These are excerpts and elaborations from my book "The Nature of Consciousness"
The US biologist Robert
Trivers noted that there was more than
cooperation at work. According to Hamilton's genetic metrics, a child should see herself twice more valuable than
her siblings. The parents, on the other hand, should see all siblings as
equally valuable. Thus it is not surprising that siblings compete and fight for
parental resources, while parents teach them to share equally. Parents have to
literally brainwash their children into thinking that it is in their (each
child's) interest to care for their siblings when in fact their genes tell them
(the children) the exact opposite. Beyond family, there is in
general a whole repertory of attitudes that serves the purpose of regulating
altruism (gratitude, compassion, trust, guilt, even hypocrisy). Eventually, it
all boils down to game theory: how to maximize the chances of success and
minimize the chances of failing. We seem to be even equipped
with a repertory of skills to lie, cheat and deceive, and we use that repertory
to complement the equation that maximizes our chances of success, depending on
social conditions. Our conscience is malleable, which is another way to say
that our altruistic strategies are flexible. In a sense the reason why children
lie is that they are just practicing the art of cheating. In fact the tendency
in children to lie is so strong that they will stop lying only if punished
consistently and severely. Otherwise the tendency to lie will amplify.
Conscience is an adaptation of one's altruistic and anti-altruistic instincts
to a specific social environment. Group Selectionism William Hamilton's theory of kin selection explained only why animals assist close relatives
(by placing the emphasis on the genes that are shared by relatives). But not
why we would help friends or even total strangers. At the beginning of the 20th
century the Russian philosopher Petr Kropotkin first campaigned the notion
that animals must be social and moral. His view was not one of individual
struggle for survival, but one of the struggle for survival by masses of
individuals, a struggle not against each other but a collective struggle
against the common enemy, i.e. the adversities of their environment.
Cooperation is more important than competition. Meanwhile, the Japanese
primatologist Imanishi Kinji was arguing that cooperation is
more important than competition in nature. Individuals form societies and
cannot exist outside societies because it is through societies that they can
solve the needs required to their survival. The British zoologists
Vero-Copner Wynne-Edwards argued in favor of group selection because he found
evidence that it is groups (rather than single individuals) that adapt to the
environment. The US biologist David Sloan
Wilson ("A theory of group selection", 1975) resumed that
explanation of altruism and made a case for the evolution of altruistic
behavior. His studies gave credibility to the theory of "group"
selection. A group is not necessarily a group of kin, but can be any community
of genetically unrelated individuals and even of different species (as in the
case of symbiosis). A group is just analogous to an organism. After all, an
organism can be viewed as a collection of genes that work together towards
maximizing their common chances of survival. The same principle applies to a
group, where individual genes are replaced by organisms, by collections of
genes. Groups often behave like organisms. Such is the case with beehives, ant
colonies, flocks of birds, schools of fish, herds and even human clans. Selection may operate at
many different levels, but certainly for some species, especially humans,
living in a group, and helping each other, has provided a tremendous
evolutionary advantage. While the idea of a "group" of altruistic
individuals, who accept to live in hives, herds, clans at the expense of their
own fitness, may sound antithetical to Darwin's principle of competition, it does make sense, precisely from the
point of view of "fitness". Being part of a group may increase the
chances of being "fitter" and therefore survive. Robert Trivers' theory of “reciprocal altruism” ("The evolution of reciprocal
altruism", 1971) explained altruism as founded on the idea of exchange: i
help you and you will help me. He proved that individuals can benefit in the
long term by trusting each other. In other words, altruism is actually selfish.
Building on Trivers' theory, the Dutch zoologist Frans de Waal argued that communities yield
benefits to the individual, and that is the biological reason the individual
will try to promote the community. Human morality is based on the idea of
exchange. A society always relies, to
some extent, on altruism: a member must be willing to sacrifice part of her
individuality in order to be part of a society, which, in turn, increases her
chances of survival. Games Game theory,introduced by
John Maynard-Smith ("The Logic of Animal
Conflict", 1973), helps to explain
how altruism evolved. Over the long term, non-zero sum games (“cooperative”
games in which both players stand to win or lose) tend to have more positive
outcomes than negative ones. In particular, one can devise strategies that will
greatly enhance the players’ outlook in the long term. Thus it is not
surprising that everything from ecosystems to human societies are built on
altruism. (By contrast, “competitive” or “zero-sum” games represent a
relatively static world). The most famous of non-zero
sum games is the “prisoner’s dilemma”, in which two prisoners are offered
(independently) the same deal by the prosecutor. If one confesses and the other
does not, the former goes free and the other one gets the maximum sentence. If
they both confess, they both get a medium-length sentence. If neither
confesses, they both get a minor sentence. This is a game that can be played
only once. But imagine a similar game that could be played thousands of times
with thousands of players, each player using a different strategy. Game theory
proves that there is indeed a best strategy to play this game. John Maynard-Smith’s use of game theory decoupled kinship and cooperation: individuals
cooperate not because they share genes but because cooperation is the best
strategy (and it has little to do with moral “altruism”). The US political scientist
Robert Axelrod held a tournament of computers programmed to play the game each
against everybody else ("The Evolution of Cooperation", 1981). The
“winner” (the one that did best over the long run), equipped with the program
“Tit for Tat” written by Anatol Rapaport, was also the simplest one: it cooperated with the computers that had
cooperated in the past, and cheated computers that had not cooperated in the
past (basically, it did to others what others had done to it). “Tit for Tat” was
creating an ever more cooperative society. It used the simplest algorithm, and
it yielded the best outcome. Nature likes that combination. Even if individuals
do not communicate, they will tend to cooperate, simply because, over the long
term, it is the best strategy. The Austrian mathematician
Karl Sigmund and the Austrian biologist Martin Nowak ("Evolutionary Dynamics of
Biological Game", 2004) came up with mathematical descriptions
(“evolutionary dynamic models”) for five mechanisms for the evolution of
cooperation: kin selection, group selection, graph selection, direct
reciprocity and indirect reciprocity. These models show that competition leads
to cooperation. Nowak’s theory, in particular, is
that the Prisoner’s Dilemma, when played over and over, generates cycles from
selfishness to increased altruism and back to selfishness. Nowak argues that
most of the great innovations of life, and notably human language and
cognition, are due as much to cooperation as they are to Darwin’s variation and selection. The theory of kin selection
is weak because the evidence does not support it: eusocial species are rare
