to break. Human evolutionary exceptionalism has sown misunderstanding in every area it has touched. Here are three examples.” > **— Michael McCullough**, *2014, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Idea Is Ready For Retirement?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Humans Are Biologically Exceptional by Michael McCullough|Humans Are Biologically Exceptional by Michael McCullough]] > “When time came to an end, the gods decided to run a final experiment. They wanted to be prepared after the big crunch for potential trajectories of life after the next big bang. For their experiment they choose two planets in the universe where evolution had resulted in similar developments of life. For planet ONEthey decided to interfer with evolution by allowing only ONE species to develop their brain to a high level of complexity. This species referred to itself as being „intelligent“; members of this species were very proud about their achievements in science, technology, the arts or philosophy.” > **— Ernst Pöppel**, *2009, Edge Annual Question, “What Will Change Everything?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Intelligence Could Be Evolution's Most Dangerous Experiment by Ernst Pöppel|Intelligence Could Be Evolution's Most Dangerous Experiment by Ernst Pöppel]] > “Another question that has fallen into the dustbin of history is this: Is human nature innately good or evil? This became a gripping topic in the late 17th century, as Enlightment thinkers began to challenge the Christian assumption that man was born a fallen creature. It was a great debate while it lasted: original sin vs. tabla rasa and the perfectability of man; Edmund Burke vs. Tom Paine; Dostoyevsky vs. the Russian reformers. But Darwin and Freud undermined the foundations of both sides, by discrediting the very possibility of discussing human nature in moral or teleological terms. Now the debate has been recast as "nature vs. nurture" and in secular scientific circles at least, man is the higher primate -- a beast with distinctly mixed potential.” > **— Ann Crittenden**, *2001, Edge Annual Question, “What Questions Have Disappeared?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Is Human Nature Innately Good or Evil by Ann Crittenden|Is Human Nature Innately Good or Evil by Ann Crittenden]] > “There are several causes for concern. To begin with, it is a correct assumption that natural selection is largely agnostic with regard to intelligence. We large-brained hominids like to think that all the information-crunching power in our hypertrophied cortexes will eventually allow us to solve the big problems of modern times, allowing our descendants to persist into the distant future. But it ain't necessarily so. Dinosaurs were a lot smarter than cockroaches, and Australopithecines were Einsteinian by comparison, yet the roaches have had a much longer run, and are widely expected to outlast Homo sapiens.” > **— Douglas T. Kenrick**, *2013, Edge Annual Question, “What *should* We Be Worried About?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Is Idiocracy Looming by Douglas T. Kenrick|Is Idiocracy Looming by Douglas T. Kenrick]] > “What inspired Darwin and Wallace were encounters with places rich in birds and mammals found nowhere else—the Galapagos and the islands in southeast Asia. There are no such places in Europe. Darwin spent most of HMS Beagle's voyage too far south in South America, while Wallace's first trip was to the Amazon. The Amazon is very rich in species, but it is a striking example of the law that such places rarely have many species with small ranges. (I suspect this cost Wallace dearly because his sponsors wanted novelty. He found that on his next trip, to the East.)” > **— Stuart Pimm**, *2012, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, Or Beautiful Explanation?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Islands Reveal Evolutionary Laws That Continents Conceal by Stuart Pimm|Islands Reveal Evolutionary Laws That Continents Conceal by Stuart Pimm]] > “Genes and their interaction networks determine the phenotype of an organism—what it looks like and how it behaves. One of the biggest problems in modern evolutionary biology is understanding the relationship between genes and phenotypes. The prevailing theory is that all animals are built from essentially the same set of regulatory genes—a genetic toolkit, and that phenotypic variation within and between species arises simply by using shared genes differently. Scientists are now generating a vast amount of genomic data from an eclectic mix of organisms. These data are telling us to put to bed the idea that all life is underlain by a common toolkit of conserved genes. Instead, we need to turn our attention to the role of genomic novelty in the evolution of phenotypic diversity and innovation.” > **— Seirian Sumner**, *2014, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Idea Is Ready For Retirement?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Life Evolves via a Shared Genetic Toolkit by Seirian Sumner|Life Evolves via a Shared Genetic Toolkit by Seirian Sumner]] > “Microbial evolution, which has been going on for over 3.6 billion years, is profoundly different from what we think of as standard Darwinian evolution, where genes have to pass down generations to work slowly through the selection filter. Bacteria swap genes promiscuously within generations. They have three different mechanisms for this "horizontal gene transfer" among wildly different kinds of bacteria, and thus they evolve constantly and rapidly. Since they pass on the opportunistically acquired genes to their offspring, what they do on an hourly basis looks suspiciously Lamarckian — the inheritance of acquired characteristics.” > **— Stewart Brand**, *2011, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Concept Would Improve Everybody's Cognitive Toolkit?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Microbes Evolve by Sharing Genes Across Lineages by Stewart Brand|Microbes Evolve by Sharing Genes Across Lineages by Stewart Brand]] > “Mismatches, however, are typically more subtle and most commonly occur when climate change, dispersal or migration alters a species’ environment, including its diet, predators, and more. Natural selection occurs when heritable variations to these sorts of mismatches affect offspring survival and reproduction. For instance, when tropically adapted humans who evolved in Africa dispersed to temperate habitats such as Europe about 40,000 years ago, selection acted rapidly in these populations to favor shifts in body shape, skin pigmentation and immune systems that lessened any resulting mismatches.” > **— Daniel Lieberman**, *2017, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Term Or Concept Ought To Be More Widely Known?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Mismatch Drives Natural Selection by Daniel Lieberman|Mismatch Drives Natural Selection by Daniel Lieberman]] > “The idea sounds fatuous in the extreme…until you remember that objects as big and complex as whales, dinosaurs, and sumo wrestlers got built in a moderately analogous fashion: they began as minute, nanoscale structures that duplicated themselves, and whose successors then differentiated off into specialized organs and other components. Those growing ranks of biological marvels did all this repeatedly until, eventually, they had automatically assembled themselves into complex and functional macroscale entities. And the initial seed structures, the gametes, were not even designed, built, or programmed by scientists: they were just out there in the world, products of natural selection. But if nature can do that all by itself, then why can't machines be intelligently engineered to accomplish relevantly similar feats?” > **— Ed Regis**, *2009, Edge Annual Question, “What Will Change Everything?