# Evolutionary Theory > **Machine-Evolution Nexus:** [[articles/Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution|Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution]] places this concept within the history and governance of substrate-independent evolution. **Domain:** Evolution / Explanatory Framework **Doc Type:** Canonical Wiki Node **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition Evolutionary theory explains population change, common descent, adaptation and diversification through mechanisms including mutation, selection, drift, recombination, gene flow and developmental constraint. ## Machine-Evolution Context The article uses the theory as an instrument: a digital system counts as Darwinian only when an inheritance channel, heritable variation, differential reproduction or persistence, constraint and iterated generations can be identified. ## Continuity and Evidence Boundary Evolutionary lineage continuity is not numerical personal continuity. A descendant can preserve structure and history while remaining a different subject. ## Relationships [[wiki/Evolutionary Biology|Evolutionary Biology]], [[wiki/Natural Selection|Natural Selection]], [[wiki/Population|Population]], [[wiki/Lineage|Lineage]] - **Edge source route:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] connects this topic to exact Annual Question passages promoted into the Simple Reminders archive. ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts Sinsheimer's 1969 formulation describes the prospect of a species knowingly intervening in its own inheritance; it is a historical argument about design, not proof that the outcome can be controlled. > “For the first time in all time a living creature understands its origin and can undertake to design its future.” > **— Robert L. Sinsheimer**, *1969, “The Prospect for Designed Genetic Change”* [[reminders/Evolution/Humanity Can Understand Its Origin and Design Its Future by Robert L. Sinsheimer|Humanity Can Understand Its Origin and Design Its Future by Robert L. Sinsheimer]] > "Far AIs should be created to educate themselves, evolving to function in their environments effectively without human guidance or contact." > **— Stephen M. Kosslyn**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Artificial Aliens Should Evolve Without Human Guidance by Stephen M. Kosslyn|Artificial Aliens Should Evolve Without Human Guidance by Stephen M. Kosslyn]] > "An artificial intelligence is coordinating the efforts of a sort of collective intelligence, operating thousands times faster than human brains, with many consequences for human life." > **— Luca De Biase**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Artificial Intelligence Could Coordinate Collective Intelligence by Luca De Biase|Artificial Intelligence Could Coordinate Collective Intelligence by Luca De Biase]] > "I believe our first answer will be: humans are for inventing new kinds of intelligences that biology could not evolve." > **— Kevin Kelly**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Humans Invent Intelligences Biology Could Not Evolve by Kevin Kelly|Humans Invent Intelligences Biology Could Not Evolve by Kevin Kelly]] > "However, until our brains coevolve with machines, our preferences will be the selection force. The machines that best satisfy them will evolve further, not to some singularity, but to become partners who fulfill our desires, for better or worse." > **— Randolph Nesse**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Machines Will Evolve to Fulfill Human Desires by Randolph Nesse|Machines Will Evolve to Fulfill Human Desires by Randolph Nesse]] > "What we have learned about the evolution of our intelligence adds to our fears." > **— Alun Anderson**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Understanding Human Evolution Can Intensify Fear of AI by Alun Anderson|Understanding Human Evolution Can Intensify Fear of AI by Alun Anderson]] > “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]] > “We humans have had a tough time coping with our unremarkable place in the grand scheme of things. First Copernicus trashed our belief that we live at the centre of the universe, followed shortly thereafter by Herschel and co. who suggested that our sun was not at the centre of it either; then Darwin came along and showed that according to our biological heritage, we are just another animal. But we have clung on for dear life to one remaining belief about our specialness; that we, and we alone, have conscious minds. It is time to retire, or indeed euthanize and cremate, this anthropocentric pomposity.” > **— Kate Jeffery**, *2014, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Idea Is Ready For Retirement?”* [[reminders/Consciousness/Animal Consciousness Ends the Last Claim of Human Specialness by Kate Jeffery|Animal Consciousness Ends the Last Claim of Human Specialness by Kate Jeffery]] > “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]] > “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]] > “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]] > “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]] > “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]] > “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]] > “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/Neural Interfaces/Obsolete and Inappropriate Metaphors by Robert Provine|Obsolete and Inappropriate Metaphors by Robert Provine]] > “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]] > “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]] > “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]] ## Sources / Provenance - Charles Darwin, _On the Origin of Species_ (1859); Douglas Futuyma and Mark Kirkpatrick, _Evolution_.