Where New Adaptations Come From

 I posted a video in which I explain where new evolutionary adaptations, and cultural innovations, come from. I filmed the video in Strasbourg, which has many old villages crammed together, such as Hoenheim (where I live) and Bischeim and even one called Souffelweyersheim.

Here is how I learned the process of natural selection. A new mutation appears, then if it is a good one, natural selection favors it. It starts off very rare—only one individual carries it—and ends up common, maybe even going to fixation (completely replacing the other versions of the gene). This is the way I taught it, and the way I wrote about it in my Encyclopedia of Evolution.

But the reality is more complicated, as is usually the case in science. If the mutation appears in a large population, say, a million organisms, then it is extremely rare—one in a million. No matter how good it is, it can get lost by random events before it has a chance to get selected. It has virtually no chance.

But suppose the large population, a million individuals, consists of small interconnected populations, maybe a hundred each. If the mutation occurs in one of them, it has a chance of becoming common, maybe even going to fixation. One chance in a hundred. Then if it spreads to another population, it has another one chance in a hundred to go to fixation. If this happens a hundred times, the new mutation now has ten thousand chances out of a million to be successful.

This is the shifting balances theory of Sewall Wright, who was one of the most important figures in the modern theory of evolution. He was publishing books right up until his death almost at age 100. New adaptations get started in small populations. That is the only way they have a ghost of a chance of succeeding. This is how natural selection must work.

Cultural evolution works the same way, but with ideas instead of genes. Suppose somebody got a great new idea in Hoenheim (or even Souffelweyersheim!). In a small village, the idea might have a chance to spread. If it becomes common in Hoenheim, it might become common in Strasbourg as well. And from there it might have a chance of success in Paris. (This may be unlikely, since Parisians consider themselves the cultural center of the universe, and Strasbourg, to them, is unspeakably provincial.) And from Paris, maybe the world. But the new idea popping up in Paris would get swamped out by all the other ideas in Paris.

This is not the whole story because, of course, Paris consists of lots of small populations, local neighborhoods and arrondissements. A big new idea in the 49^th arrondissement might spread to the 5^th.

One of the major examples of a cultural innovation starting in a place considered provincial is the printing press. Johannes Gutenberg perhaps had to start in an out of the way place—in fact, it was Strasbourg, where I now live. He did not start in Paris or Vienna.

 

The Evolution of Genius

There are geniuses among us. Some of you might be geniuses. But since it is impossible to define what a genius is, few of us can ever know who is or is not a genius. I will just share some insights, from the evolutionary point of view.

First, what genius is not. It is not just intelligence. I am intelligent, as seen from the outside, but when I am being intelligent, as when I am writing, I can see myself from the inside: I am paddling like crazy, like a dog trying to not drown in a flood of stupidity around me.

But for a real genius, everything comes almost without thinking. Mozart would fit anybody’s idea of a genius. He could write the most exquisite music without even having to think about it; in his own words, he wrote music “as the sows piss.” This certainly does not describe anything I do.

Second, genius shows up in the details. I can think of some musical examples. Consider the Nutcracker ballet by Pyotr Ilyitch Tchaikovsy. It is full of delightful melodies, which millions of people know. The ballet is performed hundreds of times around the world at Christmas. I heard that The Nutcracker performance is what keeps a ballet troupe in the black for the season. It may be the most successful ballet in human history.

But that is not what makes it a work of genius. I do not have a score to the Nutcracker, nor can I navigate the online public domain fragments, but I will tell you where to find the music I have in mind. It is in the Danses de Poupées Mecaniques. The magician Drosselmeyer has brought three mechanical dolls for Clara. A lot of skill is required for the three ballet performers since they must all have graceful yet jerky movements that make them seem like robots. The middle one is a woman dancing a waltz, although, this being Tchaikovsky, it is hemiola, with three-quarter time sounding like three-two time. It is not One two three One two three but is One two Three one Two three. It is an exquisite and seldom remembered melody. Right at the end, when the strings repeat the melody one more time, there is a gentle wavering of two flutes. This is the detail that makes it a work of genius. I heard it several times over the years, but never noticed it until my grandkids made me play a video clip of it over and over and over and over.