(basically humans, ants and a few others) while kin selection predicts that most
species should evolve social skills (especially in species for which genetic
similarity of kin is very high). The Romanian mathematician Corina Tarnita showed ("The evolution of
eusociality", 2010) that the very mathematics behind kin selection could
be wrong. Building on her findings, Edward Wilson proposed that altruism is due
to social genes. Within any given group the selfish are more likely to succeed,
but groups of altruists have an advantage over groups of selfish people. This
led to the evolution of eusocial species that are genetically programmed to
cooperate. Group selection leads to “virtue”, individual selection leads to
“sin”. The Neural Correlate of
Altruism It is debatable whether
there is a neural predisposition for being nice to others, i.e. whether there
is something about the human brain that makes children altruists instead of
selfish. Children are, of course, influenced by the teachings of their parents,
and eventually learn that there is a reward for being nice (first of all to
their parents and siblings, then to their neighbords and so forth). However,
there is evidence to the contrary: siblings who presumably have similar brains
can turn out to be wildly different in the way they behave towards others (one
can be extremely selfish in a family of very generous people or viceversa). The Origin of Sex The classical explanation
for the existence (and widespread existence) of sex in nature was given by the
German physiologist August Weismann in 1889 (“The Significance Of
Sexual Reproduction In The Theory Of Natural Selection”): sex increases variation which is then used by
natural selection to improve the fitness of the species. Basically, sex
accounts for faster rates of adaptation. However, there is a
component of altruism in this purely statistical game. The US zoologist Alison
Jolly contends that altruism is a
fundamental aspect of evolution. The very existence of sex as a means of
reproduction is proof that cooperation is a crucial evolutionary force. Sex is
a trade-off: a genome sacrifices a part of its genes to team up with another
genome and increase its chances of survival in the environment. The British biologist Matt
Ridley thinks that evolution is
accelerated even by apparent enemies like parasites. Organisms adopted sexual reproduction in order to cope with
invasions of parasites: parasites have a harder time adapting to the diversity
generated by sexual reproduction, whereas they would have devastating effects
if all individuals of a species were identical (if the children were as
vulnerable to the same diseases as the parents). Co-evolving parasites help
improve evolution because they force individuals to cooperate. The lesson to be
drawn is that (the need to fight) competition often leads to cooperation. On a
large scale, life is a symbiotic process that is triggered by competitors. And, of course, plants reproduce with the
help of insects. Well over 300,000 species of plants may have been created by
co-evolution with their pollinators. Cooperation is pervasive, both within a
species and across species. The emphasis in evolutionary
theories has traditionally been on competition, not cooperation, although it is
through cooperation, not competition, that considerable jumps in behavior can
be attained. In a sense, humans have
mastered altruism the same way they mastered tools that allowed them to extend
their cognitive abilities. Humans are able to deal with large groups of non-relatives.
De facto, those individuals are “used” as a tool to augment the mind: instead
of having to solve problems alone, the mind can use an entire group. Endosymbiosis The mechanism proposed by
Darwin to explain the evolution of life
on Earth is based on a delicate balance between a positive process, that of
variation, and a negative process, that of selection. The inconsistencies
encountered so far in the fossil record all seem to point towards a need for a
stronger positive process, one that allows for a species to be born in far
shorter times than the evolutionary times implied by Darwin's theory. It is
true, as Michael Behe noted, that an organism is way too complex to be built by
refinements, and it is true, as Stephen Jay Gould claimed, that species appear
all of a sudden. Selection does account for the disappearance of variations
that are not fit, but variation alone (and the set of genetic
"algorithms" that would represent it) is hardly capable of accounting
for the extraordinary assembly of a new organism. A more powerful force must be
at work. When we find that force, we
may finally write the last chapter of "The Origin of Species", which
Darwin never even tried to write: we
still don't know how species originate. That force may be hidden in
the process of endosymbiosis, the process by which a new organism originates
from the fusion of two existing organisms, or, more precisely, by which two
independently evolved organisms become a tightly coupled system and eventually
just one organism. "Endosymbiosis" is the process by which a being
lives inside another being. "Structural coupling" of organisms has been shown to be an accelerating factor in evolution both by the Chilean neurobiologist Humberto Maturana (whose "autopoiesis” is precisely such a process to generate progressively more and more complex organisms) and by the US mathematician Ben Goertzel (who argued that organisms capable of effectively coupling with other organisms are more likely to survive, and that the coupling process may account for Gould's punctuated equilibrium). If organisms are composites
rather than individuals, then Darwinian evolution can occur much faster and can
exhibit sudden jumps to higher forms, and therefore explain two monumental
events of life on Earth: how prokaryotes (cells without a nucleus) evolved into
eukaryotes (cells that have a nucleus) and the sudden appearance of new species
in the fossil record. The symbiotic creation of
species is not such a far-fetched idea. After all, humans can be thought of as
collections of organs and viruses co-existing in symbiotic relationships.
Generally speaking, the transformation of primitive organisms into more complex
ones may be due to the incorporation of other organisms. We know, to start
with, that species may also originate by hybridization between existing
species, a process that is very common in plants. Assembling organs in a
functionally coherent way is a very difficult task for anybody, including
Nature itself, especially if the forces working on it are random; but mixing
genomes may be relatively easy. The chemical process that can dramatically
alter the genetic code of an organism to incorporate the genetic code of
another organism may exploit the very peculiar structure of the DNA double
helix and the very peculiar behavior of sex. Both the genetic apparatus and the
sexual apparatus seem to be conceived so as to facilitate the fusion of
organisms. While single-organism
evolution may explain only gradual and localized changes in skills, the
formation of composite structures would certainly result in higher levels of
complexity which in turn would result in higher levels of organization. Unfortunately, we have no
idea of how the DNA of a new organism can be synthesized from the DNAs of two
organisms, i.e. how a new species can be created by the symbiotic union of two
species. The chemical process that allows for the fusion of two codes has not
been discovered yet, but may turn out to be a relatively simple
"algebra" of the four bases of the DNA. The Tree Of Life As geneticists have been
rearranging the tree of life based on the DNA or organisms, one thing has
become evident: life diverged first into bacteria and archaea, eukaryotes then
evolved from archaea but with a little help from bacteria. Somehow eukaryotes
acquired genes from bacteria, genes that were critical for their metabolism.