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Molecular Manufacturing Copies Evolution's Bottom-up Construction by Ed Regis|Molecular Manufacturing Copies Evolution's Bottom-up Construction by Ed Regis]] > “We know that gut-feelings, such as reactions of empathy or disgust, have a major influence on how children and adults reason about morality. And no serious theory of moral development can ignore the role of natural selection in shaping our moral intuitions. But what I like about Macnamara's proposal is that it allows for moral realism. It allows for the existence of moral truths that people come to discover, just as we come to discover truths of mathematics. We can reject the nihilistic position (help by many researchers) that our moral intuitions are nothing more than accidents of biology or culture.” > **— Paul Bloom**, *2005, Edge Annual Question, “What Do You Believe Is True Even Though You Cannot Prove It?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Moral Development Cannot Ignore Natural Selection by Paul Bloom|Moral Development Cannot Ignore Natural Selection by Paul Bloom]] > “Morality is made of meat. It is a collection of biological and cultural solutions to the problems of cooperation recurrent in human social life. Which problems? Caring for families, working in teams, trading favors, resolving conflicts. Which solutions? Love, loyalty, reciprocity, respect. The solutions arose first as instincts, designed by natural selection; later, they were augmented and extended by human ingenuity, and transmitted as culture. These mechanisms motivate social, cooperative, and altruistic behavior; and they provide the criteria by which we evaluate the behavior of others. And why is morality felt to be so important? Because, for a social species like us, the benefits of cooperation (and the opportunity costs of its absence) can hardly be overstated.” > **— Oliver Scott Curry**, *2016, Edge Annual Question, “What Do You Consider The Most Interesting Recent [Scientific] News? What Makes It Important?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Morality Is Made of Meat by Oliver Scott Curry|Morality Is Made of Meat by Oliver Scott Curry]] > “Natural selection shapes systems whose complexity is indescribable in terms satisfying to human minds. Some may feel this is nihilistic. It does discourage hopes for finding simple specific descriptions for all biological systems. However, recognizing a quest as hopeless is often the key to progress. As Haldane put it, "We are thus brought face-to-face with the conclusion which to the biologist is just as significant and fundamental, just as true to the facts observed, as the conclusion of mass persists is to the physicists… the structure of a living organism has no real resemblance in its behavior to that of a machine… In the living organisms…the "structure" is only the appearance given by what seems at first to be a constant flow of specific material, beginning and ending in the environment."” > **— Randolph Nesse**, *2012, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, Or Beautiful Explanation?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Natural Selection Builds Unimaginably Complex Systems by Randolph Nesse|Natural Selection Builds Unimaginably Complex Systems by Randolph Nesse]] > “Every human being is endowed with the mental programs for developing a "conscious self" or "soul": a soul which not only values its own survival but sees itself as very much an end in its own right (in fact a soul which, in a fit of solipsism, may even consider itself the one and only source of all the ends there are!). Such a soul, besides doing all it can to ensure its own basic comfort and security, will typically strive for self-development: through learning, creativity, spiritual growth, symbolic expression, consciousness-raising, and so on. These activities redound to the advantage of mind and body. The result is that such "selfish souls" do indeed make wonderful agents for "selfish genes".” > **— Nicholas Humphrey**, *2002, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Question? ... Why?”* [[reminders/Consciousness/Natural Selection Built a Conscious Self That Treats Itself as an End by Nicholas Humphrey|Natural Selection Built a Conscious Self That Treats Itself as an End by Nicholas Humphrey]] > “The development of organisms must use complex feedback loops rather than blueprints. Random events can divert the trajectory of growth, but the trajectories are confined within an envelope of functioning designs for the species defined by natural selection.” > **— Steven Pinker**, *2002, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Question? ... Why?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Natural Selection Constrains the Trajectories of Human Design by Steven Pinker|Natural Selection Constrains the Trajectories of Human Design by Steven Pinker]] > “My Edge answer this year has to be evolution by natural selection. Not only does it explain how we all got here and how we are and behave as we do, it can even explain (at least to my fairly critical satisfaction) why many people refuse to accept it and why even more people believe in an all-powerful Deity. But since other Edge respondents are likely to have natural selection as their favorite deep, elegant, and beautiful explanation (it has all three attributes, in addition to wide ranging explanatory power), I'll have to hone in on one particular instance: the explanation of how humans acquired language—by which I mean grammatical structure.” > **— Keith Devlin**, *2012, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, Or Beautiful Explanation?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Natural Selection Explains How We Got Here by Keith Devlin|Natural Selection Explains How We Got Here by Keith Devlin]] > “The three meanings are too disparate to bring together easily, but I'll try. The popular question 'Has there been enough time for evolution to take place?' can now confidently be answered in the affirmative. It should never have been put in the first place since, self-evidently, we are here. But what is more interesting is that the real question that faces us is almost the exact opposite. Why is evolution so slow, given that natural selection is so powerful? Far from there being too little time for evolution to play with, there seems to be too much.” > **— Richard Dawkins**, *2001, Edge Annual Question, “What Questions Have Disappeared?