# Where is Evolution heading? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 3, 2007, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-evolution-heading/425129 "2007-11-03T19:57:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ConsciousStarDebris](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/74df32/32.png) [@ConsciousStarDebris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ConsciousStarDebris)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2007, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-evolution-heading/425129/1 "2007-11-03T19:57:43Z")
I’ve got a two-part question for those willing to share their thoughts and knowledge on the topic of the direction of evolution. The first question relates to the following quote from The Book by Allan Watts. > [@](#): > > Our whole knowledge of the world is, in one sense, self-knowledge. For knowing is a translation of external events into bodily processes, and especially into states of the nervous system and the brain; we know the world in terms of the body, and in accordance with its structure. > [@](#): > > So, too, everything that you hear, touch, taste, and smell is some kind of vibration interacting with your brain, which translates that vibration into what you know as light, color, sound, hardness, roughness, saltiness, heaviness, or pungence. Apart from your brain, all these vibrations would be like the sound of one hand clapping, or of sticks playing on a skinless drum. Apart from your brain, or some brain, the world is devoid of light, heat, weight, solidity, motion, space, time, or any other imaginable feature. All these phenomena are interactions, or transactions, of vibrations with a certain arrangement of neurons. Mr. Watts concludes… > [@](#): > > The mythology of the nineteenth century had reduced man to an utterly important little germ in an unimaginably vast and enduring universe. It is just too much of a shock, too fast of a switch, to recognize that this little germ with its fabulous brain is evoking the whole thing, including the nebulae millions of years away…Does this force us to the highly implausible conclusion that before the first living organism came into being equipped with a brain there was no universe- that the organic and inorganic phenomena came into existence at the same temporal moment? His question… > [@](#): > > Is it possible that all geological and astronomical history is a mere extrapolation- that it is what would have happened if it had been observed? (italics throughout removed) That aside, I’ve been wondering where evolution is headed. Certainly it will not stop with us. Now that survival has become less of a day to day struggle for our species as a whole in relation to our environment, which traits will become valued and critical enough to survive our bodily dissolution? This also brings up the question of purpose and intent in regards to evolution. It appears that there is a progression towards greater complexity. What lies beyond our current state of evolution? And how will it change the way we percieve the universe and our concepts of it. ---
**Author:** ![human\_extinction](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/839c29/32.png) [@human\_extinction](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/human_extinction)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2007, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-evolution-heading/425129/2 "2007-11-03T21:07:02Z")
Heh. ^name. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2007, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-evolution-heading/425129/3 "2007-11-03T21:46:11Z")
From Bruce Sterling’s SF short story “Swarm”: Afriel, a human agent of the Solar System’s Shaper faction (specializing in gene-engineering), at war with the Mechanists (prosthetics and technology), has been sent to the Hive, a cluster of asteroids in a distant star system, where, in air-filled tunnels burrowed through the rock, live the Swarm, a race of nonsentient beings with many specialized castes. His mission is purportedly scientific study, but his real mission is to domesticate the Swarm, alter their genes to make them produce things the Shapers can use. At the end, his partner, the (real) scientist Mirny, vanishes, and Swarm of the soldier caste arrest him and take him before what appears to be a new caste, a Swarm with a giant brain, which has absorbed his partner’s mind and memories through a tentacle thrust into her head, so it can now speak her language. Afriel’s pheromonal experiments created a chemical imbalance which the Queen detected, triggering genetic patterns, causing the brain to be born to deal with the threat. > [@](#): > > “Yes,” Swarm agreed. “You will be helpful. Your companion’s memories tell me that this is one of those uncomfortable periods when galactic intelligence is rife. Intelligence is a great bother. It makes all kinds of trouble for us.” > > “What do you mean?” > > “You are a young race and lay great stock by your own cleverness,” Swarm said. “As usual, you fail to see that intelligence is not a survival trait.” > > Afriel wiped sweat from his face. “We’ve done well,” he said. “We came to you, and peacefully. You didn’t come to us.” > > “I refer to exactly that,” Swarm said urbanely. “This urge to expand, to explore, to develop, is just what will make you extinct. You naively suppose that you can continue to feed your curiosity indefinitely. It is an old story, one pursued by countless races before you. Within a thousand years – perhaps a little longer – your species will vanish.” > > “You intend to destroy us, then? I warn you it will not be an easy task --” > > “Again you miss the point. Knowledge is power! Do you suppose that fragile little form of yours – your primitive legs, your ludicrous arms and hands, your tiny, scarcely wrinkled brain – can contain all that power? Certainly not! Already your race is flying to pieces under the impact of your own expertise. The original human form is becoming obsolete. Your own genes have been altered, and you, Captain-Doctor, are a crude experiment. In a hundred years you will be a relic. In a thousand years you will not even be a memory. Your race will go the same way as a thousand others.” > > “What way is that?” > > “I do not know.” The thing on the end of Swarm’s arm made a chuckling sound. “They have passed beyond my ken. They have all discovered something, learned something, that has caused them to transcend my understanding. It may be that they even transcend being. At any rate, I cannot sense their presence anywhere. The seem to do nothing, they seem to interfere in nothing; for all intents and purposes, they seem to be dead. Vanished. They may have become gods, or ghosts. In either case, I have no wish to join them.” > > “So then – so then you have --” > > “Intelligence is very much a two-edged sword, Captain-Doctor. It is useful only up to a point. It interferes with the business of living. Life, and intelligence, do not mix very well. They are not at all closely related, as you childishly assume.” Food for thought. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2007, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-evolution-heading/425129/4 "2007-11-03T22:49:29Z")
