Evolution 101: What it isn’t, and what it is.

It's taken me quite a few decades to clarify my understanding of evolution. Like many people, I once believed that evolution somehow improves a species. Problem is that we think of improvements from our human point of view. That often makes our notions of improvement irrelevant. And even when our notions of improvement are relevant, they may be mistaken.

A widespread mistaken expectation is that evolutionary theory gives definitive answers. It doesn't. No science does, although some answers are more definitive than others.

Several years ago, a blog I read claimed that the epicanthic fold is “unimportant” if not “useless”, and therefore its existence makes the theory of evolution doubtful. For evolution is all about developing useful traits, right?

Well, no, actually. I'll take up the epicanthic fold.

a) "Unimportant" and "important" aren't what a human might think they are. Just because someone may think something is an unimportant feature doesn't mean that it really is. What’s more, “important” depends on context. "Context" for an organism means its environment.

b) The epicanthic fold may be a consequence of genetic drift. Evolution will not eliminate neutral changes in the genome. Accidents of mating may therefore concentrate some part of a genome and so enhance a particular variation of some trait. The primary accident of mating that affects this is the size of the mating pool. In a small population, genetic drift can show up within half a dozen generations or less, and can disappear just as quickly. In larger populations the effect is slower. However, a trait may become universal.  A secondary cause of genetic drift is aesthetic preferences (for want of a better term), aka as "sexual selection".

c) Actually, the epicanthic fold is helpful in the Arctic in late winter and early spring, when there's still lots of snow around, and the sun is higher in the sky. By shading the pupil of the eye, it reduces the glare from snow and sky. Fact is, the Inuit made sunglasses by cutting narrow slits in flat bones which were fastened in front of the eyes. These are artificial epicanthic folds taken to the extreme, so to speak. It’s also helpful in insulating the eye.

d) The epicanthic fold shows up in several variations. I have a version, but it's not like the one you would see on a Japanese person.

Generally speaking, the phrase "survival of the fittest" has caused much misunderstanding of evolution. It does not mean "survival of the strongest/fastest/etc". It means "survival of those who fit their environment best; those which are the best suited to their environment”. At the time the phrase was coined, “physically fit” was also becoming common. It meant something like “physically well put together, hence suited to strenuous exercise”, but quickly morphed into “physically superior”.

“Being best suited to their environment”  has a consequence that may seem counterintuitive when evolution is seen as primarily explaining changes. Evolution will preserve traits necessary for life, or that maintain a good adaptation to the environment, even if the environment changes. That’s why we share so much of our genome with other animals. The shared bits code for features such as enzymes or hearts, without which survival would be impossible or difficult in any environment.

On the other hand, genetic changes can change the environment, because every organism is part of the environment from the point of view of the other organisms in that environment. If the change confers some survival advantage, there will be new selective pressures on some of the other organisms, and they may change, which may change the selective pressures on still other organisms, including the one that triggered the changes. That means that adaptation is a complicated feedback loop. Or rather a feedback tangle, which means it’s a complex system. As in ecosystem. Unfortunately, our brains are not very good at making sense of simple systems, let alone complicated ones.

As for genetic determinism: People who believe that genes rule are way behind the curve. Genes cannot "determine" anything in the absence of environmental inputs, which includes inputs from other components of the organism itself. In fact many genes will have no effect until some environmental trigger causes them to "express", that is, to start making the proteins they specify. What happens next may eventually trigger other genes. This, in a general way, is how an organisms grows an develops.

You are what you are because of your genes _and_ your environment, and your environment includes the environment of your ancestors. Environmental factors can change the DNA by a process called "methylation", which affects gene expression. One consequence of methylation is that a mother's illness can affect her children and grandchildren, and possibly even her great-grandchildren.

Evolution is complicated, but it works because of the interaction of the environment and genetic differences between individuals. If an individual lives long enough to reproduce, its genes and the genes of its mate will survive for another generation. If some variation improves the odds of having more offspring than average, that variation may spread through the following generations until it dominates the population. Cumulative changes may make offspring long separated in time and space so different that they are different species.

But what’s a species? That’s another concept that's not so easy to define. I’m not happy with my concept. I may discuss the results of my attempts at clarification here. Or maybe not.

Bread (musings)

     Bread is called the staff of life. When I was a kid, I thought of a staff as made of wood. A staff made of bread made no sense. That was before I understood metaphors of function: Just as a staff supports a man, so bread supports life.

     But in fact through most of human existence, there was no bread. The earliest archeological evidence for bread of a sort is about 30,000 years old. By that time homo sapiens had existed for at least 200,000 years. That bread was a cooked or semi-roasted porridge made of grains; I don’t think anyone nowadays would recognise it as bread. Flatbread baked on hot stones or a griddle is the closest modern equivalent.

     The archeology shows that these first bread makers relied on hunting and gathering for most of their food. Cereal grains were one among several types of seeds gathered for food. It took several thousand years to develop cultivation of grains; perhaps someone noticed that spilled grain would provide a crop the following year, and decided to experiment. However it began, that invention or discovery began the constantly accelerating development of technology that has made our species the dominant life form on this planet. 