This implies that genes are passed not only vertically from generation to
generation but also horizontally (or "laterally") from one species to
another. This lateral gene transfer could turn out to be the single most
important factor of evolution. The more we study their DNA, the more eukaryotes
appear only distant relatives to their archaea ancestors, the more they appear
the product of a large number of lateral gene transfers. There was probably a
time when swapping genes among cells was an ordinary event: by swapping genes,
cells would simply trade or share skills with other cells. Research carried out, among
others, by the US biologist Carl Woese is showing that the
phylogenetic tree looks more like a web than a tree ("Towards a natural
system of organisms: proposal for the domains Archaea, Bacteria, and
Eucarya", 1990). By drawing the family tree of today's genes, one should
eventually find the genetic content of the common ancestor of all life.
Instead, different genes yield different family trees. If they all had forebears
in a common ancestor, it must have been a terribly complex being, far from the
simple living cell that one expects. It is more likely that some genes were
transmitted horizontally (one lineage to another) as well as vertically (one
generation to the next one) in the tree. If gene exchanges were common, one can
envision a colony of cells as the ancestor of all life and gene exchanges as
the main form of early evolution. Symbiogenesis In 1909 the Russian botanist
Konstantin Merezhkovsky introduced the theory of symbiogenesis. Merezhkovsky viewed living organisms as the
result of a combination of two plasms: “mycoplasm” (stuff such as bacteria and
fungi) and “amoeboplasm” (basically, eukaryotic cells without a nucleus).
Merezhkovsky believed that mycoids were the food of amoeboids, and that one
fateful day a mycoid managed to become the nucleus of an ameboid rather than
its meal. A fascination with the
wonders of the bacterial world led the US biologist Lynn Margulis (since “The Origin of Mitosing
Eukaryotic Cells”, 1966) to believe that no other single force has shaped
evolution in a more important way.
Everything the Earth is today, and everything that we and other living
forms do today, is due to conditions that have been created and maintained by
bacteria. Margulis' fundamental thesis is that our bodies are amalgams of several
different strains of bacteria. Endosymbiosis of bacteria is responsible for the
creation of complex forms of life. Margulis follows the US biologist Ivan
Wallin, who (“Symbionticism and the origin of species”, 1927) was the first one
to propose that bacteria may represent the fundamental cause of the
"origin of species" (Darwin's unsolved mystery) and that the creation of a species may occur via
endosymbiosis. Margulis noted that not all the DNA is
contained in the nucleus of the cell.
As originally outlined by Wallin, The "mitochondria" are organelles
of the cell that function as its "power plants": they convert sugar
into energy that the cell can use. Mitochondria have their own DNA, separate
from the DNA of the cell. While most
DNA is organized as double sets of chromosomes in the nucleus, the DNA of
mitochondria stands apart. Margulis
believes that the presence of "extra" DNA in the cell is a fossil of
an ancient evolutionary event: it attests to the fusion of at least two
different kinds of organisms that together formed a "eukaryiotic" cell.
Margulis believes that such symbiotic
merger, or "symbiogenesis", has been common in the evolutionary
history of life on Earth, and actually accounts for life as we know it today.
The ancestors of all life are bacteria.
They fused into "protists" (algae, amoebas, etc) which fused
into multicellular organisms. Margulis
tracks their evolution into plants, animals and fungi. Margulis emphasizes that the Earth is
still dominated by bacteria, which not only account for the vast majority of
life, but also maintain the conditions for life on the planet. All life is either bacteria
or descends from bacteria. Life "is" bacteria. Bacteria are also closer to immortality than
animals with bodies: cell division generates identical bacterial copies of a
bacterial cell. Bacteria can be killed but they do not really die, because
countless clones exist of them. The
life of a multicellular creature is far more fragile. Bacteria can also reproduce
at amazing rates, compared with "higher" forms of life. Life can even be viewed as a
plan for bacteria to exist forever: bodies are desirable food sources for
bacteria, so one could view the evolution of bacteria into such bodies as a
plan by bacteria to create food for themselves. The biosphere is controlled mostly by bacteria, it is, in a sense,
"their" environment, not ours. Margulis emphasizes that not only the
atmosphere but even the geology of our planet is due to the work of bacteria
(mineral deposits have been shaped by the work of bacteria over million of
years, or by the reaction with the waste gas of bacteria). We are allowed to live in
it, thanks to the work of bacteria, which maintain the proper balance of
chemicals in the air. If all bacteria died, everything would die. It is their
world. Every other form of life exists because they exist. On a smaller scale, if you
"fumigated" your body and destroyed all bacteria that live in it,
your body would not be able to perform vital functions, such as synthesizing
vitamins, and would die. The mitochondria, which dot
all cells of all living beings, are former bacteria, using oxygen to generate
energy. The property of bacteria
that intrigues Margulis is that they trade genes, rapidly and easily. DNA is loose inside
bacteria's "bodies". Bacteria reproduce by simply splitting their DNA
in two. This yields two offspring identical to the parent (same genes). Exchange of genes occurs only when genes are
traded among bacteria. Bacterial sex
("conjugation") is about making a new bacterium out of an existing
bacterium by adding genes donated by another bacterium. The new bacterium resulting
from the "engrafting" can even change sex, if the "sex"
gene is received from the other bacterium (the "sex" gene specifies whether
a bacterium is a donor or a receiver). This process is not really related to our “sex”: sex is about two
beings making a new being that partially inherits genes from each parent. When bacteria
"create" a new being, they do so by splitting (there is only one
parent and the new being is identical to the parent). When bacteria trade
genes, a being is changed into another being. Humans do not have either of
these processes. I cannot split myself
into identical copies of me, and I cannot mutate into another being by
absorbing somebody else's genes.
(Incidentally, bacteria can also trade genes as plasmids and viruses). This process of
"recombination" occurs even among bacteria of different species. It
is as if I could absorb genes from an eagle and turn into a human with wings,
and making children who will also be humans with wings. The genetic material of bacteria is
extremely flexible and versatile. Margulis thinks that this is the process
that enabled life to evolve rapidly.
