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What Daedalus told Darwin
about Darwin’s dilemma and designing intelligence
Darwin’s Dilemma harks back to Darwin’s famous admission that he couldn’t explain variation, evolution’s source of novelty. Until recently, it was taboo to ask whether random variation and environmental selection through “survival of the fittest” had any limitations. But simple logic shows that Darwinism does not fully explain how or why evolution’s arrow points toward complexity. Bacteria multiply in profusion and are fit survivors, so why didn’t evolution just stop there? After Intelligent Design hijacked the word “design” to label its dogma, scientists shunned that word. Design was viewed as a craft — something a Designer (capital D) does, top down, from outside in. Intelligent Design presumes that a higher authority sits above and outside the system He designs.
In contrast, the design of intelligence occurs from inside out. Design (small d) is not intuitive, ad hoc, as many scientists assume. Design is characterized by systematic principles, manifest in life’s origin and evolution, bottom up.Recognizing our view of evolution as incomplete has large implications. The interpretation that evolution rewards those who compete best for “survival of the fittest” served those in a position to exploit resources. But we are now poised to experience the impact of what Garrett Hardin evocatively predicted in 1968 would escalate into a “tragedy of the commons,” where competition for scarce resources and “survival of the fittest” could potentially threaten the delicate balance of Earth’s ecosystems.
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Distinguishing the design of intelligence from Intelligent Design is a practical imperative. Buckminster Fuller conceived “anticipatory design science,” “Spaceship Earth,” and “World Game,” anticipating the need to integrate information. Now it is finally possible to harness the internet and wisdom of crowds to address the “tragedy of the commons.” To survive we must collaborate. In designing intelligence, no “Outsider” takes responsibility. We, the human species, are responsible for life’s trajectory into the future, which affects every living creature on “Spaceship Earth.” Steering a boat on only one side, with one oar is a metaphor for exclusive reliance on random mutation with environmental selection. We need both oars to steer forward into the future. That future does not yet exist for us to observe or predict. It awaits our design.
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Viewing our interpretation of evolution as incomplete, and Intelligent Design as a diversion, calls for a third option that reclaims “design” by recognizing how evolutionary advancement is internally driven by design principles, why evolution generally advances toward more complex designs, and the relevance of how and why, not only to the origin of life, but to its future. I call this third option synergetic evolution, recalling Buckminster Fuller’s emphasis on synergy (wholes greater than the sum of their parts).Physicist Hermann Haken explored synergetics as the dynamic of self-organizing complex systems. Suppose that fitness of synergetic systems resides, not solely in the organism, nor solely in its genetic information, but in life’s performance as life designs itself. To be alive is to be a designer. |
