Editing Natural selection (section)

==Impact==
{{Main|Universal Darwinism}}

Darwin's ideas, along with those of [[Adam Smith]] and [[Karl Marx]], had a profound influence on 19th century thought, including his radical claim that "elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner" evolved from the simplest forms of life by a few simple principles.<ref>{{harvnb|Darwin|1859|p=[http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=507&itemID=F373&viewtype=side 489]}}</ref> This inspired some of Darwin's most ardent supporters—and provoked the strongest opposition. Natural selection had the power, according to [[Stephen Jay Gould]], to "dethrone some of the deepest and most traditional comforts of Western thought", such as the belief that humans have a special place in the world.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Gould |first=Stephen Jay |author-link=Stephen Jay Gould |date=12 June 1997 |title=Darwinian Fundamentalism |url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1997/jun/12/darwinian-fundamentalism/ |journal=[[The New York Review of Books]] |volume=44 |issue=10}}</ref>

In the words of the philosopher [[Daniel Dennett]], "Darwin's dangerous idea" of evolution by natural selection is a "universal acid," which cannot be kept restricted to any vessel or container, as it soon leaks out, working its way into ever-wider surroundings.<ref>{{harvnb|Dennett|1995}}</ref> Thus, in the last decades, the concept of natural selection has spread from [[evolutionary biology]] to other disciplines, including [[evolutionary computation]], [[quantum Darwinism]], [[evolutionary economics]], [[evolutionary epistemology]], [[evolutionary psychology]], and [[Lee Smolin#Cosmological natural selection|cosmological natural selection]]. This unlimited applicability has been called [[universal Darwinism]].<ref>{{cite book |author=von Sydow, M. |date=2012 |url=http://www.univerlag.uni-goettingen.de/content/list.php?cat=subject&show=Biologie&details=isbn-978-3-86395-006-4 |title=From Darwinian Metaphysics towards Understanding the Evolution of Evolutionary Mechanisms. A Historical and Philosophical Analysis of Gene-Darwinism and Universal Darwinism |publisher=Universitätsverlag Göttingen |isbn=978-3-86395-006-4 |oclc=1088022023}}</ref>

===Origin of life===
{{Main|Abiogenesis}}

How life originated from inorganic matter remains an unresolved problem in biology. One prominent hypothesis is that life first appeared [[RNA world|in the form of short self-replicating RNA]] polymers.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Eigen |first1=Manfred |author-link1=Manfred Eigen |last2= Gardiner |first2=William |last3=Schuster |author-link3= Peter Schuster |first3=Peter |last4= Winkler-Oswatitsch |first4=Ruthild |display-authors=3 |date= April 1981 |title= The Origin of Genetic Information |journal=[[Scientific American]] |volume= 244 |issue=4 |pages= 88–92, 96, ''et passim'' |doi=10.1038/scientificamerican0481-88|pmid=6164094|bibcode=1981SciAm.244d..88E }}</ref> On this view, life may have come into existence when [[RNA]] chains first experienced the basic conditions, as conceived by Charles Darwin, for natural selection to operate. These conditions are: heritability, [[Genetic variability|variation of type]], and competition for limited resources. The fitness of an early [[RNA world|RNA replicator]] would likely have been a function of adaptive capacities that were intrinsic (i.e., determined by the [[Nucleic acid sequence|nucleotide sequence]]) and the availability of resources.<ref name="Bernstein">{{cite journal |last1=Bernstein |first1=Harris |last2=Byerly |first2=Henry C. |last3=Hopf |first3=Frederick A. |last4=Michod |first4=Richard A. |last5=Vemulapalli |first5=G. Krishna |display-authors=3 |date=June 1983 |title=The Darwinian Dynamic |journal=The Quarterly Review of Biology |volume=58 |number=2 |pages=185–207 |doi=10.1086/413216 |jstor=2828805|s2cid=83956410 }}</ref><ref name="Michod">{{harvnb|Michod|1999}}</ref> The three primary adaptive capacities could logically have been: (1) the capacity to replicate with moderate fidelity (giving rise to both heritability and variation of type), (2) the capacity to avoid decay, and (3) the capacity to acquire and process resources.<ref name="Bernstein" /><ref name="Michod" /> These capacities would have been determined initially by the folded configurations (including those configurations with [[ribozyme]] activity) of the RNA replicators that, in turn, would have been encoded in their individual nucleotide sequences.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Orgel |first=Leslie E. |author-link=Leslie Orgel |year=1987 |title=Evolution of the Genetic Apparatus: A Review |journal=Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology |volume=52 |pages=9–16 |doi=10.1101/sqb.1987.052.01.004 |pmid=2456886}}</ref>