Scale is crucial: what Margulis realized is the extent to which bacteria
rule the planet. They account for a vast portion of the atmosphere and the
geology of the planet. They spread in ancient times
and are still spreading today at fantastic speed. Any phenomenon that involves bacteria is involving billions of
rapidly moving and mutating beings. Once life was created, once the first
bacteria appeared, things happened quickly and on a massive scale. Bacteria
spread quickly, thanks to their reproductive efficiency and to their ability to
feed on ubiquitous organic compounds. The first bacteria were
"fermenters", feeding on the sugars available on the surface of the
planet. They were followed by photosynthesizers: photosynthesis enabled these
bacteria to feed on light. Then came bacteria ("cyanobacteria") that
could tolerate oxygen, and could
therefore feed on water (extract hydrogen atoms from water). Each new type of bacteria
was "polluting" the Earth and therefore changing the environmental
conditions for future generations of bacteria. Pollution is an integral part of
the evolution of life. The power of
bacteria is that their "gene trading" habits made it relatively easy
to adapt to whatever new conditions the climate and their own doing were
producing. The history of life is the
history of a planet blanketed with rapidly reproducing and rapidly changing
beings: the bacteria. Protoctists were born about
2 billion years ago from the fusion of bacterial cells. Eukaryotes (living beings
whose cells have a nucleus and whose DNA is confined in that nucleus) evolved
from those protoctists. Mitochondria are visible
remnants of this process of endosymbiosis. Experiments by the Korean
biologist Kwang Jeon showed that even virulent pathogens can become organelles (“Change
of Cellular Pathogens into Required Cell Components”, 2006). Margulis concludes that predators can
become symbionts, that a deadly infection can become a bodily part. Margulis extends this paradigm to bodies
made of several organs, and suggests that those organs also were accumulated
the same way, that they are also due to the fusion with independent organisms
by endosymbiosis. While Darwin was emphasizing competition as
the driving process of evolution, Margulis is emphasizing cooperation. For Margulis life has "free will",
and has used it to influence its own evolution. It is not only humans who can affect their environment to direct
their own evolution: the whole environment is doing the same. Living beings
make decisions all the time and are thus responsible in part for their own
evolution, as first speculated by Samuel Butler. Superbeings We have not found any
evidence of multiple beings integrating in one being, but there is plenty of
evidence that individual single-cell organisms sometimes join in creating
"collective beings" which are better equipped to survive. Single-celled bacteria form
large colonies in countless ecosystems, particularly visible in seaside
locations. Soil amoebae join together
in one huge organism that can react quickly to light and temperature to find
food supplies. Sponges are actually
collections of single-celled organisms held together by skeletons of minerals. These are all examples of
how cells are capable of forming communities that live together and live at the
same biological "pace". Whereas in a human community we all are
independent and interact only occasionally. In such agglomerates of cells every
unit is synchronized towards the common goal. In 1999 the Danish biologist
Sune Dano engineered a community of yeast cells that live together as a
single organism, driven by collective chemical oscillations. Among multi-cellular organisms,
ants and bees exhibit such a behavior, although the individuals are physically
disconnected and communication occurs at a distance through the senses (rather
than through chemical contact). Karl
Von Frisch, the man who discovered the
symbolic dances of the bees, pointed out that the individual is an oxymoron: a
bee cannot exist without the rest of the colony. The colony, on the other hand,
constitutes a complex and precise self-regulating system that relies on
peer-to-peer communication rather than on a dictator imposing order on its
subjects. The hive exhibits a personality, the individual is totally anonymous.
The way they migrate is even more stunning, as Cecil Johnson described. The US biologist Deborah
Gordon studied ants as a superorganism
(the colony as a body, the individuals as cells) and found that the way such a
superorganism organizes itself is not too different from the way a brain or an
immune system is organized. An ant colony or a beehive seems to have a mind of
its own. It has motives and goals, and even exhibits the ability to learn. After all, what is a body?
We tend to think of a body as a set of organs "glued" together, but
that is not the case: is blood part of my body? My body cannot exist without
blood, but blood is not glued to the other organs. If I make a hole in an
artery, blood will pour out. The definition of body is actually quite open. We
all believe that ants are quite "intelligent", but we would be reluctant
to admit that a single ant shows any intelligence in its random paths of food
search and transport. What is intelligent is the colony as a whole. The colony
as a whole exhibits stunning coordination and purposeful behavior. The single
ant does not compare too well with a human being, but the colony as a whole
does. It may be more appropriate to compare our body to the entire ant colony,
in which case one notices all the relevant similarities in purposeful behavior:
the movement of those ants, taken together, do mimic cognitive, sentient
behavior. A multi-cellular organism is
a collection of cells that are synchronized through electrochemical activity.
Sponges and amoebae may show how multi-cellular organisms were created from
single-cellular organisms. Ants and bees may show that the difference between a
multi-cellular organism and a society of organisms resides only in the type of
internal communication: they both rely on constituents that are synchronized
and the only difference is how those constituents communicate (the dances of
the bees as opposed to the chemical reactions of the amoebas). If this phenomenon cannot
help explain evolution as a whole, it can at least shed some light on the
transition from mono-cellular to multi-cellular organisms, one of the crucial
steps in the evolution of life on this planet. After all, more than 90% of
the cells that make up the human body are not human: they are bacteria
(although they weigh a lot less than human cells); and they are vitally
important for our survival. There are more than 1000 species of bacteria in the
human digestive system alone (and many more in the respiratory system, in the
urogenital tract, on the skin, etc). We are a superorganism, or, at least, a
walking and thinking ecosystem. All humans share the same genome (99.9% of all
genes) but every human is fairly unique when it comes to her or his
“microbiome” (even identical twins have wildly different microbiomes).
