An Attempt at Taming Natural Selection with Convergence Backward in Time, Part II (Origin, Chap. 13)

Abstract

More clearly than elsewhere in the Origin of Species, Chapter 13 attempts to propose a “consilience of inductions,” that is, an effort to gather support from a host of disciplines assumed to be pointing at the same explanatory core. Far from being a success on close inspection, Darwin’s attempt will assemble a long list of contradictory claims he himself provides by imposing upon these disciplines a number of simplifying assumptions about the pattern-process of evolution: (1) “divergence” and “common ancestry” are tightly associated; (2) generally speaking, the most divergent forms are said to be selected over less divergent ones; (3) it is assumed that divergence today is at its maximum relative to the evolutionary past of each class/phylum; and (4) the taxonomic arrangement observed among extant forms is believed to have persisted throughout the entire evolutionary history. Darwin’s assumptions overlooked the full complexity and openness of evolution by putting it in a conceptual straitjacket. Chapter 13 is the place where Darwin will deliver his ultimate fight against an evolutionary engine that erases its genealogical traces as it rolls on, thus generating all sorts of complexities, including the rise of similar features (analogies) and the complete deletion of traces in apparently ancestorless forms. We will conclude our analysis by providing an overview of Part II of our book (Chaps. 3 – 6 ), arguing that a close reading of the Origin reveals a series of different pictures of evolution, some of which are squarely inconsistent. The Origin of Species is far from offering a unified and all-encompassing theory of evolution.