===Cell and molecular biology===

In 1881, the embryologist [[Wilhelm Roux]] published ''Der Kampf der Theile im Organismus'' (''The Struggle of Parts in the Organism'') in which he suggested that the development of an organism results from a Darwinian competition between the parts of the embryo, occurring at all levels, from molecules to organs.<ref>{{harvnb|Roux|1881}}</ref> In recent years, a modern version of this theory has been proposed by [[:fr:Jean-Jacques Kupiec|Jean-Jacques Kupiec]]. According to this cellular Darwinism, [[stochastic|random variation]] at the molecular level generates diversity in cell types whereas cell interactions impose a characteristic order on the developing embryo.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.scitopics.com/Cellular_Darwinism_stochastic_gene_expression_in_cell_differentiation_and_embryo_development.html |title=Cellular Darwinism (stochastic gene expression in cell differentiation and embryo development) |last=Kupiec |first=Jean-Jacques |author-link=:fr:Jean-Jacques Kupiec |date=3 May 2010 |website=SciTopics |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100804050452/http://www.scitopics.com/Cellular_Darwinism_stochastic_gene_expression_in_cell_differentiation_and_embryo_development.html |archive-date=4 August 2010 |access-date=11 August 2015}}</ref>

===Social and psychological theory===
{{Main|Evolutionary psychology}}
The social implications of the theory of evolution by natural selection also became the source of continuing controversy. [[Friedrich Engels]], a German [[Political philosophy|political philosopher]] and co-originator of the ideology of [[communism]], wrote in 1872 that "Darwin did not know what a bitter satire he wrote on mankind, and especially on his countrymen, when he showed that free competition, the struggle for existence, which the economists celebrate as the highest historical achievement, is the normal state of the ''animal kingdom''<!--author's emphasis-->."<ref>{{harvnb|Engels|1964}}</ref> Herbert Spencer and the eugenics advocate [[Francis Galton]]'s interpretation of natural selection as necessarily progressive, leading to supposed advances in intelligence and civilisation, became a justification for [[colonialism]], [[eugenics]], and [[social Darwinism]]. For example, in 1940, [[Konrad Lorenz]], in writings that he subsequently disowned, used the theory as a justification for policies of the [[Nazi]] state. He wrote "...&nbsp;selection for toughness, heroism, and social utility&nbsp;... must be accomplished by some human institution, if mankind, in default of selective factors, is not to be ruined by domestication-induced degeneracy. The racial idea as the basis of our state has already accomplished much in this respect."<ref>{{cite journal |last=Eisenberg |first=Leon |author-link=Leon Eisenberg |date=September 2005 |title=Which image for Lorenz? |journal=[[American Journal of Psychiatry]] |type=Letter to the editor |volume=162 |issue=9 |page=1760 |doi=10.1176/appi.ajp.162.9.1760 |pmid=16135651}} Eisenberg quoting translation of ''Durch Domestikation verursachte Störungen arteigenen Verhaltens'' (1940, p. 2) by [[Konrad Lorenz]].</ref> Others have developed ideas that human societies and culture [[Sociocultural evolution|evolve]] by mechanisms analogous to those that apply to evolution of species.<ref>{{harvnb|Wilson|2002}}</ref>