Evolution isn’t really headed anywhere…it simply is. There is no goal, no end product. The ‘best’ most adapted species after humans might be bacteria…or whatever other species has the best survival chance or is adapted best too the conditions at the time. -XT ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2007, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-evolution-heading/425129/5 "2007-11-03T22:59:58Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] Food for thought. [/QUOTE] Well, I certainly couldn’t divine anything useful out of what looks to be a pretty bad novel. Maybe you could add some of your own thoughts to clarify? As for the OP, the straightforward answer is that it is simply impossible to predict where life on earth will be in any substantial period of time from now, and anyone who says they know even an inkling of what the future holds in store is a fool or a liar. ---
**Author:** ![glee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b5a626/32.png) [@glee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glee)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2007, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-evolution-heading/425129/6 "2007-11-03T23:02:10Z")
As xtisme said, evolution doesn’t head anywhere. It’s just an explanation of why certain species prosper, not a sentient force that arranges things. Certain characteristics are more suitable for various locations and some mutations will prosper according to what benefits they convey… If the Earth was covered with water, every surviving species would have adapted to that. If there’s a nuclear war, I understand cockroaches have some radiation resistance and will thus presumably ‘evolve’ to be the Masters of Earth. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2007, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-evolution-heading/425129/7 "2007-11-04T00:38:29Z")
[QUOTE=RickJay] Well, I certainly couldn’t divine anything useful out of what looks to be a pretty bad novel. Maybe you could add some of your own thoughts to clarify? [/QUOTE] It’s only a short story, and widely regarded by SF fans as a modern classic. As for its relevance: The Swarm (expressed through the brain replete, an emergency measure with a lifespan limited to a thousand years, and other fail-safes built in so it won’t try to take over the Hive) is content to be nonsentient. It just wants to go on living and living forever; having observed that in other races intelligence appears to lead to extinction, it does not want to evolve into any “higher” form, and places no value on intelligence for its own sake. A different POV from that usually found in SF, or in most thinking on the OP’s question, which usually assumes some sort of teleology is desirable. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2007, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-evolution-heading/425129/8 "2007-11-04T05:09:57Z")
> [@](#): > > Where is Evolution heading? Strangely enough, Myrtle Beach. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2007, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-evolution-heading/425129/9 "2007-11-04T05:42:12Z")
Probably back to court the next time the Creationists attempt to insert their stealth Creationism under the guise of Intelligent Design into school curricula. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2007, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-evolution-heading/425129/10 "2007-11-04T05:44:29Z")
Evolution is heading where it always heads, to those organisms best capable of surviving in whatever the environment is at the time. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2007, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-evolution-heading/425129/11 "2007-11-04T13:31:33Z")
Most current niches are filled, so evolution isn’t going much of anywhere right now. When the next catastrophe hits (asteroid? climate change? killer virus?) niches will reopen. Evolution will function as it always has: a million tiny experiments, some of which are successful because they are effective improvements, and some of which are successful because of blind luck. No one can predict what the new forms will be like. If humans are completely wiped out, for instance, there is nothing to suggest that our particular form of intelligence would reappear anytime soon. While it has been a successful adaption, it’s entirely likely that other adaptations would be just as successful. The notion that evolution drives toward some sort of distant goal of faster/smarter/more complex/etc has no basis. Perhaps in the distant future most lifeforms on earth will be relatively simple, well adapted, very stupid bugs. It might be more informative to speculate on what niches might open up, rather than where evolution is going. Evolution is a follower–not a leader. It’s descent with modification. While modification is an accidental leader, without the descent part, nothing changes, and the descent part is dependent on external circumstance–new niches, in particular, on average. ---
**Author:** ![9thFloor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/9/b487fb/32.png) [@9thFloor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/9thFloor)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2007, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-evolution-heading/425129/12 "2007-11-05T01:42:04Z")
Electricity. The concept of evolution of course isn’t sentient or purposeful in that way as noted by earlier posts. But if you meant where are humans headed in the future – which might be a complete misunderstanding of what you meant, in which case I apologize for going off thread – then I’d say I think we’ll move beyond our bodies into electrical, synaptic events in some computerized kind of way that will cause us to be less dependent on the physical world’s realities though obviously not completely so. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2007, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-evolution-heading/425129/13 "2007-11-05T02:25:42Z")
