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8/11/2019 Futures Volume 6 Issue 6 1974 [Doi 10.1016%2F0016-3287%2874%2990034-2] Desmond King-Hele -- 4. Evolutio
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5 12 From Prophecy to Prediction
From Prophecy
A serialised survey of the movement
to Prediction
of ideas, developments in predictive
fiction, and first attempts to forecast
the future scientifically.
4. Evolution and exDectation
a
I
Desmond King-Hele
BIOLOGICAL
evolution is now recog-
nised as the key world scenario of the
past, but recognition came only after a
2000-year struggle against the stubborn
prejudices of the human mind. The
story of this struggle provides futurists
with food for thought, because the
early evolutionists were the unrecog-
nised futurists of the ancient world, who
foresaw the modern way of looking at
nature, and were ignored; and because
the recognised futurists of today, gripped
by evolutionary imperatives, often mere-
ly produce predictable predictions.
The idea of biological evolution may
go back not just 2000 years, but per-
haps two million. The similar structure
of the larger animals would have been
obvious to the proto-humans whose
remains are being unearthed in East
Africa. The idea that animals devel-
oped in different ways from a common
ancestry, and even the idea of the sur-
vival of the fittest, could have occurred
to hunter-gatherers living in harmony
with nature, who noticed how the
fastest-running bucks escaped the hun-
ter and survived to breed. In the
developed world of today, addiction
to a technology based on raping nature
has crippled our intuitive natural wis-
dom; but to deny the possibility of
Desmond King-Hele, FRS, works at the Royal
Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough, on re-
search into the upper atmosphere and the Earths
gravitational field. He is the author of books on
varied subjects, including EmnzusDarwin (1963),
Observing Earth Satellites (1966), The End
of
the
Twentieth Century?
(1970), ShA ey:
His Thought
and Work (2nd ed, 1971) and Poem.s and Trixies
(1972).
such wisdom in our forebears would be
arrogance indeed.
The ancient Greeks were apparently
the first to formalise the idea of evolu-
tion.
Anaximander (6 1 l-547
BC
thought that human beings developed
gradually from fishes, and Anaximenes
588-524
BC)
believed that life began
spontaneously in primordial slime.
Ideas like these, boosted by the influ-
ential philosophy of Heraclitus (540 ?-
475
BC)
that everything is in a state
of flux (~~CWS-OL&), prepared the way
for Empedocles (495435
BC).
In his
view life developed gradually, plants
first, then animals, with more perfect
forms replacing the imperfect, which
died out. Aristotle disagreed, but has
left a contorted yet riveting summary of
Empedoclean theory: Where chance
produced the combination of qualities
that might have been arranged on pur-
pose, the creatures, thus suitably formed
by chance, survived; but those not so
formed perished. Evolution by natural
selection, as dismissed by Aristotle
Though opposed to evolution, Aris-
totle did emphasise the ladder of
nature, seeing life as a spectrum with
ill-defined boundaries between species.
This evoked evolutionary theories from
others, including Epicurus and his
disciple Lucretius (c 95-55
BC), who
nicely summarised the survival of the
fittest in his poem De Rerum Afatura.
In the next 1500 years Christian ideas
gradually gained command in Western
Europe : the climate was hostile to
evolution because the book of Genesis
said that God created a male chauvinist
FUTURES December 874
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From Prophecy to Prediction 513
called Adam and then (repairing a
rather stupid oversight about reproduc-
tion) fashioned a mate for him. Despite
Genesis, two leading pillars of the early
Church, Augustine and Aquinas, fav-
oured a more complex interpretation
with a faintly evolutionary flavour.
Indeed the authors of the Bible left
non sequiturs that cry out for evolution:
if Noah took two of each species into
his ark, either the ark was remarkably
large or species have multiplied. And
what about the white, yellow and black
races ? Was Adam white and Eve black,
and their offspring, like those of Miss
Starkey in the limerick, one black,
one white and two khaki? As with
every ideology, belief in the party
line overrode the inconsistencies : the
problems were swept under the pews,
and literal belief in the Bible prevailed.
From 1600 until after 1850, the ortho-
dox Christian believed that species
were fixed; that God in his great wisdom
had arranged his creatures in an orderly
pattern. So as not to waste the grass,
He created sheep to eat it and give
humans mutton and wool; and so
on.
Rumblings against orthodoxy sound-
ed throughout the 17th century, through
Raleigh, Bacon, Ray, Leibniz and
most of all through Tysons Oran-outan
sive Homo Syluestris
(1699), which
discussed mans affinity with the apes.
The 18th century was the heyday of
the deistic idea of the great chain of
being : all forms of life were links in a
chain well designed by the Creator.
This left evolution out in the cold. Yet
it was during the 18th century that
evolution became intellectually estab-
lished. The centurys most influential
naturalists were Linnaeus, whose classi-
fication of plants and animals inevitably
raised the question are species vari-
able ? (even if no was the answer) ;
and Buffon, whose immensely popular
Natural History includes numerous con-
tradictory discussions of the arguments
for and against evolution.
