On the Origin of Heavenly Bodies

The main thesis of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species is that species evolve from other species. They arise from natural variations found within a given species that are selected for or against. They do not arise spontaneously and independently, or by dint of divine or extraterrestrial intervention. One species derives from another species, going back indefinitely (but finitely). The process is mindless and purposeless, a matter of natural law and physical mechanisms (mutation and natural selection). The intermediate forms may be missing, but they once existed; the transition was gradual not abrupt, and certainly not magical. The existence of a range of animal species is thus scientifically intelligible not inexplicable. But Darwin does not apply this perspective to the existence of heavenly bodies—planets, moons, stars, meteors, galaxies, galaxy clusters. Asked what their origin is, Darwin ventures no answer, no doubt because not much was known about it in those days. Yet the questions are remarkably similar: what is the origin of these enigmatic entities, these astronomical natural kinds, these celestial species? Do they arise spontaneously and independent of each other, by divine action or alien super-scientist, or do they derive from earlier entities of the same basic type by intelligible means? The answer, as we now know, is that they arise in the latter way: moons arise (or can arise) from planets, planets arise out of free-floating debris from stars and other objects, stars arise from condensed dust clouds, galaxies arise from stars, galaxy clusters arise from galaxies. The mechanism is the law of gravity, condensing bits of matter into other bits of matter, sometimes producing extremely hot and dense objects. These things are dependent for their existence on other similar things and develop from them over time; they were not created separately. For example, the earth was caused to exist by antecedent chunks of matter swirling around in space, not by God ab initio. No intelligence went into its creation, as no intelligence went into the creation of animal species. It would therefore be possible to write a book about heavenly bodies just like Darwin’s book about animal species; indeed, a single book could naturally cover both topics. The questions and answers are much the same (though clearly not identical). The book could be called On the Origin of Natural Kinds, and it could include animals and plants, stars and planets, rocks and minerals, chemical elements and geological formations. It would be a book of cosmic history, its main thesis being that stuff comes from other stuff of the same basic kind by explicable natural processes. The universe obeys a law of homogeneous gestation—like from like, going back in time to some primordial event (the big bang, the origin of all life). We might even say that Darwin discovered this mode of explanation, applicable to a wide variety of natural objects, though he didn’t himself extend it beyond the biological sphere. He worked out the Special Theory of Generativity, applying it to the specific case of life forms; but he didn’t propose a General Theory of Generativity, applying it to the universe as a whole. But he could have, he could have. He could have offered a theory of all species (kinds, sorts): animal, celestial, geological, chemical, physical, even mental—every existing natural kind. Each of these would no doubt introduce different mechanisms of progression (e.g., nuclear fusion), but the general form of the theory would be common to multiple areas. Then he would truly be a towering figure in the history of science—he would have explained the lot.

Or would he? For surely there are some existing entities that are not explicable in the manner suggested—those that are created by intelligent minds. These include works of art, items of technology, buildings, and social systems. In each of these areas there is an indispensable role for intentional creation by intelligent agents—artists, scientists, architects, political theorists. In these cases, it would be quite wrong to postulate mindless creation—we can all see that such entities are brought into being with the aid of an intelligent mind. Here we all believe in “Intelligent Design” and “Creationism”. We all think that the Mona Lisa was created by a certain mind at a certain time—not by mere physical laws (as if the paint just happened to come together in these ways). But this is not necessarily so—the means of gestation might not be so obvious. Imagine a planet on which all manner of artifacts abound but their creators have all disappeared for some reason (a pandemic, say). You might observe these objects and wonder how they came to be (you just beamed down to the planet’s surface). Some of the more rigidly Darwinian members of the landing party might insist that it must be by some sort of non-intelligent process, because no one has ever seen the putative creators; but of course, this is simply because they have all disappeared since they did their creative work. Here the Darwinian style of explanation would be completely mistaken—some watches are made by watchmakers! The correct theory (enunciated by a spindly character named Spock) is precisely that the erstwhile creators have been wiped off the face of the planet without leaving a trace: that is the only logical explanation, given the similarity to our own artifacts. A book called On the Origin of Works of Art contending that all such works result from mere physical laws, with no intelligent creator in sight, would not meet with much acceptance. In point of fact, Darwin’s own title is somewhat misleading, since some species are the result of Intelligent Design—e.g., those dog breeds we see around us all the time. Species differences can and do arise by virtue of choice and forethought; in fact, a whole planet could be so populated. It is just that most species do not actually arise in this way on planet earth. There is nothing necessary or a priori about any of this. It’s just empirical science. Darwin’s theory could have been wrong, but actually it isn’t.