A similar genius-detail can be found right at the beginning of Hindemith’s Symphony in B flat for band. Few people would rank Hindemith up with Mozart or Tchaikovsky, and I, for one, am not sure. When we rehearsed this piece in band at the University of California in 1977, the director raved on and on about what a genius Hindemith was. Maybe he was right. In the first movement, the trumpets carry a soaring melody (Theme 1). A few minutes later, the oboe introduces Theme 2. But right in the very first measure, just as the trumpets enter with Theme 1, the rest of the band plays just the first five notes of Theme 2. The intervals are correct, but just in the tuba line! Nobody could possibly hear it. Such attention to unseen and unheard detail is something that ordinary composers overlook in their rush to produce something that publishers want.

Third, genius can sometimes work together insights from different realms of thought: music and literature, or literature and science, etc. Leonardo Da Vinci, a genius of both science and art, is everyone’s prime example of this. Isaac Asimov, a biochemist, might have also been an example. He wrote science, fiction, theology, and humor. More often, genius is narrow. Mozart was a genius musician, but who knows if he might have had the rudiments of some other kind of genius. Genius can be narrower yet. John Philip Sousa was a genius in writing band marches; of the best twenty band marches, Sousa probably wrote seventeen of them. He wrote 130 marches, but his operettas, fantasies, overtures, suites, and dances (which add up to 83) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Philip_Sousa] have been largely forgotten. According to a 1952 movie, whenever he tried to write something other than a march, it came out sounding like a march. In the movie, he wrote a love song, “My love is a weeping willow down by the streamside fair…” His wife played piano as he sang. Then she started laughing and played the music as a march, the now famous trio of Semper Fidelis.

Fourth, genius can be agony. One thinks of Beethoven struggling with every detail. In fact, most of the great composers seemed to have mental problems, except apparently Bach and Mendelssohn. If this sounds like I have contradicted my first point, about genius being easy, maybe I have, I dunno. But consider Tchaikovsky again. I have heard that Tchaikovsky loathed, despised, hated the Nutcracker. Maybe not his own music, but the plot seemed utterly stupid to him, even though it was written by an author today revered (Alexandre Dumas). It must be admitted Tchaikovsky was under time pressure, having to write an opera Iolanta at the same time. (I’ve never heard it either.) But it is clear that Tchaikovsky jotted down lines of music perhaps with disdain; “There, they’ll love that,” as he scribbled in the little flute murmurs. But he wrote perfect music even for a piece that he hated. I’m sure that I have given more thought to that little bit of music for the mechanical ballerina than he did. The music Tchaikovsky despised has brought pleasure to hundreds of millions of people.

Genius seems like a supernatural gift. But it evolved. The human brain is capable of astounding complexity, more in some people than others, and usually only after a childhood of mental stimulation. The exact form it takes may be a matter of chance. Some people (often autistic) can remember incredibly long strings of numbers. The extreme complexity of the human brain has a very clear evolutionary advantage. Smart people can read the physical and social landscape and use it to their advantage. They can amaze the other people and become revered, and fecund, leaders of the tribe. They could figure out a lot of things, and even if they knew how they did it, they would not have told anybody. They could out-bamboozle everyone else. They were especially good at getting people to believe them. Their intelligence continually contributed to the collective intelligence of their tribes, of related tribes, and eventually of the whole species.

We, all of us, are the evolutionary descendants of at least some geniuses.

Mutualism all around us

After decades of teaching, writing, and reading about ecology and evolution I thought I had heard everything. But just recently I ran across an example of mutualism that surprised me.

Most vertebrates have lots and lots of parasites inside and outside of our bodies. Birds are no exception. They have it worse than humans because, unlike us, they cannot bathe away the oils, dirt, and parasites that accumulate on their skin, well protected as it is by feathers that are really good at repelling water.

But there are some things that birds do to reduce their parasite loads, besides preening with their beaks. They can expose themselves to environmental chemicals which may kill the parasites.

One example of an environmental chemical is smoke. Many naturalists have observed that birds will gather near a fire and extend their wings, allowing the smoke to get into their feathers. The smoke contains some chemicals that might help to reduce the growth of the parasites.

Another example, which I just read about, is that birds (in this case, a Eurasian jay) can stand near the entrance to an ant’s nest. They extend their wings, thus scaring the soldier ants that guard the entrance. The soldier ants squirt streams of formic acid at the birds, which does not harm them, but may reduce their parasite load.

Notice that this particular ecological interaction does not require that either the birds or the ants know what is happening. Natural and cultural selection reinforce the behavior, not the understanding.