09 April 2023

Superheroes and the (nonexistent) Myth of No Limits: Chapter 1 of From Extraterrestrials to Animal Minds

Which superpower would you choose and why?

This seems a somewhat common "get to know you" question. Sometimes you're forced to choose between two (invisibility or teleportation?), perhaps to reveal particular features of your psyche. My choice is teleportation I want to see my kids and grandkids but I want to live in Edinburgh. My frustration with such limitations is real, and contemplating teleportation doesn't help.

My fanboy heart has always belonged to the Rebel Alliance, but I do love the X-Men and the MCU and I count Black Widow and Black Panther among my favorite films (and soundtracks). All of the main characters are superheroes and all claim some kind of superpower. Most of these superpowers arise from usually-nefarious use/misuse of technology by humans: directed genetic enhancement, carelessness with radiation, crafting or mining of superpowered materials, unsupervised development of military hardware, stuff like that. The X-Men have superpowers that are great fun but also outlandish (even for the genre), and all are said to have arisen via mutation.

I would love to be able to teleport. And yet I never considered the possibility that I could do it, via genetic manipulation or vibranium or a fancy suit made by a rogue military contractor. I've never met an adult who wonders whether the right mutations (an extra chromosome, according to canon) could give them the glorious superpowers enjoyed by Mystique or Wolverine. Such a person would have to be ignorant, or mad, or seven.

The first myth in From Extraterrestrials to Animal Minds: Six Myths of Evolution by Simon Conway Morris, the subject of Chapter 1, is "The Myth of No Limits." The chapter begins with a discussion of deep evolutionary history that seems (at first) unrelated to the topic of limits. Taking as his inspiration the "Biological Big Bang" ideas of Eugene Koonin, Conway Morris tries to paint a picture of "early complexity and subsequent streamlining" by emphasizing deep conservation of proteins and processes found in the first eukaryotic cells. I sense cherry-picking here but it's true that complex machinery such as the Krebs cycle can be tremendously old, sometimes likely older than cellular life. The author then turns to a riveting discussion of the existence of limitations, all biophysical, that constrain the form and function of organisms. He uses these constraints in part to argue that there are "lifeless zones" (the opposite of habitable zones) in "biological hyperspace," what Dan Dennett calls Design Space.

So, the idea is that evolution is exploring Design Space but there are places it can't go. This refutes the claims of those who think that evolution "is effectively without limits."

Those people are either ignorant, mad, or seven. If you meet one, be nice. That's what you would have wanted when you were a second grader swept away by the mythology of Spider-Man or Wonder Woman.

Now of course what I mean is that Conway Morris has defeated a strawperson that even a second grader could drop. One way to tell that the claim is a strawperson: look at who Conway Morris cites as its proponents. The first hint is on page 14: "Concomitant with this three-billion-year spree, to echo the words of the science-fiction writer Brian Aldiss, has been the universal assumption that this process is effectively without limits." Yep. A science-fiction writer. (Ignorant? Mad? Definitely not seven.) Conway Morris' last hope of finding a suitable name for his strawperson is the one I expected: Stephen Jay Gould. He cites Full House and mentions Gould's infamous focus on contingency. Then without apparent awareness of the cringe-inducing irony, he repeats the common insult that Gould's views were "largely driven by ideological reasons." What Conway Morris does not do is demonstrate (or even make the attempt) that Gould's contingency-based open-ended evolution position is common, much less the kind of "received wisdom" that is required to make the claim that there is a "Myth of No Limits."

It's clear why Conway Morris doesn't attempt to defend that claim. It's false. Not even Stephen Jay Gould believed that evolution proceeds "effectively without limits" one of his most famous essays is "Kingdoms Without Wheels" in Hen's Teeth and Horses' Toes. Gould didn't believe that, because he was neither ignorant, mad, nor seven.

There's a minor tragedy here, I think. The strawperson and the accompanying atmosphere of disrespect do damage to what should have been a spirited exploration of the limits of biology and what they mean. Perhaps due to the stifling presence of the strawperson, Conway Morris omits mention or citation of a biologist who has written brilliantly on exactly those topics. He's Geerat Vermeij of UC Davis, and one of his many papers is a 2015 review titled "Forbidden phenotypes and the limits of evolution." His absence from the chapter is a really bad look.* That's a shame.

But there's also a major irony in how the author wrecks the train. He wants us to think that evolution is tightly constrained (read: guided) but he wrote a chapter that is not really about the limits of evolution. It's about the limits of biology. Conway Morris shows convincingly that within those limits, evolution is... superpowered. He goes as far as to claim that evolution has already explored nearly all that there is to explore.

In other words, Conway Morris shows us that evolution is constrained by biophysics, something no biologist ever doubted, then shows us evidence that within its constraints there is essentially nothing it can't do. Shall we call this the Fact of No Limits? Too soon?

The chapter is a rough start, and I've been harsh. We've answered the first question I've assigned for each chapter: no, there is no orthodoxy that is being challenged or resisted in Chapter 1. (A strawperson was sacrificed with barely adequate solemnity.) That leaves the second more positive question for the next post.


*Vermeij and his "forbidden phenotypes" paper are mentioned briefly in Chapter 2.

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