I enjoyed the post. It makes a correct and extremely important point about the fallacy of teleology. I have come to identify teleology with natural law theory, which has dominated Western civilisation for the last two millennia. Both Marx and Spencer (!) quickly identified the major contribution of Darwin’s _Origin of Species¬_ as putting the boot into teleology. Alas, they were a bit over-optimistic. Alas (2), I fear that your enthusiasm to make this point has led you astray. In the post, you condemn formulations which are at worst ambiguous or a legitimate figure of speech. I read the handout you refer to at https://www.stem.org.uk/system/files/elibrary-resources/legacy_files_migrated/35875-Y6Evolution-DarwinsFinches.pdf, and see little wrong with it. The story told is a good one, which entertains while instructing. It is true that some of its formulations are not inconsistent with a teleology, but so what? – you can’t do everything in a handout. To be specific: “the finches had to evolve beaks which could take advantage of the food supplies available to them … different finch populations evolved to eat different food sources.” There is nothing wrong with this, and you do not make out a case that there is. Birds have “distinctive beaks adapted for their specific diet.” Ditto. And so on. True, if you interpret “having to” as a compulsion, then it’s wrong; if you say populations evolve *in order to* exploit varied sources, then it’s wrong; if you think “perfect adaptation” literally exists, rather than constituting an – in context – legitimate hyperbole, then it’s wrong. If you think that evolution happens for a reason – an ‘in order to’ reason, rather than a ‘because of’ reason – then you are wrong. Evolution is not forward-looking and does not have a goal. But your strictures go way beyond this. You claim that it is ‘obvious’ that “individuals can’t adapt to an environmental need”. I say that it is obvious that they do, all the time. Take your example of meeting potential mates – individuals spend extraordinary time making themselves look and smell attractive, and learning the appropriate language and behaviour to make themselves seem cool. We absolutely do not adopt the stoicism of *simply* accepting the hand we were dealt. What do you think “*working* with what you’ve got” is doing, if not adapting? Your parable of the crossbills in the supermarket falls flat. “Did any of these birds adapt to the foods they ended up eating?” you ask. Yes, clearly they did. Firstly individuals adapted by specialising where they had advantage, absolute or relative. Secondly, newly learned habits of unwrapping cheese, etc, will be passed on by cultural evolution, thirdly, the frequency of helpful genes to each population will rise, fourthly, helpful mutations will be conserved. You know all this: why are you denying it? You seem to imply that inefficiencies are evidence of failure of evolution. They are not. There are trade-offs involved. The *best* trade-off will generally involve a bit of inefficiency here and a bit there. You summarise the problem thus: “Is a crossed beak the result of (1) divine intervention, (2) an evolutionary adaptation to the environment, or (3) did crossbills just get dealt a bad hand… and they’re struggling to do the best that they can with what they have?” The 1st 2 options I recognise. The 3rd is more problematic. It seems to be just an instance of (2). “Struggling to do the *best* one can with what one has” sounds like a good definition of adaptation. This reminds me of the idea of ‘satisficing’ put forward in economics as an alternative to optimisation: it should not be forgotten that satisficing might be optimal.
I enjoyed the post. It makes a correct and extremely important point about the fallacy of teleology. I have come to identify teleology with natural law theory, which has dominated Western civilisation for the last two millennia. Both Marx and Spencer (!) quickly identified the major contribution of Darwin’s _Origin of Species¬_ as putting the boot into teleology. Alas, they were a bit over-optimistic. Alas (2), I fear that your enthusiasm to make this point has led you astray. In the post, you condemn formulations which are at worst ambiguous or a legitimate figure of speech. I read the handout you refer to at https://www.stem.org.uk/system/files/elibrary-resources/legacy_files_migrated/35875-Y6Evolution-DarwinsFinches.pdf, and see little wrong with it. The story told is a good one, which entertains while instructing. It is true that some of its formulations are not inconsistent with a teleology, but so what? – you can’t do everything in a handout. To be specific: “the finches had to evolve beaks which could take advantage of the food supplies available to them … different finch populations evolved to eat different food sources.” There is nothing wrong with this, and you do not make out a case that there is. Birds have “distinctive beaks adapted for their specific diet.” Ditto. And so on. True, if you interpret “having to” as a compulsion, then it’s wrong; if you say populations evolve *in order to* exploit varied sources, then it’s wrong; if you think “perfect adaptation” literally exists, rather than constituting an – in context – legitimate hyperbole, then it’s wrong. If you think that evolution happens for a reason – an ‘in order to’ reason, rather than a ‘because of’ reason – then you are wrong. Evolution is not forward-looking and does not have a goal. But your strictures go way beyond this. You claim that it is ‘obvious’ that “individuals can’t adapt to an environmental need”. I say that it is obvious that they do, all the time. Take your example of meeting potential mates – individuals spend extraordinary time making themselves look and smell attractive, and learning the appropriate language and behaviour to make themselves seem cool. We absolutely do not adopt the stoicism of *simply* accepting the hand we were dealt. What do you think “*working* with what you’ve got” is doing, if not adapting? Your parable of the crossbills in the supermarket falls flat. “Did any of these birds adapt to the foods they ended up eating?” you ask. Yes, clearly they did. Firstly individuals adapted by specialising where they had advantage, absolute or relative. Secondly, newly learned habits of unwrapping cheese, etc, will be passed on by cultural evolution, thirdly, the frequency of helpful genes to each population will rise, fourthly, helpful mutations will be conserved. You know all this: why are you denying it? You seem to imply that inefficiencies are evidence of failure of evolution. They are not. There are trade-offs involved. The *best* trade-off will generally involve a bit of inefficiency here and a bit there. You summarise the problem thus: “Is a crossed beak the result of (1) divine intervention, (2) an evolutionary adaptation to the environment, or (3) did crossbills just get dealt a bad hand… and they’re struggling to do the best that they can with what they have?” The 1st 2 options I recognise. The 3rd is more problematic. It seems to be just an instance of (2). “Struggling to do the *best* one can with what one has” sounds like a good definition of adaptation. This reminds me of the idea of ‘satisficing’ put forward in economics as an alternative to optimisation: it should not be forgotten that satisficing might be optimal.