The question of whether evolution is the same as progress is still debated. “Stephen Jay Gould argues that evolution is just a chance result of the surviving species, while Richard Dawkins believes that the superior genes survive, resulting in progress. The difference in their views makes it necessary to explore the relationship between evolution and progress in depth.
Are evolution and progress the same thing? Many people are familiar with Charles Robert Darwin’s theory of evolution. However, many people subconsciously understand that evolution and progress are the same thing. “Stephen Jay Gould, author of Full House, has tried to correct this misconception that many people have about Darwin’s theory of evolution. On the other hand, another evolutionist, Clinton Richard Dawkins, opposes Gould and argues for progressive evolution. While Gould and Dawkins are two of the leading figures in modern evolutionary theory, they share the same general framework of evolutionary theory, they have different positions on progressive evolution. It’s important to take a closer look at their claims and arguments to discuss the need for a clear distinction between evolution and progress.
Many people, including myself, believe that evolution is the result of progress, but Gould questions this view and argues that evolution and progress are different. He explains that in a situation where the majority goes extinct and only a few survive, the surviving species doesn’t survive because they have progressed to a higher level of existence, but because they were just lucky. He uses the example of a drunkard’s behavior to illustrate how random, directionless actions end up in a certain direction. If the bar is a wall and the other side is a ditch, the drunkard will eventually fall into the ditch. Similarly, evolution is a process in which each step is undirected, but the outcome determines the direction. The formation of complex organisms like humans is not the direction of evolution. Bacteria have already reached a wall where they can’t evolve any further, Gould argues, while complex genes are headed for an open space with lots of room for change. He sees evolution as more of an increase in diversity than progress.
Dawkins, on the other hand, argues in The Selfish Gene that evolutionary progress occurs cumulatively in the direction of increasing the adaptive fitness of organisms and their environments. He uses the example of predator-prey competition and enrichment to illustrate that evolution is a process toward progress. According to Dawkins, evolution toward progress can be a discontinuous staircase rather than a steady upward climb. He argues that genes are selected for their excellence, and that this excellence is determined against the backdrop of the current gene pool. Dawkins believes that there is a direction to evolution and sees evolution and progress as the same thing.
However, the two scholars are not completely opposed to progressive evolution. They both agree that there is no direction to evolution. However, Gould argues that the idea of the surviving species being superior is false, while Dawkins believes that the best genes survive. Gould does not recognize the superiority of the surviving species, but Dawkins does. In Dawkins’ view, evolved species are the result of progress.
The jury is still out on the validity of either position, but personally, I think Dawkins’ argument is more valid than Gould’s. Dawkins’ view is more in line with more common real-world examples. Gould uses the example of bacteria to argue for the need to distinguish between evolution and progress, but this is only one counterexample, and there are plenty of other examples of creatures that have adapted to their habitats, such as arctic foxes, desert foxes, and others, where evolution is the result of progress.
In general, organisms have survived through adaptation and evolution. Adaptation means changing in response to certain conditions or environments, and when this adaptation occurs over generations, it leads to changes in genes, and evolution occurs. I agree with Gould that evolution hasn’t always been a directional process. However, it is clear that the species that eventually survived had traits that favored their survival over those that did not. Doesn’t this mean that the superior species survived? From this perspective, Gould’s argument is just an interpretation of one part of the evolutionary process, and I think Dawkins’ argument is more valid than Gould’s.
In conclusion, we have examined the views of Gould and Dawkins, two of the leading figures in modern evolutionary theory, on the question of whether evolution and progress are the same.
Gould argued that evolution is not the result of progress, while Dawkins argued that the species that survived as a result had superior genes. I examined the evolutionary process and concluded that Gould’s view of evolution as an increase in diversity was only a temporary interpretation of part of the evolutionary process. I concluded that Dawkins’ argument for the existence of superior genes is more plausible, using the example of common animals such as foxes. But as Gould says in Full House, in order to tell the history of something, you have to trace how all the components change. You can’t make the mistake of looking at parts and mistaking them for the whole and misrepresenting them. To use Darwin’s theory of evolution to illustrate, let’s acknowledge that humans are the species with the superior genes, but don’t assume that early monkeys evolved into humans in a cascade of steps. Nor should we assume that humans are superior to monkeys. The current species of monkey is one of many branches that evolved from earlier monkey species to favor their survival, and humans are one of those branches. The idea that humans are superior should be limited to recognizing that we are superior to extinct, pre-evolutionary species, and should not be extended beyond that.
