EVERYTHING EVOLVES
Why Evolution Explains More Than We Think, From Proteins to Politics
by Mark Vellend
Ch-ch-ch-changes…
Darwinian evolution is the accepted explanation of how life came to be, but this thoughtful argument maintains that it explains a great deal more. Vellend, a professor of biology at the Universite de Sherbrooke, in Canada, argues that in the realm of life, culture, and technology, everything evolves. Vellend asserts that two sciences explain all phenomena in the universe. Physics, in the broad sense encompassing chemistry and physiology, employs distinct physical laws. Evolution, his “Second Science,” describes changes in the social realm: how human societies developed (history), learned to speak (linguistics), and created commerce (economics), democracy (political science), and iPhones (technology). No one invented the iPhone. Steve Jobs’ team worked with a mass of existing phone technologies, winnowing down possibilities through exhaustive trial and error. No less than Homo sapiens, the iPhone evolved. The author dismisses the myth that evolution implies progress. English became the most widely spoken language, but it’s a mess compared with Latin, French, or Esperanto. Quality does not explain the decline of jazz or the spread of rock ’n’ roll. Humans are smart, but experts have argued that ants are the world’s dominant organism. Vellend delivers ingenious explanations of how evolution gave us not only today’s flora and fauna but governments, legal systems, languages, machines, and religion. The author delves deeply into the details; persistent readers, provided they pay attention, and aided by generous illustrations, will absorb complex evolutionary concepts that have led to modern culture, from directional selection to latitudinal biodiversity.
An imaginative and plausible study.