Tuesday, March 11, 2025

Life, Reproduction, and the Paradox of Evolution

My article “Life, Reproduction, and the Paradox of Evolution” appears in a special issue of the journal BioCosmos devoted to exploring the nature of life. (And fear not, dear reader, the articles are open access rather than behind a paywall.)

Posted by at

16 comments:

  1. Paul D. Van PeltMarch 12, 2025 at 4:41 AM

    I will await comment(s) here, acceding to greater minds than mine. Am curious to see what may be offered, concerning the piece on paradox of evolution. Will frame my own remarks, accordingly.
    Thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousMarch 12, 2025 at 7:10 AM

    Dr Feser, I am grateful you are taking the time to discuss critiques of evolution. I'm Catholic but grew up Protestant, and this was a much bigger issue for us back then. My impression is that evolution is a bit of a third rail for Catholics. We don't want to be fundamentalists, and Catholic's hospitality toward reason and science makes us more like to seek a harmonization of evolution with Genesis than our Protestant neighbors.

    However, and perhaps this is just my Protestant baggage, but I am much less sanguine about this. At least, the Darwinian explanation must be false as it totally defies common sense and simply makes teleology an illusion.

    Whatever Catholics think of the hardcore "young earth" creationists (some of their theories are admittedly a bit nutty), I think being willing to criticize this theory using the superior firepower of Thomism would certainly be welcome.

    Thanks again for all your work,
    JMM

    ReplyDelete
  3. Paul D. Van PeltMarch 12, 2025 at 11:12 AM

    OK. That was quite enough. Kirk, out.

    ReplyDelete
  4. SMackMarch 12, 2025 at 11:25 AM

    Thank you, Dr. Feser. A nice article. I'm going to have to meditate longer on just why the admitted deficiency in explanation of natural selection for reproduction leads to *teleology* specifically. I'm not doubting that it does. Just saying I need to think this over more. (Do Haldane et al. discuss this more?)

    One point that I could wish you had steered away from is Rothman's point about reproduction conferring no survival advantage. An evolutionary biologist would brush that point away -- correctly, in my view -- my simply observing that while, in popular and / or early accounts of evolution, "survival of the fittest" was used, it is really reproduction and *not* survival that drives the logic of natural selection. Traits are useful (evolutionarily) if they confer a survival advantage *up to the point of reproduction* (or allow more reproduction); but actual extending of life post-reproduction is of no obvious evolutionary value, a point that actually causes other paradoxes for evolutionary theory (why do humans survive long after reproductive age?). So Rothman's point seems a little irrelevant.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AnonymousMarch 12, 2025 at 1:49 PM

      Survival after reproduction is useful because parents help their children to survive long enough to be able to reproduce themselves.

      Delete
    2. David T.March 13, 2025 at 9:46 AM

      Don't many organisms reproduce more than once?

      Delete
    3. WOLF BRONSKYMarch 13, 2025 at 6:03 PM

      It leads to teleology because if natural selection presupposes reproduction rather than explaining it, then something else must account for why organisms reproduce. It has to be teleological because reproduction is an inherently goal-directed process. It exists to generate new life.

      It isn’t just a byproduct of survival. It actively aims at producing another organism.

      Darwinism tries to explain biological features in mechanistic terms, without reference to inherent goals or purposes. But since reproduction can’t be explained through natural selection, it has to be explained in a way that acknowledges its goal-directed nature (teleology).

      Delete
    4. WOLF BRONSKYMarch 13, 2025 at 6:20 PM

      Also, I think you’re misunderstanding Rothman’s argument. The issue isn’t whether reproduction, rather than survival, is what drives evolution. The problem is that natural selection presupposes reproduction, so it can’t explain how reproduction itself got started.

      Reproduction isn’t just another evolved trait like antlers or camouflage. Those traits can be selected for because reproduction is already happening. But reproduction itself is the starting point for evolution, which means it needs a different kind of explanation.

      It’s relevant because natural selection favors traits that help individuals pass on their genes, but reproduction often comes at a cost to the individual. The idea that survival only matters up to reproduction doesn’t really explain why natural selection would favor a process that often shortens lifespan.

      Delete
  5. Tim the WhiteMarch 12, 2025 at 6:39 PM

    It seems that this argument pushes any evolution back into the pre-biotic realm. An organism that comes to life from non-living matter would have to have the ability to reproduce as one of it's original abilities or it would simply die, and another life form would then have to evolve.
    It puts the burden of evolution on chemistry instead of biology.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Vini TadeoMarch 13, 2025 at 1:30 AM

    Excellent article, boss. I still can't comprehend how you can make your arguments even more understandable, readable, and accessible to the lay public than it already is. Great job!

    Also, for everyone interested in this topic, I highly recommend reading Aristotle's Revenge (specifically chapter 6). In there, Ed discusses important (and often misunderstood) topics about evolution, reductionism in biology, biological essentialism (and how it is still defensible as it ever was), and a lot of other stuff like the hierarchy of life forms and function and teleology (I can guarantee that any reader can complement his or her knowledge about this important subject even more after reading what Ed has to say about natural selection).

