CHAPTER THREE

CULTURAL SELECTION AND EVOLUTIONARY HOLOGEIST

by Hugh M. Lewis

Life upon earth has evolved in a self-organizing and anti-chaotic manner--blind chance and natural selection has guided the directions of changing species. We do not fully understand these natural processes upon earth, but we know that the dynamics of evolutionary change are central to the definition of biological life upon earth. We know these processes best at the level of speciation as they are generally studied and understood, but little is known about the global level of the whole fabric of life. The entire biosphere. It is almost certain that the fabric of life upon earth has evolved in unknown ways into an intricate, interwoven state such that the selective factors that impinge upon the speciation of one population are indirectly linked to the selective factors influence a myriad of other species.

During any particular evolutionary age, the global patterning of the web of life was fundamentally different than previous periods, and this global patterning had an indirect selective influence upon the kinds of species which evolved. Mass extinction events, the most noteworthy being the end of the age of the dinosaurs, have periodically occurred that radically altered the profile of the overall patterning of life on earth. Species surviving these historical episodes reemerge in altered and diverse forms under a new selection aegis. These episodes represent critical junctures in natural history in which the lifeways and web of interrelationships of the previous period becomes radically transformed and replaced by a new patterning. This overall patterning I have termed "hologeistic" and refers to the global and regional selective aegis of interspecies relationships. Undoubtedly, many minor events also occur, with an expected but unpredictable patterning of periodicity of earthquakes, and this patterning may be implicated to models of punctuated equilibrium that are applied to the species.

Hologeistic patterning is self-organizing. It is driven on a local level by processes of natural selection and random genetic change. The informational patterning which occurs at several levels (i.e. genotypical, phenotypical, and ecological) becomes affected differentially.

At any given level of articulation of the ecosystem (i.e. local, regional or global), there occurs a hologeistic patterning of interspecies relationships which provide a selection "regime" under which aegis the evolution of those species are channeled in certain directions.

The higher level relationships are also the most basic, and underlie and predetermine the patterning of organization of more local level regimes. On the other hand, the patterning of interaction at the more local level may statistically influence in a cumulative manner broader regional or global patterns. There is in this sense a feedback relationship between the global and local levels which is largely indirect and invisible, and articulated in terms of the underlying selective determinants which occur at those levels.

A bio-quake is an apt description for the kind of critical episode which occurs when there is transformation of hologeist. In terms of biological time, these "bio-quake" events are relatively rapid in occurrence--taking place in terms of decades, centuries or millennium, rather than in terms of millions of years. Unlike earthquakes which occur in a matter of seconds, these events are too slow, regionally widespread and diffuse in effect to be readily apparent or empirically noticeable.

This has an influence on our understanding of the basic processes of evolution--in particular, we cannot fully comprehend or reconstruct the natural history of life on earth if we pursue an exclusively analytical and non-synthetic understanding of this patterning--especially one that is "species-centric" by definition. A hologeistic approach to evolutionary theory provides a contextual framework appropriate for placing the genetic processes of speciation, perhaps allowing us to avoid some of the taxonomic dilemmas of cladistic versus a phenetic approach, or of punctuated equilibrium versus continuous evolution, or of the apparent paradox of a reduction to a primogenitorial "Eve" as the mother of all species and the related construction of "trees" from a single root stock.

We have thus an understanding of how biological diversity and ecology may be articulated with a global biosphere that takes on certain basic patterns of relationship. Natural systems theory provides the larger framework for the understanding of how the biological hologeist may be patterned and articulated at different levels, and come to have a stochastic influence upon the direction of evolutionary change.

The end of natural selection as it has been, and the emergence of human cultural selection, mark the contemporary evolutionary epoch. The human biomass has become the largest single species biomass upon earth. While it speaks of the evolutionary success of the human species, principally by means of cultural adaptation, it also speaks of an important critical interruption in the predominant biological processes of natural selection. As development makes increasing inroads into the remain natural habitats, natural ecosystems are becoming increasingly circumscribed and interfered with. As many species become extinct or endangered, more of the biological diversity is entering into a critical period of human management (and mismanagement)--no longer will the survival of these species depend upon natural selective forces for survival, but exclusively upon the vagaries of human good will and ecological consciousness. Cultural selection has replaced natural selection for most species on earth. Often this cultural selection is indirect or unintentional, as many species adapt themselves quite successfully to niches created by the artificial reconstruction of the landscape.

Cultural selection to a large extent has displaced and destroyed the processes of natural selection. Evolution is surely occurring, but under a radically transformed selective aegis of factors--factors that are now mostly man-made and cultural in origin than an intrinsic part of the evolutionary process. Cultural selection involves a number of processes upon the cultural level of informational patterning, and must be understood in terms of the sublevels of cultural systems. Superorganic cultural development of human civilization must be understood as a developmental process of increasing elaboration and sophistication of information which is essentially different in form, function and processes of transmission from the evolution of genetic information in the natural world.

It is a paradox that while the world is becoming thus transformed through the depredations of industry and human society, nature as a commodity is enjoying increasing popularity. Nature programs depict the "survival of the fittest" that not only have symbolic connotations of economic competition in the capitalist market-place, but also portray the vital process of natural selection in their most brutal and picturesque forms at the very time that these very processes are becoming interrupted. Surely, raising of ecological consciousness will become one of the principle forms of awareness to emerge--a consciousness that includes an enlightened sense of responsibility in the cultural management of natural systems.

The fate of the modern world remains unknown and very much an important and open question. The fact that it is in question should awaken us to the fact that something may be vitally wrong in our world. Human society as it has developed will continue for some time to come. Up to an unknown point we can rely upon our science and technology to provide many of the kinds of solutions we want in the cultural refashioning of the natural world. But we must take into account certain basic and unequivocal facts. Natural selection and life have been continuously operating forces upon earth for a few billion years, by contrast human culture and civilization has been in existence scarcely a few tens of thousands of years, and has only risen to ecological predominance in the last few hundred years. It is certain that we are undergoing as one consequence of this age a fairly rapid period of mass extinction of a broad variety of species on earth. What we do not know and cannot predict is the periodicity and timing of future events upon the earth. How soon and how sudden, nor what critical, relatively innocuous factors, may trigger such events.