More recently, work among anthropologists and psychologists has led to the development of [[sociobiology]] and later of evolutionary psychology, a field that attempts to explain features of [[Psychology|human psychology]] in terms of adaptation to the ancestral environment. The most prominent example of evolutionary psychology, notably advanced in the early work of [[Noam Chomsky]] and later by [[Steven Pinker]], is the hypothesis that the human brain has adapted to [[language acquisition|acquire]] the [[grammar|grammatical]] rules of [[natural language]].<ref name="Pinker">{{harvnb|Pinker|1995}}</ref> Other aspects of human behaviour and social structures, from specific cultural norms such as [[Westermarck effect#Westermarck effect|incest avoidance]] to broader patterns such as [[gender role]]s, have been hypothesised to have similar origins as adaptations to the early environment in which modern humans evolved. By analogy to the action of natural selection on genes, the concept of [[meme]]s—"units of cultural transmission," or culture's equivalents of genes undergoing selection and recombination—has arisen, first described in this form by [[Richard Dawkins]] in 1976<ref>{{harvnb|Dawkins|1976|p=192}}</ref> and subsequently expanded upon by philosophers such as [[Daniel Dennett]] as explanations for complex cultural activities, including human [[consciousness]].<ref>{{harvnb|Dennett|1991}}</ref>

===Information and systems theory===
In 1922, [[Alfred J. Lotka]] proposed that natural selection might be understood as a physical principle that could be described in terms of the use of energy by a system,<ref>{{cite journal |last=Lotka |first=Alfred J. |author-link=Alfred J. Lotka |date=June 1922 |title=Contribution to the energetics of evolution |journal=PNAS |volume=8 |issue=6 |pages=147–151 |doi=10.1073/pnas.8.6.147 |pmc=1085052 |pmid=16576642|bibcode=1922PNAS....8..147L |doi-access=free }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Lotka |first=Alfred J. |date=June 1922 |title=Natural selection as a physical principle |journal=PNAS |volume=8 |issue=6 |pages=151–154 |doi=10.1073/pnas.8.6.151 |pmc=1085053 |pmid=16576643|bibcode=1922PNAS....8..151L |doi-access=free }}</ref> a concept later developed by [[Howard T. Odum]] as the [[maximum power principle]] in [[thermodynamics]], whereby evolutionary systems with selective advantage maximise the rate of useful energy transformation.<ref>{{cite book |author=Odum, H. T. |author-link=Howard T. Odum |date=1995 |title=Self-Organization and Maximum Empower |editor=Hall, C. A. S. |publisher=Colorado University Press}}</ref>

The principles of natural selection have inspired a variety of computational techniques, such as "soft" [[artificial life]], that simulate selective processes and can be highly efficient in 'adapting' entities to an environment defined by a specified [[fitness function]].<ref>{{harvnb|Kauffman|1993}}</ref> For example, a class of heuristic [[Mathematical optimization|optimisation]] algorithms known as [[genetic algorithm]]s, pioneered by [[John Henry Holland]] in the 1970s and expanded upon by [[David E. Goldberg]],<ref>{{harvnb|Goldberg|1989}}</ref> identify optimal solutions by simulated reproduction and mutation of a population of solutions defined by an initial [[probability distribution]].<ref>{{harvnb|Mitchell|1996}}</ref> Such algorithms are particularly useful when applied to problems whose [[energy landscape]] is very rough or has many local minima.<ref>{{cite web |title=Genetic Algorithms |url=http://www.pharmacologicalsciences.us/genetic-algorithms/scoring-functions.html |website=Pharmacological Sciences |date=7 November 2016 |access-date=7 November 2016}}</ref>

===In fiction===
{{Main|Evolution in fiction}}

Darwinian evolution by natural selection is pervasive in literature, whether taken optimistically in terms of how humanity may evolve towards perfection, or pessimistically in terms of the dire consequences of the interaction of human nature and the struggle for survival. Among major responses is [[Samuel Butler (novelist)|Samuel Butler]]'s 1872 pessimistic ''[[Erewhon]]'' ("nowhere", written mostly backwards). In 1893 [[H. G. Wells]] imagined "[[The Man of the Year Million]]", transformed by natural selection into a being with a huge head and eyes, and shrunken body.<ref name=SFE>{{cite encyclopedia |last1=Stableford |first1=Brian M. |last2=Langford |first2=David R. |title=Evolution |url=http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/evolution |encyclopedia=The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction |publisher=Gollancz |access-date=24 July 2018 |date=5 July 2018}}</ref>