Therefore not only are you a superorganism but, whatever you are, it may be due
more to the bacteria that parasite on you than to your own human genes. Superorganisms The US philosopher Guy
Murchie was perhaps the first to
advance the notion that super-organisms are pervasive in nature. The term was
introduced in 1876 by the British philosopher Herbert Spencer, and in the 1920s applied to societies of insects by the US
myrmecologist William Morton Wheeler. Inspired by Wheeler, Murchie showed that groups sometimes behave like individual organisms: who
runs an ant colony? how do ants decide to move their nest somewhere else? It is
the interaction among the individuals: some ants carry eggs and food to the new
nest, some ants carry them back, and eventually one of the two competing
population prevails (in a sense, "natural selection" decides whether
and where the nest moves); bees of a beehive communicate (at least as far as
directing their fellow bees to food) with a language which is made of dance
steps (including sounds and smells); furthermore, honey bees fan their wings to
maintain a constant temperature within the beehive, the same way an organism's
parts cooperate to keep the organism within the narrow range of temperature that
allows for its survival. An ant colony or a beehive
behaves like an organism with its own mind: a beehive metabolizes, has a
cognitive life (makes decisions), acts (it can move, attack) and so forth. In this scenario, language
can be viewed from a different perspective, as the mechanism that allows for
the organism to be one. Murchie envisions the entire Earth as
an organism which uses as food the heat of the
sun, breathes, metabolizes, and its cognition is made of many tiny parts
(organisms) that communicate, exchange energy, interact. All living organisms, along with all the
minerals on the surface of the Earth, compose one giant integrated system that,
as a whole, controls its behavior so as to survive. And so do galaxies. After
all, we are made of stardust. Life is inherent in nature.
Murchie describes sand dunes, glaciers
and fires as living organisms, the life of metals and crystals. The question is not whether
there is life outside our planet, but whether it is possible to have
"non-life". Then Murchie shows that properties of mind
are not exclusive to humans. Memory is ubiquitous in nature. For example,
energy conservation is a form of memory (an elastic band remembers how much
energy was put into stretching it and eventually goes back to the original
position). The laws of Physics describe the social life of particles. Electrons obey social laws that we decided
are physical laws instead of biological laws thereby granting their behavior a
different status from the behavior of bees. But this is an arbitrary decision.
Mind can be viewed as a universal aspect of life and energy. Murchie believes there is one huge
mind, the "thinking layer" around the Earth, which corresponds to the
"noosphere", a concept introduced by Teilhard de Chardin in 1938. Individual
“consciousnesses” are absorbed into the superconsciousness of a social group,
which is part of a superconsciousness of the world. In Murchie's opinion, the
world has a soul, an analogous of the Pythagoreans' "anima mundi" and
of the Hindus' “atman”. A Viral Past Studies on viruses (for
example, by the US biologist Luis Villarreal) have also hinted at the possibility that genes could be “acquired”
from an external organism, without any need to wait for millions of years of
natural selection. A virus is a parasite that comes alive, and replicates, only
while it feeds on host cells. This process takes place at the genetic level:
the genetic instructions of the virus induce the host cell to manufacture the
genes that the virus needs in order to assemble a copy of itself. Thus there is
“genetic” contact between the virus and the host cell. Viruses may be the
lowest form of life (in fact, most biologists don’t even agree that they are
forms of life, because they are simpler than living cells), but their fast
replication continuously creates new genes, and that process of gene
manufacturing takes place inside another organism: the odds that some of those
genes get “transferred” permanently to the organism are not negligible. Humans
and bacteria share some genes, but those genes are not present in the organisms
that should constitute the evolutionary chain from bacteria to humans: how did
the intermediary species miss them? The easiest explanation is that somehow the
genes of the bacteria “infected” the DNA of humans and became permanent
residents of it. Villarreal suspects that the cell nucleus itself of the
eukaryotes may have evolved from prokaryotes by, basically, viral infection:
the eukaryotic cell might just be a permanently infected prokaryotic cell (the
original cell plus its viral invader). Gaia Gaia is an idea that
originated by the joint work of the British chemist James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis. Lovelock views the entire surface of the Earth, including
"inanimate" matter, as a
living being (which in 1979 he named "Gaia"), an idea to which the
Austrian physicist Fritjof Capra also subscribes. Lovelock and
Margulis argued that the rules of life
work at both the organism level and at the ecosystem level, and eventually at
the level of the entire planet. There is a gigantic cycle that involves the
actions and structure of all matter and eventually yields "life" on
this planet. The environment (volcanoes, rocks, sea water, sun, rain) is part
of life. At the same time life creates the environment that it needs. Life
creates the conditions for its own existence. Capra put it in mathematical
form: feedback loops link together living and nonliving matter. The entire
planet is a self-organizing network, just like an ecosystem, just like a living
system. Living systems are networks interacting with other networks. Organisms
are networks of cells. Ecosystems are networks of organisms. Biological systems
at all levels are networks. The "web of life" consists of networks. Murchie, Margulis, Capra and Lovelock view the world as an integrated
whole. The
The French paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1925) and the Russian geologist Vladimir Vernadsky (1926) even thought that the Earth is developing its own mind, the "noosphere", the aggregation of the cognitive activity of all its living matter. Chardin saw it as the consequence of a natural process of consciousness evolution. Vernadsky saw it as the consequence of technological progress.
Russian geologist
Vladimir Vernadsky even thought that the Earth is developing its own mind, the
"noosphere", the aggregation of the cognitive activity of all its
living matter. Complexity, Specialization
and Cooperation The British biologist John
Maynard-Smith and the Hungarian biologist
Eors Szathmary argued that each major
transition in evolution turned
biological units that were capable of independent replication into biological units that needed other
biological units in order to replicate. In other words, each “major transition”
seems to produce (or be produced by) cooperation. For example, independently
replicating nucleid acids evolved into chromosomes (assemblies of molecules
that must replicate together). Also, sexless life was replaced by species that
have male and female members, and that can replicate only if a male and a
female “cooperate”. Ants and bees can
only replicate in colonies. In these major transitions,
sets of identical biological units were replaced by sets of specialized units
that needed to cooperate in order to survive and replicate. This also opens a window on
the history of socialization, or cooperative behavior. Far from being a recent
invention, socialization arose when specialization arose. Originally, one can
envision a world of multifunctional self-sufficient biological entities. When
these evolved into specialized entities, the need for them to socialize was
born. Division of labor among a group of specialists is more effective than a
multifunctional non-specialist but only if the specialists cooperate. And thus
the multifunctional cell led to cellular organization and eventually to bodies
with specialized limbs and organs that eventually led to societies of
specialists (ants, bees, humans). Altruism, or at least division of labor and
cooperation, appeared very early in the history of life, as soon as molecules
were enclosed within membranes. After all, cooperation was inherent
in Mendel’s laws: a gene’s chances of
surviving in future generations depends on the success of the cell that hosts
that gene, a success that depends on the success of all the other genes that
determine the life of that cell. Hence a gene has a vested interest in
“cooperating” with the other genes. The cell would not survive if its genes did
not form an efficient society. The US biologist Peter
Corning believes that
"synergy" is pervasive in the universe at all levels of organization,
and plays a role in producing "variation", the phenomenon that makes
natural selection possible. Corning argues that traditional
Darwinism cannot explain complexity (on large scales) precisely because its emphasis
is on competition and not cooperation. Genetic mutations per se would not be
enough to explain the complexity we find in nature. Corning instead focuses on
the behavior of living beings, that are capable of learning (the "Baldwin effect") and are capable
of modifying the environment (as Waddington and Mayr pointed out). Living
beings are more than mere "vehicles" for genes to live forever.
