How We Believe_ Science and the Search for God - Michael Shermer [143]
So what? For Gould, the disappearance of .400 hitting is just one of many examples of how systems change over time and how our bias of progress and complexity has led us to misunderstad historical change. “All of these mistaken beliefs arise out of the same analytical flaw in our reasoning—our Platonic tendency to reduce a broad spectrum to a single, pinpointed essence. This way of thinking allows us to confirm our most ingrained biases—that humans are the supreme being on this planet; that all things are inherently driven to become more complex; and that almost any subject can be expressed and understood in terms of an average.” In baseball there is a bell-curve variation from worst to best players; what has happened in the past century is that while the league average has remained the same, the “spread” has shrunk as the entire system has marched closer toward that outer limit. It is this spread that matters, not the single point on it. As an example of the latter Gould relates his personal battle with abdominal mesothelioma, a rare and usually fatal form of cancer for which he was given eight months to live. That was in 1982. What happened ? The “eight months” was a median that did not describe the variation within the entire system (the spread) which, fortunately for Gould, has a long right tail on which he is located.
As in baseball and disease prognosis, evolution can be illustrated by a bell curve of organisms from simple cells to complex mammals of today. But what else could evolution have done?, Gould asks. In the spread of life, there is a left wall of simplicity—any simpler and it would not be alive. For life to evolve it could only have gotten more complex—evolution reflects “an increase in total variation by expansion away from a lower limit, or ‘left wall,’ of simplest conceivable form.” It’s the same thing with size: “Size increase is really random evolution away from small size, not directed evolution toward large size.”
Why is this idea revolutionary? Because change is a result of the whole system (the “full house”) expanding, not a progressive march of an average “toward” something. Evolution is not “going” anywhere in a teleological sense. It is massively contingent, and we are but a minor twig on the richly branching bush of life. “The vaunted progress of life is really random motion away from simple beginnings, not directed impetus toward inherently advantageous complexity.” With that the full impact of the Darwinian revolution is felt. We are not even special in the impersonal world of materialistic evolution. Where, then, shall we turn?
CONTINGENCY AND FREEDOM
In numerous places Dennett accuses Gould of “radical contingency,” particularly with regard to its significance for human freedom: “If we can just have contingency—radical contingency—this will give the mind some elbow room, so it can act, and be responsible for its own destiny, instead of being the mere effect of a mindless cascade of mechanical processes! This conclusion, I suggest, is Gould’s ultimate destination.”
Nowhere that I know of has Gould modified contingency with “radical” (i.e., to the exclusion of necessity, or to the degree that necessity becomes irrelevant, which is what most philosophers mean by radical contingency). Yet I partly agree with Dennett. Whether it is Gould’s ultimate destination or not, it is the ultimate implication of contingency. But contingency is not in contrast with the algorithm of natural selection—Dennett’s “mindless cascade of mechanical processes.” Contingency interacts with the necessitating force of natural selection. Natural