     Bread as staple food and agriculture go together, in fact agriculture makes no sense without bread. The earliest agricultural settlements were villages, some fortified, some not, surrounded by fields and pastures. The last users of stone tools built them about 10,000 years ago. When metallurgy was invented around 3500BCE, that technology developed swiftly, and within a few hundred years we find cities dominating the farming villages in their vicinity. These complex polities require writing, an armed force, and centrally administered law to survive.

     I think it’s no accident that the invention of bread and the earliest forms of writing, mnemonic symbols, are nearly contemporary. These symbols were used to help the reader recall everything from lists of trade goods to signs of future events to myths, those stories in which the sacred and secular histories of the tribe were mingled. Surprisingly quickly, these early mnemonic systems developed into scripts. 

     Bread as a staple requires agriculture, which requires a hierarchical social structure to ensure that the backbreaking (and boring) work of plowing, seeding, and harvest is done. A hierarchical society needs an agreed body of rules and customs. Law, in other words, enforced as much by common beliefs as by physical force. Customs, religious and otherwise, express the common understanding of how the world does and should work. Written law codifies those beliefs; the law describes what is to be done and what is not to be done. Writing is also handy for keeping accounts, so much so that writing numbers probably predated writing words. 

     Bread is not only the staff of life, it’s the driver of those changes in human society that we are pleased to label progress.

 

 

Education Usually Fails: Lapham's Quarterly 14-4.

 Lapham’s Quarterly 14-4: Education (2022) Every society ever known has some method of passing on its culture, its values, customs, knowledge etc to the next generation. All societies also mark the transition from childhood to adulthood, and well as other changes in status. However, the new generation doesn’t grow up in the same environment as their parents, and so the transfer of culture is always incomplete and variable. Stories and instructions will not have the same meaning and force for the children as they had for the parents. I take it as a given that raising one’s children is one of the main drivers of cultural change. For no matter how hard we try, something is always lost in translation.

     This collection focuses more on the process, and mostly on formalised institutional education, which began with literacy in Sumer. Literacy’s great advantage is that it enables people to record and reflect on their experience. That’s also its great disadvantage. People who feel it’s important to write about education, especially if it’s their own, usually have an axe to grind. In fact, literature generally is one long wail of complaints. Even fantasy, which implicitly complains that real life lacks its intensity. Much of the evidence in this collection explicitly or implicitly complains that education, especially formal education or schooling, not only fails to achieve its ostensible goals but is more or less actively hostile to them. 

     Depressing. 

     For the record, I often felt frustrated by my work as a teacher. When I reflect on my career, I have only one serious regret, that I didn’t agitate for the abolition of the grading system. We group students by age range, so that in a typical class there is about a one year range in chronological age, and as often as not more than that in developmental age. To expect them all to be capable of arriving at the same place after a course of study is a kind of delusion. That’s bad enough, but focusing on a good grade as the purpose of learning doesn’t encourage students to actually learn anything. What they actually learn is how to ace the test, not how to understand material they have studied. Worse, grades encourage invidious comparisons. 

     The above paragraph is not too far off the most common tone of the selections in this compilation. So I’ll try to strike a positive note: Students do want to have a pleasant experience of school, and any teacher who tries to provide it will be rewarded by seeing their charges grow and develop as persons, and achieve insights and accomplishments that delight them.

     The student-teacher nexus is one of the most intense personal relationships, which no doubt explains that everyone has strong feelings about their schooling. We use the verbs “teach” and “learn” as if they were transitive verbs denoting independent processes. As if teaching a student was like painting a wall. As if learning a subject was like eating a meal. In fact, teaching and learning denote the same reality. Neither can occur without the other. It’s a reciprocal process: the teacher and student both teach and both learn. Each changes the other. I’m grateful to the many students who taught me what I needed to learn.

     Another recommended compilation. ****

The Vinyl Cafe Wreaks Its Vengeance

Stuart McLean. Revenge of the Vinyl Café (2012) Ninth in the series, as laid back and weird as ever, a pleasure to read. If you’ve heard McLean on radio or live, his voice will inform your reading. I think most people would want to live in a world where a used record store has enough business to support a family. Dave and Morley live on a street where everybody knows everybody else. McLean’s vision is of a world where people of many different kinds and personalities live together in mostly unruffled harmony. The occasional dissonances add interest, but never spoil the tune. 

     I’m a fan of McLean’s work. Many years ago, we saw him in Sault Ste Marie. A memorable evening, but I can’t recall the story he told.

    I have no idea why McLean chose that title.