Living beings actively participate in determining their own evolutionary future
by 1. Continuously reshaping the environment that will "select" their
evolution (the use of tools is pervasive among living beings) and 2. Learning
behavior that is not in their genes and passing it on to the next generation
(learning is also pervasive among living beings). In other words, living systems shape the very environment that
drives their evolution. He goes as far as to claim that humans, the most active
living systems, have "invented themselves" by creating the
environment that they wanted. Behavior shapes evolution.
In particular, humans adopted "group-based behavioral strategies",
i.e. social organization. He emphasizes the importance of tools to shape our
behavior, in particular a dietary shift from vegetables to meat. That, in his
opinion, caused subsequent anatomical developments of the hominids. Climate
change caused behavioral changes, and they caused anatomical changes. Language
is also a by-product of behavioral changes that, in turn, fostered anatomical
changes. Corning emphasizes the importance of
the transfer of culture from one generation to the next one. Culture, in turn,
helped create novel forms of synergy, or, in other words, higher levels in the
hierarchy. We are still creating new forms of synergies. Corning thinks that two quantities need
to be added to Monod's "chance" and
"necessity": teleonomy and selection (selection was implied in
Monod's theory although not in the title of his book). Teleonomy is a property
that living systems exhibit: their structure and function has a purpose and is
directed towards a goal. This property is a consequence of the living system's
evolutionary history. Teleonomy is coded in the genome of the living system.
The genotype determines the behavior of the phenotype, but the phenotype in
turn helps to create the selection pressures that will determine the evolution
of the genotype. Teleonomy has an impact on evolution because it is a form of
downward causation: the behavior of the whole creates the selection pressures that
cause the evolution of its "parts" (all the way down to the genes
themselves). Nature is organized in a
hierarchy of hierarchies. At each level of a hierarchy different
"synergies" are at work that create the upper level. Nature's
creativity lies in the combination of parts to create wholes that are more than
the sum of their parts. The universe is still inventing itself and we are not
just spectators but co-protagonists. Corning, therefore, believes in "synergistic selection", which is Darwinian
selection at the level of complex systems: the differential survival of wholes
that leads to the emergence of higher-level wholes whose purpose transcends the
purpose of their constituent parts. These wholes in turn become agents of
selection for both themselves and others. Corning's "Neo-Lamarckian
Selection" is not in opposition to Darwinian selection but complements it. Just like Robert Wright's "nonzero sum game", Corning's theory is fundamentally a theory that says cooperation is important
in human evolution.. The difference between the two is that Wright believes in an inevitable
destiny towards greater complexity and progress driven by “non-zero sumness”,
i.e. by a fundamental mathematical law that rewards cooperation, whereas
Corning believes that we are free agents of our own future. Corning points out
that for every giant step ahead the human race has stumbled into an equally
impressive step backwards. So the direction of history is not clear at all. Sex And Death Bacteria reproduce by
replication and mutate by conjugation.
Mitosis ("the dance of chromosomes") is the process by which eukaryotic cells reproduce:
the DNA of the new being is a combination of the DNA of the two parents. In eukaryotes
the DNA is not just a string: genes are organized in chromosomes (a minimum of
two, humans have 46). Prokaryotes are wildly
different from bacteria. But how did this striking difference between bacteria
and their descendants come to be? Mitosis is truly responsible
for the origin of species. Before mitosis, bacteria were freely exchanging
genes: the concept of "species" as we know them today did not exist,
as any bacterium could mutate into a novel "species" at any time.
Bacteria do not have true species. On the other hand,
multicellular beings cannot trade genes. Therefore they cannot mutate into
anything else, and their offspring belongs to the same species (because both
parents must be of the same species in order to interbreed) and such offspring
inherits genes of the parents. Genes remain within the same family, the
"species". Any multicellular being is a member of a species: it is an
obvious fact, but a quite striking one.
It is one of nature's whims. At the beginning of life on Earth, a new
bacterium could be just about any combination of available DNA. Later in
evolution, a new individual had to be a member of a species. It may not be a coincidence
that death was invented with multicellular sexual beings. They age and die,
whereas bacteria did not. Why did sexless and immortal
bacteria evolve into beings that have sex and die? Bacteria have only one sex,
they can mutate (change their DNA), they can interbreed with any bacteria, they
don't make children, and they never age or die. Animals that evolved from them have two sexes, they cannot mutate
(cannot change their DNA), they can only inbreed within their species, they
make children and they age and die. (Last but not least, the DNA of animals is
organized and inherited in units called chromosomes, a detail that may turn out
to be crucial to explain all of the above discrepancies). Margulis argues that "death was the
first sexually-transmitted disease".
Once animals started aging and dying (once death had been programmed into
their DNA), their offspring inherited the same disease. Margulis' hypothesis is that, once upon a time, "eating and mating were
the same". Cannibal unicellular
beings may have merged into multicellular beings. The evolutionary advantages of this behavior may have led to
sexual beings. But the genders are exactly
two, and each member of a gender has the same sexual organs. How did that
happen? Guy Murchie believes that death provides an
evolutionary advantage: immortal beings that simply split would be immutable
and easy prey to environmental changes. Death allows for regeneration of the
race and for creation of new species. Death is a tool for change and progress.
