1.3 Micro/Macro
Last modified 07/04/2008
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If Huxley, before his gestalt switch, was representative of many of those
in the generation before who baulked at the idea of evolution, it was because
that earlier generation was beset with the clear teleological implications of
embryology, and this often muddled their reasoning even as it enforced a
discipline of confronting the facts before them. It is almost as if Darwin cut
through the confusion by making a paradigm out of an error of oversimplification
that nonetheless was better focused on the facts of evolution. But the issue of
embryology cannot be so easily annexed to the paradigm of natural selection and
the issue of a larger framework simply won't go away. And the debate has
inherited this question mark in many versions, all of which can be summarized in
a distinction of a 'macro' aspect vs a 'micro' aspect. The idea is that while
natural selection is real it only explains the context of evolution, or one of
its levels, and not the real engine of evolution itself. The question then is,
where, if it exists, is this macro aspect to be found? Many candidates have
emerged, but again the problem of observation confounds easy hopes of success,
although the clear evidence of phenomena later codified as 'punctuated
equilibrium' does show the direct way in which the regime of selectionist
explanation is inexorably confronted by an equivocation over a micro and a macro
factor.
We can at least see that the scenarios constructed by Wallace and Darwin both, significantly, were induced by 'observations in the wild' where the spectacle of teeming life, the obvious play of the survival of the fittest, and the parallel placement of multiple related 'species', induced a perception that 'that was how evolution' occurred, and that it was visible from the plain surface of life. But what if the problem is not so simple. If evolution had a 'teleological' component then its action would relate a beginning and an end, in relation to the observer's present. Consider the implications! How would an observer observe something that is a function of such a large scale? His observations of 'teeming life' in the relative present would be dwarfed by what is a question of a totality of observations stretching over 13 billion years, at least. The observer has no assurance that observations of teeming life over the range of the lifetimes of the creatures in the wild that he sees before him really reflect the dynamic of macroevolution that might lurk behind the lesser situations of relatively delimited populations. He might have missed the whole thing, confusing macro with micro.
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