What Flows Across Scales Where Evolutionary Theory Goes 1900-2025

What Flows Across Scales Where Evolutionary Theory Goes 1900-2025

When explaining evolution, we tend to use the individual as the unit of analysis. At first glance, the explanation since Darwin that a mutation occurs and, if it adapts to the environment, it will persist in offspring, seems to indicate a tidy causal relationship. However, this perspective alone is not the only feature that appears universally in evolution. For example, it cannot explain the acquisition of the eye and the advancement of the brain, which are common to many animals. Why do organisms placed in different environments develop similar organs? Why did one species acquire an extremely complex nervous system while another did not, despite being exposed to the same external stimuli? The question arises as to whether there is a larger current at work here that cannot be explained solely by the coincidence of mutation.

Bergson focused on this point. According to him, life is not merely a series of parts piled up like a machine, but is the very momentum that carries time within itself and moves forward. Evolution is not a change in individual characteristics, but the expression of a direction shared by the species as a whole. Life as a whole is moving in a more dynamic direction. Life as a whole is being pushed in the direction of more mobility and more complex control. This is why organs similar to those of organisms living in different places arise repeatedly.

Mechanisms and Objectivism are based on the analysis of parts and the completion of each part. But the reality of life lies somewhere in between. It carries with it the possibility of being open to the future, continuously changing its form, and still having a consistent direction. Therefore, phenomena emerge that cannot be captured by individual-scale analysis alone.

In short, to understand evolution, we need to go beyond the static framework of species as an accumulation of individuals. It is necessary to redraw life as a moving body that continues to flow with time. The next step for evolutionary theory is to go beyond individual changes to decipher the history of life itself.