     Recommended. *** to ****

Churchill, the Artist

 David Coombs. Churchill: His Paintings (1966) After looking through this book for the third or fourth time, I think that Churchill is an underrated artist. Unlike professional art makers, he could indulge his avocation without worrying whether his work would sell, whether it made some kind of currently fashionable statement, or whether he could aspire to becoming an Important Artist. So he experimented with colour and style, and painted what he liked to look at or thought was worth memorialising.
     He had a good eye for colour, preferring a palette of subdued complementary colours lit up a few bright spots. He liked architectural shapes, and tended to abstract natural objects into blocks and streaks of colour. His most successful paintings are impressionist. Better:   The paintings I like best are impressionist emulations of Turner and Monet.
     The book is a curiosity. A catalogue raisonne, with almost complete data on dates, owners, and whereabouts, and an introduction by David Coombs. Poor man, he knows he’s dealing with the leisure time output of a Great Man, and so had a to strike a nice balance between respect for a serious amateur’s work and professional art criticism (he was at the time writing for The Connoisseur). Churchill’s work is better than amateurish, but most of it lacks the sense of the professional’s idiosyncratic unique vision.
     I like Churchill’s pictures. The printing is better than average for its time. **½

Antiquities Trigger Lethal Greed: Silhouette in Scarlet (1983)

 

Elizabeth Peters. Silhouette in Scarlet (1983) Pleasant fluff. Vicky Bliss falls for what we would call click-bait these days, flying to Stockholm for a holiday knowing that John Smythe has once again planned a caper aimed at producing cash. The McGuffin is a Viking chalice found on the property of an eccentric Swedish plutocrat who doesn’t want his lake-bound island dug up by archeologists. A gang of thieves specialising in antiquities want in. So we have some charming characters, a couple of psychopaths, the threat of death, and finally a barely plausible operation by the lake-shore villagers that rescues Vicky and puts the thieves in jail. Plus a hint that there will be another adventure in this series.
     I began reading this on the flight to Edmonton, continued it on the flight back, and finished it at home. If you like well-written adventure romance that knows it’s fantasy, you’ll like the Vicky Bliss series. It would make a nicely light-hearted series. Think Romancing the Stone extended until the writers run out of ideas. **½

Two how-to books about scenery and dioramas

 Cody Grivno, ed. How to Build Realistic Scenery (2010)
Hal Miller, ed. Model Railroad Scenery Step by Step (2018)
 

These two books both fill a need, or rather, two. The first is encouragement. Many modellers feel adding scenery is beyond them. Scenery is artistic, not technical, and while we North Americans aren’t fazed by technical challenges, art appears to be beyond us. For that, you need that mysterious something labelled “talent”. Technology merely needs skills, which can be learned. Well, most of them can be learned by any one of us. We each suffer from some technical phobia and clumsiness.

The other need is for clear descriptions of the techniques and technologies used to “build” scenery. (Note “build” instead of “create”, which soothes the anxiety many modellers feel when they contemplate adding trees and such to their layout.)
 

Both books consist of articles that appeared in Model Railroader. They cover a wide range of scenic problems and their solutions. Some can be applied as is to any layout, others can be adapted. Each article includes enough information that, once a modeller has gained some experience, they can suss where and how to modify and adapt alternative materials and methods. The covers display the range of topics covered. Both books are still in print, along with many others. Useful not only for model railroaders, but also for anyone who wants to make dioramas. Available online at Kalmbach's online store
Recommended ****

More tasty chips from Binchy: Chestnut Street (2014)

Maeve Binchy. Chestnut Street (2014) A posthumous collection, and like all Maeve Binchy works, a potato chip book. Binchy, like Munro and others, shows how people’s character flaws, quirks, ill-considered decisions, and willingness to believe anyone who offers what they wish for, in short, the common human weaknesses, cause the troubles that hurt them. She has the gift of sketching a whole life in a few paragraphs. Unlike Munro and others, she tends to provide happy endings, many enabled by some lucky coincidence, or some necessary but somewhat improbable insight. This comforts the reader, but doesn’t fully satisfy. So one (me, that is) reads the next story, and the next, and the next. The stories are tasty, flavoured with ironies and poetic justice, confirming popular notions about psychology, with enough realism to soothe the critical faculties.

Binchy’s stories take place in the borderland between fantasy and realism. She knows the contours of her talent, and has adapted her vision to her market. I enjoyed reading these stories, and was happy to suspend disbelief. ***

Dylan Thomas as a Young Dog

 Dylan Thomas. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog (1940) Thomas was two years old when Joyce published his Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I’m pretty sure Thomas’s title is an allusion to Joyce’s novel (which to me feels more like a group of linked short stories). Thomas doesn’t attempt a coherent time-line, though some of his characters appear in two or more of the stories.

The stories themselves, like Joyce’s novel, don’t have much of a plot. Both writers tell us about epiphanies, some large, some small, which trace the development of the artist’s awareness of self and place in the world. The difference, I think, is that Thomas takes religion, respectability, and customary morality less seriously than Joyce, who tends to pomposity. For Joyce, the artist must resist and rebel. For Thomas, the artist should observe and enjoy whatever presents itself to them. Joyce resists moral judgements of the artist's life and work, Thomas ignores them. I think I prefer Thomas. ***