It is not a coincidence that the odds of immortality increases as creatures get
more elementary. Notwithstanding these
cunning speculations, sexually-reproducing species are a bit of a mystery, and
so is death, that came with sex. The Origin of Selection According to modern
synthesis, the genetic makeup of a population is altered through natural
selection (the interaction between the individuals of the population and their
environment). Darwin's approach to the problem
implied that natural selection mainly acts on the individual (precisely, it
causes differences in phenotype among individuals within a population),
although he explicitly recognized three levels of natural selection: individual
selection, kin selection, group selection. Several biologists have argued that
selection might act at a number of different levels, loosely corresponding to a
hierarchy of biological organization: genes, individuals, kin, groups,
populations, and species. Ultimately, what changes is species, but that is the
effect of a process of natural selection that may act at any of these levels
and then cause that visible effect on species. Evolutionary theory is based
upon the idea that species evolve and their evolution is driven by natural
selection, but it is not clear what exactly evolves and what natural selection
acts upon. Nature is organized in a
hierarchy: genes are located on chromosomes, chromosomes are located in cells,
cells make up organs which make up organisms which make up species which make
up populations which make up ecosystems: at what level does selection act? One
may view the genes as the units that must change to generate evolution. Or one
may view ecosystems as made of co-evolving species that would not evolve the
same way by themselves. And so forth. Gould supports a hierarchical model
that views selection as acting simultaneously at a variety of levels in a
genealogical sequence of gene, organism, population and species. David Sloan Wilson views nature organized in a
structural hierarchy, and selection acting at each level of the hierarchy, but
which levels matter more depend on the species. In the case of humans and other
species, the group (hive, herd, clan, tribe, nation) was one of the most
relevant levels. The German biophysicist
Bernd-Olaf Kuppers thinks that natural selection applies to the molecular level. The US biologist Richard
Lewontin thinks that all entities that exhibit inheritable variance in
fitness (from pre-biotic molecules to whole populations) are units of
selection. The US philosopher Robert Brandon thinks that the biosphere is
hierarchically arranged and, in agreement with Lewontin, natural selection
applies to all levels of the hierarchy. For the US zoologist Terrell
Hamilton, the individual is the unit
of natural selection. He separates selection, adaptation and evolution: natural
selection results in differential reproduction, therefore, in adaptation of
populations, therefore, in evolutionary change. Correspondingly, the individual
is the unit of natural selection, gene substitution is the elementary process
of adaptation, and the species is the main unit of evolution. Alfred Russell Wallace, co-inventor of evolution theory with Darwin, thought that selection acts on populations as well as
individuals. Selection at the level of
populations occurs when a group of individuals produces more groups than other
groups. The British biologist
Richard Dawkins popularized "gene selectionism", according to which the
genes compete and are responsible for evolution. Finally, Ernst Mayr thinks that genes cannot be treated as separate, individual units,
that their interaction is not negligible. The units of evolution and natural
selection are not individual genes but groups of genes tied together into
balanced adaptive systems. Natural selection favors phenotypes, not genes or
genotypes. Ultimately, species are the units of evolution. After all,
speciation is the method by which evolution advances. The US chemist Jeffrey
Wicken thinks that the most general
entities subject to natural selection are neither genes nor populations but
information patterns of thermodynamic flows, such as ecosystems and
socioeconomic systems. Natural
selection is not an external force, but an internal process such that
macromolecules are accrued in proportion to their usefulness for the efficiency
of the global system. The US biologist William
Wimsatt grounds the notion of selection around the notion of
"additive variance". This quantity determines the rate of evolution.
Variance in fitness is totally additive when the increase of fitness in a
genotype is a linear function of the number of genes of a given type that are
present in it. If variance in fitness at a given level is totally additive,
then this is the highest level at which selection operates. The entities at
that level are composed of units of selection, and there are no higher-level
units of selections. Gene Selectionism Richard Dawkins and the British philosopher
Helena Cronin argue that genes rather than organisms (as Darwin held) are the primary units of
natural selection. Dawkins essentially built on the work
of the US biologist George Williams. Williams thought that genes encouraging altruism would quickly become
extinguished, and therefore genes must be "selfish" in nature. Every
trait serves some kind of self-interest. Genes that serve that self-interest
are more likely to survive (because their vehicles are more likely to survive)
and multiply. Thus the corresponding traits are more likely to become
widespread among future generations. Dawkins introduced whole new methods of
thinking about life, behavior and evolution. Firstly, Dawkins argued that the
gene is the fundamental unit of evolution: genes drive evolution and genes
drive behavior. Darwin's assumption that natural selection favors those individuals best
fitted to survive and reproduce can then be restated as: natural selection
favors those genes that replicate through many generations. The level at which selection occurs is not
that of the individual organism, but that of particular stretches of genetic
material. Organisms are merely the means that genes use to perpetuate copies of
themselves. The universe is dominated by stable structures, and one particular
stable structure is a molecule that makes copies of itself. A "replicator" is
an entity that copies itself, such as genes. A "vehicle" is the
organism that carries the replicator in its cells and whose differential
survival and reproduction results in the differential spread of the replicator.
Dawkins thinks that the superiority of
replicators is obvious. A replicator serves as a repository of information
(about the organism but also, indirectly, about the environment) that is
preserved over time and spread over space. Replicators are immanent entities:
they exist virtually forever. Vehicles, on the other hand, are merely “tests”
of how good that information is. And, of course, vehicles are also the machine
used by replicators to copy themselves. The US philosopher David
Hull offered a slight variation on
Dawkins' theme. Hull distinguishes replicators (units that reproduce their
structure directly) from “interactors” (entities that interact directly with
their environment). Darwin's theory of evolution
through natural selection thus reads: differences in the interactions of
interactors with their environment result in differential reproduction of
replicators. The difference between Hull's “interactors” and Dawkins's
"vehicles" is not trivial: genes are both replicators and interactors
(they have a physical structure that interacts with an environment), and some
interactors are also replicators (the paramecium that splits in two). However, the general scheme
remains the same. Natural selection is about the differential survival of
replicators. Genes can be replicators
whereas multicellular organisms, groups and other levels of the hierarchy can
only be vehicles/interactors. In other words, what
survives is not my body but my genes. It is not bodies that replicate when
children are made: it is genes that replicate in the children. Therefore,
natural selection can't be about bodies, it must be about genes. Bodies are in
a lose/lose situation, as they will disappear anyway. But genes do have a
chance to survive (by copying themselves into a new body). Of course, this doesn't mean
that genes "are" eternal. Genes are perpetuated insofar as they yield
phenotypes that have selective advantages over competing phenotypes. They have a chance of being eternal, but
that depends on how good they are at creating competitive organisms. An organism is a mere
gene-transporting device: its primary function is not even to reproduce itself,
albeit to reproduce genes. The mind
itself is engineered to perpetuate DNA.
