History of Two Evolutionary Paradigms

Many people are not aware that ideas about evolution were widespread prior to Charles Darwin. In fact, the concept of evolution is the most important building block of the Ideology of Progress.

Before Darwin, evolution was viewed as a teleological process: that is, it was directional, it had an endpoint (human beings). Evolution fit within a Biblical historical framework, in which world history proceeded according to a series of discrete stages, following a divine salvation narrative. In this model of evolution, "more evolved" necessarily meant "better" in an absolute sense.

One of the most controversial aspects of Darwin's writings was not the idea of evolution itself, but the argument that evolution was random and non-directional, driven by arbitrary forces of nature rather than divine plan. According to Darwin, traits that inhibited reproduction in any given environment would gradually die out, while those that did not would survive. This is a fairly tautological statement. Within Darwin's model, any particular organism can only be adapted to a particular environment, and thus cannot be "more evolved" or "better" in any absolute sense, as environmental conditions are constantly changing.

Darwin's conception of evolution drew, in part, on notions of "survival of the fittest" from population studies, although Darwin himself did not use this phrase (it is falsely attributed to him). It should be emphasized, once again, that "fit" only means able to reproduce in a given environment.

However, with the "survival of the fittest" notion in the popular conscious, a hybrid paradigm of evolution emerged that retained characteristics of both Darwinian and pre-Darwinian evolutionary paradigms:

-evolution proceeds according to arbitrary forces of nature rather than divine plan
-yet evolution is teleological: it results in the development of "better" or more "complex" organisms.

Thus, for example, the popular idea that "humans came from monkeys." First, humans are more biologically related to apes than monkeys (there is a big difference). More importantly, any organism that exists today cannot have evolved from another organism that exists contemporaneously, as both would have evolved to the same extent since the time of divergence: thus, it is not possible that humans came from apes, because apes have evolved just as much as humans in the same time period. It would be more consistent with the principles of Darwinian evolution to say that humans and apes share a common ancestor.

Yet, it would be wrong to suppose that the hybrid concept of evolution is merely a popular misunderstanding. This paradigm of evolution has continued to shape the thinking of many esteemed scientists up to the present. It seems that a teleological model of evolution is irresistable, even to those who espouse a contradictory model in principle.

This is a perfect example to demonstrate that scientific thought is more strongly driven by worldview than logical deductions from first principles.