    Btw, AT Metaphysics is the only philosophical position to date that can tell us a satisfying definition of life. Once one really understands the AT view about life it becomes clear how it is particularly destructive against any materialistic position that purports to explain the same phenomena mechanistically -- I think this fact can never be stressed enough.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Michael CopasMarch 14, 2025 at 5:29 AM

    Very glad you are writing on this. The biggest problem for the theory of evolution is the inability to determine on a principled basis what constitutes a distinct species. I have a good friend who runs a small research department for the game and fish in my home state and who has a Phd in Evolutionary Biology. He focuses on small mouth bass and regularly publishes in academic journals. He published an article proposing a new species of small mouth bass and I asked him what degree of genetic difference constitutes a new species. He wasn't sure. Yet he and others are writing in journals claiming that they have discovered new species. By determining species by genetic difference modern scientists are stating that no one before modern science was able to recognize distinct species (After all, neither Aristotle nor Albert the Great nor even Linneas were analyzing genes to classify). Along with this there is the problem that various scientists are making judgements that a new species exists based on varying degrees of difference. This is a rubber ruler for classification. If the degrees of difference requisite for a new species are made small enough then every *individual* is its own "species" making the term species vacuous. This is the problem with utilizing the genetic standard for classification. Modern scientists don't mean by species what ancients, scholastics, or even early moderns had in mind with that term. They don't even seem to have in mind the same thing as one another. If the classification were done as it was previously, the number of "species" counted by scientist would be reduced to a fraction of how they count them today.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AnonymousMarch 14, 2025 at 8:46 AM

      The classical criteria for determining if two individuals are of the same species is if they can reproduce, and then it is generalized to all the population of said animals. With other kinds of organisms it might get more complicated (specially as you get into "simpler" or more cellullar level organisms), but that basic criteria is there and is known to biologists.

      Delete
    2. TonyMarch 14, 2025 at 12:08 PM

      Modern scientists don't mean by species what ancients, scholastics, or even early moderns had in mind with that term.

      I think you are right about that.

      The biggest problem for the theory of evolution is the inability to determine on a principled basis what constitutes a distinct species.

      I believe that in principle they are committed to the idea that "distinction of species" is a misguided idea altogether: there is no such thing as "species" in any principled sense. There are only various populations with varying degrees of different traits and (at the root level) different gene subsets. In this view, it is merely a matter of scientific utility as to how to arrange subsets, and of popular preference as to which trait collections enjoy most attention - there isn't any principle to it. If you have 5 different populations, with each population having 3 traits (15 traits in total) the others don't share at all and 4 traits that they share with some but not all of the other 4 populations (12 of these traits partly shared), scientists might readily decide there are anywhere between 1 and 5 "species", but by argument they might find it useful to distinguish 20 or 30 different species if some of the shared mixed trait groupings seems especially worthwhile to attend to.

      They probably try to use criteria like stability of a trait (or gene clump) over time, and size of population involved, to rule out too small subset / trait populations to warrant a distinct name, but that's fairly clearly a decision of utility rather than principle.

      There might be a few scientists who don't realize that evolution theory is committed to the proposition that there is no such thing as "species" in the ancient sense of the term, but most probably do. The question is whether they have a new way to define it that bears any weight. Here is one scientist's view:

      It is clear to me, at any rate, that there are many conceptions of species, and that biologists use the one that best suits the organisms they study. I think of this as a "conceptual delicatessen" — when scientists need a species concept to suit the organisms being studied, they will typically assemble a custom "club sandwich" from previous ideas.

      https://ncse.ngo/species-kinds-and-evolution

      Delete
  8. SteveKMarch 14, 2025 at 9:13 AM

    What I like about the line of argument presented in the paper is that is accepts at face value everything that the Darwinian evolutions says is true about evolution. There's no need to fight them over what is true about evolution. Essentially this is what's being said: "If what you're telling me is true, then it logically follows that evolution doesn't explain what you think it does", which is basically what Jerry Fodor said.

    But wait, there's more! The hard science of mathematics comes to the same conclusion as the philosophical arguments that Dr. Feser presented here. If we accept all of the numbers that all of science tells us are facts - being as generous as possible - the math doesn't work. Natural selection isn't enough.

    CHLCA (chimpanzee–human last common ancestor)
    - Years: 9,000,000
    - Years per generation: 27.5
    - Generations per fixed mutation: 64
    - Years per fixed mutation: 1,760
    - Maximum fixed mutations: 5,114
    - Mutations required: 120,000,000
    - % attributable to evolution by natural selection: 0.00004 or four-thousandths of one percent.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Paul D. Van PeltMarch 14, 2025 at 11:06 AM

    All good reasoning from Mr. Copas. Something like elephant meat: the longer you chew it, the bigger it gets in your mouth. So, maybe we should not kill elephants or eat their flesh. I think that is right. Evidence suggests they are among, or, are evolving into the higher order consciousness Edelman suggested. Of course, I have no proof of that. Which is part of why we have philosophy.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Vini TadeoMarch 14, 2025 at 1:48 PM

    Fascinating comment, Michael.

    The idea of genetic difference as a determinant of species is very wacky. As you said, it would make every individual its own species! I think we can *kindly* name this idea nominalist specism, LOL.

    It's also glaring that specialized sciences necessitate (at least a little) background in philosophy before they start making their assumptions. One small step into the wrong ideas and things can go downhill faster than one can say Jack Robinson.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)