We are starting to see that the meaning of evolution might be something quite different from what we had thought. And at this point it is important to see how our common perceptions of what we think of as 'evolution' can be misleading. This is especially clear if we look at the natural environments of life, where we see the constant struggle for survival. It is a simple mistake, in casting about for some explanation of 'how evolution happens', to confuse this picture of teeming life with the dynamic of evolution itself. It is significant to see that Darwin fell into this way of looking at the issue, and it is important to see the influence of Malthus on Darwin in this regard. Malthus was the founder of the science of demography, and he was also, we should note, a highly contentious conservative figure, one of the most blatant in his propensity to use theory for social legitimation. The polarized and acrimonious debate over Malthus’ work went on for an entire generation, and in many ways prefigured the more complex and subtle Darwin debate. It is easy to lose sight of a simple fact: the mechanism adopted by Darwin under the influence of Malthusian thinking is open to severe challenge on its own terms. The struggle of populations, and the incidence of natural disasters or sudden population fluctuations, is seldom seen as a very weak candidate for an evolutionary theory, even as we begin to sense the need to distinguish macro from microevolution. The scale and duration of deep time are an unknown. It is therefore a temptation for a theorist to cast about for what he can observe as a clue to what he cannot. But it is very doubtful if what we mean by evolution is really caused by anything like a Malthusian scenario. Certainly the factor of natural selection is a given, but there is no inherent reason to assume that this generates the emergence of complex forms that we see in the fossil record.

 As David Stove notes in Darwinian Fairytales:

If Darwin’s theory of evolution were true, there would be in every species a constant and ruthless competition to survive: a competition in which on a few in any generation can be winners. But it is perfectly obvious that human life is not like that, however it may be with other species. 

Nothing in archaeology, the search for fossils, or DNA, is required to see this, or able to contradict this. We have no scientific proof that massive population catastrophes lead to evolutionary advance in the crucial questions under consideration. History shows any number of semi-Malthusian episodes, but its advances spring from a different source.

The confusion arises from looking at the surface of 'evolution' in the natural environments of life. This tends to make us take a short-term view. But as we are beginning to see the range of observation required to 'see' evolution must be far broader.