[QUOTE=Larry Borgia] Evolution is heading where it always heads, to those organisms best capable of surviving in whatever the environment is at the time. [/QUOTE] Right, except it’s only indirectly related to “surviving”. Reproducing, and passing your genes on to the next generation, is the key. There is often a correlation between those two things, but not always. BTW, to the OP: Not to be snarky or anything, but you’re not the first to pose that question around here. It comes up several times a year. Join up and you’ll be able to search for past threads on that and other subjects. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2007, 10:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-evolution-heading/425129/14 "2007-11-05T10:49:37Z")
[QUOTE=xtisme] Evolution isn’t really headed anywhere…it simply is. There is no goal, no end product. [/QUOTE] Bingo. We see ourselves as the crowning product, the leading edge, of evolution because we’re the ones who are writing the story right now. But really, we’ve got no particular claim. We’re clearly more successful in evolutionary terms than the other large predatory animals that have coexisted with us, in that we’re crowding out their niches, and their survival is dependent on our forbearance. But that’s about as much as can be said. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2007, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-evolution-heading/425129/15 "2007-11-05T13:04:18Z")
[QUOTE=glee] If there’s a nuclear war, I understand cockroaches have some radiation resistance and will thus presumably ‘evolve’ to be the Masters of Earth. [/QUOTE] I believe it was right here, at the SD that they blew up that myth (can’t be bothered to search for link though). Cockroaches aren’t much better than humans wrt radiation resistance, which makes them the laughing stock of other insects. ---
**Author:** ![Staggerlee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/staggerlee/32/3134_2.png) [@Staggerlee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Staggerlee)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2007, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-evolution-heading/425129/16 "2007-11-05T14:14:38Z")
[QUOTE=ConsciousStarDebris] Is it possible that all geological and astronomical history is a mere extrapolation- that it is what would have happened if it had been observed? [/QUOTE] This question - and the preceding explanatory paragraphs proposing that the external world didn’t really exist until there was a conscious entity to perceive it (like the metaphorical tree falling in the unvisited forest) - sounds quite profound. But is it really enlightening to suggest that history of whatever sort is extrapolated from the present-day universe? I’d say _of course it is_ - retrospective deduction from the evidence currently at hand like fossil records, background cosmic radiation, or buried artefacts. And we can not only extrapolate the processes which have occurred in days gone by, but also the timeframe involved, regardless of the presence of an observer. Or am I missing something(s)? ---
**Author:** ![CannyDan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cannydan/32/548_2.png) [@CannyDan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CannyDan)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2007, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-evolution-heading/425129/17 "2007-11-05T14:34:48Z")
Where is evolution heading? From Mark Twain’s “Was the world made for man?” (1903) > [@](#): > > …you cannot make an oyster out of whole cloth, you must make the oyster’s ancestor first. This is not done in a day. You must make a vast variety of invertebrates, to start with – belemnites, trilobites, jebusites, amalekites, and that sort of fry, and put them to soak in a primary sea, and wait and see what will happen. Some will be a disappointments - the belemnites, the ammonites and such; they will be failures, they will die out and become extinct, in the course of the 19,000,000 years covered by the experiment, but all is not lost, for the amalekites will fetch the home-stake; they will develop gradually into encrinites, and stalactites, and blatherskites, and one thing and another as the mighty ages creep on and the Archaean and the Cambrian Periods pile their lofty crags in the primordial seas, and at last the first grand stage in the preparation of the world for man stands completed, the Oyster is done. An oyster has hardly any more reasoning power than a scientist has; and so it is reasonably certain that this one jumped to the conclusion that the nineteen-million years was a preparation for him; but that would be just like an oyster, which is the most conceited animal there is, except man. As has been stated before, evolution is not end directed. Nor is evolution always in the direction of increasing complexity. There are a huge variety of parasitic species, quite successful, thank you, that prosper despite reduction to almost bizzarely simple forms. ---
**Author:** ![Triskadecamus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b19c9b/32.png) [@Triskadecamus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Triskadecamus)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2007, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-evolution-heading/425129/18 "2007-11-05T15:32:50Z")
Evolution is headed for survival. Whether it gets there is pretty much random chance, with the outcome weighted by multiple individual iterations, over long periods of time. Tris ---
**Author:** ![Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freddy_the_Pig)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2007, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-evolution-heading/425129/19 "2007-11-05T15:41:59Z")
I think there will be some major developments in hamster evolution over the coming millennia. I think we’ll see hamsters splitting into multiple species, with some varieties having even cuter and shorter tails, and others developing opposable thumbs and larger brains to better compete with pikas and guinea pigs. We may even see more aggressive, aquatic breeds like the killer rabbit that attacked Jimmy Carter. Seriously, I’m at a loss as to why people who ask this question assume that the siginificant developments will be in _human_ evolution, when we’re already successful enough that there are seven billion of us. ---
**Author:** ![Triskadecamus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b19c9b/32.png) [@Triskadecamus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Triskadecamus)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2007, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-evolution-heading/425129/20 "2007-11-05T15:47:39Z")
By sheer weight of numbers, or even weight of biomass, the bacteria are winning. Have been all along. They are lagging behind in art, and science, except medicine, where they are regaining a slight edge, after some setbacks last century. Tris [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-evolution-heading/425129.md?page=2)