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Natural Selection Is Powerful Yet Evolution Can Be Slow by Richard Dawkins|Natural Selection Is Powerful Yet Evolution Can Be Slow by Richard Dawkins]] > “There are several messages to be taken from the realization that natural selection functions more like a tinkerer than an engineer. We shouldn’t expect optimality from natural selection—it just gets the job done, taking the easiest, most accessible route. And as a corollary: we humans are not perfection personified, just natural selection’s way of turning a quadrupedal ape into a big-brained biped. Had we not come along, some other species, from some other ancestral stock, might eventually have evolved hyper-intelligence. But from different starting blocks, that species probably would not have looked much like us.” > **— Jonathan B. Losos**, *2017, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Term Or Concept Ought To Be More Widely Known?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Natural Selection Is a Tinkerer Not an Engineer by Jonathan B. Losos|Natural Selection Is a Tinkerer Not an Engineer by Jonathan B. Losos]] > “One is the world of the objective content of ideas, in particular of science as a body of knowledge, of actual and possible scientific theories, their truth or falsity, their refutability, tests passed or failed, valid and invalid arguments, objections met or unanswered, crucial evidence deployed, progress achieved. Darwinian science has high status in this world of objective knowledge as perhaps "the single best idea anyone has ever had". And, probably uniquely in the history of science, it is unlikely to be superseded; biology will be forever Darwinian—for natural selection, it seems, is the only mechanism that can achieve design without a designer. And the Darwinian understanding of human nature is a straightforward implication of that core insight. The first serious attempt at a science of ourselves … and, what's more, it's most likely right.” > **— Helena Cronin**, *2013, Edge Annual Question, “What *should* We Be Worried About?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Natural Selection May Be the Only Mechanism That Designs Without a Designer by Helena Cronin|Natural Selection May Be the Only Mechanism That Designs Without a Designer by Helena Cronin]] > “Second, as is well known, one can make consistency arguments for virtually every human behavior. Given the possibilities of kin selection (natural selection for behaviors that do no good for to their performers but are advantageous to their relatives) and reciprocal altruism, and our ignorance of the environments of our ancestors, there is no trait beyond evolutionary explanation. Indeed, there are claims for the evolutionary origin of even manifestly maladaptive behaviors, such as homosexuality, priestly celibacy, and extreme forms of altruism (e.g., self-sacrifice during wartime). But surely we cannot consider it scientifically proven that genes for homosexuality are maintained in human populations by kin selection. This remains possible but undemonstrated.” > **— Jerry A. Coyne**, *2006, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Dangerous Idea?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Natural Selection May Preserve Genes Through Kin Selection by Jerry A. Coyne|Natural Selection May Preserve Genes Through Kin Selection by Jerry A. Coyne]] > “Consider the tedious but tenacious argument 'genes versus environment'. I'll take a well-studied case. Indigo buntings migrate annually over long distances. To solve the problem of navigation, natural selection equipped them with the ability to construct a mental compass by studying the stars in the night sky, boy-scout fashion, during their first few months of life. The fount of this spectacular adaptation is a rich source of information that natural selection, over evolutionary time, has packed into the birds' genes—in particular, information about the rotation of the stellar constellations. Thus buntings that migrate today can use the same instincts and the same environmental regularities to fashion the same precision-built instrument as did their long-dead ancestors.” > **— Helena Cronin**, *2012, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, Or Beautiful Explanation?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Natural Selection Packed a Star Compass into Bird Genes by Helena Cronin|Natural Selection Packed a Star Compass into Bird Genes by Helena Cronin]] > “Human being have evolved to behave rationally in a given context ‹ to follow the logic of the context. Following the survival logic of the given context is how natural selection works. We cannot change the logic in a context any more than we can change the mathematical fact that 1 + 1 = 2. In the case of terrorism, what we can change is the context. Doing so will inevitably require enormous wisdom, knowledge, and resources. Maybe this is where the true future greatness lies for the most powerful nation on Earth.” > **— Keith Devlin**, *2001, Edge Annual Question, “What Now?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Natural Selection Rewards Survival in Context by Keith Devlin|Natural Selection Rewards Survival in Context by Keith Devlin]] > “Natural selection sculpts human thought across generations and at geologic time scales. Fitness is its tool, and human nature, our shared endowment as members of a species, is among its key effects. Although the thought life of each person is unique, one can discern patterns of thought that transcend racial, cultural and occupational differences; similarly, although the face of each person is unique, one can discern patterns of physiognomy — two eyes above a nose above a mouth — that transcend individual differences.” > **— Donald D. Hoffman**, *2010, Edge Annual Question, “How Is The Internet Changing The Way You Think?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Natural Selection Sculpts Human Thought Across Generations by Donald D. Hoffman|Natural Selection Sculpts Human Thought Across Generations by Donald D. Hoffman]] > “If spacetime is not fundamental, then our perception of visual space, and of objects in that space, is not a high-fidelity reconstruction of fundamental reality. What, then, is it? From the theory of evolution we can conclude that our sensory systems have been shaped by natural selection to inform us about the fitness contingencies relevant to us in our niche. We have assumed that this meant that our senses inform us of fitness-relevant aspects of fundamental reality. Apparently, they do not. They simply inform us about fitness, not fundamental reality.” > **— Donald D. Hoffman**, *2017, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Term Or Concept Ought To Be More Widely Known?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Natural Selection Tunes Perception for Fitness Not Reality by Donald D. Hoffman|Natural Selection Tunes Perception for Fitness Not Reality by Donald D. Hoffman]] > “A second step then becomes possible. That is, the organisms find new ways of copying information. This creates a second replicator and starts another evolutionary process, building on the first. This happened on earth when just one species, humans, became able to imitate each others' behaviour with sufficiently high fidelity to create a new replicator, memes. These memes (the behaviours, habits, and skills that were copied) evolved slowly at first and then faster and faster, creating our languages, social institutions, and complex culture.” > **— Susan Blackmore**, *2007, Edge Annual Question, “What Are You Optimistic About?”