Areas of Research in Universal Darwinism
Universal Darwinism provides scientific explanations for design; wherever it is
found in the universe. The explanation provided by Universal Darwinism
is the same in all arenas: the process or algorithm of evolution first
posited by Charles Darwin.
Darwin’s theory of evolution
by natural selection explains the evolution of life forms. As he
demonstrated, biological evolution is an algorithmic process. This means
anything meeting a simple set of conditions will evolve in a manner
similar to life. These conditions are:
Reproduction; the ability to make copies and thereby increase
Heredity; the ability to pass traits to copies. This is inherent
in the usual meaning of the word ‘copy’ and may be redundant and
unnecessary as a separate condition.
Variation; differences in heritable
traits that affect "Fitness” or the ability to survive and reproduce
leading to differential survival. Differential survival means that not
all copies have the same ability to survive, often as a result of
limited resource in the environment required to maintain the copies.
Those best able to access and harness the environmental resources will
preferentially survive and make copies.
Natural Selection is based
on the differential survivability of inherited characteristics. Each
generation inherits characteristics from their parents and in each
generation there is some random variation in these characteristics. Some
variations will bestow greater reproductive success on their bearers
than will others. The individuals possessing adaptations or variations
bestowing greater reproductive success will propagate more offspring;
offspring tending to have these parental characteristics as well as
exhibiting some variations of their own. In this manner each generation
tends to accumulate adaptations that bestow reproductive success.
The Darwinian algorithm will
produce evolution in any system conforming to these three simple
conditions. The direction in which the system evolves is determined by
which variations bestow survival. In other words the individuals in the
system will become better at surviving and will accumulate adaptations
that assist their survival. What those adaptations are is hard to
predict and depends heavily on the environment in which the system is
The Darwinian algorithm, supported by a
compelling body of scientific evidence, destroyed the argument
from design in the biological realm. Prior to Darwin this argument was
the predominant one, accepted by the majority of educated people, as the
explanation for the existence of all design in the universe. The most forceful version of this
argument was given by Reverend Paley.
that if we were to find a pocket watch in the woods and were to examine
it, it would be clear that it must have been created by a watch maker.
Nothing so intricately designed could be created by accident and its
very existence was proof of a watch maker, a creator. So too, the
natural world exhibits exquisite design which therefore proves the
existence of a creator of the natural world; God.
It is puzzling why this argument
could be considered compelling as
it has obvious deep flaws. That there are well designed life forms
is evidence of the existence of a means of producing biological design.
That God is that means of producing design, specifically the Christian
God described in the bible, is a huge and totally unsupported leap.
Darwin destroyed this argument by discovering the actual means by which
design is accomplished in the biological world.
As Darwin's explanation came to be widely accepted, the argument for the
existence of God from design, retreated from the biological arena but
was still championed in areas such as cosmology or studies of the human
mind where scientific explanations were undeveloped. This situation came
to be known as the 'God of the Gaps', referring to the retreat of God
creator to those areas of design where scientific explanation were
As we now know, science is a tireless Darwinian process for
evolving explanations approaching truth. Since Darwin's work,
particularly in the past thirty years, science has closed all gaps in
its ability to explain design by Darwinian processes. There are
plausible evolving theories and bodies of evidence in all arenas where
we see design: cosmology, human psychology and culture as well as in biology.
Daniel Dennet has likened Darwin's Idea to a universal acid that
dissolves our myths about creation of design:
idea had been born as an answer to questions in biology, but it
threatened to leak out, offering answers- welcome or not- to questions
in cosmology (going in one direction) and psychology (going in the other
direction). If redesign could be a mindless, algorithmic process of
evolution, why couldn't that whole process itself be the product of
evolution, and so forth, all the way down? And if mindless evolution
could account for the breathtakingly clever artefacts of the biosphere,
how could the products of our own 'real' minds be exempt from an
evolutionary explanation? Darwin's idea thus also threatened to spread
all the way up, dissolving the illusion of our own authorship, our own
divine spark of creativity and understanding.
the controversy and anxiety that has enveloped Darwin's idea ever since
can be understood as a series of failed campaigns in the struggle to
contain Darwin's idea within some acceptably 'safe' and merely partial
Universal Darwinism consists of the claim that the revolution is
complete, that Darwin's Idea explains all design.