The prime evolutionist of the early
18th century was Maupertuis-or so it
seems today, for he had little influence
in his own time. Maupertuis (1698-
1795) became famous for his expedition
to Lapland in 1736, which showed that
the Earth was flattened at the poles.
But his reputation suffered unfair
eclipse because Voltaire detested him.
Maupertuis advanced valid theories of
genetics and evolution in three books
published between 1745 and 175 1. His
particulate theory of heredity arose
from a study of six-fingered families,
and his work remained unequalled
until Mendels experiments in the
1860s. Primed with this evidence of
variations in the human species and its
mechanism of heredity, Maupertuis
pointed to the variations in other
animals-dogs, pigeons, canaries-and
concluded that species were variable,
with new mutations often being trans-
mitted by heredity. But he did not link
evolution with the struggle for exis-
tence.
In the late 18th century the domin-
ant figure propounding evolution was
Erasmus Darwin (1731-I 802). After a
successful career as a doctor-being
generally acclaimed as the finest physi-
cian in England-Darwin devoted the
1790s to recording his views on animal
and vegetable life and the mineral
realm. He began with a long poem
The Botanic Garden (1791), which was
an instant success and brought him
great fame. His second book
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514
rom Prophey toPrediction
often inherited : Many of these enor-
mities of shape are propagated, and
continued as a new variety at least, if not
as a new species of animal.
Having established with these and
many other examples that variations
can and do occur and may be inherited,
Eramus Darwin considers the control-
iing forces. Assuming air and water are
available,
the three great objects of
desire, which have changed the forms
of many animals by their exertions to
gratify them, are those of lust, hunger
and security. Apropos those of Iust,
Darwin explains how the males of
many species, such as boars, stags, cocks
and quails, have developed weapons
to combat each other for the purpose
of
exclusive possession of the fe-
males :
The final cause of this con-
test amongst the males seems to be, that
the strongest and most active animal
should propagate the species, which
should thence become improved. The
spur of hunger, Darwin tells us, has
diversified the forms of all species of
animals. Each has adapted to its
means of acquiring food-the hard
noses of swine, the rough tongues of
cattle, the varied beaks of birds, etc.
His third criterion, the need of animals
for security,
seems much to have
diversified the forms of their bodies and
cdour of them,
with some animafs
acquiring swiftness of foot, or wings,
to escape; others hard shells, protective
camouflage and so on.
Such changes, of which some (as
with pigeons and dogs) have come
within a few hundred years, give
Erasmus Darwin a confident belief in
evolution :
Would it be too bald to
imagine, that in
the
great length of time since the earth began to
exist, perhaps millions of ages before the eom-
mencement of the history of mankind, would
it be too bold to imagine, that all warm-blooded
animals have arisen from one iiving filament I . .
This rhetorical sentence goes on for
several lines more, but there is no
question mark at the end. Erasmus
Darwin correctly assigns a time scale
of several hundred million years, as
against the 5800 years allowed by
contemporary Biblical interpreters, and
the 40 million years allowed by Charles
Darwin. Erasmus also stresses, later in
his rhetorical sentence, that evolution
proceeds by its own inherent activity,
ie without divine intervention. This
brought howls of anguish from the
religious, including Coteridge, who 50
years before the U+$r Itf Specief,
roundly condemned evolution as $mere
Darwinising.
In his poems Erasmus Darwin gives
lurid pictures of the struggle for exis-
tence.
Rather than dweI1 on the cruelty
of
he
process, however, he sees it as all
in aid of evolution, through which
species are continually being improved.
For him the survival of the fittest is also
the survival of the happiest, because the
surviving animals are generally the
healthiest and most active. Hence his
philosophy of organic happiness ex-
pounded in his treatise on plant life,
Phytologia.
Erasmus Darwin was ahead
of his time, and earned only abuse for
his evolutionary ideas.
The next long exposition of evohnion
is in Lamarcks ~h~~~s~~hi~
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_ ._ .-
Pre-Darwinian theories inspired Tennysons famous lines in n Memoriam 1850)--Dragons of the prime That tare
each other in their slime. . .I
Within ten years of the publication of the Origin of Species illustrated books about evolution and prehistory were
largely responsible for the popularisation of Darwins ideas
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From Prophecy to Prediction
517
called himself: he explained the idea in
his book On naval timber and arboriculture
1831). These statements either went
unnoticed or, in the case of Lawrence,
were suppressed. Not so R. Chamberss
anonymously published Vestiges of the
natural history of creation 1844), which
ran through ten editions in nine years.
From then on, evolution was in the
air,
whence it was plucked by Tenny-
son for the evolutionary verses of In
Memoriam 1850)) and by Herbert
Spencer in 1852.
