In this blog post, we will examine whether evolution is “progress” that improves life, or simply an accumulation of changes in response to the environment.
The oldest living organisms found by humans are prokaryotes discovered in stromatolites in Australia that are 3.5 billion years old. However, today’s Earth is home to not only prokaryotes but also a wide variety of organisms with different appearances and habits. This diversity is the result of species differentiation and changes in appearance through the process of evolution from prokaryotes. Evolution plays a major role in the history of life and has had a significant impact not only on the appearance of living things but also on biologists. Compared to ancient prokaryotes, modern organisms have become structurally more complex, enabling them to perform various actions. This has sparked a debate among biologists as to whether evolution is progress that changes living things for the better. In this article, we will discuss whether evolution can be considered progress.
Before discussing the relationship between evolution and progress, we must first clarify the definitions of these two terms. Evolution refers to the phenomenon of organisms gradually changing since the origin of life, while progress refers to improvement or advancement in degree or level. In other words, if we view evolution as progress, then organisms evolve to become better, and evolution has a directionality toward improvement. In the era before Darwin, evolution was regarded as progress, and Aristotle placed humans at the top of the “great chain of being.” Nineteenth-century evolutionists also viewed evolution as a process of progress in animals and plants, and regarded humans as the final stage of animal evolution. This was intertwined with religious beliefs and stemmed from the belief that humans were a perfect species chosen by God. However, although Darwin was initially skeptical that evolution was progress, he concluded in On the Origin of Species that it was.
However, there are several reasons why evolution cannot be viewed as progress. First, evolution is a process in which individuals that are even slightly better than others are selected in the competition for limited resources in the environment. The important question here is whether the environment progresses at an absolute level. The Earth’s environment has undergone periods of glaciation and warming, and these changes cannot be considered progressive. For example, elephants and mammoths evolved from a common ancestor, Primelephas, but mammoths were covered with fur, while modern elephants are not. This shows that evolution does not have a certain direction.
The structure of the human eye is another example that proves that evolution cannot be seen as progress. The human eye has a blind spot because the optic nerve is located in front of the retina, but mollusks do not have a blind spot because their optic nerve is located behind the retina. This refutes the claim that humans are the end point of evolution and means that evolution is not planned but accidental.
Finally, the concept of progress cannot be objectively applied to living organisms. Bats use ultrasonic waves to find their way in dark caves, but this cannot be considered more advanced than humans. The direction in which living organisms evolve to adapt to their environment can be seen as progress, but this can also be interpreted as an increase in diversity. Therefore, the modern view of evolutionary biology is that there is no objective progress in evolution.
Since 3.5 billion years ago, living things have increased their diversity through evolution and reached their current state. However, evolution should not be seen as a process that moves in a certain direction, but rather as a process of increasing biological diversity. Evolution occurs when organisms select the optimal conditions in their environment, and changes in the environment do not necessarily lead to absolute progress. Evolution is not planned but occurs randomly and should be understood as an increase in diversity rather than absolute improvement.
The debate over whether evolution is progress has continued since Darwin’s theory of evolution. Some view evolution as progress, but this is only a human-centered perspective, as evolution means an increase in the diversity of living things. We can conclude that evolution is not progress but an increase in the diversity of living things.
