The first thing to remember about evolution is that it doesn't exist. It's a none-independent term, like calling a place where two roads meet "the corner of 5th and main" or whatever. The road is only the fifth counting from some arbitrary starting place, the other is the main one because for some reason it's wider, the name would be meaningless without the roads, the roads undistinguished without a name and everything meaningless without cars or people to drive them. Nothing stands alone, it's all a bunch of dominoes piled one against the other. The same with evolution. Evolution is the name we give to the point where life and death meet the enviroment and what happens there. It is a neutral term, it is not positive, or negative. It has no direction, it can go forward, or backward, or sideways. It does not care about sentience, TV or twinkies. Evolution loves the merest speck of shit-eating scum on the ring of a whale's ass just as much as it loves Shakira. Evolution is not God. It is not an it.
Ooh-ooh, I forgot mutation. That good ol' supposedly random mutation. Did you know that after heavy sunspot activity there is usually a flu epidemic somewhere in the world..? That's right, all those little flu viruses learning new genetic tricks after getting their brains knocked out by heavy radiation.
But hang on, a reliance on purely random mutation to solve your problems would require a whole lot of patience - tapping your fins while you wait for them to turn into feet. You'd have to be some kind of scaley ichthian saint. However, following evolutionary 'logic', a random mutation that then allowed life to generate its own 'purposeful' mutation would imediately become wildly successful, wouldn't it..? It would. Mutation, on a day to day basis, ain't random anymore. It's endogenous, a reaction of a species to enviromental conditions and change.
Your enviroment btw, is not just the green and brown bits: the trees and mountains. Nor just the moving bits like the mosquitos and pigeons and bears. Or the weather. Nope. It is also your neighbor, your mother, your lover, your dog, your toothbrush. Everything that is not you, including the bacteria that live in and on you, is your enviroment. Some of it you choose, most of it you do not, or at least you can't be bothered going to the effort that that choosing would require to implement.
The real enviroment starts from the gene up. In the big scheme of things I am single lily-pad on a very, very big pond which just happens to be the one that the frog of life is sitting on at the moment. When froggy hops to the next, I will sink from view, never to return. Only our genes move on in any physical sense, even then in the 'new blade, new haft - is it the same axe..?' sense of the word. Lonely little string of nucleotides in the big bad world. And the biggest threat from the enviroment is not so much the lions and tigers and bears, nor falling rocks or sudden ice-ages or drunken drivers. Just as in the modern macro-world the only real threat to man, is man - the biggest threat to our genes in the micro-world has always been other genes.
The gene. We've got lots and lot of them. Not just 'one-gene-one-job' either, but a web of inter-connections and inter-dependent functions that we are only beginning to percieve. Nothing wasted, nothing redundant. Diabetes is an adaptation to the last ice-age, still used by Eskimos. Sickle-cell anaemia protects against malaria, high cholesterol is an adaptation to increase high pigmentation vitamin D production. Nothing is black and white. Western Europeans are genetically adapted to beer. A gene for cystic fibrosis protects against tuberculosis. Nothing we contain is without use. Evolution allows no flab.
But if evolution allows no free lunches - why then is our genome is 97% shit..? Only about 3% builds and maintains our bodies. The rest rides for free down the eons, coding for nothing. Well, so the theory went anyway. We didn't adapt to many diseases, we integrated with them. We have married a whole bunch of viral and bacterial DNA on our way down the eons and now we have our own little genetic laboratory in every cell of our bodies. How else would we ever be able to produce the right antigen for every new bug that shuffles off the production line..? We have set thieves to catch thieves and now we cut and paste elements from this vast amount of stored genetic material to combat everything nature throws at us: Transposons - jumping genes - sample and remix the genome like frantic genetic DJs, trying desperately to find the newest groove.
It is more efficient this way. More robust. For example - You can chemically or radiolojically 'knockout' many of what were thought to be vital genes and absolutely nothing happens. You don't die. Why..? Because your genome treats this KO as a disease, as a 'problem' thrown at it by nature and works around it. Other genes borrow material from the 97% and utilize it to make up for the loss in protein production caused by the KO'd gene.
