Prolegomenon to patterns in evolution

Abstract

Despite Darwin, we remain children of Newton and dream of a grand theory that is epistemologically complete and would allow prediction of the evolution of the biosphere. The main purpose of this article is to show that this dream is false, and bears on studying patterns of evolution. To do so, I must justify the use of the word “function” in biology, when physics has only happenings. The concept of “function” lifts biology irreducibly above physics, for as we shall see, we cannot prestate the ever new biological functions that arise and constitute the very phase space of evolution. Hence, we cannot mathematize the detailed becoming of the biosphere, nor write differential equations for functional variables we do not know ahead of time, nor integrate those equations, so no laws “entail” evolution. The dream of a grand theory fails. In place of entailing laws, I propose a post-entailing law explanatory framework in which Actuals arise in evolution that constitute new boundary conditions that are enabling constraints that create new, typically unprestatable, adjacent possible opportunities for further evolution, in which new Actuals arise, in a persistent becoming. Evolution flows into a typically unprestatable succession of adjacent possibles. Given the concept of function, the concept of functional closure of an organism making a living in its world becomes central. Implications for patterns in evolution include historical reconstruction, and statistical laws such as the distribution of extinction events, or species per genus, and the use of formal cause, not efficient cause, laws.

Introduction

My aim in this article is to explore a new conceptual framework that is, in the Kantian sense, a prolegomenon to thinking about patterns in evolution. The title is somewhat presumptuous, in that we are already using much of the conceptual framework I shall discuss, but have not clearly articulated it or its basic rational.

Briefly, we remain children of Newton and classical physics, despite the vast transformation Darwin wrought. Newton then Laplace laid the foundations of modern “Reductive Materialism”, which remains our model of science itself, including “Dreams of a Final Theory” (Weinberg, 1992). I hope to show that Weinberg's dream is almost surely a mistake, only some of which can be discussed in this article, and that the explanatory framework of physics is not adequate for biological evolution, nor, a fortiori, for the evolution of human life and civilization. What I shall claim seems surely true of the living world, and may be true even for the abiotic universe.

In outline: Newton and Laplace created a view of the world whose becoming is entirely entailed by “the laws”, plus the initial and boundary conditions. This view is in a deep sense not altered by quantum mechanics on at least some of its interpretations. In this world view, there can be no “true creativity”. All is already entailed from the start, for example, the Big Bang.

I shall try to show that this view of an entailed becoming is profoundly wrong for the evolving biosphere. In place of an entailed becoming we shall find a new explanatory framework: The evolution of the biosphere is describable by no entailing laws at all. Nor is that evolution even mathematizable in any known way. Instead, new in the universe, and typically unprestatable, Actuals (the term defining the existing and not merely potential or possible) arise. These Actuals constitute new in the universe, unprestatable boundary conditions that are “enabling constraints” that literally create new in the universe and unprestatable “Adjacent Possible Opportunities”, into which evolution “becomes” with the radical emergence of yet new Actuals. In turn these unprestatable Actuals create new unprestatable adjacent possibles into which evolution becomes creating yet new Actuals in a continuous, beyond entailing law, largely unprestatable becoming. Indeed we will find that evolution creates the very possibilities into which it becomes, without natural selection “acting” to achieve these new adjacent possibilities. Evolution is radical, ongoing, co-creativity.

What I shall say has many implications, assuming I am correct. First, we often cannot even know what can happen. Then we can form no statistical probability distributions for we do not know the sample spaces of the adjacent possibles. Harder, “sufficient reason” fails. We cannot reason about what we cannot know. Then Reason, the highest human virtue of the Greeks and our Enlightenment, is an insufficient guide for understanding, predicting, or living our lives forward. In turn, our model of the scientific method, based on physics: laws, deduction of new consequences given those laws, confirming or, with Popper, falsifying those predictions, fails. We have no laws from which to make the predictions. We need new ways to “do science”, when we cannot know what can happen. In truth, we already do science when we do not know beforehand what can happen. We do this all the time in our historical approach to evolution, as in paleontology, where we reconstruct the past from “the Record”. We do history, and the patterns of evolution we seek are those revealed in a history that is entailed by no laws of motion.

Darwin hoped to be the Newton of biology. Kant said there will be no Newton of biology. Kant was right and Darwin and evolution is the end of the hegemony of Newton and Reductive Materialism in our understanding of science and the world at large. In a sense, I need say no more. But, of course, I should try to make my claims for your consideration and critique.