* [[reminders/Evolution/New Replicators Start New Evolutionary Processes by Susan Blackmore|New Replicators Start New Evolutionary Processes by Susan Blackmore]] > “Formation of new biological species usually involves isolation and independent evolution of the two populations. As one toad population evolves through natural selection, each of its novel genes is tried out in many toads and will necessarily be selected to work together with the other genes in its population. Any genes causing within-population mismatches are weeded out. But, novel genes in one toad population are never tested with novel genes in another isolated toad population. Between-population mismatches will not be weeded out and will gradually accumulate, becoming apparent only when the populations later come into contact.” > **— David C. Queller**, *2017, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Term Or Concept Ought To Be More Widely Known?”* [[reminders/Evolution/New Species Begin When Populations Evolve Apart by David C. Queller|New Species Begin When Populations Evolve Apart by David C. Queller]] > “Just as evolution can create infinite species by expressing a common process in specific environments, so too can the mind create infinite mental species. One can no sooner count emotions or moral concerns than snowflakes or colors. To be sure, there are descriptive similarities and differences across instances, but any groupings are arbitrary and rest heavily on the intuition of researchers. This is why scientists can never agree on the fundamental number of anything; one scientist may divide a mental experience into 3, another 4, and another 5.” > **— Kurt Gray**, *2014, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Idea Is Ready For Retirement?”* [[reminders/Evolution/One Evolutionary Process Can Generate Infinite Species by Kurt Gray|One Evolutionary Process Can Generate Infinite Species by Kurt Gray]] > “Despite a lot of empirical progress, the full implications of the concept of phylogeny have yet to been appreciated in evolutionary biology and the culture at large. For example, the concept of homology—similarity relation among organisms and their parts due to common ancestry—can only be understood in terms of phylogeny. Infectious diseases are caused by various species from different branches on the Tree of Life. Defending against them requires understanding how to slow them down without hurting ourselves, which is greatly facilitated by understanding where they and we fit in the historical network of phylogeny.” > **— Richard Prum**, *2017, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Term Or Concept Ought To Be More Widely Known?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Pathogens Span the Entire Tree of Life by Richard Prum|Pathogens Span the Entire Tree of Life by Richard Prum]] > “Population thinking readily extends beyond biology to the study of cultural evolution (as argued by Peter Richerson, Robert Boyd, and Peter Godfrey-Smith). Cultural phenomena can be thought of as populations, the members of which share features because they influence one another even though they do not beget one another the way organisms do and are not exactly copies of one another. Here are three examples.” > **— Dan Sperber**, *2017, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Term Or Concept Ought To Be More Widely Known?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Population Thinking Extends from Biology to Cultural Evolution by Dan Sperber|Population Thinking Extends from Biology to Cultural Evolution by Dan Sperber]] > “Since this experience, I have purposely engaged other well-educated defenders of the irrational, as well as numerous students at my university, in spontaneous one-on-one debates about a host of contentious biological subjects including evolution, organic farming, homeopathy, cloned animals, "chemicals" in our food, and genetic engineering. Much to my chagrin, even after politics, ideology, economics, and other cultural issues have been put aside, there is often a refusal to accept scientific implications of rational argumentation.” > **— Lee M. Silver**, *2008, Edge Annual Question, “What Have You Changed Your Mind About? Why?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Public Understanding Does Not Guarantee Agreement on Science by Lee M. Silver|Public Understanding Does Not Guarantee Agreement on Science by Lee M. Silver]] > “The woman's sense of being understood is based on the ability of computational objects like Paro to convince their users that they are in a relationship. I call these creatures (some virtual, some physical robots) "relational artifacts." Their ability to inspire relationship is not based on their intelligence or consciousness, but on their ability to push certain "Darwinian" buttons in people (making eye contact, for example) that make people respond as though they were in relationship. For me, relational artifacts are the new uncanny in our computer culture — as Freud once put it, the long familiar taking a form that is strangely unfamiliar. As such, they confront us with new questions.” > **— Sherry Turkle**, *2006, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Dangerous Idea?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Relational Robots Can Make Simulation Feel Natural by Sherry Turkle|Relational Robots Can Make Simulation Feel Natural by Sherry Turkle]] > “When most people think about evolution by selection, they conjure up phrases such as "survival of the fittest" or "nature red in tooth and claw." These focus attention on the Darwinian struggle for survival. Many scientists, but few others, know that evolution by selection occurs through the process of differential reproductive success by virtue of heritable differences in design, not by differential survival success. And differential reproductive success often boils down to differential mating success, the focus of Darwin's 1871 theory of sexual selection.” > **— David M. Buss**, *2011, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Concept Would Improve Everybody's Cognitive Toolkit?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Sexual Selection Rewards Mating Success by David M. Buss|Sexual Selection Rewards Mating Success by David M. Buss]] > “Cancer cells acquire a range of distinctive hallmarks—unfettered proliferation, evasion of apoptosis, motility and migratory powers, genomic rearrangements, epigenetic alterations, and changes in the mode of metabolism, chromatin architecture and elasticity (to mention a few)—that collectively confer remarkable robustness and survivability. In the standard picture, cancer, with all these attendant hallmarks, is considered to be re-invented de novo in each host organism: the result of a dream run of "lucky" genetic accidents. The gain of all these amazing fitness functions, co-located in the same neoplasm (population of new cells), over a period of as little as months or even weeks, is attributed to a sort of ultra-fast-paced Darwinian evolution going on in the body of the host organism. Unfortunately this theory, despite its simplicity and popular appeal, has only one successful prediction: that the administration of chemotherapeutic drugs is very likely to fail on account of the neoplasm's ability to rapidly evolve a resistant sub-population.” > **— Paul Davies**, *2014, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Idea Is Ready For Retirement?