This oldest of methods of tweaking the production line is mirrored in our social reality: The business 'philosophy' of kaizen aims to eliminate waste (defined as "activities that add cost but do not add value"). It is often the case that this means "to take it apart and put back together in a better way." This is then followed by standardization of this 'better way' with others, through standardized work. ie - don't throw out the whole production line when a problem is encountered, tweak it till it works then make the tweaked version the new standard. Sound familliar..?
This internal panic button, that kicks your genome into hyper-mutation-mode, is pressed by stress. Which is good if you've got the latest strain of flu, or a glacier just moved in next door, but totally shit if it's just your boss bustin' your balls - because in the first case, mutation is necessary therefore potentially beneficial, and in the second unnecessary and potentially malignant: hello Mr. Cancer.
So - The human genome isn't really human. It incorporates bits and pieces from every virus and bug we ever conquered and/or got friendly with down the ages. HERV - human endogenous retro viruses - able even, it is thought, to breach the barrier between germ cells - sperm and egg - and body cells. ie. Able to pass on changes aquired within the parental lifetime to the next generation. We are not one pure thing but an alloy of the multitude. But what of the macro-world, the world we can see..? Cells, bodies - these must be discrete..? Separately evolved..? Mustn't they..?
Say on one area there are a couple of individuals who are just fucking great at one thing, but pretty mediocre at everything else: Joe can build a wall that'll stand for a thousand years with his eyes closed, but he couldn't put a roof on for toffee. Fred does great plumbing but electricity turns his head round in knots. Tony roofs and wires like an artist but builds walls like a drunken sailor.
On their own, they are doomed to live in half-finished houses, together, they would build works of art. The trick is to get them to co-operate. To trust.
Capitalism is much the same on a much bigger scale - Governments use the peaceful atmosphere the protection of an army and police-force to provide a system of commerce which allows networks of specialists to take something approaching mutual advantage of eachother, rather than all of them having to do everything for themselves. Would Picasso have had the time and energy to paint such nice pictures if he'd had to spend his days ankledeep in sheepshit growing all his own food..?
But capitalism goes all the way back.
Let us imagine the first cell. Let's call him Donald.
"Back in the day, when I was just a snot-nosed kid, I was a single cell with a floppy cell-wall and a really crappy generator. Luckily in the bit of sea next to me there was this little guy who did almost nothing but suck in the crap floating about and churn out exactly the kind of fuel I needed too. He got so good at it he made far more than he needed, and just excreted the rest. What was his name now..? Mito-Something, ah yes... Mitochondria. I stuck close by, siphoned what I needed, and put my feet up. Well - If I'd had feet, I'd have put them up anyway - I was a thinker. I had plans.
Lazy days. I took to a bit of DIY. Tried to fix up my cell-wall. I found I just sucked at building. As luck would have it in the pond around the corner there was this funny chap, foreign sounding name - Spirochaete I think - Greek maybe. Anyway - He looked like a frightened hedgehog - All spines made out of microscopic tubules. Sturdy. Rugged. Hirstute. I took to sticking to him like glue. I dragged him over to where Mitochondria and his family hung out and I was sorted. Lazy days under the veranda."
Note though, at this point, they are not a unified structure, they are three separate genomes, three separate entities who simply prosper better if they happen, at random, to be in close proximity to one another. One provides energy, one cover, one structure. Each supports the other. But if one divides then there is one too many, if one dies, there is one too few. Either way, it disrupts the pattern of symbiocy. The only answer is for then to begin to divide synchroniously. The easiest way for this to happen is for their genomes to fuse, become one, rather than three.
A mutation that achieved this would soon dominate the resources in the area. And so from three individuals with inadequacies, one supercell is formed. Good societies work under exactly the same principle.
Now we have cells, why build bodies..? The same principle. Arms race. Speed-trials. Diversification of appetite.
Perhaps in one area exist three types of single-cell lifeforms: One cell type is better at propelling itself. One better at digesting nutrients, different nutrients. One has a supertough cell wall, or produces chemicals that hinder rival cells.
Again, these cells would do better, thrive, if they exist in close proximity to one another. If they synchronize division, they do even better, if they clump together, adhere and eventually fuse genomes using special homeobox genes to regulate the number and location of cell types produced... They become kings of the castle.
Co-operation always makes sound evolutionary sense, wether or not the participants are sentient, or even communicative, it doesn't matter.
