In this blog post, we will look at how evolution is interpreted through the perspectives of adaptationism and anti-adaptationism, and find out the differences between them.
After Charles Darwin published “On the Origin of Species” in 1859, presenting the theory of evolution, the scientific community was faced with a radical change. Until then, the mainstream view of the world was creationism, which held that life was fixed and unchanging, but Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection presented an innovative perspective that life changed according to the environment. This has led to the formation of a new paradigm in the field of life sciences that explains the diversity and evolution of living organisms. The theory of evolution has become an important theory to explain the complexity of the Earth’s ecosystem in that various species of organisms have emerged as living organisms adapt to changes in the external environment.
However, when Darwin’s theory was first revealed to the world, it faced strong opposition. In particular, the church and religious circles supported creationism and attacked evolution, and even in modern times, some creation scientists criticize evolution. Nevertheless, evolution is a widely accepted theory in the scientific community and has become an important framework for explaining the amazing diversity of the Earth’s ecosystems.
However, not all scientists have accepted Darwin’s theory of evolution in the same way. While most agree with the general framework of Darwin’s theory of evolution, discussions on the details continue. In particular, the debate over the role of adaptation in evolution is one of the most prominent issues. This debate is divided into two representative theories: adaptationism and anti-adaptationism. Adaptationists emphasize that adaptation plays a very important role in evolution, while anti-adaptationists argue that not all traits of living organisms are the product of adaptation. To understand these differences, it is necessary to look at the basic concepts of evolutionary theory and the mechanisms of adaptation.
First, we need to understand the concept of adaptation by looking at the process of evolution through natural selection. Natural selection is the process by which, when there are various alleles among individuals of the same species, individuals with traits that are advantageous for survival in a particular environment survive more and pass on those genes to future generations. For example, if individuals with white fur have better survival conditions than individuals with brown fur in a snow-covered mountainous area, individuals with the white fur gene will reproduce more and the proportion of individuals with white fur will increase. Through this process, organisms adapt to the environment, which is one of the important principles of evolution.
Adaptationists emphasize the power of natural selection and see the characteristics of all living things as the product of such adaptation. Dawkins is a representative adaptationist who, in his book “The Selfish Gene,” argued that genes drive the evolution of life. Dawkins believed that all living things evolve through self-replication, and that genes are important elements that evolve for their own survival beyond the individual. He explained the behavior of genes from this perspective and introduced the concept of “meme” by comparing the development of human culture to evolution.
Dawkins’s adaptive view has been taken as an innovative approach to the study of evolution. He emphasizes that natural selection is a powerful force of evolution, and argues that all living things adapt through natural selection in the process of replicating themselves. This adaptive view of Dawkins is closely related to genetic determinism and has had a great influence on many scientists.
However, not all scientists agree with Dawkins’s views. Stephen Jay Gould is a leading scholar of anti-adaptationism, who argued that adaptation cannot be the only driving force of evolution. Gould believed that many traits in the process of evolution may be accidental or secondary byproducts of natural selection. For example, a certain physical characteristic of an organism may not directly help its survival in the environment, but may occur as a byproduct of other evolutionary changes. Gould described this concept as a “spandrel,” which was presented as an important example of the existence of non-adaptive elements in evolution.
Gould also emphasized that evolution is not necessarily “progressive.” While Dawkins saw evolution as moving in an increasingly complex and progressive direction, Gould argued against this and argued that evolution is simply the result of accidental changes. In “Full House,” Gould explained that the reason why the complexity of life seems to be progressing is because the evolution of living organisms started from a simple starting point, such as bacteria, and not because it has a progressive direction. He argued that evolution has no direction, and the birth of humanity is also a simple product of chance.
This difference in views between Gould and Dawkins is largely due to how they understand the role of adaptation within the theory of evolution, and the adaptive and anti-adaptive theories they represent have been the subject of fierce debate in the biological community. Although the two scholars had different perspectives, their theories can be complementary in that they both share the common goal of developing Darwin’s concept of natural selection.
The selfish gene theory has provided an important perspective on understanding the mechanisms of evolution, and adaptationism remains a powerful school of thought within evolutionary theory. On the other hand, Gould’s anti-adaptationism provides a deeper insight into evolutionary theory in that it considers various factors other than adaptation that affect evolution. These two positions show that evolutionary theory is not limited to a single theory and is being studied from various perspectives.