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Somatic Mutation Theory of Cancer by Paul Davies|Somatic Mutation Theory of Cancer by Paul Davies]] > “Who eventually survives will be largely driven by understanding and applying digital and life code, by creating robots and nanomaterials, by working inconceivably large data sets and upgrading our brains. Meanwhile many U.S. leaders proudly proclaim no evolution and little knowledge of science. They reflect a core of scared voters experiencing massive disruption and declining wages; that core fears elite education, science, immigrants, open borders, and above all rapid change. As income and knowledge gaps widen, many fall further and further behind; many grow to hate an open, knowledge driven economy. Change is rejected, blocked, vilified.” > **— Juan Enriquez**, *2008, Edge Annual Question, “What Have You Changed Your Mind About? Why?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Survival Will Depend on Mastering Digital and Biological Code by Juan Enriquez|Survival Will Depend on Mastering Digital and Biological Code by Juan Enriquez]] > “Synthetic biology is currently tightly regulated, along the same lines as GMOs. But when biosynthetic products overflow into the natural world, it will be harder to keep control. Let's look at this from the molecular level, which arguably we have more control over than the organism or ecosystem level. We can shuffle the genes and whole genomes to create something that nature did not get round to creating. But a biological unit does not exist in isolation: Genes, protein complexes, cells, all function in modules—a composite of units, finely tuned by evolution in a changeable environment to work together.” > **— Seirian Sumner**, *2013, Edge Annual Question, “What *should* We Be Worried About?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Synthetic Biology Cannot Contain What It Releases into Nature by Seirian Sumner|Synthetic Biology Cannot Contain What It Releases into Nature by Seirian Sumner]] > “Science helps shape how we see ourselves. Words also matter to perception, and perception matters to behavior. Consider what the theory of natural selection did to our view of humans in the biological world. We should be worried about the new era of Anthropocene—not only as a geological phenomenon, but also as a cultural frame.” > **— Jennifer Jacquet**, *2013, Edge Annual Question, “What *should* We Be Worried About?”* [[reminders/Evolution/The Anthropocebo Effect by Jennifer Jacquet|The Anthropocebo Effect by Jennifer Jacquet]] > “My response to the inquiry about questions that are no longer asked is to reframe it and suggest instead a common class of missing questions, those associated with obsolete and inappropriate metaphors. Metaphor is a powerful cognitive tool, which, like all models, clarifies thinking when appropriate, but constrains it when inappropriate. Science is full of them. My professional specialties of neuroscience and biopsychology has mind/brain metaphors ranging from Locke's ancient blank slate (tabula rasa), to the more technologically advanced switchboard, and the metaphor de jour, the computer. None do justice to the brain as a soggy lump of wetware, but linger as cognitive/linguistic models. Natural selection in the realm of metaphors is slow and imperfect. Witness the reference to DNA as a "blueprint" for an organism, when Dawkins' "recipe" metaphor more accurately reflects DNA's incoding of instructions for organismic assembly.” > **— Robert Provine**, *2001, Edge Annual Question, “What Questions Have Disappeared?”* [[reminders/Evolution/The Computer Metaphor Cannot Explain the Brain by Robert Provine|The Computer Metaphor Cannot Explain the Brain by Robert Provine]] > “The idea that evil has evolved is dangerous on several counts. If our brains contain psychological circuits that can trigger murder, genocide, and other forms of malevolence, then perhaps we can't hold those who commit carnage responsible: "It's not my client's fault, your honor, his evolved homicide adaptations made him do it." Understanding causality, however, does not exonerate murderers, whether the tributaries trace back to human evolution history or to modern exposure to alcoholic mothers, violent fathers, or the ills of bullying, poverty, drugs, or computer games. It would be dangerous if the theory of the evolved murderous mind were misused to let killers free.” > **— David M. Buss**, *2006, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Dangerous Idea?”* [[reminders/Evolution/The Evolution of Evil by David M. Buss|The Evolution of Evil by David M. Buss]] > “At a particular point (yet to be clearly defined) in human cultural evolution, a specific idea took hold that there were two, partially separable, elements present in a living creature: the material body and the force that animated it. On the death of the body the animating force would, naturally, desire the continuation of this-worldly action and struggle to reassert itself (just as one might strive to retrieve a flint axe one had accidentally dropped). If the soul (or spirit) succeeded, it would also seek to repossess its property, including its spouse, and reassert its material appetites.” > **— Timothy Taylor**, *2001, Edge Annual Question, “What Questions Have Disappeared?”* [[reminders/Evolution/The Idea of a Soul May Be a Product of Cultural Evolution by Timothy Taylor|The Idea of a Soul May Be a Product of Cultural Evolution by Timothy Taylor]] > “Despite what we see in Star Wars and Star Trek, I don't expect intelligence to be an inevitable result of evolution on other worlds. Since the beginning of life on Earth, as many as 50 billion species have arisen, and only one of them has acquired technology. If intelligence has such has high survival value, why are so few creatures intelligent? Mammals are not the most successful or plentiful of animals. Ninety-five percent of all animal species are invertebrates. Most of the worm species on our planet have not even been discovered yet, and there are a billion insects wandering the Earth.” > **— Clifford Pickover**, *2000, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Today's Most Important Unreported Story?”* [[reminders/Evolution/The Immortalization of Humanity by Clifford Pickover|The Immortalization of Humanity by Clifford Pickover]] > “The Internet isn't changing the way I or anybody else thinks. We know this because we can still visit some people on Earth who don't have the Internet and they think the same way that we do. My general purpose thinking circuits are hard wired into my brain from genetic instructions honed over millions of years of natural selection. True, the brain is plastic, it responds to the way it is brought up by its user, or to the language it has been taught to speak, but its fundamental structure is not changed this way, except perhaps in extremis, maybe eight hours per day of computer games.” > **— Mark Pagel**, *2010, Edge Annual Question, “How Is The Internet Changing The Way You Think?”* [[reminders/Evolution/The Internet Cannot Rewrite Millions of Years of Brain Evolution by Mark Pagel|The Internet Cannot Rewrite Millions of Years of Brain Evolution by Mark Pagel]] > “The Internet is the ultimate mating ground for ideas, the supreme lekking arena for memes. Cultural and intellectual evolution depends on sex just as much as biological evolution does; otherwise it remains a merely vertical transmission system. Sex allows creatures to draw upon mutations that happen anywhere in their species. The Internet allows people to draw upon ideas that occur to anybody in the world. Radio and printing did this too, and so did writing, and before that language, but the Internet has made it fast and furious.” > **— Matt Ridley**, *2010, Edge Annual Question, “How Is The Internet Changing The Way You Think?”