Of course direct fusion of genomes also derails any uncooperative behaviour.
Imagine if we only had 7 huge cells: Right leg, left leg, right arm, left arm, head, torso, and balls, all containing the exact same genome, though the individual genes of each are expressed and supressed in a slightly different manner to produce the relevant properties specific to each part.
Each body 'cell' works together in harmony to support the 'balls' to eventually produce a child with exactly the same genetic relatedness to each 'cell' - 50% if they reproduce sexually, a 100% if they simply clone. Each does exactly 1/7th of the work involved.
Now - Let us imagine a cell goes rogue: While the rest are sleeping, the left arm strangles the body and knuckles off into the blue. Then it grows some balls and finds a mate. Almost certainly a pity-shag. Produces a child. What has it done..? It has achieved exactly the same result as it would have if it had just been a good little arm and stayed attached, but - For a vastly increased expenditure of energy. It did all the work, rather than only 1/7th.
Duh. Was it a good idea..?
The co-operation of all the cells in our bodies, is not altruistic. They aren't doing eachother a favour. They are saving energy. Selfish little bastards.
So - basically the rule is: However many members you have in your body-colony, as long as all are 100% genetically related to the others, and each gene within that genome has an equal chance of being transmitted into the next generation, there will be no problems with cohesion of purpose.You can grow as big as you can, it doesn't matter. The biggest 'wins'.
Only gravity and the strength of your skeleton limit you. And resources/appetite/digestion - an army has always fought on its stomach. The reason why the dinosaurs were so damn big is the same reason old American cars were so damn big - there was enough fuel lying around to render 'economy-size' pointless. Our genes learnt the economy lesson the hard way, via a meteor and an iceage. Looks like we'll do the same. We're stupid you see, shortsighted, as genes, as their products. Live now, pay later, just so long as we live.
So, the clash of the Titans cannot go on for ever. A huge body is a great energy expenditure on the part of the lifeform in question's genome for the same result - offspring. It's a trade off - huge equals longevity and long fertile period, but a slow turnover of the generations, and a less dense population. A huge bodied species is slow to adapt to gross enviromental change - weather, drought etc. - but big bodies are strong and heavily defenced if the enviromental threat is another lifeform. Conversely - Small body = less biomass = quick turnover = high adaptability to gross enviromental change. So small bodies can be built in more diverse enviroments, allow higher population densities, but they are weak, easily killed by predators.
Simple, like stone/scissors/paper: Big beats small. Meteor beats big. Small beats Meteor.
Did I say small was weak..? I did. But only weak on their own.
Rather than have one giga-organism, co-operating through shared-reproduction-cohesion, 'all your eggs in one basket' so to speak - better to have a lot of 'separate bodies' acting in unison - a society - all your eggs with little legs of their own running about the place - that way, if some get stepped on, it don't matter too much.
The problem with a colony of truly separate bodies is recreating this unity of purpose that in a single bodied creature is policed through energy conservation and homogenuity. This is the problem evolution had to crack.
ie: Any species 'wanting' dominate all others, must find a way to produce a large-scale cohesive society. This is a rule of life and evolution just like any rule of chess or of mathematics. That man is a social animal, indeed the most social of animals, the most cohesive of social animals, and that man dominates the earth is no coincidence.
Insects in eusocietes manage to maintain and mimic a 'one-body' level of cooperation by concentrating the colony's means of reproduction into a single individual - the queen.
Human societies achieve the same end by setting themselves up so that it is easier to have children under the umbrella of that society than outside of it. All else, including technology, is on-going fine tuning to support, protect and secure resources for an ever growing population, the blessing and curse of societical success. This is why politicians kiss babies, because babies are the root of all society.
This ultimately makes social structures and abstract belief-sets as critical an adaption to the living portion of the enviroment as gills or lungs or legs were to the unliving enviroment.
ie: after a certain point, the 'fitness' of a society's infrastructure inevitably becomes more important than physical genomic fitness, more important than individual physical adaptations.
ie: Evolution does not need to remain solely in the physical realm to produce physical effect.
ie: Memes. Social concepts. Have real material effect by proxy of their living hosts, even if they are not alive themselves.
The gene is dead, long live the meme.
