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The essence of mathematics, physics, and biology

Again, I question the roles of novelty and merit in the selection process. But though I come to this subject from my same philosophical perspective, I might add that there aee serious and even trailblazing biologists on my side. True, none of them has offered a comprehensive complementary theory to explain what Darwin and his followers leave out. Even so, I take heart from the words of Sydney Brenner, who won the Nobel Prize for his efforts in discovering messenger RNA (mRNA). “Wheras,” Brenner explains, “mathematics is the art of the perfect and physics the art of the optimal, biology, because of evolution, is only the art of the satisfactory.” Species need not be perfect or optimal, only satifactory. Fancois Jacob opposes in his autobiography Jacques Monod’s Cartesian idea of nature to his: “I saw nature as a rather good girl. Generous, but a little dirty. A little messy. Working in a piecemeal way. Doing what she could with what she found.”

The absurdity of intelligent design

Partisans of intelligent design argue in bad faith, so they might still claim my views on behalf of their mistaken ideas. In fact, my arguments vitiate theirs; there is a strong corellation between the uqiquity of neutrality and the falseness of intelligent design. That is because intelligent design is parasitic on selectionism. Intelligent design begins from the premise, supplied by selectionism, that species are optimized. ntelligent design takes Darwin’s analogy to domestication as more than figurative, asking how the perfection of nature - or, in Wallace’s case, the human specifically - could possibly be achieved without the intervention and direction of an intelligent force, a great cosmic breeder or sculptor. In contrast to both selectionism and intelligent design, the theory of the good enough turns our attention to nature’s many imperfections. Because nature is not optimzed, intelligent design advocates are actually assigning waste and mediocrity to the handiwork of an omnipotent being of supernatural intelligence. Why venerate such a lazy and inept God? When we temper our selectionist expectations, the absurdity of intelligent design emerges in even sharper belief.

Why should we struggle and strain when we are all good enough?

In chapter 10, I conclude with an exploration of what humanity’s safety net means for ethics, resolving that competition within society is a fool’s game. We need far less excellence than we cultivate. We do it anyway because the best of our neurons, those that rescued us from extinction, are underemployed and overqualified - not because doing so is necessary or even, in many cases, useful. More often, it is crushing. Being excellence-driven myself, I am well placed to know to futility and the masochism of this pursuit. Though our capitalist institutions tell us that we mst constantly strive, that nature ordains competition to be the best and reap the rewards, nature in fact offers no rewards beyond survival and reproduction. Both are assured by a safety net that allows us to be just fine even though we are so much less than optimal. Why should be struggle and strain when we are all good enough?

Much that distinguishes organisms from one another is not adaptive

And I explain more thoroughly the idea of the two evolutions. The first, concering qualitative variation, is in the province of Darwinism and adaptation. The second, concerning quantitative variation, is in the province of the good enough and neutrality. Again, natural selection is real; adaptation is real. But much that distinguishes organisms from one another, particularly differences in size, is not adaptive. These variations are not selected; they are tolerated.

Posterity heuristics

Posterity tends to make its choices with the help of two heuristics. One in incumbency bias: the earlier one enters the pantheon, the harder he or she is to expell, no matter the quality of the work celebrated. The other is laziness bias: posterity tends to select those who were already recognized by their own contemporaries; a lifetime of success is an important, if not strictly necessary, condition for posthumois lionization. Rare exceptions such as Gregory Mendel will console only inveterate optimists.

Natural selection is spectacular, chance is not

And yet spectacular as natural selection is in these cases, most birds are primarily generalists, most crickets are simple-minded, most antilopes are guileless, and springboks also pronk in the absence of predators. Species and organisms often survice not because they are are special but because they don’t have to be. On this view, however, they possess no magnetism, no elegance. They tell no story and project no significance into the world. To say that most of what survives was not selected but is just not bad enough to be eliminated is to demote natural selection from its exalted place in the order of life. Natural selection is biology’s greatest intellectual contribution; of course it is prized. Natural law leaves us quaking in wonder, while chance interests only gamblers.

Natural selection is not a natural law; it is a relative frequency.

Lynn Margulis, the pioneer of the theory of symbiosis in evolution, defined herself as an adherent of descent with modification and an adversary of selection as its principal agent. She rejected the “capitalistic, competitive, cost-benefit” interpretation of Darwin.

Margulis expressed nothing outlandish when she told a interviewer that “natural selection eliminates and maybe maintains, but it does not create.” I detail throughout this book a more controversial claim: that natural selection’s maintenance is, most of the time, in abeyance. Natural selection is not a natural law; it is a relative frequency. Facing little pressure to adapt, the mediocre survive and thrive. It is a jungle out there, but, unlike deserts, jungles are not very competitive places. They are full of resources and opportunities and thus are hotbeds of life. It is true that every species in the jungle - and everywhere else - has traits that are products of selection, but each posess also traits that are merely tolerated. In the end, the most we can say for any living organsims is that it is good enough not to die.

The absurdity of intelligent design

Partisans of intelligent design argue in bad faith, so they might still claim my views on behalf of their mistaken ideas. In fact, my arguments vitiate theirs; there is a strong corellation between the uqiquity of neutrality and the falseness of intelligent design. That is because intelligent design is parasitic on selectionism. Intelligent design begins from the premise, supplied by selectionism, that species are optimized. ntelligent design takes Darwin’s analogy to domestication as more than figurative, asking how the perfection of nature - or, in Wallace’s case, the human specifically - could possibly be achieved without the intervention and direction of an intelligent force, a great cosmic breeder or sculptor. In contrast to both selectionism and intelligent design, the theory of the good enough turns our attention to nature’s many imperfections. Because nature is not optimzed, intelligent design advocates are actually assigning waste and mediocrity to the handiwork of an omnipotent being of supernatural intelligence. Why venerate such a lazy and inept God? When we temper our selectionist expectations, the absurdity of intelligent design emerges in even sharper belief.

Natural selection as nature's safety net

Chapter 7 draws on the theory of facilitated variation, developed by Marc Kirschner and John Gehrhart, to explain the mechanisms underlying this tolerance. This theory holds that for three billion years, a process of natural selection furnished the biological foundations of all extant creatures. Secured by this sturdy infrastructure, which I call nature’s safety net, organisms havespent the last four hundred million years getting away with much waste and inefficiency. They can afford their waste thanks to highly optimized selected traits, but the waste itself is not selected.

Our excess bubbles and blooms

I argue that the future powers a division of labor so thorough that it obliterates all challenges to humanity’s survival, leaving us with a world of free lunches, ease, and boredom. We face no species-level threats except perhaps those ecological ones that are products of unavaoidable excess. This excesss is unavoidable because we have little to do from a survival standpoint. Humans have the ultimate luxury of wasting time and resources in order to divert ourselves. The skills our ancestors cultivated for the purpose of survival no longer serve that purposem yet the skills remain. We have the means to achieve ends we no longer need to worry about, so the means become ends themselves. Our excess bubbles and blooms not because it is selected through a process if struggle but because there is no struggle.