Everything Evolves

Posted on June 12, 2008 by Peter Turney

What is evolution? There are three main components to evolution: variation, heredity, and differential fitness. The best definition I have seen is in Robert Brandon’s Concepts and Methods in Evolutionary Biology:

The following three statements are crucial components of the Darwinian (or neo-Darwinian) theory of evolution:

1. Variation: There is (significant) variation in morphological, physiological and behavioral traits among members of a species.
2. Heredity: Some traits are heritable so that individuals resemble their relations more than they resemble unrelated individuals and, in particular, offspring resemble their parents.
3. Differential Fitness: Different variants (or different types of organisms) leave different numbers of offspring in immediate or remote generations.

Of course life evolves, but evolution inevitably happens whenever we have these three things: variation, heredity, and differential fitness. Thus life is not the only thing that evolves.

Culture evolves:

• Cultural Evolution (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
• Memetics
• Cultural Selection Theory
• Dual Inheritance Theory

Science evolves:

• Evolutionary Epistemology
• The Heroic Theory of Scientific Development
• Without Miracles: Universal Selection Theory and the Second Darwinian Revolution
• Incremental Doubt

Technology evolves:

• Simultaneous Invention
• The Evolution of Technology

Language evolves:

• Evolutionary Linguistics
• The Symbolic Species

Art evolves:

• The Evolution of Movies
• Does Beauty Build Adapted Minds?
• Literary Study and Evolutionary Theory: A Review Essay
• Literary Darwinism
• The Literary Animal

Ethics evolves:

• A Scientific Approach to Morals and Ethics
• The Evolution of Cooperation
• Genetic and Cultural Evolution of Cooperation
• The Complexity of Cooperation

Evolution evolves:

• Unbounded Evolutionary Versatility
• Increasing Evolvability
• The Evidence of Progress
• Baldwin Effect

Universes evolve:

• The Life of the Cosmos
• Evolution of the Universe by natural selection?
• Fecund Universes
• A Universe of Universes