Evolution of Evolutionary Theory

Summary

Evolutionary theory has gone through five phases Adaptation/ Transmutation, Natural Selection, Mutation Theory, Evolutionary Developmental Biology, and Law of Complexity/ Consciousness:

Ideas

• Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (Adaptation/ Transmutation)
  • An adaptation is a characteristic of an organism that has been favored by natural selection and increases its fitness,
  • Adaptation is the change in living organisms that allow them to live successfully in an environment
  • Adaptations can be structural, behavioral or physiological.
• Charles Darwin/ Alfred Russel Wallace (Natural Selection)
  • Natural selection is the process by which favorable heritable traits become more common in successive generations of a population of reproducing organisms, and unfavorable heritable traits become less common, due to differential reproduction of genotypes,
  • Natural selection acts on the phenotype (observable characteristic of an organism) such that individuals with favorable phenotypes are more likely to survive and reproduce than those with less favorable phenotypes,
  • The phenotype's genetic basis, the genotype (genetic constitution of a cell, an organism, or an individual) associated with the favorable phenotype, will increase in frequency over the following generations,
  • Natural selection is the mechanism by which evolution may take place in a population of a specific organism.
• Jacques Monod, Hugo de Vries (Mutation Theory)
  • Mutations are changes to the nucleotide (structural units of RNA and DNA) sequences of the genetic material of an organism,
  • Mutations can be caused by copying errors in the genetic material during cell division, exposure to radiation, chemical, or viruses, or can occur deliberately under cellular control during processes such as hypermutation (immune system adaptation),
  • Mutations create variation within the gene pool. Less favorable mutations can be reduced in frequency in the gene pool by natural selection, while more favorable mutations may accumulate and result in adaptive evolutionary changes.
• Sean B Carroll (Evolutionary Developmental Biology)
  • A field of biology that compares the developmental processes of different animals and plants in an attempt to determine the ancestral relationship between organisms and how developmental processes evolved.
  • It addresses the origin and evolution of embryonic development; how modifications of development and developmental processes lead to the production of novel features; and how ecology impacts in development and evolutionary change.
• Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (Law of Complexity/ Consciousness)
  • He saw Evolution as a cosmic process rising from the birth of the universe in ever increasing complexity through matter, life, and thence to humankind with its unique capacity for self-reflection.
  • His theory of evolution is in sharp contrast to the neo-Darwinian theory but shows remarkable similarities with the new systems theory.
  • Its key concept is what he called the Law of Complexity/ Consciousness
  • This states that evolution proceeds in the direction of increasing complexity, and that this increase in complexity is accompanied by a corresponding rise of consciousness, culminating in human spirituality.
  • Unity of All Things - Teilhard believed that each one of us is linked by all the material organic and psychic strands of his being to all that surrounds him,
  • Arrow of Evolution - Teilhard maintains that evolution has a definite direction, the increasing complexity of living beings, the focus of which is their nervous systems, more precisely, their brains.
  • Evolution of the Earth occurs in phases:
    • Geosphere - Inanimate matter only, pre-life,
    • Biosphere - Emergence of biological life,
    • Consiousness - Emergence of thought,
    • Noosphere - Emergence of a transhuman consciousness from the interactions of human minds.
    • Omega Point - Global humanity has the capacity to determine evolution's future, rising further through convergence and increasing complexification in a collective global consciousness to achieve Omega, the endpoint of the evolutionary process, which Teilhard identified as the Christification of the cosmos.