Minds present an interesting case. What is their origin? The answer is that minds also come from other minds, as things actually are, though not comprehensively so. For there is such a thing as learning. Animal minds, like animal bodies, result from mutation and natural selection—the minds that survive are the minds that serve the genes best. The human mind derives from the ape mind, going back to the first minds on Earth; it isn’t as if each species has a mind that exists without reliance on prior minds. The basic structure of the human mind derives from the structure of earlier minds, modified in the usual ways. A book called On the Origin of Mindswould be very similar to Darwin’s book: later minds descend from earlier minds; they don’t arise spontaneously and independent of other minds. With this exception: minds can be changed in the course of an individual life by the process we call learning. Not all knowledge arises by genetically copying ancestors’ minds; some of it arises by intentional action, e.g., by the scientific method. But it is equally true that not all aspects of the body derive from earlier bodies, since a given species might have characteristics not found in any earlier species—such as geographical location or freedom from certain diseases. Species don’t always stay in the same place as their progenitors, or always suffer from the same diseases. Not everything about a species reflects its origin in the species it came from; some comes from the currently obtaining environment—like learning. In any case, none of this requires any relaxation of the basic principle that minds (and species) owe their origin to other minds (species) and not to creative acts by supposed deities or super-scientists. Intelligence is not created by intelligence in the style of Creationism, but by the same processes that produce bodies.[1]

The steady state theory of the universe gave way to the dynamic big-bang theory. The immutable species theory gave way to the dynamic evolutionary theory. The universe started life as a cloud of dust and developed into a differentiated assembly of natural kinds of celestial object in the fullness of time; the former seems an unpromising foundation for the latter, but gravitational attraction is a powerful force. Life on earth started as a sea of uniform bacteria and developed into a differentiated assembly of animal species in the fullness of time; the former seems like an unpromising foundation for the latter, but natural selection is a powerful force. The history of planets is written into their structure. The history of species is written into their structure. At no point do we need to introduce a form of guiding intelligence to explain these transitions and end-points. The analogies between the two areas are clear and instructive. Astronomy did what biology had already done: replace one historical world-view with another. It is curious that these links are not explicitly drawn: Darwinian biology is a special case of evolutionary cosmology, viewed broadly. Gradual evolution from one thing to another, not sudden creation from nothing—lawfully related causal sequence, not non-natural fixity. Natural history, not supernatural non-history. Darwin in effect anticipated modern cosmology, but didn’t draw the connection. No discredit in that, but historically interesting. He also said nothing about the destiny of species—what their future will be as opposed to their past. But we can easily fill that gap (with due allowance made for the uncertainties of the future): the future will resemble the past, though it will not go on forever. Species will keep arising from other species by the mechanisms that have operated hitherto (God will not suddenly pop into the picture, smiling and winking). Extinctions will continue to happen. We can anticipate that more species will result from intelligent intervention (or stupid intervention), as we seek to improve the human condition—e.g., meaty-tasting plant life. Who knows what will happen with AI. Stars will continue to be minted, then fizzle out and die. Entropy will have its way with the universe. The Sun will eventually grow cold. Life and the physical universe are everchanging things not static givens. That is one of the great lessons of Darwin’s great book: nature is not a timeless immutable; things come and go (dinosaurs, stars). The physical universe is more like life than we thought, more changeable, less carved in stone; and life is more like the physical universe than we thought, more mechanical, less anthropic. Their origin stories have much the same plot.[2]

[1] That is not to say that we know how this is done (we don’t). I find it a rather chastening thought that my mind owes its existence to the minds of countless ancestor minds, some none too brilliant. My mind genes carry the trace of mind genes stretching back to our aquatic days.

[2] A problem that particularly exercised Darwin is what might be called the “dispersal problem”: if species derive from an ancestor species, how come they are often found at a considerable distance from their origins? The answer, he suggested, is that forces of nature carry organisms far and wide—the wind, tides, birds. A similar problem arises in cosmology: if packets of matter come from other packets of matter, why are they so widely dispersed? Shouldn’t the packets be closer together? The answer is that forces of nature drive them apart, notably the explosive force of the big bang—hence cosmic expansion. The universe is a natural wanderer, as are animals. Things are born from other things, then they wander, then they die—that’s the basic story.

