The Problem With Darwinian Language

The Problem with Darwinian Language By Sally Morem I will be the first to admit that Darwinian language falls far short of what is needed to effectively convey the complex nuances of evolutionary theory to the general public. However, I attribute most of the problem to the shortcomings inherent in English—or perhaps, more accurately, to those of all human languages. Our ancestors had virtually no means of examining or parsing the wandering ways of self-organizing systems (autopoesis), and this historical inexperience is reflected in our present-day vocabulary. Instead, ancient peoples paid particular attention to the appearance of human or human-like acts of intention and resulting artifacts, ignoring those phenomena that didn’t fit the template. Apparent cause/effect relationships had to be very obvious to grab their attention. Take a pair of verbs, “design” and “evolve,” and compare lists of synonyms. Here are some compiled from “Synonym Finder.” Note the colorful variety of activities connoted by the former and the rather forced expressions foisted upon the latter: Design—plan, plot, scheme, organize, arrange, contrive, devise, develop, fashion, fabricate, frame, make, effect, produce, shape, form, mold, forge, construct, build, rear, erect. This particular list was derived from only one of many meanings for “design.” There are many, many more evocative words listed under the other meanings. Evolve—develop, grow, become, turn into, become more complex, derive from, result, emerge, progress, go forward, increase, expand, snowball, produce, construct, formulate, build up, unroll, unfold, uncoil, open.

If you are a writer, you’ve been told by editors to “use the active voice.” As you can tell from comparing these lists, it’s much easier to do so when describing the deliberate, planned, intentional acts of human beings, as opposed to the unplanned, evolving systems of nature. No wonder “design” gets the juicier verbs. But even then, “evolve” is stuck with lame analogies to human action. As such, Darwinian language is profoundly misleading. There is another problem with the word “evolve.” In everyday language, it also means moral improvement in human beings. This meaning has nothing whatsoever to do with what scientists are trying to get across when they describe the processes that make up biological evolution. No wonder popular debate over the existence of what has been referred to as Darwinian thought or neo-Darwinism is confused. Human beings are able to observe and report on claims of moral evolution in real time. They don’t have to sift for evidence in the fossil record for its existence. Humans can then form coherent opinions about the existence of moral evolution in an individual or a group and argue their case with a reasonable chance of being understood. No biologist, no matter how outré his metaphorical language, would ever consider doing the same in order to describe biological evolutionary processes. Chaotic, self-organizing phenomena refers to systems studied by chaos and complexity theoreticians, systems in which complex subsystems grow out of very simple rules, systems such as climate, stock markets, respiration, and river tributaries. Chaos theory provides us with some tantalizing clues as to how biological evolution may work. It also provides us with very useful nouns and verbs by which we may communicate these new understandings. But, scientists have to work with what they’ve got, which isn’t a whole lot in the way of colorful, evocative words reserved to biological evolution, with enough connotational oomph to do the job. So, they find they must raid the “design” list of synonyms with all the resulting confusion I’ve noted above.

Perhaps as the “evolution of language” proceeds, scientists and writers will be able to come up with a better selection, permitting the reader to get a much better sense of evolution as a bundle of trends, tendencies, and emergent characteristics in organisms’ lines of descent as they respond to changes in their environment. Or perhaps “design” will pick up connotations of “unplanned efficaciousness” from its continued use over a long period of future scientific history describing evolutionary processes. Such major changes in meaning have occurred over and over again in the evolution of language. Curiously enough, citizens of free societies have similar problems with language in describing the workings of their societies. They are used to living with unplanned efficaciousness—improvements in political, economic, and cultural systems, which grow out of the tiny cause/effect relationships between innumerable human actions, but out of little of that which we would describe as “human design.” Those sociologists and historians who study cultural evolutionary tendencies over time have learned much from those who study the biological kind and have given much insight in return. If so, terms such as “natural selection” will then become better understood as a metaphor for the survival of the fittest lineage in a world in which the meaning of “fittest” must always change.