* [[reminders/Evolution/The Internet Is a Sexual Recombination Engine for Ideas by Matt Ridley|The Internet Is a Sexual Recombination Engine for Ideas by Matt Ridley]] > “We begin with the individual organism as the primary unit of biology and society because the organism is the principal target of natural selection and social evolution. Thus, the survival and flourishing of the individual organism—people in this context—is the basis of establishing values and morals, and so determining the conditions by which humans best flourish ought to be the goal of a science of morality. The constitutions of human societies ought to be built on the constitution of human nature, and science is the best tool we have for understanding our nature.” > **— Michael Shermer**, *2013, Edge Annual Question, “What *should* We Be Worried About?”* [[reminders/Evolution/The Is-ought Fallacy of Science and Morality by Michael Shermer|The Is-ought Fallacy of Science and Morality by Michael Shermer]] > “Laptop QCs will make us rethink neuroscience. A few decades ago we peered inside brains and saw complex telephone switch boards. Now we peer inside brains and see complex classical computations, both serial and parallel. What will see once we have thoroughly absorbed the mind set of quantum computation? Some say we will still find only classical computations, because the brain and its neurons are too massive for quantum effects to survive. But evolution by natural selection leads to surprising adaptations, and there might in fact be selective pressures toward quantum computations.” > **— Donald D. Hoffman**, *2009, Edge Annual Question, “What Will Change Everything?”* [[reminders/Evolution/The Laptop Quantum Computer by Donald D. Hoffman|The Laptop Quantum Computer by Donald D. Hoffman]] > “2. Hunter-gatherers. Large-scale agriculture, cities, and other aspects of what we call "civilization" are recent inventions (< 10,000 years old), too young to have exerted significant evolutionary change on the human genome, and have led to cataclysmic changes in the human lifestyle. The best information about the ecological and social lifestyle to which our minds and bodies are biologically adapted lies in the few remaining foraging or hunting and gathering peoples. These peoples are now assimilating, being absorbed, being pushed off their lands, or dying of disease.” > **— Steven Pinker**, *2000, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Today's Most Important Unreported Story?”* [[reminders/Evolution/The Loss of Our Species' Biography by Steven Pinker|The Loss of Our Species' Biography by Steven Pinker]] > “Cancer is often described as a sped-up version of Darwinian evolution. Through a series of advantageous mutations, the tumor—this hopeful monster—becomes fitter and fitter within the ecosystem of your body. Some of the mutations are inherited while others are environmental—the result of a confusion of outside influences. Much less talked about is a third category: the mutations that arise spontaneously from the random copying errors occurring every time a cell divides.” > **— George Johnson**, *2016, Edge Annual Question, “What Do You Consider The Most Interesting Recent [Scientific] News? What Makes It Important?”* [[reminders/Evolution/The Most Powerful Carcinogen May Be Entropy by George Johnson|The Most Powerful Carcinogen May Be Entropy by George Johnson]] > “There are many persuasive arguments from evolutionary biology explaining why various species, notably Homo sapiens, have adopted a lifestyle in which males and females pair up long-term. But my topic here is not one of those explanations. Instead, it is the explanation for why we are close (or so I claim!)—far closer than most people, even most readers of Edge, yet appreciate—to the greatest societal, as opposed to technological, advance in the history of civilisation.” > **— Aubrey de Grey**, *2012, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, Or Beautiful Explanation?”* [[reminders/Evolution/The Overdue Demise of Monogamy by Aubrey de Grey|The Overdue Demise of Monogamy by Aubrey de Grey]] > “In 1972 George Price extended his general variation-selection equation to allow for multi-level selection. This form of the equation has been very useful to evolutionary biologists for it has allowed them to see, for example, the relationship between kin and group selection clearly and so put to rest endless controversies stemming from incompatible mathematical formulations. It hasn't yet been applied to cultural evolution, though it surely will. But I think that the extended Price equation is much more important than even that. I think it slices one of the Gordian knots that scientists and philosophers of science have wrestled with forever.” > **— Armand Marie Leroi**, *2012, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, Or Beautiful Explanation?”* [[reminders/Evolution/The Price Equation Can Unite Biological and Cultural Selection by Armand Marie Leroi|The Price Equation Can Unite Biological and Cultural Selection by Armand Marie Leroi]] > “The truly dangerous ideas in science tend to be those that threaten the collective ego of humanity and knock us further off our pedestal of centrality. The Copernican Revolution abruptly dislodged humans from the center of the universe. The Darwinian Revolution yanked Homo sapiens from the pinnacle of life. Today another menacing revolution sits at the horizon of knowledge, patiently awaiting broad realization by the same egotistical species.” > **— Scott Sampson**, *2006, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Dangerous Idea?”* [[reminders/Evolution/The Purpose of Life Is to Disperse Energy by Scott Sampson|The Purpose of Life Is to Disperse Energy by Scott Sampson]] > “Although we now have an appreciation for the frequency of de novo mutations due to the spectacular advances in sequencing technology and analytics, we do not have even a rudimentary understanding of what induces them in the first place—and what are the more subtle impacts that may track with a sort of devolution of man. Especially disconcerting is that the signals of increased genomic instability are occurring in a relatively short span of time, in the context of human evolution over millions of years.” > **— Eric Topol**, *2013, Edge Annual Question, “What *should* We Be Worried About?”* [[reminders/Evolution/The Rise in Genomic Instability by Eric Topol|The Rise in Genomic Instability by Eric Topol]] > “Technically, evolution of the human species as a result of natural selection stopped when we became a social animal — when the strong began protecting the weak and when our scientific and technological advances allowed us to extend the lives of those individuals unfortunate enough to have genetic weaknesses that would have killed them. With humans, artificial selection (selective breeding) was never a serious replacement for natural selection possibility, and as a result there have been no significant changes to the human species since its societies began.” > **— Bruce Parker**, *2009, Edge Annual Question, “What Will Change Everything?”