Abstract
The dominant view today on evolutionary progress is that it has been thoroughly debunked. Even value-neutral progress concepts are seen to lack important theoretical underpinnings: (1) natural selection provides no rationale for progress, and (2) natural selection need not even be invoked to explain large-scale evolutionary trends. In this paper I challenge this view by analysing how natural selection acts in heterogeneous environments. This not only undermines key debunking arguments, but also provides a selectionist rationale for a pattern of “evolutionary unfolding”, where life radiates across an increased range of exploitation of environmental heterogeneity.
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Notes
“There is nothing in the basic structure of the theory of natural selection that would suggest the idea of any kind of cumulative progress.” (Williams [1966]2018: 35).
Beatty would call this “contingency per se”: a replay from seemingly identical conditions leading to a different evolutionary outcome (Beatty 2006).
For this reason, there being a (grounded) selectionist rationale would seem to contradict the ECT in spirit, even though the ECT could still be saved in letter since selectionist rationales cannot be used for exceptionless generalisations over actual, empirical evolutionary history.
See e.g. “The sequence of local environments in any one place should be effectively random through geological time—the seas come in and the seas go out, the weather gets colder, then hotter, etc. If organisms are tracking local environments by natural selection, then their evolutionary history should be effectively random as well.” (Gould 1996, pp. 139–140).
As, by the way, Sober explicitly does in (Sober 1984).
So for these particular versions of (selective) competitive and adaptive progress I agree, with Gould and Williams, that natural selection offers no rationale for them. If progress-claim are to be viable, they must involve a different concept of progress.
This taxonomy can be further fine-grained according to the internal differentiation and interaction between parts (see McShea 2001a). This need not further concern us here.
This type of modality should be distinguished from the type involved in “possible evolutionary histories”. The latter are fleshed out in terms of varying conditions faced by life (asteroids, atmosphere composition, etc.). By contrast, biologically possible states are individuated in terms of organismic structure (genotype and/or phenotype). Nonetheless, the two types of modality are related, since a single evolutionary history can be represented as a network of branching paths in the space of biological possibility.
Phenotypic change can occur without genetic change (due to phenotypic plasticity), so this concept of a space of possible genotypes is just a heuristic. See critical discussion of biological possibility in (Maclaurin and Sterelny 2008).
This is another simplifying assumption. For instance, wolfpacks, or cooperating predatory bacteria (Myxococcus), are considered to exemplify multicellularity (Berleman and Kirby 2009; Grosberg and Strathmann 2007). Thus, changes in level of nestedness may be environmentally induced and underdetermined by genotype alone.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank audiences at the CEFISES and CLPS seminars for early feedback on this project, as well as the Leuven PhilBio reading group. Many thanks as well to two helpful anonymous referees and to Rachael Brown.
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Desmond, H. The selectionist rationale for evolutionary progress. Biol Philos 36, 32 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-021-09806-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-021-09806-1