Erasmus Darwins grandson, Charles,
after a disappointing career at school
and university,
was fortunate to be
allowed to travel as naturalist on the
voyage of HMS
Beagle
round the world
between 1831 and 1836. He was 22
and rather ignorant at the start of the
voyage :
five years later, self-impelled,
he had grown into the worlds most
perceptive naturalist. On mulling over
his rich findings, he gradually became
convinced that species had varied, and
why. He wrote out his views on evolu-
tion in unpublished essays in 1842 and
1844, and then continued with his
other scientific work. By 1858 he was
one of the most trusted and respected
of British scientists, a solid Victorian
country gentleman, a benevolent con-
servative paterfamilias, not the man to
be suspected of revolutionary tenden-
cies. In 1858 he received an unpub-
lished essay on evolution by A. R.
Wallace, whose views were similar to
those Darwin had already written
down. Papers by Darwin and Wallace
were published simultaneously later in
1858. Like the essays and ideas of Wells,
Lawrence and Matthew, they created
little stir.
But the events of 1858 spurred Dar-
win to write down his ideas on the
variation of species at greater length,
and he prepared what he called an
abstract of a proposed major work on
the subject, published in November
1859 as
On the origin of species by means
of natural selection.
. . .
The
Origin of
species persuaded the world that evolu-
tion by natural selection was the key
to understanding the past and present
pageant of life.
How did Charles Darwin succeed in
convincing everyone when so many
previous announcements of the prin-
ciple of natural selection had fallen on
deaf ears ? First, there is the translucent
honesty of his book: for 20 years
Darwin had been amassing evidence
about the variation of species and he
modestly presents the results of his
labours; being honest, he mentions all
the possible objections he can think of,
and answers them-a master-stroke
which floored many critics. He did not
say, because he did not know, that he
had subconsciously been selecting mat-
erial in favour of the theory. He ignored
the earlier expositions of evolution, but
this was honest too, because he was not
conscious of them. He had read and
annotated his grandfathers
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518
From Prophecy to Prediction Books
accept them. An idea must be proposed
in vain many times to prepare the
ground before the right person at the
right time drops potent seeds on semi-
fertile ground. Futurists have this
problem to face, and they solve it by
predicting what is socially acceptable.
Society is built on the assumption that
we have a future: house-building, tree-
planting, child-bearing, student-learn-
ing-all presuppose a future. No healthy
society can believe in the imminence
of its own destruction. The genetic basis
of this bias is clear: throughout human
evolution the optimists have been
dominant, outfighting and outbreeding
the pessimists who sit moaning on the
side-lines. So our genetic endowment
is optimistically biased and todays
men of affairs are optimists among
optimists, who are blind to impending
disasters.
The survival of the fittest applies to
BOOKS
Of myth and men
Donald N. Michael
DESIGN FOR EVOLUTION :
SELF ORGANIZATION AND
PLANNING IN THE LIFE OF
HUMAN SYSTEMS
by Erich Jantsch (320 pages, 9.95,
Jvew York, Braziller, forthcoming 1975)
Erich Jantschs new book seems to be
a much needed attempt to create a new
myth that, as do good myths, can give
vitality, direction, meaning, and legiti-
macy to human effort. Read this way,
it is moving, illuminating and stimu-
lating. However, its pervasive but by
Donald N. Michael is Professor of Planning and
Public Policy and of Psychology at the Uni-
versity of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
futurists as well as insects, and estab-
lishment futurists (ie those paid by
society)
survive by conforming to
societys optimistic requirements. They
predict the predictable-what society
allows to be predicted. Shy of taboos,
establishment futurists steer clear of
chemical and biological weapons, and
shirk scenarios in which the humans
destroy themselves, and other creatures
take over as Earths lords and masters,
though evolution has seen many such
upsets, eg the dinosaurs. So the real
future is unlikely to resemble the
scenarios
of establishment futurists.
Futurism is chiefly therapy for futurists.
(No harm in that: science is therapy
for scientists; art for artists; theology
for theologists; writing for writers; and
so on. Keeping them happily occupied
minimises their wish to overthrow
society; and they may even do some
social good in their spare time.)
no means exclusive reliance on the
language and format (tables, diagrams,
etc) of the natural and social sciences
also invites evaluation by more con-
ventional canons. The resulting uncer-
tainties produced in me are reflected in
this review. His mythic appeal may, I
hope, be sensed from my summary of it
below. But my interpretation and my
response to his creation is uncertain for
reasons expressed in my comments
following the summary. As I under-
stand his thesis: (1) human emancipa-
tion will be a function of our ability to
accept ourselves as part of cosmic
evolution; (2) the major purpose of our
place in the evolutionary process is to
be active participants in furthering
evolution; and (3) the mode of further-
ance, proper to man as an unfolding
part of evolution, is conscious design of
our whole human world.
Evolution is the establishment of ever
FUTURES December 974