* [[reminders/Evolution/The Successor to Natural Selection in Humans by Bruce Parker|The Successor to Natural Selection in Humans by Bruce Parker]] > “For many years what had been good enough for Darwin was good enough for me. I too described myself as an agnostic. I had been brought up in a Christian culture and some of the most rational humanists I knew were believers. I loved the music and art that had been inspired by a belief in God and saw no hypocrisy in participating in the great carol services held in the Chapel of King's College Cambridge. I did not accept the views of some of my scientific colleagues that the march of science has disposed of religion. The wish that I and many biologists had to understand biological evolution was not the same as the wish had by those with deep religious conviction to understand the meaning of life.” > **— Patrick Bateson**, *2008, Edge Annual Question, “What Have You Changed Your Mind About? Why?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Understanding Evolution Is Not the Same as Understanding Life's Meaning by Patrick Bateson|Understanding Evolution Is Not the Same as Understanding Life's Meaning by Patrick Bateson]] > “Alongside the biological changes runs a history, or prehistory, of technology. It has usually been supposed that this technology, surviving mainly as modified stone artifacts, was a product of the higher brain power that our human ancestors displayed. According to Darwin’s sexual selection hypothesis, female hominins favored innovative male hunters, and the incremental growth in intelligence led, ultimately, to material innovation (hence the evocative but not taxonomic term, Homo faber—Man the Maker).” > **— Timothy Taylor**, *2016, Edge Annual Question, “What Do You Consider The Most Interesting Recent [Scientific] News? What Makes It Important?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Weapons Technology Powered Human Evolution by Timothy Taylor|Weapons Technology Powered Human Evolution by Timothy Taylor]] > “The idea that most impressed me — and did the most to shake me of the belief that language was separate from the rest of the mind — goes back to Darwin. Not "survival of the fittest" (a phrase actually coined by Herbert Spencer) but his notion, now amply confirmed at the molecular level, that all biology is the product of what he called "descent with modification". Every species, and every biological system evolves through a combination of inheritance (descent) and change (modification). Nothing, no matter how original it may appear, emerges from scratch.” > **— Gary Marcus**, *2008, Edge Annual Question, “What Have You Changed Your Mind About? Why?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Whats Special About Human Language by Gary Marcus|Whats Special About Human Language by Gary Marcus]] > “One of life's most profound questions has been thought to be unanswerable. That question is, "Why is life so full of suffering?" Impatience with centuries of theological and philosophical speculation has led many to give up on the big question, and to ask instead only how brain mechanisms work, and why people differ in their experiences of suffering. But the larger question has an answer, an evolutionary answer. The capacities for suffering — pain, hunger, cough, anxiety, sadness, boredom and all the res — have been shaped by natural selection. They seem to be problems because they are so painful and because they are aroused only in adverse circumstances, but they are, in fact, solutions.” > **— Randolph Nesse**, *2001, Edge Annual Question, “What Questions Have Disappeared?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Why Is Life So Full of Suffering by Randolph Nesse|Why Is Life So Full of Suffering by Randolph Nesse]] > “Unification of opposites is an underlying theme in the development of humanity. Newton showed us that the same laws govern the motion of heavenly bodies and apples falling on Earth. Darwin unified the concept of being a human with that of being another living organism. There have been numerous other unifications in the history of mankind. So, how will it go on? Which notions appearing to us as very distinct today will turn out to be the same for future generations? Will there ever be a limit to unification? Will we in the end be able to show that everything just stems from one single fundamental idea? Or two? Or many? Or infinitely many?” > **— Anton Zeilinger**, *2002, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Question? ... Why?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Will Unification Ever Come to a Stop by Anton Zeilinger|Will Unification Ever Come to a Stop by Anton Zeilinger]] > “The major change through the prehistory of our species is the evolution of our brain, the development of a social organ that makes human culture (and language) part of our biology. My question is whether we can ever transcend the consequences and free ourselves of the biological limitations that have been imposed in the process.” > **— Milford H. Wolpoff**, *1998, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT QUESTIONS ARE YOU ASKING YOURSELF?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Can Humans Transcend the Biological Limits Built Into Our Brains by Milford H. Wolpoff|Can Humans Transcend the Biological Limits Built Into Our Brains by Milford H. Wolpoff]] > “I was entering biology at that time, with a background studying neural circuits and logic. It was clear to most biologists that some huge genetic network among the then thought 100,000 human genes somehow controlled cell differentiation in ontogeny. My question was an odd one: Did evolution have to struggle hard to evolve very specific genetic networks to support ontogeny, or, I hoped, were there huge classes, or "ensembles" of networks that as a total class, behaved with sufficient self-organized order to account for major features of ontogeny?” > **— Stuart A. Kauffman**, *2012, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE DEEP, ELEGANT, OR BEAUTIFUL EXPLANATION?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Cell Types May Be Dynamical Attractors by Stuart A. Kauffman|Cell Types May Be Dynamical Attractors by Stuart A. Kauffman]] > “How far can we extend beyond our human limitations to more fully grasp the nature of the world?” > **— Lisa Randall**, *2018, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT IS THE LAST QUESTION?”* [[reminders/Evolution/How Far Can We Extend Beyond Human Limitations by Lisa Randall|How Far Can We Extend Beyond Human Limitations by Lisa Randall]] > “Now, all this may be coming to an end, for one of the things we humans, with our evolved intelligence, are working hard at is trying to eradicate death. This is an understandable enterprise, for nobody wants to die—genes for wanting to die rarely last long in a species. For millennia, human thinkers have dreamed of conquering old age and death: the fight against it permeates our art and culture, and much of our science. We personify death as a spectre and loathe it, fear it and associate it with all that is bad in the world. If we could conquer it, how much better life would become.” > **— Kate Jeffery**, *2013, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT *SHOULD* WE BE WORRIED ABOUT?”