A New Law of Biology

I believe I have discovered a new law of biology. I call it “the law of differential adaptation”. It is fairly easily derivable from established principles, but I have not seen it enunciated before. It strikes me as illuminating. We begin by making a distinction: between the animate environment and the inanimate environment. A given organism is adapted to both, and there is a history to these adaptations. The animate environment consists of all the impinging life forms that an organism is subject to, particularly predators, rivals, and diseases. The organism has defenses against these life-threatening factors—ways of surviving in their presence. These ways include things like legs, antlers, and immune systems—for running, fighting, and disease avoidance. The inanimate environment consists of all the non-biological factors that govern an organism’s life: space, time, matter, gravity, climate, oceans, mountains, volcanos, rocks. This is the physical environment as opposed to the biological (and psychological) environment. Now, these two environments show a marked difference: one evolves slowly, if at all, while the other evolves quickly (relatively speaking). The physical make-up of the planet is pretty stable over time, give or take the odd ice age, meteor impact, or volcanic eruption. Once a species is adapted to it its work is done: it doesn’t change, so the organism doesn’t need to. When there is a large change, extinction is likely, because not adapted to. But generally speaking, the rate of adaptive change is slow and equilibrium is readily achieved (judged by evolutionary time). For all intents and purposes, when a species becomes adapted to space, time, and solid objects it has done all the adapting it needs to do—because these things don’t change. They are physical universals (consider the Sun). But it is different with the biological environment—it keeps changing. It evolves rapidly and unpredictably: the biological world evolves differently from the physical world. It does so because of the action of mutation and natural selection. Consider the arms race between predators and prey: each evolves in response to the other—the faster the prey, the faster the predator needs to be, and vice versa. Thus, there has been a lot of change in the biological world since organic evolution began—species come and go, natural selection never ceases, there is a continual biological interaction spurring change. It should now be clear, then, what the new law says: every organism is a locus of slow and fast adaptation—to the fixed physical environment and the changing biological environment. Evolution is double track—a slow track and a fast track. Some characteristics of the environment have been constant over evolutionary time while others have varied. Adaptation to solidity has remained the same but adaptation to predators and pathogens has varied. There has been trait stability and trait plasticity. Two different evolutionary processes have been at work, according as the organism interacts with a constant physical environment and a constantly changing biological environment. For example, lung design hasn’t changed much because the atmosphere is a physical constant, relatively speaking, but escape strategies have evolved quite a bit in response to predator prowess. Just to be concrete, let’s say the rate of adaptation to these two categories is a hundred times faster for the one than the other. Little evolutionary adaptation to the physical environment and much evolutionary adaptation to the biological environment. Natural selection by the biological environment is a hundred times greater than natural selection by the physical environment. The former triggers a lot of adaptive change, the latter not so much. Hence, differential adaptation.[1]

This distinction helps deal with a puzzle: why is it that organisms die a lot from predators and pathogens but not much from purely physical accidents? Have they lagged behind in respect of the former but not the latter, adaptively speaking? How often do fish die from lack of water as opposed to the predatory actions of other organisms? How often do birds die from midair collisions as opposed to wily predators? How often do land-dwelling creatures die from falling off a cliff as opposed to catching a fatal disease? They all seem very good at avoiding physical accidents but not so good at avoiding their biological enemies—rather maladaptive at this. Why can’t they do better? The answer is that the enemy keeps getting one step ahead of them by means of natural biological change, while they struggle to keep up (e.g., viruses). The lion gets faster and more agile just when the antelope begins to outrun it. An animal can be extremely well adapted to avoiding an earlier iteration of a predator, but now it is faced with a new and improved model. It seems as if it has been lazy in the adaptive department, but really it has been working hard to keep up. The appearance of ineptitude is deceptive: actually, the animal is more adapted (fine-tuned) to the biological environment than the physical environment—it is just that the physical environment is relatively static. Adaptations to it are more primitive than in the biological case. The most advanced technology is deployed in the case of adaptation to the biological world; it just looks as if the animal is ineffective in this domain. Thus, animals die of disease more often than from falling over, because the laws of physics stay fixed while microbes keep changing.[2] The physical world is a steady target, but the biological world is a constantly moving target. The pace of evolutionary change would be much less if organisms only had to adapt to the physical environment. But the biological environment is much more dynamic, changeable, challenging to old ways. It is misleading to talk of adaptive change in relation to “the environment” because really the mechanisms at work are quite different for the two cases: there is physically driven adaptation and biologically driven adaptation. The genes for the former have been around a lot longer than the genes for the latter. It is the difference between the tried and true and the continually updated.

