Evolutionary "contingency" - Darwin's heritage

Evolutionary "contingency" - Darwin's heritage
In many ways 1859 was a seminal, epochal year in Human history. Charles Darwin published his “origin of species”, after ruminating over it for nearly twenty years. He never meant it to be a purely “scientific” book, but a general account of what he considered to be evidence for natural selection and its effect on growth or evolution of species. The purpose of his book was to lay the foundations and necessary proof for a “Creator-less” design of human life, which meant a complete severance, abnegation of a cherished belief held over millennia. Only 1250 copies got printed, and most of them were distributed, or gifted to scientists, friends and libraries. Left to himself, one wonders, if Darwin would have ever gotten to take his work to the Printer - he was forced to – because his colleague and friend Alfred Russell Wallace was perilously close to usurping the grand theory that he had conjured over decades of observation and study. More and more members of his scientific fraternity were beginning to rumble with experimental evidence gathered from different species on genetic heredity and capricious design. His could not stall the process of publishing his book any longer. During Darwin’s life time, the book went through six editions, with corrections, modifications, additions and rephrasing happening in each one them. It is only in the fifth edition, printed in 1869, ten years after the original publication, that Darwin chose to include the controversial term ( a term that has haunted debates on progress, direction and ethics of our race since then) - “Survival of the fittest”..
It is amazing how a book or an idea can be twisted and battered into something that was never proposed or advocated in the first place. The idea that Man is a culmination of a long series of futile attempts by “Nature” to produce a near perfect specimen endowed with the power to rule over his dominion - is a direct result of this misconstrued, misinterpreted concept of “Survival of the fittest”. If one were to read the book (which many debaters, creationist crusaders or conversationalists even today really don’t), it is pretty obvious that Darwin had nothing of this sort of Human progress or hegemony in mind when he wrote about it. In fact, he had serious doubts of Man’s place in the scheme of things. His simple observation was that nature acted on the principle of natural selection in a given geographical area, and the species that is best suited to adapt to local conditions will end up surviving and flourishing well for a given geological time period. The fossil records and evolutionary history of the world is replete with instances of mass extinction, unproductive lineages, and failure of design. To Darwin, survival of the fittest meant not to demonstrate the superiority of Human species, or a vindication of a “Creator’s” crowning glory, but merely a principle that favored the flowering of Human species at a right point in Earth’s history. Curiously enough, in the 500 odd pages of his tome, not once does Darwin mentions that Man is a progressive adaption of an Ape. The illustrations that populate and proliferate in scientific text books with a picture of an Ape, followed by a Guerrilla, then a Neanderthal man , culminating with proud Homo Erectus as the crown jewel of nature’s engineering, is perhaps the worst possible tragedy that could have befallen Darwin’s work and understanding. The reason why he refrained from publishing his work for such a long time (his famous voyage aboard the Beagle happened between 1831-36) owes largely to the fact that Darwin was a devout Catholic, and he believed that there was a divine design in the way organisms were created. All his observations, data and detailed analyses belied such premises. The fact that Man may just be a twig in a branch of a prolific evolutionary tree, with no special privileges except for a new element introduced in its design – consciousness - stuck Darwin very early in his career as a naturalist and Geologist. He knew he had stumbled upon something profound and radically unsettling. It was also worth noting that during the same period, the concept of time also underwent major transformation. The Western world was ruled by biblical time- which meant that the world was created 2000 years ago with a specific goal of putting Human beings on this planet. But geologists such as Sir Charles Lyell, started postulating time ranges based on their study of Earth’s strata that Earth’s origins may go back to millions of years, and life could have had genesis in a time that is ancient and cannot be fathomed at this distance with any amount of certainty. For the kind of “evolution” that Darwin was proposing in his book, life required such long spreads of geological time to make those small incremental adjustments in design, for whole scale mutations or extinctions - that would make life as we know it, possible on earth.
It was a tremendous moral dilemma for Darwin who belief systems leaned towards an intelligent divinity; and here was evidence staring straight at one’s face- that life on earth was purely a matter of chance, evolving into various forms based on contingencies that really don’t seem to be adhering to any divine plan at all. When Darwin closed the final chapter of his book in the 1859 edition, this is what he had to write:
“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
There is no mention of a “God” or a “creator” in this conclusion. Public were outraged, Catholic Church was upset and still visibly recovering from the catastrophic effects of Copernican revolution. First, Earth lost its place as the center of the Universe, and now Darwin was pulling the carpet under Man’s supremacy. Darwin himself, struggled to make sense of his findings. Though, he had begun to lose faith in organized religion after his Daughter’s untimely death in 1851, he still continued to harbor a subtle belief in intelligent design overseen by a superior force. When his analyzed scientific evidence projected no basis for such an assumption, this short, amiable gentleman was pulled in both directions. Personally, he was a convinced agnostic, but publicly he had to concede to popular beliefs and ideas. His quiet contemplative nature wouldn’t allow him to hurt anybody’s sentiments - more so his wife, who remained a devout Catholic all her life. Hence, in the second revision of his book, which appeared in 1860. He rephrased his concluding remarks thus (paraphrased):
“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one…… from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved…”
Observe the introduction of “Creator” in the sentence. It was clearly an afterthought necessitated by the need to confirm to established ideas, than on any scientific basis. While Darwin’s study certainly propelled understanding of genetics, heredity and a greater understanding of life forms; the flip side of it was the fact that his work inadvertently gave impetus to a bloated sense of egotism and supremacy in Human race. If the last 250 years is any indication to go by, it is amply clear that we have crowned ourselves as supreme achievements in nature’s unfolding drama. Rampant disregard for ecosystems, unabashed material progress that tramples over other life forms, a bloated sense of individuality that reckons itself to be immortal - all these and more, surely indicate a false understanding and interpretation of evolutionary principles.
Stephen jay Gould, one of the finest evolutionary biologists of the last century writes in his beautiful book “It’s a wonderful life - a study of Burgess Shale”:
“Life is a copiously branching bush, continually pruned by the grim reaper of extinction, not a ladder of predictable progress.”
Also, he goes on to say that if the tape of life were to be rewound, then chances are very unlikely that it will follow the same evolutionary path as it has now. Contingency plays a very important role in adaption and evolution of organic forms. Frankly, if Progress towards complexity if a measure of progress (Human are supposedly highly complex organisms), then single-celled organisms must be hailed as its apogee, simple because they have held way over planet earth for more than three fourths of its history. Multicellular life forms are a very recent entrants to this drama, and in the scale of evolutionary time, they are not of any consequence at all.
Well, this has turned out to be a rather longish essay. Before I conclude, it must definitely be pointed out that despite all my ramblings on contingency and anti-progress : Man is only species capable of understanding and analyzing this great process. In his design, life has breathed in “consciousness” – a self- awareness, which is probably not bequeathed to any other known species. This gift has also led to symbolic thinking, language and an ability to master basic laws of nature. The pulsating life or raw existence still shines within us in its primordial brightness, but unfortunately, we have given ourselves over to its symbolic manifestation in the form a self-encapsulating thought structure. And that may prove to be our nemesis as a species.
Adi shankaracharya, in Vivekachudamani – one of the finest condensation of Vedantic wisdom begins his second verse thus
जन्तूनां नरजन्म दुर्लभमतः
Freely translated, it means: “Of all births, attaining a human form is rare…”
He was dead right. We are here because of any special privilege accorded to us by this Universe. We are lucky to be here, and do what we are doing. In the grand roulette of cosmic design, we just happened to have manifested. So Let’s cherish existence and live it as a blessing, and perhaps with a little humility as well.
God bless…

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