Evolution is the process by which organisms change to adapt to their environment, but can this be considered progress? There is debate about whether evolution is always for the better, or whether it should be seen as an increase in diversity.
The oldest organisms found by humans are 3.5 billion-year-old prokaryotes from the Stromatolites of Australia. But prokaryotes aren’t the only organisms on Earth today, and they come in many different shapes and behaviors. This diversity is due to the fact that species have diverged from prokaryotes and changed their appearance through the process of evolution. Evolution has played a huge role in the history of life, not only changing the appearance of organisms, but also having an important impact on biologists. Compared to the ancient prokaryotes, today’s organisms have become structurally complex and capable of many different behaviors. This has sparked a debate among biologists: is evolution a progression that changes organisms for the better? In this article, we’ll talk about whether evolution can be seen as progress.
Before we discuss the relationship between evolution and progress, we need to clarify the definitions of both terms. Evolution is “the gradual change in living things since the origin of life,” and progress means “to become better or higher in degree or quality.” In other words, if evolution is viewed as progress, then organisms evolve to become better, and evolution has a direction of improvement. In pre-Darwinian times, evolution was viewed as progress, with Aristotle placing humans at the top of the “chain of being”. Evolutionists in the 19th century also saw evolution as a process of animal and plant progression, with humans as the end point of animal evolution. This was driven by religious reasons and the belief that humans were the perfect species, chosen by God. However, while Darwin was initially skeptical about whether evolution was progress, he concluded in The Origin of Species that it was.
However, there are many reasons why evolution cannot be viewed as progress. First of all, evolution is the selection of individuals that are slightly better than others in the competition for limited resources in the environment. The important question is: Is the environment progressing in absolute terms? The Earth’s environment has gone through periods of ice ages and warming, and these changes are not necessarily progressive. For example, elephants and mammoths evolved from a common ancestor, Primelephas, but mammoths were covered in fur, whereas today’s elephants are not. This shows that evolution does not have a constant direction.
The structure of the human eye is another example of how evolution cannot be seen as progress. The human eye has a blind spot because the optic nerve is in front of the retina, whereas mollusks have the optic nerve behind the retina and do not have a blind spot. This refutes the claim that humans are the end point of evolution, and suggests that evolution is accidental, not planned.
Finally, the concept of progress cannot be objectively applied to organisms. Bats use ultrasound to navigate in dark caves, but that doesn’t make them more advanced than humans. Progress can be seen as the way organisms evolve to adapt to their environment, but it can also be interpreted as an increase in diversity. Therefore, the view of modern evolutionary biology is that there is no objective progress in evolution.
Since 3.5 billion years ago, life has been evolving and increasing its diversity to reach its current state. However, evolution should not be viewed as a process of constant improvement, but rather as an increase in the diversity of life. Evolution is the selection of optimal conditions in an organism’s environment, and changes in the environment do not constitute absolute progress. Evolution is unplanned and accidental, and should be understood as an increase in diversity, not an absolute improvement.
The debate over whether evolution is progress has been going on since Darwin’s theory of evolution. Some view evolution as progress, but this is an anthropocentric view; evolution is an increase in the diversity of living things. We can conclude that evolution is not progress, but rather an increase in the diversity of life.