Consider the genetic book of the dead, or the phenotypic movie of the past—that is, the records within the organism of its evolutionary history. Some of these recordings depict an unvarying static history but some depict a frantic history full of rapid change. Four limbs have been around forever, but not the peacock’s tail or the owl’s eyesight. Breathing is as old as the hills, but not antler-locking. The movie would be monotonous when it comes to moving on four legs, but it would become action-packed when dealing with predator-prey interactions. Peace is less eventful than arms races. Animals have more to fear from other animals than from rocks and cliffs. The battle for survival is fought more against other animals than chunks of the inanimate world. Thus, there is a deep difference between coexisting with the physical world and coexisting with the biological world—a quantitative difference. The quantity of adaptation to the biological world is much greater (a hundred times greater, let’s suppose) than the quantity of adaptation to the physical world. The biological world acts to accelerate the rate of adaptive change; the physical world tends to produce a constant state of motion (rest). Once the organism is up and running in a physical environment, it doesn’t have any real motive for upgrading its abilities; but an organism that exists in a world of other organisms (predators, rivals, pathogens, parasites) is playing a different kind of game altogether—it has to keep changing or else it is in danger of being done in by other organisms.[3] Hence the law of differential adaptation.

Permit me to talk briefly about the not-so-brief history of the universe. Cosmologists speak of the evolution of the universe, and the word is not out of place. This evolution is slow by any standards, driven by the unvarying laws of physics (mainly gravity). But in one tiny corner of the universe (as far as we know) it has undergone a remarkably rapid evolution—I mean life on earth. Suddenly life began and developed rapidly, by means of mutation and natural selection. New types of entity came into existence overnight (i.e., several millions of years). Then evolution began to pick up the pace big-time: living things started to interact with each other in myriad ways. In a fraction of a second whole species evolved, only to lapse as rapidly into extinction. In the blink of an eye dinosaurs came and went. So, there were three stages of cosmic evolution: first, the physical evolution of the universe; then, its evolution into life on earth; and then, the co-evolution of living things. Evolution accelerated over this time period (14 billion years) achieving speed-of-light evolution in the last billion or so years. There have been three epochs of cosmic evolution, two of them concerning life. I have been suggesting that we carve up organic evolution into two periods or types, corresponding to organism-inanimate evolution and organism-animate evolution. So, there ought to be a further law: the law of differential evolution. This law states that the rate of evolution varies according to whether it is purely physical, organic-physical, or organic-organic. Physical evolution is slow, organic-physical evolution is fast, and organic-organic evolution is super-fast. Evolution in general thus falls into three phases that can be usefully distinguished; it is more fine-grained than we might have supposed. There are varieties of evolution. In fact, evolution evolves in that its nature changes over time. The early post-big-bang phase was relatively primitive and sluggish; the initial life-on-earth phase was more advanced and a lot slicker; the most recent phase really got into its stride and produced cosmic marvels not seen before (lions, humans, etc.). These are the natural kinds of process into which the overall cosmic evolutionary process divides—the evolution of the entire universe, from the very large to the very small. Call it three-fold evolution. We might be in for a fourth phase before too long, as our machines start to evolve on their own account. Then we might get within-a-lifetime revolutions, as machines beget machines.[4]

[1] Consider so-called artificial selection, say of dog breeds. The biological environment of dogs (initially wolves) includes human dog breeders; they have caused an enormous amount of variation in dogs. The changes, genetic and phenotypic, have been extremely rapid. But the changes wrought by the physical environment of dogs have been minimal to non-existent, because it hasn’t changed, or very minimally. The difference between the two sorts of adaptation is conspicuous.

[2] Imagine if gravity were to change its force from time to time: animals would have a devil of a time adapting to its fluctuations and would no doubt die from it (and hence not reproduce) with greater frequency than now. That would be the physical equivalent of predator transformation: stronger gravity, faster predator.

[3] If the physical world evolved by something analogous to mutation and natural selection, then the difference would disappear, or be reduced. For then, it would embed a mechanism of change that lifts it above physical law, causing it to change its nature over time (of course, this is physically impossible). The biological world is inherently a lot more changeable than the physical world because of this mechanism.

[4] Obviously, AI will be crucial: it might start designing and making machines and organisms hitherto undreamt of, capable of producing yet other machines and organisms. Then we will need a fourth evolutionary category—true artificial selection (machines being not part of the biological world). The pace of this evolution might be measured in seconds not millennia and decades—as machines turn out new machines at a dizzying rate.

