In
his book Full House: The Spread of Excellence from
Plato to Darwin, Stephen
Jay Gould presented the idea that the appearance of progress in evolution can
be explained as “a random walk.” According
to Gould, in evolution there is a left bound, a minimum at zero complexity, but
no right bound on complexity. Evolution thus
has only one direction to move in, and that is toward greater complexity over
time. There is no need to posit a direction of increased complexity or progress, only a random process, which
leads to increased complexity because it can’t really lead to anything
else.
While the idea that evolution is a random walk certainly
is reasonable, I find at least one reason to question it: If we accept some form of the big bang theory,
then our universe starts off in a highly disorganized state. Yet several billion years later, when the
first life appears on earth, the universe has become organized into stable
galaxies and planetary systems. Just how
to account for this increase in cosmic organization is a rather contentious
issue, but I don’t see any way that “a random walk” describes this process.
Further, at a certain point in the history of evolution, we
find one species, the human, who starts to organize his world. Over a few hundred thousand years, we find
this creature going from organizing simple shelters to creating such highly
organized entities as the Library of Congress, the I-Pod, and the space
program. Again, how to account for this
massive increase in organized complexity is rather contentious, yet again, it
cannot be accounted for by a random walk.
So the question arises, if what happens between the big
bang and the rise of life on earth seems to have a direction of progress, and
the development of human learning and technology clearly has a direction of progress,
should we feel so confident that evolution, which lies between these two, lacks
a direction of progress?
There is a lot of talk about a theory of everything in
physics, but one thing seems clear to me – such a theory of everything won’t actually
explain much of anything outside the realm of physics. I would like to predict here that somewhere
in the future there will be another kind of theory of everything that will
actually explain a good deal more. This
theory will be a theory of organization – a theory that
comprehensively accounts for how the universe self organizes and in the process
of self organizing generates new forms of organization, such as the algorithmic
organization by which genes produce organisms and ideas create buildings and
machines. Darwinian Evolution will be a part of this larger theory, rather than a theory somewhat isolated from the other forms of development and organization occurring in the universe.
