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The word 'utopia' was coined by Thomas More, an English philosopher who had a vision of a future in which everything was perfect. The people living in his utopia were just like you and I, but they were living a new, magical and socially just existence.
A little more than 100 years ago, though, there was an abrupt change in the nature of our vision of the future. The people living in such fictional societies had changed – and the alterations were physical, not just social or cognitive. You can trace that shift to the beginning of evolutionary thinking in both the modern novel and in modern biology.
H.G. Wells wrote the first truly modern dystopian novel, The Time Machine, in 1897. A time traveller heads into the future and encounters what appears to be utopia. But slowly a terrible truth begins to dawn: the main characters, tea-drinking liberals called the Eloi, are regularly attacked by a terrible mob known as the Morlocks.
The Morlocks are sinister and brutal spider-like hominoids that live underground and come out at night to kill and eat the Eloi. The twist to the tale is that the Eloi are in fact the farm animals of the Morlocks.
The idea comes from an evolutionary concept that was very popular in Victorian days – that the human race was going to split into two types: the subhumans and the superhumans. In the Wellsian vision, human evolution has continued, bad genes have taken over, and we are in a state of inevitable physical decline.
Whether you subscribe to this view or to the more Star Trek style idea that people will become more advanced than they are now, both extremes hinge on the premise that evolution in humans will continue.
The question I have is: will human evolution really continue? I think the evidence shows that human evolution has largely come to a halt. Nevertheless, to explore these questions about what a future utopia may be like – or more specifically, what version of humanity it will be populated by – we must first ask ourselves, what is evolution?
Darwin defined evolution, essentially, as descent with modification. I can rephrase this with an even simpler triad of words. Evolution is genetics plus time.
Each time DNA is copied, it is copied imperfectly, resulting in mutations. Given enough time, let's say three and a half billion years, evolution is inevitable. It's so simple it could almost be physics.
Evolution relies overwhelmingly on differences; in the genetic constitutions of different people, and in their ability to reproduce. Inherited differences in the ability to reproduce is what Darwin called natural selection.
That, too, is simple. If some individuals are more successful at finding a mate and raising offspring than others, and this is because of their genes, then these genes will spread at the expense of others. In time, the population will change and if it changes sufficiently, a new form of life will arise.
may not be the end?
so far the author had prove that the whole human population is undergoing a "grand averaging", which reduces the differences in our genes.
However, evolution is not just about creating new species, in that case isolation is needed. Evolution can also be the gradual change in physical features of a whole species, in that case, only mutation is needed.
Once a new variation pops up by mutation, with the "grand averaging", the variant will spread quickly through our gene pool, thus creating changes in a much quick time than before. and in this way, humans "evolve", as in change quicker than before.
There is an article a few months ago in the scientific american concerning the speed of evolution in humans, and contrary to the ideas put forward by the authorof this article, suggests that we are evolving faster.
Gene averaging
Higher levels of education will bring about "grand averaging" where as once the gene pool was preserved by the
higher levels of society marrying into there own kind you now have what was once classed as the lower levels being educated in the same universities, and physical chemistry
being what it is brings together the different gene pools.
Increase in disease alleles?
I think it’s pretty presumptuous to assume we’re not evolving. We like to think of modern selves as being outside or above nature.
In third world countries there would still be selection for disease resistance. In developed countries the opposite is true – lots and lots of people who once would never have lived long enough to reproduce are being allowed to reproduce thanks to modern medicine. Many of those who draw the short straw in the genetic lottery of diseases live to reproduce, or those who cannot have children can do so with IVF. The lack of selection does not mean we are not evolving – surely I means that the frequency of these once selected-against alleles could be increasing in the populations in rich countries.
And one final comment to stir up the hornet’s nest: demographic data from the Australian Bureau of statistics shows time and time again that far more children are born in the less educated and lower socio-economic areas. (Obviously education and socio-economic status don’t equate to intelligence, but our education system is more egalitarian than any time in history, and while someone from those areas is likely to be at a disadvantage, there are still opportunities for a bright student to get an education and a better paying job and inevitably move into a more expensive suburb.)
end of evolution??
has anyone considered the end
of just the physical evolution?
there is also consciousness and spiritual ecological
transformation ability to use mindbody intuition to change
ones belief systems expand consciousness affecting others
i believe we can change our dna expand beyond the illusion
joyce eaglelight bovee' carrizozo new mexico usa
Evolution of mind
I think you are up to something, despite your horrible writing style. The evolution of perception of our existence, the level of our consciousness is at its very beginnings still.
End of evolution?
To a large degree, YES.
Take our advanced Australian society, for instance. Our social welfare system supports those who are less capable of looking after themselves. Statistically, these people tend to have larger numbers of children (encouraged by the baby bonus - most of us realise that this hardly makes any difference to the cost of having a child, but not a naive teenager already living on welfare). The cycle thus perpetuates itself. Hundreds of years ago, these same people would have had little support, their offspring would have been less likely to reach adulthood. This was evolution at work - survival of the fittest. Now we have survival of the not-so-fit, and the effects of the evolutionary process are diminished.
exactly
I completely agree. Especially with medicine, the best of our kind isn't getting pushed forward.
Evolution is not ending
Humans may be averaging out ethnically but are steadliy improving both physical and mental attributes through medicine, diet and education. These characteristics will translate into human heredity and result in anthropological change. But the essential problems for suvival remain: will intellect improve to a degree which will bring control over:- a)deviants and sociopathic factions empowered with modern technological weaponry? b) self indulgent consumption endangering the planet with warming and water shortage? c) choking planetary resources through unrestrained copulation?
Brothers and sisters: it's not looking good!!
jwexler@bigpond.net.au
You're getting mixed up with
You're getting mixed up with Lamark and inheritance of acquired characteristics. "Improving both physical and mental attributes through medicine, diet and education", will not "translate into human heredity".
The Filter
Steve Jones overlooks a significant element in evolution, which is environmental change.
I think there is a wide range of genetic diversity among humans, most of it suited only to survive within narrow environmental limits.
When there is a sudden change in the environment, many genetic combinations in numerous species are no longer suited to survive in the new environmental contitions. Those less suited die out before reaching reproductive age.
The genetic combinations that can survive go towards making up a filtered and much smaller gene pool, which according to the article, is also a faster-mutating gene pool.
At some point in our future, the biosphere, including humans, will face a sufficiently altered environment for evolution to be 'thrust upon us'.
That is when a lot of genetic combinations get filtered out of the pool over a relatively short space of time.
Evolution has its boom and bust cycles as well. We are the first species clever enough to make choices over how that plays out for us, but are we clever enough to make good choices?