Freud Generalized

Freud’s psychoanalytic system was built around the idea of sexual repression. Sexual taboos expressed as societal pressures lead to the repression of the sexual instinct, resulting in distinctive psychological consequences. These include: neurosis, sexually charged dreams, dirty jokes, the artistic drive, and a general feeling of malaise. The basic mechanism is the repressive act applied to sexual desires. This leads to sublimation and symbolic release. The libido is distorted and thwarted, affecting mental health. So the story goes. The question I want to ask is whether this theory can be applied to other sorts of instinctive desire—specifically, the desire for food. As things stand, there is not much of a taboo about eating: we can eat what we like when we like with no shame attaching. There are exceptions such as dietary prohibitions of various sorts: kosher food, not eating cows, not eating meat in a vegetarian household. But they are not extreme enough to match the kind of sexual repression Freud was talking about, so I will need to invent a thought experiment. This is not difficult: picture a civilization that enforces many kinds of food prohibition, with shame and punishment as deterrents to indulging one’s natural food preferences. Suppose hot food is prohibited, perhaps for religious reasons, along with apples, oranges, and bananas. No butter on bread, nothing spicy. People desire these things, but it is deemed sinful to even think about them or talk about them. Children are brought up to feel shame about such desires and are punished for indulging them (buttered bread is deemed particularly heinous, the sign of a corrupt soul). Religion gets in on the act, predicting hell for violators. It’s a heavy trip, man. Meanwhile, we can suppose, sex gets a free pass: here you can do whatever you want—promiscuity, masturbation, even a bit of incest. Anything goes—you are actually admired for your sexual “impurity”. There is no sexual repression at all. According to Freudian theory, none of the consequences of sexual repression will apply in this society: no sexual neurosis, no sex dreams, no dirty jokes, no artistic sublimation, lots of erotic happiness. However, again according to Freud, food consumption will be surrounded by the untoward effects of repression, because repression attempts to control instincts that strive for free expression. You badly want butter on your bread, or some hot soup, but your society abhors such culinary sins—you were spanked as a child for breaking these rules and would be despised as an adult if you succumbed to said desires. Consequently, you are a food neurotic, plagued by food dreams, are always telling “dirty” food jokes, and feel pretty lousy in the eating department (all that not getting to eat what you want to eat). You have a seething food unconscious, pressing for release. The basic psychological law that Freud discovered (allegedly) is that repression necessarily leads to such symptoms of self-denial. Desire seeks release (hydraulicly so) and any attempt to thwart it spills over into untoward psychic perturbations. That is just the way the human mind works: it is a psychological law that repressed desire produces the kinds of effects noted. So, repressing food desires will produce the same kinds of effects as repressing sexual desires, should it occur. It doesn’t occur much with us, but it could occur in a possible society; in this society there will be a need for psychotherapists to work on people’s repressed culinary desires. And the same mechanism will work on any natural desire that is thwarted and repressed—even the desire to pursue one’s scholarly interests in peace. You might be publicly shamed for working on the mind-body problem, for example (so you only do it in your dreams in a disguised form). Freud’s theory is not limited to sex but applies to any kind of desire that receives the taboo-repression treatment. How could it not?

How should we respond to this point? One response would be to say, “How interesting, Freud’s theory could apply to the case of food, with no loss of plausibility!” It was only contingently about sex, despite appearances. On another planet, it might be about food, or even scholarly interests. A second response would be to say that there must be a difference between the food case and the sex case, because it doesn’t sound right to extend it to the case of food. How could food lead to such drastic psychic deformations? Wouldn’t food prohibitions just lead to a lot of conscious discontent, not the formation of a culinary unconscious with its attendant psychological ramifications? So, there has to be a difference between the two cases—there has to be something special about sex. Is sex perhaps the stronger desire, the more pressing? (Try telling that to someone who has been fasting for three days). Thirdly, it might be concluded that Freud’s theory has to be wrong about sex precisely because it is clearly wrong about food. The cases are exactly parallel, but surely the Freudian consequences would not obtain in the food case—just a lot of griping and rule violation and black-marketing. I incline to this third view, but we don’t have any solid empirical data, so I must remain agnostic, as a good scientist. Still, I am morally certain culinary Freudianism stands no chance of being true, but ought to be true if Freud were right about sex. That’s not how the mind works.[1]

[1] It might be said that there is a deep difference between the food case and the sex case, namely that sex is inherently shameful while eating is not. Sex should be repressed, but not so eating. Extreme puritans would contend as much. Thus, sexual desire is necessarilyapt for repression, even without societal pressures. We need to suppress our sexual desires or they will devour us, wrecking civilization. The conscious mind cannot bear the weight and fire of human eros, so the formation of a repressed sexual unconscious is entirely natural. That is not a Freudian view, nor the current opinion on such matters; but if there exists a deep acceptance of it in the human psyche (whether true or false), that would explain our asymmetrical attitudes towards sex and food. For it does seem odd that we are so ready to believe the Freudian story about sex but smile at the idea of a food unconscious, or a scholarly unconscious. Sex seemsspecial, but exactly why is unclear. Is there something intrinsically evil about sex, but not about food? Does violence, say, lurk at its heart, or contempt, or competition?