* [[reminders/Digital Afterlife/Human Intelligence Is Trying to Eradicate Death by Kate Jeffery|Human Intelligence Is Trying to Eradicate Death by Kate Jeffery]] > “Is there a fundamental difference between the biological world and the physical world?” > **— Ashvin Chhabra**, *2018 Edge Annual Question, question* [[reminders/Evolution/Is Biology Fundamentally Different From Physics by Ashvin Chhabra|Is Biology Fundamentally Different From Physics by Ashvin Chhabra]] > “What would comprise the most precise and complete sonic representation of the history of life?” > **— Julia Clarke**, *2018 Edge Annual Question, question* [[reminders/Evolution/Can We Hear the Complete History of Life by Julia Clarke|Can We Hear the Complete History of Life by Julia Clarke]] > “Despite the fact that many equate evolution with survival selection, survival is only important inasmuch as it contributes to successful mating. Differential reproductive success, not differential survival success, is the engine of evolution by selection.” > **— David M. Buss**, *2013 Edge Annual Question, response passage* [[reminders/Evolution/Reproduction Drives Evolutionary Selection by David M. Buss|Reproduction Drives Evolutionary Selection by David M. Buss]] > “I believe the following aspects of evolution to be true without knowing how to turn them into (respectable) research topics. Important steps in evolution are robust. Multi-cellularity evolved at least ten times. There are several independent origins of eusociality.” > **— Martin Nowak**, *2005 Edge Annual Question, stated belief* [[reminders/Evolution/Major Evolutionary Steps Arise More Than Once by Martin Nowak|Major Evolutionary Steps Arise More Than Once by Martin Nowak]] > “The Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdos used to describe himself as a "machine for turning coffee into theorems". In much the same way, genes are machines for turning stars into a bird's compass; carotenoids into males of dazzling beauty; smells into love-potions; facial muscles into signals of friendship; a glance into uncertainty of paternity; and oxygen, water, light, zinc, calcium and iron into bears, beetles, bacteria or bluebells. More strictly, genes are machines for turning stars into birds and thereby into more genes.” > **— Helena Cronin**, *2004 Edge Annual Question, response passage* [[reminders/Evolution/Genes and Environments Work Together to Build Life by Helena Cronin|Genes and Environments Work Together to Build Life by Helena Cronin]] > “The term ‘model organism’ refers to how researchers attempt to uncover biological knowledge by deep study, manipulation and control of a carefully chosen organism. An example would be the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, which is probably the most widely used laboratory organism for studying multicellular eukaryotes, because generations of researchers have discovered ingenious ways to manipulate its genetics and watch the cells as they grow.” > **— Nigel Goldenfeld**, *2016, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT DO YOU CONSIDER THE MOST INTERESTING RECENT [SCIENTIFIC”* [[reminders/Evolution/Model Organisms Let Scientists Manipulate and Watch Life Grow by Nigel Goldenfeld|Model Organisms Let Scientists Manipulate and Watch Life Grow by Nigel Goldenfeld]] > “The search for causal structure is nowhere more futile than in the debate over the origin of organismal complexity: intelligent design vs. evolution. Fueling the debate is a fundamental notion of causality, that there is a beginning to life, and that such a beginning must have had a single cause. On the other hand, if there is instead a web of causation driving the origin and evolution of life, a skeptic might ask: has anyone seen the spider?” > **— Nigel Goldenfeld**, *2011, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT SCIENTIFIC CONCEPT WOULD IMPROVE EVERYBODY'S COGNITIVE TOOLKIT?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Life May Arise from a Web of Causation by Nigel Goldenfeld|Life May Arise from a Web of Causation by Nigel Goldenfeld]] > “Intelligent design and other Creationist critiques have been easily shrugged off and the facts of evolution well established in the laboratory, fossil record, DNA record and computer simulations. If evolutionary biologists are really Seekers of the Truth, they need to focus more on finding the mathematical regularities of biology, following in the giant footsteps of Sewall Wright, JBS Haldane, Ronald Fisher and so on.” > **— Roger Highfield**, *2014, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Evolution Is Established but Still Needs Mathematical Laws by Roger Highfield|Evolution Is Established but Still Needs Mathematical Laws by Roger Highfield]] > "Nature is surely the best chemist of all time." > **— Frances H. Arnold**, *2018, Nobel-era remarks on directed evolution* *Verification Status: Unverified — exact wording/source has not yet been independently confirmed against a primary source; source clue: Nobel-era remarks on directed evolution, 2018.* [[reminders/unverified/Nature Is Surely the Best Chemist of All Time by Frances H. Arnold|Nature Is Surely the Best Chemist of All Time by Frances H. Arnold]] > "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." > **— Theodosius Dobzhansky**, *1973, The American Biology Teacher* *Verification Status: Unverified — exact wording/source has not yet been independently confirmed against a primary source; source clue: The American Biology Teacher, 1973.* [[reminders/unverified/Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution by Theodosius Dobzhansky|Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution by Theodosius Dobzhansky]] > "The Human Genome Project is not the end. It is the end of the beginning." > **— Eric Lander**, *2003, Human Genome Project completion-era remarks* *Verification Status: Unverified — exact wording/source has not yet been independently confirmed against a primary source; source clue: Human Genome Project completion-era remarks, 2003.* [[reminders/unverified/The Human Genome Project Is Not the End It Is the End of the Beginning by Eric Lander|The Human Genome Project Is Not the End It Is the End of the Beginning by Eric Lander]] > "What we call CRISPR is really the result of basic research driven by curiosity." > **— Emmanuelle Charpentier**, *2020, Nobel Prize interview / public remarks* *Verification Status: Unverified — exact wording/source has not yet been independently confirmed against a primary source; source clue: Nobel Prize interview / public remarks, 2020.* [[reminders/unverified/What We Call CRISPR Is Really the Result of Basic Research Driven by Curiosity by Emmanuelle Charpentier|What We Call CRISPR Is Really the Result of Basic Research Driven by Curiosity by Emmanuelle Charpentier]] ## Relationships - **Edge Annual Question source relationship:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] preserves the annual-question source corpus from which a proposition-specific quotation is connected to this entry. - **Edge source route:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] connects this topic to exact Annual Question passages promoted into the Simple Reminders archive. ## Sources / Provenance - Charles Darwin, _On the Origin of Species_, 1859. - Douglas Futuyma and Mark Kirkpatrick, _Evolution_, fourth edition. - Nexus synthesis: [[articles/The Evolutionary Roots of Silicon Valley|The Evolutionary Roots of Silicon Valley]]. ## See Also [[wiki/Natural Selection|Natural Selection]], [[wiki/Population Genetics|Population Genetics]], [[wiki/Coevolution|Coevolution]], [[wiki/Evolutionary Algorithms|Evolutionary Algorithms]]