The brain is a machine whose goal is to maximize fitness in its
environment. From the point of view of a
gene, any organism carrying it is an equivalent reproductive source. In many
cases siblings are more closely related (genetically speaking) than parents and
offspring. Adaptation is for the good of the replicator. Therefore, it is not
surprising that sometimes organisms sacrifice themselves for improving their
kin's survival. Kin selection is part of a gene reproduction strategy. "I" am not the
subject: I am the object. My genes are the subject. I am but a product of my
genes. Genes represent a higher force than my will, a force that has been
acting for millions of years, compared to the few decades that my will be performing.
Genes tell me what to will. Genes tell me how to interact with other people who
are the product of other genes, i.e. they tell me which genes to interact with.
Genes tell me what food I should eat and what dangers I should avoid. Whether
there is a conscious entity in my genes or not, it is "them" that
drive my existence. It is "them" who want me to reproduce: I will be
dead soon, but they will still be somewhat alive in my relatives. My family is not going to be extinguished
any time soon. I will be a mere step, soon forgotten and useless, in their
process of reproduction, of survival, of progress. Genes want to live forever. The British zoologist Mark
Ridley makes a distinction between the
macroscopic effects and the microscopic causes of animal behavior. The puzzling feature of the
animal world is that animals often help each other, and sometimes some
individuals would sacrifice their lives to save others. This would not make any
sense if the goal were merely for the body to survive. Altruism was explained by
Richard Dawkins with the idea that evolution applied to genes, not to bodies.
Bodies are the vehicles that genes use to attain everlasting life. Bodies are
disposable. Genes are not used by organisms, genes use organisms. I am nothing
but a machine invented by a bunch of genes to maximize their chances (not mine)
to survive. I will die. But if I am fit
and make children, my genes will survive me.
And if my children are fit, they will die but those genes will continue
to exist in other bodies, generation after generation. It's the genes, not the
organisms. Darwin's idea of competition among
individuals for survival must be slightly modified: it is not individuals that
compete, it is genes. In order to
maximize its chances of survival, a gene would cause one of its bodies (one of
the bodies that contain that gene) to help its "kin" (bodies with the
same gene). The macroscopic effect would be cooperation among organisms, while
at the microscopic level that cooperation is truly an attempt by the gene to
outsmart other genes, i.e. it is competition of the most cynical kind. You have to think like a
gene, not like a body. If you are a gene, you have no problem sacrificing some
of your bodies to save some others. Your ultimate goal is to survive (you are
the gene) and you can use any of those bodies as vehicles to continue your
journey through time. Altruism makes as
much sense as selfishness in the classical Darwinian theory, as long as you
look at the micro-world, not just at the animal kingdom (the macro-world) as we
(bodies) see it. In mathematical terms, sex
provides a way for a gene to participate in a lottery a number of times: each
body is a participant in the lottery of survival. The more bodies, the more
chances to win the lottery. This is a special lottery,
though. Winning this lottery entails some work (creating and maneuvering the
organism) and this work must be done jointly with other genes. Sex is the process
by which a gene is chosen to work in a body together with other genes. In each offspring the gene
is working with a different set of genes. Each offspring is a combination of
genes. Some of those combinations will prevail, i.e. they will generate an
organism that is capable of surviving in the environment. The gene has a vested interest in that as
many as possible of those offspring survive.
If you are one of those offspring, you think that it is all about you.
But, in reality, it is all about the genes that are inside you, and that you
share with your siblings (and some with your cousins, and some with your entire
tribe, and some with the entire human kind). If you are a gene shared by
my brother and me, it makes perfect sense that i give my life to save my
brother's children. I am not jeopardizing my chances of survival: i am
maximizing your chances of survival. Matt Ridley sides with Dawkins in thinking that the gene is
the unit of selection and in believing that genes are selfish; but Ridley shows
that it is in their interest to form alliances, because that may increase the
chances of survival for their genetic pool. Cooperation is actually a recurring
theme at all levels of the biological world, from cells to species. Ridley
explains cooperation among organisms of different species by using game theory:
whenever the mathematics of benefits outweighs the mathematics of competition, organisms tend to be
cooperative. Therefore, Ridley believes that social behavior, such as
cooperation, trade, religion, is a direct consequence of evolution. Selfish Altruism Altruism could be a simple
outcome of a cost/benefit analysis that begins at home and continues in the
world at large. Altruism does not seem to be
innate, not even among siblings. Children are selfish. It takes years to teach
children to be “nice” to other family members. If i have a candy and my brother
has a candy, i want his candy and i don’t want to give him my candy. However, i quickly learn
that my parents will punish me if i steal his candy but will reward me if i
give him my candy. Therefore at some point i become a “good kid” who does not
steal my brother’s candy and instead offers him my candy. The long-term goal of
gaining my parents’ affection, protection and trust prevails over the
short-term goal of getting as many candies as i can. Parents teach us to be nice
to our siblings because parents care for all their children. They blackmail us
into being nice to the other siblings by threatening punishments and promising
rewards. We are naturally inclined to be altruistic to our brothers and
sisters: our parents are, and our parents instill that value in all their
children. Society at large does the
same for all individuals: be nice to others, even complete strangers, and
society will reward you with protection and respect. The US social scientist
Howard Margolis argued in favor of a compromise between the two views. He
speculated that we have two selves, one selfish and one altruistic, and our
behavior is the outcome of a rational, Darwinian strategy on how to allocate
resources between those two selves. Back to the beginning of the chapter "Altruism" | Back to the index of all chapters |