In a session of the weekly book group discussing "The Human Condition" by Hannah Arendt, evolution came up as one aspect of modern science and how science changed the way we humans see the world and changed the world itself.
The comment reminded me about discussions in the Evolution Round Table that evolution does not have a direction. There is no inevitable progression from bacteria to Bruce Lee. Sometimes species that struggled from the water to the land return to the water.
Evolution occurs when a species in a particular environment endures stress, adapts and passes the adaptation to the following generations. Evolution is most evident when a population is separated into two or more groups and put in different environments with little or no contact. Over time the members of these groups will become unlike each other, possibly even becoming different species, no longer able to mate.
Cultures as well as species evolve. Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Afghanistan and many other countries in the middle east were somewhat free and had intellectual culture at some point in the 20th Century. In the current century they are all under some form of predatory theocracy which is tyranny with a god label.
Germany was by some measures the most civilized country in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century. Then it was the most vile totalitarian autocracy in history. Now it is very civilized again.
Under tyranny, thinking is discouraged. In its later stages, intellectuals are murdered. A culture that is anti-intellectual brings the corrupt and craven to the centers of power. Art and science die when the corruption is in control.
People who have risen to the challenge of self government can sink back into tribalism. Their culture evolved away from the energy required for civilization and sank back into tribalism.
Recently I read Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut. He writes that the world ended in 1986 because our brains were (are) too being. The survivors evolved into fish--with small brains.
