Evolution as a theory was invented and popularized by a group of highly educated intellectuals. When the current mainstream evolution theory (Darwin’s evolution) was introduced in 1859, initially, people from scientific community disliked the idea of evolution for different reasons. Some of them blamed the chaotic nature of it, some of them dismissed the redundancy of the process, and some of them were offended by the exclusion of God and his miracle of creation. But few of them were able to recognize its fundamental incompatibility with classic science in his time.
Francis Galton was the outlier. His obsession to Mathematics led to his experiment for the analysis of heredity. His calculation and experiment led to a surprising finding: variations of characteristic in successive generation always fell back to mean. If no variations had been inherited, how evolution could be possible? Or, put in other words, if the probability of preserving variations is mathematically negligible, how long it would take to form a life from void? 5 billion years is not nearly enough for random variations to generate a sequence of DNA from carbon and phosphorus [1]. This finding provides the first stand ground for intelligent design believers to attack evolution. The classic science simply cannot explain the improbable chance. And, the classic science also cannot explain the First Mover. The classic physics views the universe as fixed and mechanical. Laplace claimed that giving him a state of the universe, he can probe all the state in the past and the future. What about the beginning? The classic physics cannot explain the First Mover. There must be some magic power that leads to the causality.
Before 20th century, most physicists were not atheists [2]. A rational God was essential for the First Mover and served the foundation of classic physics. If the world is irrational, it cannot be studied in such reduction way. You cannot describe the universe concisely with chaotic variables. The evolution theory is founded on such ground that the world is chaotic, full of surprising variations [3] and that is the trouble with classic science. The classic science was failed to capture the complexity involved in such system and ultimately, failed to recognize evolution as a theoretical tool to study such system. It should be understandable since in its original form, evolution theory appeared to be a suggestion derived from observations, rather than a concrete Mathematical system to model the process.
The classic physics is the de-facto thinking pattern for most people even in today’s world. We were introduced to Newton’s First, Second and Third Law [4] and inevitably, formed our very first idea about a mechanical universe. This is why intelligent design is so appealing to mass. The intelligent design never introduced new ideas. They didn’t bother with the notion of complex system. All their language is around a world that we know and familiar with.
The life was not appeared on the Earth by random chance. It was designed and created by some magic (divine) power. The randomness is impossible for such a short time even if you have considered the age of the universe. There are about 10^10 atoms in one simplest cell. Since we know there are about 100 types of atoms, the combination of all permutations would be somewhere around 100^(10^10), we actually have a name for such large number: it is about (1 googol)^2. Suppose the permutation is insanely fast, thus, takes 1 microsecond each time, it would still be somewhere around 10^170 years. The age of the universe, for comparison, is about 10^10 years [5]. It seems quite impossible for evolution to stand a chance. Since there is a designer, the causality for the First Mover in classic physics is also in favor of intelligent design: the same magic/divine power works!
The problem with most theories in the history is that, it cannot be falsified. The intelligent design theory is sound, but you cannot make any predictions to verify/falsify it. In the contrary, evolution theory can make predictions and these predictions were consistently verified with new discoveries. That’s why after some time, the scientific community embraced the theory despite the profound disagreement with classic physics. But they both cannot be right. If we were brave enough to embrace evolution, it seemed that classic physics needed a major revision. The first bomb hunted down the ghost of causality. The human perception of causality is heavily based on the sequence of time. Thus, the cause always happens before the consequence. However, it is not true since 1905. One astonish effect of special relativity is the establishment of relativity of time. In such system, one event can occurred before another for one observer, but the contrary is true for another observer if they are in different inertial coordinate system [6].
The second bomb for classic physics is about the complexity. For quite some time already, the classic physicists knew that for some simple problems, it is easy to have differential equations, but hard to find the analytic solution. People knew the numeric approximation technique too, but only with the invention of computer, it was possible to gain some insights into the numeric solution. One surprising finding with such approximation is the sensitivity to the initial condition. A very little variance to the initial condition will dramatically change the outcome. People who were curious about the effect established a new theory to deal with the chaos characteristic in such dynamical system. Eventually, we eliminated certainty in physics [7].
By eliminating the causality and certainty in physics, we finally entered the era of modern science. The scientific ground is clear for a deeper understanding of evolution theory. The evolution theory is not a belief about how everything struggles for survival or how it adapts to the environment. Evolution which defines a set of simple rules to govern complex system also happens to be the most effective one. It is not only possible to generate life from void with evolution, but also is the fastest way to do so. Intelligent design was never able to answer questions such as “how does the magic power know to construct the life in such particular way”. But evolution can. Now, please get rid of causality for a second, and consider the creation of life as a multiple-variable optimization problem. To get the optimal answer, we need to try every possible combination, and it is certainly not effective. Evolution method is effective in a way that it approximates the optimal answer by combining winning features together to pursuit the optimal choice; making variations to avoid local optima; dropping unfit ones to avoid no hope region as soon as possible. The 3 strategies are actually the winning ones to deal with the optimization problems in such complex system. 10^170 years? No, life is much cheaper than we can ever imagine.
The major revelation of chaos theory is that our world is indeed chaotic. If problems as simple as three-body [8] can be chaotic, why doesn’t so our world which contains billions of objects? In that light, evolution is not trying to mess up our mind with extra chaos; rather, it provides a framework to characterize, to even govern the chaotic nature of the world. It is not evolution’s fault of introducing chaotic concept, but is our lack of insight to recognize the chaotic fact of the world.
Despite the overwhelming winning with the ground of mathematical beauty and the scientific proof, there are still good chunk of people believes in a magic power [9]. It is mainly because evolution theory is not a theory that you can accept without any sacrifice. It hints a darker future and for any human beings, it is hard to swallow. The main theme of evolution is about survival, nothing more. The result of intelligence is a by-product, not the purpose. People who believed in social Darwinism always forgot about this fact. It is not only of Eugenics, the evolution is of the scheme to survive through reproduction, variation and interaction. In the process, intelligence turns out to give us a ubiquitous advantage against other species. However, evolution didn’t favor the intelligence. On the contrary, the intelligence is a temporary effect in evolution due to the fact that the nature of it tends to self-destruction [10].
The evolution governs the activity of a group by selecting the most competing individuals. Once the intelligence is spawned, the ability of individual with intelligence will be stretched such that it will outweigh many competing individuals. Though evolution tries to preserve more possibilities in the survival path, the intelligent ones eliminated these healthy variations. The homogenization of species made intelligent ones more vulnerable to environment changes. That’s the first vector of destruction.
The second destruction vector is about empowered intelligent individuals. For unenlightened species, malfunctioned individuals will be cleared out of the group. It is quite unlikely for such individual having the power to destroy the whole species [11]. However, with the progress of intelligence, each individual will eventually have the power to destroy a large portion of its own species. Taking human as example, one individual would probably capable of killing several dozen of people in ancient days, but today, an highly-educated person would be able to kill thousands if not tens of thousands people with well-engineered equipment. It is not only appealing to example, but is also inevitable. Intelligent species will dominate resources in a given environment, thus, the population will explode. Even with well-defined constraints, eventually, the destruction can be performed by single individual would be powerful enough to outweigh the probability against such tragedy.
The self-destruction tendency against intelligent individuals can also be observed in Cosmo scale. If indeed as evolution suggested, the life is cheap and easy to grow, in such given Cosmo scale, there must be some intelligent species already formed. Since some of the intelligent species will have sufficient technology to have inter-galactic traveling, we should already have had contact with some of them. The fact that we have met none of them suggests that every intelligent species in our universe was destroyed before they obtain the sufficient technology to do inter-galactic traveling [12].
Such a darker implication from evolution is surely unwelcome from mass. It is also an interesting contrary that the elite theory [13] is after all anti-intellectualism. Can we avoid such a loop-hole as an intelligent species? I don’t know. But I believe that we cannot if we don’t belief evolution theory in the first place.
[1] The classic science doesn’t have any understanding about complex system for which happens that to understand evolution theory, it is essential.
[2] Isaac Newton was famous for his belief in almighty God during later of his life. Rene Descartes and Gottfried Leibniz were both hold the belief to a rational God. They surely were not alone in their time.
[3] Admittedly, Darwin organized his words in a way that avoid such implication. But if chaotic is not part of the nature, life doesn’t have the need to adapt. The changing of environment itself is full of chaos and surprises.
[4] It would be interesting to consider if by any chance, Hamilton could born before Newton, the classic physics would be very different. Newton’s Law is focus on causality, for which, applying a force (cause), then an object will move (consequence). It is not the case with Hamiltonian mechanics which analyzes the movement over time t, and solves the system of differential equations. The Hamiltonian mechanics didn’t capture the causality at a particular time; rather, it considered the movement over space and time as a whole. If we start with such system in the beginning, it would be much easier to understand complex system. I personally believe that eventually, we will realize that causality is just an illusion due to human’s failure of perceiving time.
[5] I carried out the calculation mainly to ridicule the absurdity of intelligent design. If you feel the argument is actually compelling, here is why it is actually absurd: the majority of bio cell was composed from water, which has a very simple atomic structure - 3 atoms. Even by random composition, the possibility to have water is about 100^3, in the time scope of universe, basically instantly, we can have water. Now you should have a vague idea.
[6] One simple thought experiment can clearly show the fact: we all know that if one object moves at speed comparable to the speed of light (i.e. 0.5c), the length of the object will shrink dramatically. Suppose we have a train that runs at 0.5c to go through a tunnel, and it just happens that the train is the same length as the tunnel when both of them are static. From our point of view, the train is shrunk, thus, the tail of the train will first enter the tunnel and then the head of the train will go out of the tunnel. But if you are on the train, the tunnel will shrunk from your point of view, thus, the head of the train will first go out and then the tail of the train will enter the tunnel.
[7] It is still curious for us if really the certainty is eliminated. Actually, the elimination has more philosophical meaning than actual mathematical one. The lost of certainty is argued in following fashion: for such dynamical system, a better initial condition will have a dramatically different result, thus, you cannot have any certainty about the actual value because you are chasing the infinity. A simple interesting equation will give you some insight into this issue is sin(1/x), if you approximate x to 0, the function is more and more unstable, thus, it is impossible to gain any result that has certainty meaning.
[8] The simplest 3-body problem consists of three balls in different places, and the motion was governed solely by gravity between them. The question is, giving the initial condition, can you predict at time t, what are the positions of the 3 ball? It is not trivial because the differential equation can only be solved with numeric method, and giving a long enough time t, the accumulated error will destroy the result completely (suppose that you have the actual physical model to verify).
[9] Only 14% Americans believe the strict definition of evolution (2007 Gallup Poll).
[10] That is why ultimately, evolution is anti-intellectualism.
[11] Not impossible however. You could think about a species which protects itself by exploding some part of the body, in such way, one malfunctioned individual does have a power to take out a whole sub-species. Another look at the premise is, the spawn of intelligence itself is in evolution scheme, thus, evolution do engineered some species that gives individual such power.
[12] A lengthy discussion about such issue is here: Why I Hope the Search for Extraterrestrial Life Finds Nothing - http://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf
[13] 1997 Gallup Poll suggested 55% scientists believed the strict definition of evolution theory.